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Friday 17 January 2020

TOUCHE: THE ADVENTURES OF THE FIFTH MUSKETEER


A man stumbles into a town at night on his way to a lively tavern. With his pithy one-liners and over-confident swagger, he's travelled a great distance with one ambition; to be a mighty pirate... I mean musketeer! Touche: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer (1995, Clipper Software & U.S.Gold) wears its inspiration on its sleeve but the change of location and overall plot does just enough to give it its own identity, and not be a shameless ripoff of The Secret of Monkey Island.

Any similarities to that absolute classic in more of a loving homage than an outright reproduction of the game. For starters, Touche is set in 16th century France at a time when they are war with England. It's the same backdrop as The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo and other great works by Alexandre Dumas which is ripe for parody. The sly, often witty words that come out of our protagonist's mouth proves you can get just as much mileage here as you can from pirate cliches.

Going by the name of Geoffroi Le Brun, you have arrived at the town of Rouen to train as the new Ensign of His Majesty's Musketeers. Upon your very arrival, you witness the murder of Count Willian de Peuple. His last words were to recover his will (the will of de Peuple - ha!) stolen from him in the attack. Also witness to this atrocity is Henri, your ever-hungry beggar/barman/con man/somewhat loyal manservant. Getting found out in his vagabond swindle, he is fired from his job as a barman and joins you on your new-found quest. That's quite a character arc for the first five minutes.

Love at first sight-gag. Geoffroi makes some hilarious attempts to woo Juliette (left)
D'Artagnan and The Three Musketeers are in the game but are absolutely no help (right)

At first, Henri is little more than a foil to bounce off acerbic comments. To give him something to do, he can also carry items in his sack, much like Luggage from the Discworld games, though limited item slots for our hero isn't really a thing here. The true value of his companionship from a gameplay standpoint comes when he is needed to solve some of the puzzles. About halfway through, you get to dress him up as a monk to infiltrate the belltower of a monastery. Up until this point, puzzles consisted entirely of correct manipulation of the inventory and the odd pixel hunt, but including your cohort in this way was a welcome change to the formula.

Other puzzles end up being a little obtuse. At one point, you have to find a lost letter written by  Captain Pleinforce of the musketeers. Searching the office requires little more than clicking on things, but you have to click on certain objects in order for you to find it. To make things worse, you might be stuck if you don't do it correctly. Either by a bug in the original game's code or one in ScummVM's implementation of it, I couldn't get it right even with a sneaky peek at the walkthrough. I spent an inordinate amount of time clicking on different papers only to come back later to find the puzzle had reset. Basically, examine the feather pen, the ink well and the stacks of paper from right to left in that order. If it doesn't work, leave and come back to try again.

There are a few other moments that expose the game's relatively lower budget. For starters, the graphics appear to be of little improvement over Monkey Island 2 which released three years earlier (though I wouldn't say it's an ugly game). Several locations, most notably the stables, reuse background art and character sprites (though the game itself deliberately mentions this as a joke). Some of the animations get a little lazy at times too. The practising musketeers in the courtyard may move fluidly, but when our hero comically falls out of a tree later on in the story, he uses up a single frame to go from standing on a branch to lying face down on the grass (though one could argue this makes it funnier).

Real-world locations are represented, including Le Mans, St. Quentin (left) and Paris (right)

I remember reading about Touche back in PC Gamer back in the day. It was one of the games used as an incentive to subscribe to the magazine (and I unsuccessfully begged my parents to do so, fantasising about getting either this or Realms of the Haunting). The game has become something of a collector's item now, with complete copies going for around £150 on eBay if and when they show up. I'm often tempted to ignore my financial situation and fork out for it making it the most I've ever spent on a single game.

Other than die-hard adventure gamers, I'm surprised to find it's somewhat forgotten. I found nothing on YouTube other than long-plays which is surprising considering its support on ScummVM. I'd hazard a guess that it's because it didn't get the marketing push that it perhaps needed due in part to U.S. Gold's financial troubles. The British publisher would later be merged with other struggling companies to found Eidos a year later, so my guess is that it got caught in the crossfire.

None of this has any bearing on the overall quality of the final game. Playing it is a welcome throwback to the golden age of the genre. It may ease a little too close to another celebrated game, but those Monkey Island comparisons end up being favourable ones and you don't need me to tell what that means.

Just in case you do, though, it means PLAY IT!


To download the game, follow the link below. This custom installer exclusive to The Collection Chamber uses ScummVM to allow the game to run on modern PCs. Manual included. Tested on Windows 10.

File Size: 142 Mb.  Install Size: 181 Mb.  Need help? Consult the Collection Chamber FAQ

Download


Touche: The Adventures of the Fifth Musketeer is © Clipper Software & U.S. Gold
Review, Cover Design and Installer created by me


Like this? Try These...

http://collectionchamber.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/return-of-phantom.html  http://collectionchamber.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/big-red-adventure.html  http://collectionchamber.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/discworld.html

9 comments:

  1. Although Touché - The Adventures Of The Fifth Musketeer was one of a few remaining handdrawn Adventure games I was interested in as of 1995, nevertheless I somehow didn't get hold of it at the time of its release; a period in which I thought that FMV was everything an Adventure needed to make me completely satisfied in terms of presentation for all time. Well, time has proved I'm still thinking that way, but every now and then something deep inside myself still yearns for an oldfashioned pixel hunting experience in the vein of my old Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island and Indiana Jones days from the very early 1990s. So, I guess that Biff's lovely prepared Touché presentation is the ideal opportunity to satisfy exactly that hunger which catches me up from time to time. Providing an unusually interesting francophile 16th century's era where a cunning musketeer with a smart little mouth is set to undergo the adventure of his lifetime within delightfully painted backgrounds that capture the vibe of the 1500s after Christ beautifully and make for a warm and dignified, but nonetheless also humorously thrilling cloak-and-dagger, costumes-and-masquerades athmosphere, I am more than willing to immerse myself into it.

    (A good-natured) "En-garde", Biff! You manage to pleasantly surprise people time and again! :-)

    Bye for now,
    Thomas

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  2. Lets keep the mid-90s 2d adventure theme going with Master of Dimensions next!

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    Replies
    1. Don't know when it'll be done but I'm working on it :)

      Next up is the January 5 which has a couple of requests fulfilled. After that there's another long-requested adventure coming up. Hint: it'll be a delight :)

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  3. I've got it, I've got it! I failed to get the Voodoo Kid clue at Halloween, just as I fail with most obscure clues, but I'm sure I've got this one. It might even have been me who requested it. Without spoiling it for others, I'll give another clue: Agatha Christie = AC. (No, it's not an AC story. It's a word association. I'll see if I'm right later.)

    Touche is also a delight, for people who haven't played it. I did, a while ago. Biff's review and Thomas have said it all, but I too was impressed by its historical authenticity. It did go a bit crazy in the final act though, but they're allowed to unwind at the end. It's great fun throughout.

    Also, for people who didn't know, the SCUMMVM engine is very user-friendly and can be downloaded from their site. It's often the best option for many 90s and 80s games. Check their directory of compatible games.

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  4. Please Please PLEAse PLEASE, Tom Clancy SSN

    It's been abandonware forever, yet nobody can get it to run without a virtual setup except some greedy guy on Ebay selling it $30.00 pre-fixed.

    Alot of us truly miss that game.

    Keep up the GREAT work Biffman 101 ! You should get the Noble Peace Prize !

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    Replies
    1. Peace, probably not. Perhaps the reviews could count towards a Nobel Literature Prize, but sadly computer science is one of the many fields not acknowledged by the Nobel Foundation. He should get a Turing Award for his clever setups, though. The Turing Award is generally recognized as the highest distinction in computer science and thus as the "Nobel Prize of computing".

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  5. Thanks for uploading - after finishing the excellent 'The Gene Machine' a few days ago (just left my mini-review on that game's page), thought I'd finally give this one a go after having it on my to-do list for years! Runs smooth enough except I'm having volume issues - the dialogue volume keeps shooting up and down in volume, loud one minute and 'distant' in amongst the midi music the next. I'm running it on both Windows 10, and on my far older Vista laptop(!), but having same issue on both. Anyone else getting the same thing / any clues about it? :)

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    Replies
    1. (...How many times did I over-use the word "volume" in that post. D'oh!!) :D

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    2. Hello! I don't recall such issues, but then I played it a while ago. Run setup.bat or press Ctl-F5 to enter SCUMMVM's setup menu. You can fiddle with sound controls there.

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