The Therapist Gamer

Day of the Tentacle was originally released in 1993.  It's a "Point and Click" adventure game, and it's the first game I ever played with full voice acting.  The gameplay consists mostly of finding a variety of objects and trying to see how to get them to interact with the environment.  Many sections involve talking with other characters - sometimes to solve puzzles but usually just for fun.

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The game is unashamedly quirky and silly.  It might not be to everyone's style, but I remember loving it as a kid and I still find it enjoyable 25 years later.  The voice acting delivery is not great by today's standards, but it still holds up surprisingly well - though some characters sound stilted, many lines are delivered in a way that still make me laugh every time.  Some of the humor is pretty slapstick, but the game is clearly self-aware so it's easy to play along with the goofiness.

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The story involves a purple tentacle (created to be a pet by a mad scientist) who drinks toxic sludge and gains the ambition to take over the world.  In order to stop this from happening, the three protagonists (Bernard, Hoagie, and Lavern) hop into time machines in order to go one day into the past to clean up the toxic sludge.  The time machines malfunction and the three protagonists are sent to different time periods - Bernard stays in the present, Hoagie goes 200 years into the past, and Lavern goes 200 years into the future.  All three characters are at the same motel, but just in different time periods.  The characters are able to pass items back and forth between each other, and their actions may impact the futures that their friends inhabit.  For example, you can submit a drawing of a tentacle to Betsy Ross as she designs the U.S. flag, and in the future the flag will be shaped like a tentacle (which is, of course, the perfect disguise for Lavern in her tentacle-ruled, dystopian future).  

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Most criticisms I've read of the game revolve around the complaint that some of the puzzles in the game are so obtuse that there is just no way that the average person would ever solve them.  This is a reasonable complaint but I think it arises from playing the game with an improper mindset; if you play the game with the sole focus of solving puzzles, you will definately get stumped.  However, I don't think that's how the game was really meant to be played.  I think it was meant to be played like a silly adventure where you experiment with the environment.  Much like Minecraft, the game really shines when you just look around and try things out, and it's weaker when the player is too goal-oriented.  That's not to say that I haven't gotten frustrated at some of the puzzles!  I will say, though, that I managed to make it through the entire game without needing a guide (which are easy to find online, anyway, in case you can't bear being stuck).

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Allow me to further explain what I mean (and defend the game): you come across a shivering John Hancock who wants you to build a fire, but Thomas Jefferson won't let him use the log sitting right next to the fireplace.  No normal human would surmise the correct way to go about solving this puzzle, which is that you get a novelty exploding cigar and give it to George Washington, who then gets his dentures destroyed, and to whom you then give some novelty chattering teeth.  Jefferson sees George chattering his teeth and concludes that it must indeed be cold, and that he should use the log to make a fire.  Again, no one would ever premeditatedly set out on that course of events, but that's because that's not really how the game is meant to be played.  How the player actually experiences the game is that they notice things in the environment and try out different items in their inventory.  So you simply notice that George Washington is smoking a cigar and that you have an exploding cigar in their inventory.  When he needs new dentures, you notice that there are some novelty teeth in another time period and figure out a way to get them.  You don't give them to George because you figure it will lead to Jefferson starting a fire, you give them to George just to see what will happen next.  

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The puzzle I've read the most complaints about involves washing a dirty horse-drawn carriage in order to make it rain.  Even though there are subtle hints, most people would never conclude that cleaning the carriage would cause it to rain.  Fair enough.  But again, you don't set about to make it rain, you just notice that there's an entire screen taken up by a dirty carriage, and that you have soapy water and a brush in your inventory.  If at any time or place you try to use the soapy water, the character will say "there's nothing to clean here," which is basically a hint to find something that needs cleaning.  However, I think that this sort of gameplay is simply foreign to objective-obsessed, trophy-collecting gamers.  In that way, this game is an interesting historical piece that displays the difference between what gamers found engaging in 1993 and what they enjoy now.

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It's difficult to recommend a game that I know is bound to be disliked by many people, but, simply put, I recommend games that I really like.  If you don't want to waste your time with an unknown quantity, then feel free to spend two hours of your life by watching my complete play-through of the game!  I've also posted a short video of some of my favorite moments.