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Tony Tough review
An article by Remi Olsen, posted on March 07. 2003.
Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths (TT) has been followed with some excitement in the LucasArts (LEC) community during its development. The game has been compared to LEC classics like Day of the Tentacle (DOTT), Sam & Max Hit the Road (S&M stop snickering), and most importantly for our readers, Curse of Monkey Island (CMI). So seeing that this is a Monkey Island site, I decided to put up a review of this game aimed at Monkey Island
Plot/Story
Make no bones about it the plot and story is just there as an excuse to make a funny game. Tony Tough works as a detective for a large company where he for the past ten years has been trying to solve the mystery behind stolen Halloween candy. Oh my! To add it up, Tony's dog (is it really a dog?) is kidnapped on Halloween and abducted to a large Halloween park. Coincidence? I think not! Hot on the pursuit of the bad guy, the doors to the park close, and Tony is trapped, leaving you to control him through an adventure which seems suspiciously similar to the last part of CMI. The story doesn't really move much after that, but not to worry; the humor should keep you entertained anyway. If you enjoyed CMI you will definitely enjoy TT's tongue-in-cheek humor.
Graphics
TT's background graphics fit somewhere in between DOTT and CMI both in style and quality. In some aspects the game looks like it's transported from 1995, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Ok, so the level of detail isn't up there with CMI, but if you enjoyed the look of that game - especially the part at Big Whoop - you will at the very least like TT's style also. There are sceneries that obviously are inspired by some of the locations in the Monkey Island games, and playing spot-the-inspiration can take up a lot of your time, if you so desire.
The animation is a mixed bag. Some parts are choppy and don't blend well with the backgrounds. It's not to say they're as bad as what we saw in Gilbert Goodmate, but they're a far cry from CMI's quality. On the flip side there are some minor character details that are well animated. An example is the pirate captain's hat make sure to check out the skull on it.
Sound
No surprise here the music feels very LEC-ish, although the sound quality sounds kind of 1991 at times with a distinct MIDI feel. The tunes are well hummable though, and quite catchy.
As for the voice acting, I was highly impressed. Most games suffer from characters sounding too similar to each other (more often than not because the same actor voice multiple characters), and generally feel like the actors are reading the lines straight from a piece of paper. Not so with TT. Tony himself is lovably annoying, and the supporting cast provides enough variation for this to sound like a high-budget cartoon.
Bugs/errors/say what?!
While there aren't any bugs in the game per-se, it does suffer from some translation issues. TT was originally written in Italian which shows at times. One thing that makes this more than a minor annoyance is that a hint to one of the earlier puzzles is butchered because of bad grammar. Some of the jokes also fall flat because of the translation.
Another slightly annoying part is the puzzles themselves. While adventure games always have had a warped form of logic, I have rarely been as stumped as with some of the puzzles in this game. Combining all sorts of strange objects seems to be the order of the day, and it feels like you have to do a lot of guess-work while doing it. Luckily Tony has a lot of great smart-ass comments, so you won't just get the standard "I can't do that" when trying to combine a piece of bread with a wig. (It could have worked!)
Gameplay/fun quotient
What makes TT a very cool game is that it's a lot of fun. The plot won't set the world on fire, the the puzzle might have no logic what so ever at times, the visuals are a mixed bag and the whole game might just be one big LEC rip-off, but that's all secondary because of two things: One Tony Tough is a very likable character in a sad, funny sort of way, very much like Guybrush Threepwood in CMI, and two - the humor, while somewhat predictable at times, is really funny in a silly sort of way. Add this together, and you have a game that is just pure fun to play. If you're after a game with a deep plot and chock-full of originality you should go somewhere else, but if you just want to have a good time with a lot of laughs, you can't go wrong with Tony Tough.