Time Gentlemen Please!

Time Gentlemen Please! is a point and click adventure game by Zombie Cow Studios, which was launched in 2009. It is a sequel to Ben there, Dan that! which was released a year earlier in 2008. Zombie Cow Studios, now Size Five Games as of 2011, has published few games since these two titles but it had released Gun Monkeys in 2013. Gun Monkeys, a one on one online platform shooter, features the voice talent of English comedian Kevin Eldon. Time Gentlemen Please!, like the previous instalment, is highly influenced by old point and click adventures such as Sam and Max, Tales of Monkey Island or Grim Fandango.

The plot picks up from the conclusion of Ben there, Dan that! in which the two protagonists have inherited leadership of an indoctrinated world population after defeating their future selves. Ben and Dan convince the world to watch Magnum P.I. which results in the human race going extinct as they were not instructed to eat, drink or sleep. Once the heroes realize their error they decide to travel back in time and prevent the coat hanger from ever being invented. Their rationale for doing so is due to their future selves using the coat hanger to abduct Ben and Dan into the world they had just destroyed. After using the time travelling device to transport themselves into the past and attempting to solve their problems, they realize they have made matters worse rather than fixing their mistake.

In this new timeline Hitler has won the war, taken over the world and commands an army of Nazi dinosaurs that do his every bidding. Ben and Dan, upon encountering Hitler, are thrown into Big Ben as prisoners of the Nazi regime. Time paradoxes begin to emerge and the time stream becomes increasingly unstable as the game progresses. Eventually Dan and Ben manage to flee their holding cell but their method of escaping by manipulating the time line causes more rips in the fabric of time and space. Once free from their imprisonment they aide the resistance in their attempts to overthrow Hitler. During their adventuring the duo also seek out PAL, a robot with some knowledge on time travel, in order to fix the mess they had made.

Overall, this was a fun and very bizarre game that was well received by critics. The humour and off the wall, complex puzzles were a highlight of the game for me but it wouldn’t appeal to every gamer. The puzzles could be quite infuriating at times but provided a sense of satisfaction once you had solved a difficult one that you had been stumped on for a while. While I doubt there are any more instalments planned for this series, I would be eager to see to see what Dan Marshall and Ben Ward could design now almost ten years later.

Plot=7/10

Characters=7/10

Graphics=6/10

Overall=7/10

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