Just finished Willy Beamish. I did end up having to get a hint for where I was stuck for a while. It turns out that
I had to use the tablecloth near the suit of armor instead of on it like I had tried. 
I'm not really a fan of Willy Beamish. Like I mentioned before, I didn't find it funny or even amusing. Jokes sort of just fall flat. Willy isn't really that interesting of a character. You are given a small amount of freedom with his actions with some of his dialogue choices and actions that affect his "Trouble Meter" and I get the impression they want him to be a "likeable troublemaker" type of character but they really don't pull that off. He's just sort of dull. He's a kid who doesn't like school and likes to play video games. That's it. Each member of the family is given a single trait and even then they don't do much with it. The ghost of his grandfather talks to him which ought to be interesting, but again, they do nothing with it. I guess the best thing that I can say about the story is that it's inoffensive. It's not crude (despite the whole plot being about plumbers and a "Sludgeworks" the toilet humor wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be) or obnoxious, but it's not very enjoyable either.
The other issue that I had with it was the gameplay. As I mentioned, the inventory system is clumsy. Everything seems to require an extra step to do. If you try to use an item on something where it can't be used, it goes to the corner of the screen so you have to pick it up and try again. Occasionally an item need to be aimed, so you have to right-click to cycle through the icons until you get a crosshairs icon. I found out that this was a thing by accident. Yes, it's in the in-game instructions (but not the print manual) but it's just an unnecessary complication. Fumbling with the inventory and icons like this made puzzles where you are under time pressure really frustrating. Some of the puzzles themselves felt like the game was trying to cheat you. There were a few times where it seemed to offer a solution that was missing one more piece of the puzzle, only to have the actual solution be totally different. I spent a lot of time chasing my tail on some of the puzzles. This also bothered me: after I get the hint for where I am stuck I am able to solve the puzzle in the kitchen. As I leave the kitchen, I get caught and the game shows the "death" cutscene. So I am thinking to myself "What am I missing now?" It turns out that the cutscene continues and I can progress with the game. But the first couple times I kept restoring before it played out because it started the same as the death cutscene I was getting before. Not cool.
So that's about it. Next, I will play the CD version with a walkthrough. Adding voices almost certainly won't help the overall experience, but it can make things much worse. I'll see what happens.
Other observations:
TNG cameo. Hey, why is Worf in his yellow uniform, but Geordi still in his red?
- willy_000.jpg (45.83 KiB) Viewed 15824 times
Clicking on the character brings up the inventory. To use an item you "float" the item out of the window. You have to drag a new item onto the character to put it in inventory. Esc brings up the control menu. Right-click to cycle through action icons. I know that part of it is just experience with Sierra's interface, but here everything seems to require an added step or two.
I remember that about RotD. I never finished that game - just couldn't be bothered. It was so ... slow.