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Ben There, Dan That!

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Developer: Zombie Cow Publisher: Zombie Cow Genre: Adventure > General Released: Jul 11, 2008 Players: 1 Website

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- Ben There, Dan That! Review

Michael Scarpelli: 8

Ben There Dan That is pretty much totally awesome. It's free (huzzah) and is a faithful and sly homage to games of yore and send-up of the games of today. The game is filled with cheek and loaded with old school adventure game charm.

Sure, like all adventure games it has its interface quirks (I got pretty tired of right-clicking through my interactivity options and began to wish I could double-click to jump to locations instead of having to watch my guys walk everywhere), but it's a gem beyond that, and for me the far and away highlight of the month.

I laughed out loud more than once and played it right on through to the end. By and large, it has much less frustrating and obscure puzzle solving than most adventure games offer, as well.

Pany Haritatos: 8

For the price, it's pretty hard to beat Ben There, Dan That. I couldn't help but wonder why the developer had decided to release the game for free, as it is certainly worth far more than the entry fee. Perhaps Zombie Cow has some tricky plan for world domination up their sleeves. I hope they do, because anything that makes it more likely that there will be another of these games is a good thing in my book. BTDT is classical golden age graphical adventure game goodness. If you remember the glory days of Sierra and Lucas Arts fondly at all, then you owe it to yourself to give BTDT a spin. Chances are you'll be gripped in the first few moments, and it won't let you go until the ride is over. The game is really well written, with a lot of great jokes and humor to push the story along. It's not perfect, though. Some of the puzzles are a little too obscure, and I admittedly had to cheat a couple times to proceed. I also wanted the interaction cursor to be a little more context sensitive. Other than these two minor gripes, BTDT excels. It has great audio, great writing and great graphics. Adventure game fans, BTDT is for you.

Coby Utter: 6

It is easy to see that Ben There Dan That is both an homage and a parody of the old point and click adventure games. The two titular characters are tasked with all kinds of bizarre quests, with humor and pop-culture references abound. You'll need to collect various items through inspection and dumb luck, and combine them for often hilarious results as you try to solve each section of the game.

Deep down I was hoping that something marvelously breathtaking and original was lurking in the game, but it is entrenched firmly in the classic adventure mechanics. The humor and wacky events buoy the game, which is otherwise quite unremarkable. The text can be hard to read and mouse-over object highlighting would have been extremely welcome, but this game is free, so it's hard to complain. Despite plenty of room for improvement, there's absolutely no reason to avoid downloading it and giving it a chance yourself.