Obviously I've played this a million times, but it's been a while. I'd forgotten how low-res the sprites are and I'd never noticed the hissing on some of the voice clips, but that stopped registering after a couple of minutes. It still looks gorgeous, though, with its chunky cartoon graphics and fantastic animation, and the music is perfect. It starts out so energetically, too, with a long, lavish Chuck Jonesy cutscene that blows all the previous games' openings out of the water. Then there's a quick easy single-room puzzle to ease you in, before BAM the time-travel concept comes out of nowhere and within moments you're hurtling through a time-tunnel in another big cutscene. But at the same time it doesn't overwhelm you - you're given a simple find quest to let you get acquainted with the (easily navigable) modern-day map before you get given your modern-day main objective and access to the past map (which closely echoes the modern day one so again it's quickly memorisable). It's expert pacing, wrapped up in gorgeous presentation. And already it's very funny, with broad cartoon humour alongside clever wordplay and even the occasional sly political dig like the Ronald Reagan pic that mentions an EPA grant.
I'd also forgotten how detailed it is, there's still dialogue in there that I'm discovering now. Reading the boring book and squirting disappearing ink on every single character turns up some great responses! The puzzles are all really clever (only a couple of tough ones where the signposting could be a bit better), and it has your major tasks outlined from the start and visibly present throughout, so there's a massive feeling of achievement when you complete one of them. The ending is fantastic as well, lots more cutscenes mixed with some bitesize puzzles and a killer final gag.
Rating: Green.
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