The next big thing

[mr.doo]

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclu ... big/712348

looking good, it's been a while I played a good broken sword kind of adventure game I'm curious to see how this one will fare.

 

[Berekän]

It's a Pendulo game, have you played the Runaway games? If you liked them, you will like this game, if you didn't chances are you won't like this either.

 

[Ringhausen]

Yeah, I loved Broken Sword, Runaway on the other hand was boring, painfully unfunny and all about pixel hunting. Judging by the trailer they haven't improved one bit.

Also it's their fourth game and they still can't lip sync? Why?

 

[villain of the story]

I watched the trailer and it looks nice but... is there a single character that isn't a reference to something else in gaming and popular culture? Even the protagonist looks taken directly from Anachronox.

 

[Einhander]

Runaway 1 and 2 were great games..Well written and great animation and story..Cool puzzles that dont lobotomize ya

 

[RRRrrr]

I don't want to create a separate thread just to say this, so I will write my thoughts here.
I was just wondering why did this game get so little attention? It doesn't even have a wikipedia article about it (in English) meaning that no one even bothered to write that this is an adventure game. Not that I think wikipedia is that important for this game, but it is still...disconcerting
Considering the amount of effort put in the game + the great voice acting I think it deserved at least a wikipedia article...

And the official forums have like 34 threads with 60 posts...I think this game deserves more discussion than this. Or Alpha
Polaris, which I liked a lot, doesn't even have any official forums whatsoever. I feel sorry for the people who spent so much effort creating these games not getting the attention they deserve.

I am not really expecting the second coming of adventure games, and to be honest I haven't played so many of them, but still I think that the genre still has a lot of potential.

I just don't get it. Even the discussions here are not what they should be. On the other hand what is there to discuss? There are walktroughs all over the internet and it's not like there are tactics that need to be discussed or perfected. And there isn't much replay value.
Perhaps I am going too far with this, but I think that Grey Matter would have been a very different game if the adventure game market was bigger. Better characters, at least.

It's just that...I am confused. Probably need to hear the obvious truth from you guys, but I am still hoping you will say there is nothing to worry about

 

[MicoSelva]

I started playing this. Apparently it is a sequel to some Spanish 1997 game called Hollywood Monsters.

It certainly does feel like a sequel. The game does a pretty poor job of explaining the setting (horror film monsters are real creatures and they star in films as actors) and does not bother to actually introduce characters, as if assuming you are already familiar them. It's an interesting design decision, which makes your protagonists more believable (everyone knows them and they know everyone), but can also be rather confusing - I feel like I am supposed to know things I don't know, and also operate on that knowledge.

The setting is kind of interesting, even though it's just ten layers of references stacked upon one another. The writing is passable, with the humor being a little dry for my taste (the funniest joke so far was when a boxer named Ron "Pearlboy" Hellman was mentioned, so yeah).

Puzzles so far have been very simplistic, but I am only 30 minutes in, maybe 45, so that may have just been tutorial syndrome. The game flat out tells you what your next objective is. The only thing to figure out is how to do it.

Graphics are nice, cartoony and stylized in a way I find appealing. The (English) VA is quite ok, but music is as forgettable as possible.

Oh yeah, there are two protagonists Broken Sword/Gabriel Knight 2 style.

 

[trustno1code]

I started playing this. Apparently it is a sequel to some Spanish 1997 game called Hollywood Monsters.

It certainly does feel like a sequel. The game does a pretty poor job of explaining the setting (horror film monsters are real creatures and they star in films as actors) and does not bother to actually introduce characters, as if assuming you are already familiar them. It's an interesting design decision, which makes your protagonists more believable (everyone knows them and they know everyone), but can also be rather confusing - I feel like I am supposed to know things I don't know, and also operate on that knowledge.

Hollywood Monsters got a fan-translation a couple of years ago (subtitles, menus etc. in English with the original voices intact):
http://shinji-nerd-life.blogspot.com/2012/03/hollywood-monsters-in-english.html

Conveniently, the Spanish publisher was giving the game away for free at the time; costs 3€ now:
http://juegos.fxinteractive.com/game.php?id=22&Hollywood-Monsters-espanol-aventuras

I played a fair bit before getting stuck and distracted - recall it being pretty tough in the good ol' school sense; got several verbs, many items, characters, inventory/dialogue puzzles (needless to say, it's no Broken Age; not sure if the toughness came from actual complexity or obtuseness, but I did really enjoy the game). After the initial section the world opens up into a bunch of globe-trotting locations you can visit in any order. The translation was also pretty good iirc, as were the original voices (memorised a couple of Spanish words from being stuck and talking a lot).

If you can be bothered with setting it up (you'll need some google-translate assistance with the website and downloader I think), I recommend giving it a shot (never played any other Pendulo game so not sure how it fares in comparison).

 

[MicoSelva]

I played a fair bit before getting stuck and distracted - recall it being pretty tough in the good ol' school sense; got several verbs, many items, characters, inventory/dialogue puzzles.

Well, none of these were preserved. The sequel is your typical modern look at/pick up/use adventure.

 

[adddeed]

Really enjoyed the game. I have Runaway but i never played it, if its form the same devs maybe i should.

 

[MicoSelva]

I finished it today. Overall, it is a pretty good game, even if some puzzles were too abstract for my taste. I really liked some of the ideas they used, like dynamically changing humorous tooltips over hotspots, but I didn't like artificial difficulty/padding in the form of many red herring items with no use.