 | | Little Big Adventure was a PC (and later Playstation) adventure game from the early '90s, and a truly magical experience that's stayed with me ever since |
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Little Big Adventure - also known as Relentless in the US - was a French developed PC title released all the way back in 1994, courtesy of Frederick Raynal of Alone in the Dark fame. Fuck me, 12 years ago? That sure makes one feel old.
From those golden years of PC gaming though - where it happily shared shelf space with the likes of Doom and Day of the Tentacle - Little Big Adventure still managed to stand out among its seminal peers, thanks to both its sheer beauty, and perhaps most of all, its zany eccentricity.
But what actually
was LBA? To this day, one still can't sum it properly. Basically though, you played Twinsen, an imprisoned young man who had attracted the watchful eye of the law due to some rather crazy visions he'd been having. LBA took place in a grim and oppressive totalitarian society you see, where soldiers marched up and down the streets in broad daylight, and just looking at 'em the wrong way saw you shot in the face. The twist of course, was that this dark and brooding universe came courtesy of the most colourful and cartoony graphic style you'd ever seen. As a result, LBA looked - to its far more original credit - like some kinda demented baby game on the face of it...when somewhat hilariously, it was fucking hardcore underneath it all. Genius.
The Many Faces of Twinsen
 | | The game regularly throwed you in jail for being a bad boy |
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Gameplay-wise, the game was an isometric adventure of sorts, one with subtle RPG elements in its item gathering and NPC conversations. It opened with your escape from prison, then gradually mutated into an epic globetrotter as Twinsen pursued those apocalyptic visions, and eventually set about overthrowing this evil and corrupt government. In practice, this involved solving puzzles and interacting with fellow toons, in a kind of
Shadowrun by way of Monkey Island. Check this though...by the flick of a key, you could switch to any of three additional movement modes whenever you wished, and with each one the genre subsequently shifted too.
"Athletic" mode for instance, upped Twinsen's speed and movement abilities, twisting the game into a crazy chase 'em up platform game. A further click would switch to "Aggressive" mode, giving Twinsen new found - and real-time - beat 'em up abilities, complete with angry "grrrrrr!"s as he roamed the streets like a drunken lout. Lastly, you could flip the script completely and turn on "Discreet" mode, which zapped the game into a sneaky stealth 'em up, the only way to lay low from the law and solve some of the more ingenious puzzles.
Each of these modes had their own uses at specific points, and when thrown together gave the game a massive, if perhaps misleading feeling of freedom. This was a completely linear adventure after all, yet the sense of being able to move around these fully realised futuristic cities and approach various obstacles in any of the four ways made it all seem so
rich. There really was nowt vaguely like it back then...and arguably rarely is these days either.
Blocky Beauty
 | | With impeccably detailed animation and backdrops, LBA was a right looker in its day |
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The graphics still look fine to this day, really. The pre-rendered backgrounds are nice enough, while the animation remains incredibly detailed. I distinctly remember LBA being the first PC game I ever saw run in "high resolution" (which comes courtesy of speech marks as it was only 640*480 on my rig). The razor sharp character models coupled with the then state-of-the-art shading techniques resulted in a beaut of a game though...and one that oddly overshadowed its 1997 sequel.
Along with the aforementioned LucasArts classics, it was also one of the earliest experiments into games featuring full voice acting, thanks to the then startlingly alien and brand spanking new "CD-ROM" technology. Oh the majesty of seeing games on shiny discs for the first time. For such an odd and off-beat world though, it's rather amazing how spot-on this voice acting was; silly, funny, and completely fucking bonkers.
I'd have to say though, it's the music which remains most memorable of all. In fact, this is perhaps the single most enchanting and lovable trait that makes Big such a timeless classic for me, featuring original, cheesy, yet oddly haunting ditties that right from the title theme, immediately set the tone for the rest of the game.
Ooh Ya Bugger
 | | Using "Discreet" mode to tip-toe past an, er, big arse elephant guard. Don't let him see you...trust me |
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As I say, Little Big Adventure may be cutesy and cartoony on the outside, but make no mistake, a kid's game this ain't. Not only is the underlying story surprisingly dark when you squint your eyes and cease to look at it through its cartoon-tinted specs, but the sheer challenge of the game is brutally over the top too. I'm not exaggerating, this mother fucker's tough as hell, and even back then was really only for the most skilled of gamers.
This son of a bitch regularly stumped me right across the board as a teenager. It required super human reflexes to avoid and defeat even the most mundane of enemy grunts, but also an epic amount of both lateral and forward thinking to solve the numerous brain teasing puzzles too. And what happened when you failed? Boy it made you pay for it. Arguably the game went overboard here, and thus had one true fly in the ointment, but at least by sending you back to prison every time you got killed and forcing you to break out over and over, it provided an original and interesting spin on the age old tradition of constant respawns. You really did need the patience of a porn star's husband to see this thing through to the end though.
Time Travel
 | | Twinsen nicks an army motorbike while its owner pops off for a pee. Ahh, urine humour |
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While I'd love for each and every gamer who missed out on this classic back in '94 to give it a spin, the ultimate question remains; does it hold up in this day and age? Personally, I'd say so for the most part. Technically it defies embarrassment at least, and both the game world and the story itself are just as magical, touching and loveable as they ever were. For these reasons I can't recommend LBA enough to those who missed out on it first time around, and will happily point 'em towards the
LBAWin homepage, which features a Windows XP launcher to get this DOS relic up and running on modern systems.
It's in terms of that raw challenge that today's gamers may find hurdles though. For better or worse, replaying the stupendously challenging LBA here in 2006 both surprises and reminds me of just how damn easy games have become over the years. In stark contrast to something like Beyond Good & Evil - perhaps its closest modern day equivalent - it's a cruel, punishing bastard of a game. Are today's more pampered players ready for that?
With video gaming's success in the mainstream of recent years, one has to wonder if perhaps the games themselves have lost some of their balls along the way. If LBA is anything to go by, they've certainly lost some of their majesty too...
This review/report was created by the great team at TPSreport.co.uk:
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