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Secret of Monkey Island Thoughts

MRY

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The problem isn't the possibility to do things out of order. It is the certainty that no matter what order you do things in, you are always acting in advance of a motive in hopes that something good will come of it. You can get out of order in Woodtick, but usually the motive will still be there.
 

PlanHex

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Amazingly, you can't buy CMI on Steam on GOG
Might be that they're planning a remaster like they did for Day Of The Tentacle and Grim Fandango, and currently doing with Full Throttle. Or might just be trouble with the IP? Don't see MI4 on there either. Then again, that could probably be remaster fodder too.

I actually played the remastered versions of the former two not too long ago and did notice that I was very often just doing things because I could do them and not because I had any real idea of why I should be doing it.
Like getting the metal detector in year 2 of GF long before I remembered/found out why I had to work so hard to get it, just to hand it over to some guy and getting nothing in return. The item you need for it to make sense is hidden behind a completely unrelated set of puzzles, while the metal detector is available to get and then give away from the moment year 2 starts.
Lots of stuff like this in many different places, but it stands out to me in GF year 2 (which is otherwise one of my favourite parts of any adventure game), since you can also muck about in Casino Calavera a lot before you go outside and find out what you're even supposed to be working towards.
Bit of a problem in DOTT too, but can't think of an especially egregious example like the above.
 

MRY

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And Primordia has puzzles with multiple solutions and optional puzzles! These should be obligatory by now, and yet most adventure game designers still follow the Lucasarts template.
Loom definitely had optional puzzles (e.g., the scrying sphere) and multiple solutions (e.g., how to deal with the last sword at the forge). Monkey Island 1 had multiple solutions (e.g., how to light the TNT at the dam). And obviously the Indiana Jones games had both optional puzzles (entire paths!) and multiple solutions. So I'm not sure it's fair to say it's the "Lucasarts template" to lack those things.

Anyway, I certainly am happy with Primordia, I just don't think it matches up the classics in a variety of categories (at a minimum, I think it has inferior puzzles, inferior "openness," inferior sprite animation, and inferior sprite scaling/perspective). In other respects, like backgrounds or voice acting or music or, to be un-humble, writing, it might be in the ballpark.
 
Self-Ejected

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Fantastic game. Brilliant writing with top notch, A-grade humour and puzzles which were incredibly rewarding to solve. I agree with it getting a bit too linear as you said but that did not detract from the overall experience of the game for me, was an intuitive (for it's time) adventure game with enough charm to put an end to racism momentarily.
 

RuySan

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Loom definitely had optional puzzles (e.g., the scrying sphere) and multiple solutions (e.g., how to deal with the last sword at the forge). Monkey Island 1 had multiple solutions (e.g., how to light the TNT at the dam). And obviously the Indiana Jones games had both optional puzzles (entire paths!) and multiple solutions. So I'm not sure it's fair to say it's the "Lucasarts template" to lack those things.

Anyway, I certainly am happy with Primordia, I just don't think it matches up the classics in a variety of categories (at a minimum, I think it has inferior puzzles, inferior "openness," inferior sprite animation, and inferior sprite scaling/perspective). In other respects, like backgrounds or voice acting or music or, to be un-humble, writing, it might be in the ballpark.
Thanks for your clarifications. Loom might be my second second most player adventure and I didn't remember it had multiple solutions.

I replayed it 5 years ago and I think it holds up better than MI1.

One problem I have is that I just don't find these Shaffer/Gilbert games that funny anymore. Have you ever played Ben there Dan that! and Time Gentleman please? Great and hilarious adventures.
 

MRY

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RuySan

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Loom VGA looks terrible compared to the Amiga version. There's way too many colours ruining the atmosphere
 

MRY

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Just to add more :disagree: and :decline: to this thread...

I just got through playing Sam & Max. The art and animation are fantastic (maybe the best?), the basic concept and characters are really good, and the music is great. The extras (like the dress up kit) are pretty neat. The voice acting isn't bad, but underwhelms.

The design, however, is really off.

The first major problem, in my opinion, is that there are almost no unique failure quips. "That's a complete unusable thingamabob" or "I can't combine those things" is used for 99% of failure quips, even for credible failures, even for failures that don't involve objects (like trying to use a living thing or "combine" living things). Failure quips (or failure animations in a generous game) are where the best gags can be had -- much better than in dialogue, where they feel obstructive rather than reactive.

The second problem -- one that was completely different from my recollection -- is that Max is really under-utilized as a "tool." It's true that he's the most used tool, just edging out the grabber. But the grabber is a totally uncharismatic item; it's not Indy's whip or Gordon's crowbar or even Horatio's plasma torch. It doesn't speak to Sam's character and it's not very funny. Max by contrast is a charismatic "item." And many of his idle animations are pretty great! But for most of the game, he's useless: he gets the note and the rasp; stops the swan; and then doesn't do again anything until he bites the rope, pulls the tooth and helps with the tar (which is passive, anyway). Even in scenarios where a Tasmanian-devil-rabbit would be useful, like perhaps in fighting off Bumpus's goon, he's inactive. My instinct is that he should've been the solution (or a step toward the solution) in about twice as many interactions.

The third problem is that sometimes things that should be really easy (e.g., finding the chief at the spa) are surprisingly hard, whereas things that should be really hard wind up trivially easy (e.g., gathering the fur samples for the frog rock). Finally, there are things that are reasonably "epic" (like getting to the top of the ball of twine by way of the fish model) that wind up having no pay off (a random bit of twine that you have no need for until a random puzzle asks you for it much later in the game). On top of that, the puzzle logic universally puts keys before locks -- I'm not sure I ever got an item after having a reason to take it other than (1) the fur (as clues) and (2) the corkscrew. I'd say it's by far the worst designed adventure I've played in the current batch. (I.e., behind Loom, MI1, and MI2, so some stiff competition, but also probably behind Pajama Sam, which feels somewhat similar in terms of presentation and humor, but somewhat ludicrously with better puzzles given that it's clearly designed for young children).

It's really too bad because the concept and art are so fantastic that it feels like it could've been one of the truly greatest adventures with a better hand at the design tiller. I don't think these shortcomings are caused or justified by the humorous setting, either, as plenty of Sierra and Lucas games were comedic but still had puzzles that worked within the paradigm of (1) Discover problem; (2) experiment to gather data; (3) apply data to solve problem or (1) Discover Lock; (2) think about what kind of key would fit the lock: (3) find key; (4) unlock. Sam & Max is basically "do things, get things, use things, watch fun cartoon." I guess this is what happens when a game's a comic first, maybe.

Next up is probably DoTT. Holding out hope.
 

Darth Roxor

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I'm now not sure I'd put it as my #1 adventure game. Probably would put QFG there.

Fast-forward a month, MRY has finished QFG. And it turns out it's not good, just not good at all.

Fast-forward another month, soccer dad MRY discovers the incline behind The Walking Dead series :smug:
 

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
I pointed out that Sam & Max had pacing issues way back in my 2013 interview with MRY and Blackthorne. Specifically mentioning the ending, but it wasn't just that. The game had some cool moments but even as a kid I always felt there was something off about it.
 

MRY

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I'm now not sure I'd put it as my #1 adventure game. Probably would put QFG there.

Fast-forward a month, MRY has finished QFG. And it turns out it's not good, just not good at all.

Fast-forward another month, soccer dad MRY discovers the incline behind The Walking Dead series :smug:
Since I'm age-limited in what I can play, Tell Tale is not a danger. The real danger is that I'll discover Sierra games are better than Lucas and my erstwhile love of Lucas was just paleohipsterism.
 

MRY

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I pointed out that Sam & Max had pacing issues way back in my 2013 interview with MRY and Blackthorne. Specifically mentioning the ending, but it wasn't just that. The game had some cool moments but even as a kid I always felt there was something off about it.
Technically, you pointed out that other people had pointed out problems with the pacing. In true journalistic manner, you expressed no opinion of your own:
Now, what exactly constitutes "good pacing" can be hard to define, but I think we all recognize bad pacing when we see it. For example, I believe the final stretch of Sam & Max Hit The Road received some complaints about this. Just as the villains were defeated and the story seemed to enter its final act, you were suddenly sent wandering across the world again to solve more puzzles and collect more items.
Incidentally, this is not really the problem I had with the game, or at least not a significant one. I guess I might've been more troubled by it if other grievances were absent.
 

Lord Azlan

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(4) Insult sword fighting was kind of good when I was a kid and not good at all now. Humor is hard, but the problem isn't actually the humor. It's that you have to grind for so damn long doing the same thing over and over again, such that any joke would wear out its welcome. The way the insults switch at the end is great, but the rest is pretty much classic bad puzzle design where the time it takes the player to figure out what to do is trivial compared to the time it takes him to mechanically do the thing. There are many other examples of puzzles that go on too long, in particular the two mazes, which each could be half as long and no less difficult or prone to luck. A few puzzles are just dumb (like the magnetic compass on the key), while others are stupidly easy and feel like padding (essentially everything on the ghost ship) -- you know exactly what to use an item one once you get it, and you get the item without even knowing it's there (the grease is a good example of this).

Not sure if point and click games are just lost to time. They had their moment but we have all moved on. Silent films. Black and White films. LPs. CDs. Betamax.

RPG Blobbers.

Recently tried Fate of Atlantis again. 25 years later on. It was one of favorites of all time back then. Even had voiced characters.

But something had changed - it was me.

On the sword fighting mentioned this was like my Ultima IV moment.

Back then in that time it was NEW and totally unexpected. It was almost a JOYOUS having to fight but not fight. Progression was not based on click of your joystick or something like that in all the other games. I especially remember having to go back and learning new insults to combat the insults thrown at you. Level 2 insults or something.

Day of the Tentacle was the other one. Maybe the most clever game of all time. A few years ago I amassed a bunch of point and clicks on Steam, probably when Indiana Jones and Monkey Island became remastered. I also bought Primordia and played that a bit.

But part of me thinks these magic moments are best left to time as no matter how hard I try I can't get back into them.
 

CryptRat

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Many games lack of failure unique texts (Discworld for example, to name a game where you'd expect them), it's the reason why I think the first Edna & Harvey game, which contains a ton, is underrated. Daedalic's further games probably contain less failure texts because people don't point out these enough (or they don't even care?).

Also Sam & Max is god, easily in my top 3.
 

MRY

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Would you put it up there in terms of design, or just in terms of art and characters?
 

CryptRat

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Clearly art, characters, atmosphere, story, humour and in particular the humour of the puzzles before design, you're right here.

In term of design, it's probably a little banal but it's good, I can see at least some good points, the full game takes place in the same world (instead of a sequence of small chapters taking place in small locations), I also like the non linear nature of the last quest (and I don't remember everything but I'm almost sure that as a all the game is not particularly linear either).
Now for example Grim Fandango has better puzzles (as in much more inventive overall, + the biggest chapter in Rubacava with the central puzzle where you must find the code is prodigious) without a doubt if it's what you have in mind.
 

MRY

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The game is very non-linear, which is definitely a plus. Areas open up as you go, but there are typical multiple strands going on an once, and there are puzzles that can be completed at a wide variety of points in the game (for example, you don't need the rasp until one of the very last puzzles, but it's one of the very first items you can get at Snucky's). In some ways, I suspect that this contributes to the problems I identified -- there's always going to be a tension between allowing the player to do things in whatever order he wants and ensuring that there's a logic to the actions since the number of logical sequences will probably be less than the number of possible sequences.

Having all the game in the same world is pretty standard. The whole broken-into-chapters thing is pretty uncommon, actually, among older games.
 

CryptRat

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ensuring that there's a logic to the actions
Why would you need to do that? You're not forcing the player to do nonsensical things, you're allowing him to do things before they would completely make sense, that's totally different.
 

MRY

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I will yield the floor to Ron Gilbert. He has plenty more where that came from.

The basic idea is that games are much more fun when the player has a goal and is working toward it, and that goal is something other than an abstract "get stuff and advance."

[EDIT: Not actually sure that's the same article I was thinking of, actually. In trying to find the one, I came across Ron's own take on replaying MI1, which hits a few of the same points I mentioned: http://grumpygamer.com/stuff_and_things_and_monkey_island]

[EDIT2: "After you've made you way back to Melee Island, you are forced to kill two ghost pirates with your root beer. This was important because it showed not only how the root beer worked but that it would work." False! You only have to kill one -- the other you can get around using the trick doors.]
 
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MRY

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No, they're make lemonade out of lemons. :D

The proper set up, in my (power-mad and self-important) opinion is for the actual puzzles to be driven by goals and logic*, while you also have a huge variety of failure** quips that are there for people to "do because it's there."

* "Logic" doesn't necessarily mean "real world" logic, it just means that there are rules that you can predict or learn so that when you say "I need to do D" you can figure out that A, B, and C lead to D.

** "Failure" doesn't necessarily mean you've done something wrong, maybe there's a better term for it, but it's basically when you "verb" a hotspot and that verb/object combination doesn't advance the game. I wrote bazillions of these for Primordia, and I think it's one of the better parts of the game. One interesting thing about the Lucas-style "can't die" adventure game design is that it actually removes a lot of the fun experimentation from Sierra games. In a Lucas game, the best you can hope for from a failure is witty quip (maybe one or two instances have custom animations, like the rubber tree, which incidentally is a joke off Sierra anyway), whereas Sierra games are full of these amusing death animations when you fail. People tend to think of those as hostile to the player, and in a way they are, but in another sense they're generous because they mean your actions can actually yield different results beyond a quip.


[EDIT: Wow, found this interview on RPS, with an incredible factoid:

That’s not to say there isn’t an element of self-critique though. “With Monkey Island we were supposed to make a forty hour game. That was the requirement, seen as value for money. That leads to filler and puzzles that serve to frustrate and delay the player rather than to tell a good story."
Isn't it like a 12-hour game at most?! And a 6 hour game generally?

And this interesting aside:
“We want to make a game that is like your memories of those games. If you go back and play Maniac Mansion or Monkey Island now, they’re kind of crappy, and not necessarily as you remember them at all. We want to make a game like the thing that you remember rather than the thing that you played.”

]
 
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V_K

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I'm afraid it would just lead to another Age of Decadence situation, where all the ideas that looked right on paper (many build-dependent solutions, a branching storyline, quests that make narrative sense) lead to a game that's largely devoid of gameplay.
 

CryptRat

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They're talking about failures in the last Kickstarter update about Tsioque :
In most adventure games, a character will just show a blob of text explaining why he/she can't do something. In Tsioque, our character goes and does it.
38d9e52d964a4203eeefcbba1b7d42a9_original.gif

Ok, not every single time, but enough to get imagination going
That's cool but there won't be a lot if they animate all of them, and deaths are even more funny, even when it's only text.

Source : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ohnoo/tsioque-an-animated-2d-adventure-game/posts/1768489
 

MRY

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I'm afraid it would just lead to another Age of Decadence situation, where all the ideas that looked right on paper (many build-dependent solutions, a branching storyline, quests that make narrative sense) lead to a game that's largely devoid of gameplay.
I dunno, Gilbert says it's how he himself designed Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2. The oddity is that these rules don't seem to have been applied consistently in either of those games, but given that MI2 is still probably the GOAT, I think it's a fair indicator that it's not an approach to that leads to ruin.

IMO the greater danger is that nonsensical puzzles become very easy to cut. That's why it was so easy to go from TLJ to Dreamfall, for example: TLJ's puzzles were stupid, so it's easy to get rid of them, and then you end up with a ~game.

(That said, the first half of Primordia was designed pretty haphazardly, the second was designed pretty much along Gilbertian lines, and I think the first half plays better, so there probably is some danger that in the hands of a mediocre designer like me, the method leads to worse outcomes.)
 

V_K

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The proper set up, in my (power-mad and self-important) opinion is for the actual puzzles to be driven by goals and logic*, while you also have a huge variety of failure** quips that are there for people to "do because it's there."

* "Logic" doesn't necessarily mean "real world" logic, it just means that there are rules that you can predict or learn so that when you say "I need to do D" you can figure out that A, B, and C lead to D.
Also, I feel like you're mixing up two issues here. One thing is not having enough information (explicit or implicit) to figure out the connection between D and A, B and C, and just blindly try everything with everything. We can all agree that it's bad. But what you're complaining about, it seems, is the ability to do A, B and C before you know that you need to do D. And that's what I cannot wrap my head around.
I mean, let's talk about a hypothetical monkey and banana example. I think we can all agree that "I need to get a monkey, and to do that I need to offer it a banana" solution doesn't require any leaps of logic. But why don't you want the player to get the banana before he knows there's a monkey in the game? And how would you go about it? I see only two options here:
1) Place the banana after the monkey - but if you apply that approach to every puzzle in the game, you'll end up with something extremely linear.
2) Place the banana before the monkey, but don't allow the player to get it before he meets the monkey - but that's, frankly, just awful design that would lead to a ton of needless backtracking.
 

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