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LucasArts Loom

Berekän

A life wasted
Patron
Joined
Sep 2, 2009
Messages
3,097
Great talk, you can feel the passion he has for Loom. Surprised he would entrust the sequels to Telltale or Double Fine, fuck that.
 

Jackalope

Arcane
Joined
Mar 11, 2011
Messages
531
Location
inside a giant mech suit
Oddly enough I played Loom for the first time yesterday. It's always been one of those games I wanted to play, but somehow never got around to it. Yesteday was that day. And you know what? It was awesome!!!! It is awesome. This is a very interesting game and it's a real shame it never got its sequels and a real shame many people (including me) overlook it.

I'm going to replay the whole thing, this time with voices. Then I'm going to try the demo for that fan sequel, looks pretty great.
 

Keldryn

Arcane
Joined
Feb 25, 2005
Messages
1,053
Location
Vancouver, Canada

Thank you for posting this link; it was fantastic. Loom was one of the first two graphic adventure games that I played (the other being Hero's Quest I).

I just finished replaying it for the first time in at least 15 years (with my 5 year-old daughter), and it was still a lot of fun. We played the GOG.com version (I own the CD-ROM version, but I decided it was worth $5 or so to avoid screwing around with extracting the CD audio and making it all playable off the hard drive). I think I prefer the original EGA version (which I stupidly sold off after finding the CD version around 1999).

The original version of Loom, in 16-color EGA, actually looked better than did many of the 256-color VGA games that came out around the same time. It took some serious artistic skills to pull off those graphics with such a limited palette.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Just finished playing it with my four year old. (Edit: Total playing time, two hours. Wow, it seemed longer than that.) I have to say, I was less taken by it than I had been when I played it as a kid myself (11, I think?). I played the EGA version, and I think the video above has it right -- the VGA version is actually rather less attractive, and the loss of the music in the "talkie" version is catastrophic. The talkie version also has some weird sound glitches; in general, the voices were sampled in a pretty crappy fashion, and there's an audible "noise" to them that makes it obvious when they're awkwardly cut. (The talkie version was a necessity because having me read the text aloud really loses quite a bit.)

What stood out to me this play through was not just how easy the game was, but how crabbed it gets near the end. Loom island is generous with its space. It feels open and you experiment a fair amount with the magic. But from the waterspout on, the game narrows and narrows, culminating in an extremely linear and repetitious finale: walk left, enter portal, cast heal, enter portal, cast close, walk left... until you reach the end game, where you just repeat the drafts backward. Adventure game finales are always tricky. Only Monkey Island 2 totally nails it, and Loom's does a lot right, but the gameplay is really weak.

Intrusive cutscenes also dominate the late game. At the end of the Forge sequence, you get: (1) cutscene as you're brought to the cathedral; (2) cutscene in the cathedral; (3) cast one spell; (4) cutscene; (5) click on sphere; (6) cutscene; (7) click on staff; (8) cutscene, and this continues as you go through the portals. Some of the cutscenes are pretty long, too. My kid was constantly asking when we'd get back to playing, but the answer is that after Forge, you really never get back to playing.

I also found Bobbin somewhat less likable as a character, perhaps because of cut dialogues, perhaps because of the removal of nostalgia-lenses.

Overally, though, it's still a beautiful little game, cleverly made. I think the EGA version's first third is truly magnificent, and the talkie's first third is still very good.
 

kazgar

Arcane
Joined
Apr 23, 2008
Messages
2,164
Location
Upside Down
MRY shame it was a slight disappointment, my last playthrough was using a better audio version from here

http://steamreview.org/external/loom/

(free download if you can sort of prove you have the steam version)

CD-ROM
+ A “talkie” release — every line of dialogue has recorded audio
- No music except in cutscenes
- Cutscenes and dialogue shortened so as to fit onto one CD Audio track
- No character closeups
- Few sound effects
FM-TOWNS
+ Complete and unabridged dialogue
+ Looping background music
I+ nteractive objects appear in the UI area on mouseover, rather than on click
- No difficulty selection UI — you must edit a text file instead
- No recorded dialogue
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
I saw that, but in my opinion the lack of recorded dialogue would've made the game very hard for my kid to enjoy, since she's not able to read well enough to keep up and having me do voices would be kind of goofy.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,871
Awesome game. I never did play it in the old days for some reason (and I was old enough to have played the original Maniac Mansion on PC), but many years later I did and it's very charming. I would actually recommend a decent General Midi output (SC-55 or a good soundfont) compared to the MT-32 since the soundtrack is all Tchaikovsky and this kind of orchestral sound is not really approximated very well by the MT32 (even though I love the synth to bits).
 

v1rus

Arcane
Joined
Jul 14, 2008
Messages
2,253
What does the kodex kool koncensus say, which version of the game is the best? I beat it few years ago, but fuck me if I knew which version i played.
 

taxalot

I'm a spicy fellow.
Patron
Joined
Oct 28, 2010
Messages
9,613
Location
Your wallet.
Codex 2013 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
Both are great, but the EGA version is much more authentic. I don't know how to put it otherwise ; EGA has more dialogs, more music, and graphics feel like the original things more like reworks.

I think the voice over of the original version is not as bad as some people make it though ; I actually think it was pretty great for the era.

Funnily enough, they keep adapting shitty games into shitty movies, but Loom is the one game that feels like it could become a classic old disney movie, visually, stylistically , and story wise.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
I think EGA is best, especially if you have enough familiarity with older games to appreciate how cool the EGA trickery they achieved is. I would not play the VO version. The voices themselves are fine, particularly for the era, but the VO's actual implementation from a coding standpoint is not very good.
 

Brancaleone

Liturgist
Joined
Apr 28, 2015
Messages
1,004
Location
Norcia
I think EGA is best, especially if you have enough familiarity with older games to appreciate how cool the EGA trickery they achieved is.
Totally agree, when I was a kid I hated EGA (especially the bright red that was used for skintones), but Loom was one of the few exceptions where I didn't find myself wishing for a VGA version. Talk about some badass dithering.
 

Syl

Cipher
Joined
Nov 3, 2011
Messages
744
I loved this game. One of the few adventure games that I actually completed without looking at a walkthrough at some point.

I played it a little late, probably on a Pentium. Got my hands on the EGA version but the game did not recognize the integrated sound card, so I played without sound. In easy mode, where notes are highlighted.

At the end there is a spell that must be heared. I made the assumption it was using the last note and a palindromic form, tried every possiblities, and nailed it after 3 or 4 attempts.

If I'm spewing nonsense, it's just that I remember the details wrong, that was a long time ago. Something along those lines anyway.
 

El Presidente

Arcane
Joined
Nov 3, 2018
Messages
1,546
Location
Oval Office
:necro:


Just wanna say this will forever be one the most magical and soulful video games ever to be made. It's one of those "there's just something about it", like Thief and so on. It's soooo short, but it's unforgettable.
 

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