Full Throttle Remastered review for PS Vita, PS4

As its name implies, Full Throttle Remastered is a remastered version of ’90s adventure game Full Throttle, redone by the geniuses at Double Fine to bring their game to more modern audiences.

By now, of course, you should know exactly what you’re getting into. Much like Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle before it, you can see why the game garnered such rave reviews when it was first released, but, at the same time, there are points where it’s not hard to tell that it was released a few decades ago.

That said, in some ways Full Throttle Remastered shows its age a little less than some of the other Double Fine remasters. Whereas the “demaster” button for Day of the Tentacle put the contrast between the original and the new version in stark relief (both in terms of graphics and in terms of controls), here that same button shows that Double Fine didn’t need to do too much to update the original Full Throttle. The graphics 1995 graphics don’t look that dated, while the game controls like your standard point & click adventure (in stark contrast to Day of Tentacle, which upgraded to those from text controls).

Most importantly, whereas both Day of the Tentacle and Grim Fandango screamed “’90s game!” in everything they did, it’s a little less noticeable here. Full Throttle Remastered’s characters are less rooted in a ’90s aesthetic, with bikers and eccentric rich people coming across as more caricatures from the ’50s than anything else. The humour and the voice acting have a similarly timeless (for lack of a better descriptor) quality, seeming less rooted in ’90s pop culture than some of the studio’s other games.

I don’t want to overstate Full Throttle Remastered’s “modern” feel. Likewise, I wouldn’t want to suggest that anyone other than adventure game fans will want to check it out: it’s relatively easy and short, but it’s still of the “walk here, pick up X, combine X with Y” school of gameplay. Still, if you’re a fan of the genre and want to see how long Double Fine have been cranking out the classics, this game is well worth checking out.

Double Fine Productions provided us with a Full Throttle Remastered PS Vita code for review purposes.