When I think 'point and click', I think 'Oh, no, please, anything but that'. Generally, that is. When I think about it in the context of this 1001 list, I'm reminded that I still need to go back to Broken Sword, Grim Fandango, and even Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Oh, and a few Monkey Island adventures too.
Even though I know I'm awful at finding the often obscure solutions to the many puzzles in these games, their usually humourous stories and strong characters are worth putting in the time for. You can tell stories differently in point and click games. You can get to explore a character's thoughts and attitudes in ways that other games just don't touch.
But the genre had still fallen behind by the time 2010 rolled around. Wouldn't it be nice to go back in time and enjoy them in their prime? That's not the premise in Time Gentlemen, Please!, but this is certainly a love letter to the genre. One written by two foul-mouthed idiots, but a love letter nonetheless.
Fun Times
Time Gentlemen, Please! is the sequel to Ben There, Dan That, an adventure that sees two pals fixing their TV aerial, and it obviously gets more complicated from there.
I've briefly played Ben There, Dan That. 'Briefly' because as soon as I found out it was a point and click and got stuck, I abandoned it. Well, we'll hope to get much further in the sequel.
Do I need to tell you the controls in a point and click game? You've got several ways to interact with an item of interest, an inventory to store them in, and your mate Dan to do the dirty work you don't want to do. Thanks, Dan.
Ben and Dan are a couple of lads on a mission. When they're not waffling on about Magnum PI and arguing with each other, they're trying to save the world from their future selves, who turn out to be right arseholes.
Based on their choice of words, that's not so hard to see. Time Gentlemen, Please! is absolutely not afraid to bring out toilet humour and profanity to paint the picture of these idiots on their idiotic quest.
Some people will probably be put off by this sort of stuff. They're very chatty folks who aren't afraid to speak their mind and crack a sarcastic joke if the situation calls for it. It's banter between mates that have their own rich history that is probably better fleshed out if you've played Ben There, Dan That first.
It's also not voiced, which is probably a good thing because I think I would be put off if I had to put up with annoying lad voices.
Using the floor indicator for the lift to pry open the door to the not-so-secret secret room, we find ourselves in another dingy blue-grey room. The art style of this game is hand-drawn and would feel right at home in a Flash game, as would the script, of course.
You just wouldn't get this kind of output from a big studio, and when the brains behind the game are so engrossed in the genre, you know you're going to get something good, too. It's a passion project and probably hopes that anyone playing it is as well-read on point and clicks as Ben and Dan are.
Onto the story, then. Our plan to stop our future selves from taking over the world for the worse is to go back in time and make sure coathangers were never invented. Why? Because using a coathanger as a TV aerial got us into this mess. In the world of point and click adventures, this makes sense, believe me.
It's here that we get our first conversation tree, and what a large and silly one it is, too. Our task here is to help Hitler work out what to do with us, but in a game as insane as this, that obviously involves phrases and suggestions that have never been uttered in the history of mankind.
Perhaps I ought to point out that Time Gentlemen, Please! comes from Britain, and we do comedy rather differently to other countries. I'm not saying this is laugh-out-loud humour because I'm not doing that at all. It's surreal and absurd, sometimes violent, often juvenile. Don't take it as a serious story about time travelling idiots, take it as an idiotic story presented to players through a well-crafted point and click adventure.
We've been brought to the Tower of London and imprisoned in what is clearly our next puzzle. How do we escape this predicament? How do we time travellers with our time-travel stick get out of this tricky situation?
Sadly, the obvious answer is not the one Time Gentlemen, Please! would like us to solve. Our time-travel stick isn't working, though it is capable of ripping open a portal to last night, before Eckles was taken out of his cell and shot in the dick. No joke.
If this is how we're going to be time travelling in the game, then I think I might be interested. Up until this point, I was a little annoyed at just how text-heavy this experience has been - especially if you end up going in circles talking to Hitler because you can't find the one path through the conversation Time Gentlemen, Please! wants you to select.
Part of the room is in the present, part in the past, point and click puzzles to solve... I can get behind this.
Frustrations
I can get behind the idea more than the execution, however. The idea is great. Think of the puzzles you can come up with if different parts of your environment are in different periods of time. Unfortunately for me, someone else thought of these puzzles, and I'm not on their wavelength.
If I approach the cake - which clearly isn't just a cake - I'm shouted at and have to stop. If I investigate the open gear and chain mechanism, I'm told that I can't do anything with it. I can see a skeleton clutching something but have no way of reaching it. Every idea I have resulted in a swift dead end.
You're controlling Ben, which means Dan serves as an extra pair of hands or a mouthpiece. His suggestions are not exactly helpful to any point and click newcomers who happen to stumble across this game. They sure aren't helpful to me. What does Time Gentlemen, Please! want me to do here?
Hopping into the inventory offers me some clues. We've got a tape reel that magically turns into a whole load of tape the very second I dare to make use of it, and items can be combined so of course I tie some string-like tape to a metal arrow to allow me to... what exactly?
I still can't jam it in the machinery, and I can't find a way to use it elsewhere. It's not a grappling hook, so I can't pluck objects from afar with it. It's clearly a useful item otherwise it wouldn't exist, but how is it useful? Where is it useful?
Hoping Eckles has more brains than Dan does, I strike up yet another conversation with him, this time trying to get him on our side by convincing him that we're not Nazi's. A few history quiz questions later and we've finally done something productive, and he will no longer scream for the guards if we approach his cake.
We have, in the process, changed history, and a new present-day Eckles phases into view as we attached a file to our arrow thingy. By the look of it, we've not even attached it using the tape as some sort of string. It looks like we've just wedged the file on top of the arrow, and this extra two inches of height is enough for us to reach the window bars and file them off.
I'm glad I found a way out, but it was not the way out I was expecting to find, especially when I'd seen some pointers towards that cage near the ceiling. What was that all about? Have we got multiple solutions to the puzzle? That'd be nice, but whether I'm smart enough to find even one solution to this madness, I don't know.
Obviously, I did find one, otherwise, I wouldn't be escaping right now, but you know what I mean.
We're off to see Professor Hartnell, who I think has some time travel tech of his own. The map to his house was stuffed down Eckles' underpants. Dan fished them out. I told you Dan was used for an extra pair of hands, just like I told you the humour is often juvenile.
Eckles is shot in the dick again, and that's that for my first hour of Time Gentlemen, Please!
Final Word
At first, I must admit to not really liking Time Gentlemen, Please!. I wasn't fully on board with the presentation and the writing. Ben and Dan just rattled on and on, when I just wanted to play the game. As time went on, however, I realised that this inane banter was the game, because Ben and Dan and their stupidity are tied to everything. They've caused every problem, and somehow they will solve every problem.
It'll help massively if you go into it knowing that it is a verbose point and click adventure that is both bonkers and a damn good example of what a point and click game is all about. It may look basic, but a lot of effort has gone into this game to make everything work, even if it appears nonsense on the surface.
Could it be more helpful to those of us that need hints? Definitely. Is that going to stop me from playing it further? Hmmm...
I've got Ben There, Dan That, and if Time Gentlemen, Please! is a direct continuation of the story, I'm sure it'll be more sensible to play that game first. I'll probably check that out again, and with more gusto, knowing where it'll lead, before coming back to this one.
How far I'll get through either before struggling, I have no idea, but if these characters grow on me - and very slowly I think they have been - then I might bang my head against the wall in search of a solution to a problem for a little while longer than I perhaps would have in the past.
Time Gentlemen, Please! is probably not the first point and click you should dive into, but when you know you're way around the genre, it's certainly worth a look.
Fun Facts
It took a decade, but Ben and Dan now have a third game, Lair of the Clockwork God.
Time Gentlemen, Please!, developed by Zombie Cow Studios/Size Five Games, first released in 2009.
Version played: PC, 2009.