1eyedking Godfucking dammit, gaming is dead

[Jim Cojones]

You're trying too hard. The new graphics are just fine. And if you don't like them, you can switch to the original game with a single press of a button (F10). The Secret of Monkey Island - Special Edition is win, all the way.

Then what's the point of buying a new game? Better play the original.

 

[Alex]

I'm gonna get my head ripped off for this, but fuck it:

In-game hints

Could you explain to me, very slowly and patiently, since I am very dense, how this will, in any way, shape or form, hurt you or me?

Note that these hints only pop-up if you ask for them.

Simple! The problem here is that the game is allowing the player to bypass the challenge to easily. Adventure gameplay comes from trying to understand the logic the author used to create the puzzles and use it to solve them. This, however, can take a long while, and since the game doesn't advance in the mean time, the player may feel frustrated.

The problem with having the solution too close by is that it will allow new people to the genre to simply look the answer and be done. They may never actually have to rack their brains over the puzzles. Thy will lay the game like a little cartoon where they sometimes have to click on some places to advance the scenes. I myself used to be like this, only playing adventure games using walkthroughs because I believed it would be a waste of time to think them through. I know, it was pretty stupid of me, but I eventually noticed that this was counterproductive, I was simply throwing away most of the fun.

On the other hand, some years ago we had an assignment at college to program a text adventure engine, which would read game files written in a certain way and read the written input of the user. At that time, my class started playing some of infocom's old titles. While they were hard to advance in, it was a lot of fun to talk about the puzzles in the games and exchange solutions and ideas. I think that is actually the best way to play these games.

So, this will hurt us both by making a possible new generation of adventure gamers even more oblivious of what can make adventure games fun. This, in turn, will guide the design decisions of future adventure games aways from "Games that are so hard you ought to form a community to solve them together." to "Games that are little more than movies with some clicking needed to advance some parts.".

 

[Grunker]

I am very stupid, and utterly impatient, which led me to never finish any adventure games at all, though I've always wanted to finish The Longest Journey and Monkey Island.

When the internet came, I was able to go past the puzzles my own idiocy made me fail at, and thus gained an increasing love for the genre. I love the genre so much for it's storytelling and simplicity of gameplay coupled with the complexity of it's content.

I would never have been able to garner this love, unless the internet provided me with abilities to help my idiocy and impatientness.

So, if the your arguments are true, the implementation of the hint-system should make as many fans as it scares people away because they never get the satisfaction of solving frustrating puzzles.

In the end, I only use solution for very, very few puzzles, and only those I think I wouldn't get much enjoyment from solving myself.

 

[RandomLurker]

Round 1

VS.

My money's on

 

[Grunker]

Linkphail?

 

[Deleted member 7219]

The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition - Remastered

I cannot explain how much I raged after watching this. Every single minute is guaranteed glittering hate.

You fucking cunt. The only hate I'm experiencing here is directed solely at you. What the FUCK is wrong with bringing back old games for people who have never played them? I never got to play the Monkey Island series, this remake has got me interested in those proper old school adventure games. You can even play the game in the original SCUMM engine if you want - it comes included. The remake is done respectfully, with nothing from the original changed. The only thing that is new is the new interface and art design which is based on the artwork of the originals. As previously said, you can change back to the original graphics if so desired.

Just shut the fuck up.

 

[RandomLurker]

Linkphail?

Miraculously, it works now. This is how I've seen it just a few minutes ago, and three refreshes didn't help. Nothing like hotlinking when it comes to fucking up images.

 

[MasPingon]

!eyedking should be dumbfucked for this tread. Jesus Christ, it's not even funny anymore

 

[Panthera]

The new art is ugly at best, but the voice acting is good so shut the fuck up.

 

[Alex]

I am very stupid, and utterly impatient, which led me to never finish any adventure games at all, though I've always wanted to finish The Longest Journey and Monkey Island.

This doesn't make you stupid. I am impatint too sometimes, and the feeling of being stuck can really get to me sometimes.

When the internet came, I was able to go past the puzzles my own idiocy made me fail at, and thus gained an increasing love for the genre. I love the genre so much for it's storytelling and simplicity of gameplay coupled with the complexity of it's content.

I would never have been able to garner this love, unless the internet provided me with abilities to help my idiocy and impatientness.

So, if the your arguments are true, the implementation of the hint-system should make as many fans as it scares people away because they never get the satisfaction of solving frustrating puzzles.

In the end, I only use solution for very, very few puzzles, and only those I think I wouldn't get much enjoyment from solving myself.

There are two issues here. Puzzle patience and difficulty. First I will try to convince you that trying to be patent is worth it. If you sit down to play an adventure game with a walkthrough, you can easily be done in 2 hours for most games. So, if you are impatient, you will mostly be annoyed at taking a whole month to solve one of these games.

However, I think that if we take our time to be patient, play, say, 30 minutes every day for a month, taking notes and trying to understand the game, and talk with other people near the spot we are in the game, exchanging ideas, the experience will be far better! Of course, I haven't done the last part in some time, but even taking the community aspect out of the above plan still makes for a nice way to play them adventures. But it will only work if the games pose an interesting challenge.

Now, you may say, the new MI didn't take away the challenge, merely provided an easy way to circumvent it. However, this is a sign of moving away from the core of adv. games. This core is that of an interesting story entwined to interesting puzzles. Adventure games may have very interesting stories, but if it doesn't have interesting puzzles, or if the puzzles aren't thoroughly entwined with the story, (many old adventures are guilty of this), then the game would have probably been better as a movie, or carton, not a game.

Now, about difficulty, I am not advocating that all adventures should be as cryptic as the author can write them. First, writing a good hard puzzle involves giving hints of the logic behind this to the player in subtle ways. If you just put a puzzle that the only way to solve it trying every possible move, it may well be hard to solve, but it is also cheap as hell, an not fun. Second, the difficulty here has to be defined by the target public of the game. A children's game should obviously be easier than one aimed at adults. But both should try to be hard given their public.

 

[Grunker]

But I've tried man. I gave The Longest Journey an honest try. But the feeling of satisfaction when solving a 2-hour frustrating puzzle didn't match the boredom of those 2 hours. Because we're different people, mayn.

That's the whole point isn't it? If developers can cater to different people without dumbing down, isn't that a good thing? It's not like modern RPGs where it hurts the core consumers. That is shit! This isn't the same.

 

[Alex]

But I've tried man. I gave The Longest Journey an honest try. But the feeling of satisfaction when solving a 2-hour frustrating puzzle didn't match the boredom of those 2 hours. Because we're different people, mayn.

Maybe we really are different, but in that case, answer me this: Would you have had ore fun if the puzzles simply weren't there? If difficult puzzles only get in the way, and if simple puzzles are solved immediately, wouldn't it have been simpler to make the game a movie, or maybe a interactive toy, without challenges.

That's the whole point isn't it? If developers can cater to different people without dumbing down, isn't that a good thing? It's not like modern RPGs where it hurts the core consumers. That is shit! This isn't the same.

This change didn't spoil MI, but it didn't help it. Maybe it will be more friendly to people from outside the genre, but it is doing so at the expense of the very core of what is an adventure game. Either the people will play the game as it was intended (so the feature is useless for them), or they will spoil themselves (in which case they may become target audience for games that eschew the core of adventure games, but not adventure games themselves).

By the way, there does need to be adventure games with entry level difficulty. But this should be done in an intelligent manner, not by simply throwing away the puzzles.

 

[Grunker]

You're way too black and white. I skip only a few puzzles. Just skipping them all would kindda get rid of the "game" aspect. I skip the ones that I deem would take 1+ hours to finish, and have great fun solving the rest. In The Longest Journey, I used walkthroughs for about 5 of the puzzles, that fucking rubber duck being chief among them.

 

[Elzair]

Round 1

VS.

Round 2

VS.

Fuck! I have never played Monkey Island, but still. Fuck!

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Simple! The problem here is that the game is allowing the player to bypass the challenge to easily. Adventure gameplay comes from trying to understand the logic the author used to create the puzzles and use it to solve them. This, however, can take a long while, and since the game doesn't advance in the mean time, the player may feel frustrated.

The problem with having the solution too close by is that it will allow new people to the genre to simply look the answer and be done. They may never actually have to rack their brains over the puzzles. Thy will lay the game like a little cartoon where they sometimes have to click on some places to advance the scenes. I myself used to be like this, only playing adventure games using walkthroughs because I believed it would be a waste of time to think them through. I know, it was pretty stupid of me, but I eventually noticed that this was counterproductive, I was simply throwing away most of the fun.

Apparently, these are hints, and not obvious solutions. Probably something like "check X area, it might have something of interest".

 

[Silellak]

Fuck! I have never played Monkey Island, but still. Fuck!

Yeah, that blows. I really wish the remake gave you the option to switch back to the old graphics and sound at any point with the simple press of a button.

Oh...wait.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Fuck! I have never played Monkey Island, but still. Fuck!

Yeah, that blows. I really wish the remake gave you the option to switch back to the old graphics and sound at any point with the simple press of a button.

Oh...wait.

You don't get it. The original game was TAINTED. It now sucks IN RETROSPECT.

 

[Alex]

You're way too black and white. I skip only a few puzzles. Just skipping them all would kindda get rid of the "game" aspect. I skip the ones that I deem would take 1+ hours to finish, and have great fun solving the rest. In The Longest Journey, I used walkthroughs for about 5 of the puzzles, that fucking rubber duck being chief among them.

Very well, I admit that having games with hard puzzles you need several days to solve isn't the only way to do an adventure. However, allowing the player to skip the puzzle isn't a reasonable solution even then. It would be akin to including a skip button in the game. If this doesn't decrease the enjoyment of who is playing the game, then the part being skipped didn't have enough relation to the rest of the game. If the part is tightly relevant to the rest of the game, skipping it would result in a lesser game experience.

By the way, about your comment of me being too black and white, I guess you might be right (when it comes to games, at least. But this is for a reason. I think that good games are so because they take a core idea and realize it as fully as possible, avoiding comprmises that would go against its core idea (or that would add nothing to it).

Apparently, these are hints, and not obvious solutions. Probably something like "check X area, it might have something of interest".

This is a lot better (though it doesn't invalidate my points about spoiling and skipping chalenges). The infocom hintbooks were always very nice, so I know that hints can be done right (though whether they did so in this MI is another story). However, I still think that everything an adventue game presents you should be inside the game (or from inside the game, like the feelies) and be tightly bound to the story that is going on.

 

[Grunker]

I agree with you on the skipping-part completely. Maybe I used the wrong words. See Alone in the Dark's retardedness for examples.

I meant the hint-thing. That's what I see no harm in.

 

[racofer]

Mang I just hope this faggotry ends with this game. Imagine how fucking stupid it would be if they remade a classic like Prince of Persia with lots of sexual connotations on its dialog, a princess that wears skimpy clothing, a prince that is full of x-treme and "improved" 3d graphics? Seriously, just imagine the horror of such thing?





























Oh wait.. fuck.

 

[relootz]

We are reaching new levels of low here.

I think 1eyedking is trying to out do Skyway in Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawing.

Who can whine the most!! Discuss, discuss!!!

 

[mondblut]

Not like I care about the game, but new artwork is eyerippingly disgusting next to original which depicts authentic-looking human beings, not disfigured "cute" disneyland crap.

I wish all kiddy cartoons ever produced would be destroyed to the last copy, and kiddies be shown snuff and CP instead. Come to think of it, I wish all kiddies would be destroyed to the last copy, too!

 

[FeelTheRads]

It looks like complete shit.
It's fine they remade it and whatever, but it still looks like shit.

 

[Melcar]

They should have gone 3D.

 

[Jim Cojones]

Fuck! I have never played Monkey Island, but still. Fuck!

Yeah, that blows. I really wish the remake gave you the option to switch back to the old graphics and sound at any point with the simple press of a button.

Oh...wait.

Does it have every advantage of original run on SCUMMVM? Scaling filters, windowed mode, fast mode?