Wadjet Eye Resonance

[Renegen]

Never really saw them as being simplified since I had more fun in many of them and the length was about the same. I guess if you generalize about all modern adventures compared to the 90s then the discussion isn't going anywhere.

 

[Alex]

I have to agree with asper. I think a really telling difference of the new games is how nowadays I can expect to be done with a new adventure title in one day or two. Whereas, back then, I would expect instead to be stuck for a while, to back track and examine the game closely in order to solve all the puzzles, and that I would need more care to keep track of the logic behind the puzzles, as there were more verbs (if not an outright parser) and items of many different puzzles would be in your inventory t the same time.

Nowadays it seems all adventure games are scared of any kind of logic that isn't obvious.

 

[Tramboi]

One thing Resonance needs, interface-wise, is a join button per character or whatever to regroup characters swiftly at another location.

 

[Renegen]

Oh god, inventory puzzles. Modern adventures are much better at for example eliminating the need to carry 20 items and actually getting rid of items that are never going to be used ever again. Your version of logic that isn't obvious and verb puzzles frequently just meant you had to guess what the designer decided the answer was. In practice, you didn't engage in deep thinking but just extreme frustration. I was just about tapped out of wacky nonsensical verb puzzles (when english isn't even my first language) and crazy worlds. I mostly stick to modern stories so the logic makes sense and those tend to be newer. And I still challenge the idea that you could cut between the 90s adventures and the modern ones and just call one group bad and the other good. There are hard modern adventures too but as mentioned I find the newer games just as fun and the same length, the talk of decline doesn't really apply.

In fact it's interesting that the particle collider puzzle in Resonance is a pure logic puzzle, funny some people had problems with it. Besides the old school graphics, Resonance is much more a modern adventure than an old school one. It has small inventories, a PDA that keeps you on track, an in-game conversation hint system, mostly localized puzzles, no pixel hunt, quite a bit of pure logical puzzles that are simply solvable through persistence and it's all solidly grounded in the modern world and includes a lot of metagaming if I could put it like that. You know you have to use the detective in certain situations while in others the doctor is needed, and thus your inventory is reduced even further. The game is even sort of divided into several chapters so the nightmare of having missed an item 20 screens away and you never noticing never happens as things are "flushed" quite often to restart at a fresh point, and that keeps the areas to visit at any one time small. What makes it so good is that the STM feature gives the illusion of great combinations and forces thinking over brute methods but it's very much a modern game at heart. But because people jack off to 20 year old games they notice Resonance and not the other games that have made up the adventure game industry we have today.

 

[Alex]

Oh god, inventory puzzles. Modern adventures are much better at for example eliminating the need to carry 20 items and actually getting rid of items that are never going to be used ever again. Your version of logic that isn't obvious and verb puzzles frequently just meant you had to guess what the designer decided the answer was.

Well, for me, that is more or less the point of an adventure game. I mean, ideally the game should require some creativity. But simple, raw, creativity isn't the point nor is feasible, as the programmer can't foresee everything a player could do. So, for me at least, "adventure gameplay" is all about reasoning, using the inherent logic of the game's story, what is the solution to the problem (which amounts to, what did the game designer think here). A good example of this (if a bit simple), from Sam & Max is:

Spoiler

In the tunnel of love, you need to use Max to blow the fuse and stop the ride. It doesn't make much sense to do that. You could have used a cup of water. You could have simply stepped out of the ride, for God's sake, as it wasn't going at all fast. But the only way to proceed is to use max with the fuse box. This doesn't make sense using real world logic. But on the other hand, it makes complete sense using usual cartoon logic, full of unnecessary violence and unnecessary loops to get around things. The game hints at the cartoon logic at every turn, being very much a cartoon game, and the cartoon logic reinforces this aspect of the game.

In practice, you didn't engage in deep thinking but just extreme frustration.

Well, that is the case sometimes, but certainly not always. You can always become stuck in a puzzle and need to brute force it through. But having all puzzles easy to brute force, or obvious, is throwing the baby with the bath water.

I mostly stick to modern stories so the logic makes sense and those tend to be newer. And I still challenge the idea that you could cut between the 90s adventures and the modern ones and just call one group bad and the other good. There are hard modern adventures too but as mentioned I find the newer games just as fun and the same length, the talk of decline doesn't really apply.

Well, then can you point those hard, modern puzzles? I have seen hard puzzle games, but no hard adventure games lately. It is great you are getting the games you wanted, but these really don't cut it for me, whereas playing old Sierra, Lucas Arts and Infocom games do. (I still think Wadjet Eye games, and Resonance in specific, are great. But the games from before still have something they don't).

In fact it's interesting that the particle collider puzzle in Resonance is a pure logic puzzle, funny some people had problems with it.

This is another aspect I don't like very much in adventure games. That puzzle (you are talking about the one with the magnets, right) is almost pure logic, meaning that you know how the moving parts work, and you just need to find a way to move them all to the goal. It is a "puzzle puzzle", instead of an "adventure puzzle". The puzzle for getting the blueprints to the lab, on the other hand, is much more to my liking. Sure, it requires you to use a bit of pure logic too (all puzzles should), but it also requires you to immerse yourself into the game's logic. In understanding how the machine works and how the receptionist work, etc.

Besides the old school graphics, Resonance is much more a modern adventure than an old school one. It has small inventories, a PDA that keeps you on track, an in-game conversation hint system, mostly localized puzzles, no pixel hunt, quite a bit of pure logical puzzles that are simply solvable through persistence and it's all solidly grounded in the modern world and includes a lot of metagaming if I could put it like that. You know you have to use the detective in certain situations while in others the doctor is needed, and thus your inventory is reduced even further. The game is even sort of divided into several chapters so the nightmare of having missed an item 20 screens away and you never noticing never happens as things are "flushed" quite often to restart at a fresh point, and that keeps the areas to visit at any one time small. What makes it so good is that the STM feature gives the illusion of great combinations and forces thinking over brute methods but it's very much a modern game at heart.

Yes, it unfortunately still is more modern than not. Still, it had some very good moments, specially when the game opens up and lets you deal with the three problems on "your own", for so to say. Since there is more than one puzzle going on at a time, things aren't so damnably obvious. I specially disliked the conversation hint system, as this meant I mostly didn't have the characters talk to each other. Since the characters can give items to each other, I don't really understand what you mean by metagaming. Having characters with specialized abilities and roles is pretty "oldschool", in my view, and if something, makes their role in the game logic more important. And while you do have a point about the inventory, the game did have some puzzles that required you to exchange items between people.

But because people jack off to 20 year old games they notice Resonance and not the other games that have made up the adventure game industry we have today.

The reason I noticed Resonance is because it had a few crafty puzzles, nice story and a good art direction (I find the aesthetics of 3D games pretty off putting, to be honest). It has all the flaws you mentioned, and would have been much better, in my opinion, if it didn't, but it still is a pretty good game, specially nowadays.

 

[Renegen]

You might like "So Blonde", to name one example that's very old school in gameplay but part of the modern era. The game has you on a deserted island that's populated by pirates. It's basically Monkey Island the way the game is structured. And you play as a young, ignorant typical girl so you have to immerse yourself in her logic.

As for Resonance, you mentioned that the game does open up yet they managed to screw that one up. The blueprint puzzle for example requires that you have the financial records puzzle finished because you need the "will and death cert" LTM, and for someone who tackled the blueprint puzzle first it was really frustrating to find out I couldn't finish it except the game didn't tell me. The game tells you it's non-linear at this point, except it manages to screw up and it isn't.

If you're looking for good art direction, try Daedalic games too.

 

[Alex]

You might like "So Blonde", to name one example that's very old school in gameplay but part of the modern era. The game has you on a deserted island that's populated by pirates. It's basically Monkey Island the way the game is structured. And you play as a young, ignorant typical girl so you have to immerse yourself in her logic.

I will try it out, thanks!

As for Resonance, you mentioned that the game does open up yet they managed to screw that one up. The blueprint puzzle for example requires that you have the financial records puzzle finished because you need the "will and death cert" LTM, and for someone who tackled the blueprint puzzle first it was really frustrating to find out I couldn't finish it except the game didn't tell me. The game tells you it's non-linear at this point, except it manages to screw up and it isn't.

It kind of screws up in that the end order needs to be the same, but for a good while, you need to keep exploring before you figure out what you need to do. And that is more than what most modern games give you. Also, I think that having one puzzle interfere with another is a good thing, as you can't simply focus on one puzzle at a time, but need to keep exploring and considering how things work together, which is part of what I loved about older games.

If you're looking for good art direction, try Daedalic games too.

Once again, thanks. I will check out. Graphics are something very low in my priority list, but I feel that the graphics in many 3D adventures work against them, while the graphics in, say, Space Quest 4 or 5, compliment the style very well.

 

[Ninja Destroyer]

The fate of four characters, which are so diffrent from their behavior and background were well spliced together. The dialogues between nicely developed plot and they deserve to be mentioned. The grouping of the characters, during some puzzles was also a good choice. Later it becames more needed; too bad there isn't some automating on that feature. The puzzles were very good, varied, from opening doors with electronick lock to decoding cipher. The places which we are visiting don't force you to walk around a couple of times in search for that one key clue. LTM and STM didn't give me a problem. A couple of minutes and it was like a natural extension of the gameplay mechanics. The oldschool point system is a good indicator of how much did the player missed during his walkthrough. Well, a couple of them and it would be a maximum, heh. From the audiovisual perspective Resonance is fine. Low resolution doesn't disturbed me - you can see how many little details were put in each of the board. Music is ok, nothing to be ashamed off, and memorable, a good binder for the graphics. Voice actors - I liked especially Bennet, old cop who wants to control every situation. The animation are moving too rigidly, like they were needing some more animation work. And the game is too short, and by that I don't want 100h experience. It just needed more plot especially near the end.
Resonance remains an interesting game, whit good puzzles, characters and it really sucks in the player. The ending variety was like a cherry on the cake. Hope to see some more product of love from Xii Games .

 

[Infinitron]

Finished Resonance.

Once again I agree with MRY. It is a better game than both Primordia and Gemini Rue, especially the latter. An excellent title that reaches close to the quality level of the Golden Age adventures.

I did think the introduction of the surveillance/Illuminati stuff was a bit hamfisted, though.

 

[Jaesun]

I could never figure out how to get the blueprints. :/ (I've never finished it).

 

[Darth Roxor]

Once again I agree with MRY. It is a better game than both Primordia and Gemini Rue, especially the latter. An excellent title that reaches close to the quality level of the Golden Age adventures.

Definitely not. The interface is horrible and it starts gradually falling apart somewhere around the middle of the game.

Also, did I mention the interface is horrible? Because it's horrible.
Very horrible. To the point of making the game painful to play.

 

[Infinitron]

It's not that horrible, you weenie. Better than Gemini's, for sure.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Haven't played Gemini Rue. But if it really does have an interface EVEN WORSE THAN THIS, it was probably a good call.

 

[Infinitron]

A scientist's family soap opera that has no relevance to the plot other than as a one-off puzzle.

No relevance? Come on.

Even if that were so, to me, it WAS (part of) the plot. I liked Resonance because I like "human" stories that make an effort to humanize their characters. Combine that with the gameplay ambition that you mentioned and you have a game that simply outclasses the other two.

And I find it odd that you can say

I definitely felt like I had seen this movie before several times and I know how it ends.

about the modern day character-driven drama Resonance, but not about Gemini Rue which is much more "genre". THAT'S what you've seen several times? I think you might not be enough of a geek for this forum.

 

[RuySan]

I was really enjoying the game until i got stuck with the blueprints puzzles. Not only this interface is made of nightmares, but i was supposed to have solved another puzzles before this, and that wasn't hinted anywhere.

I wished Wadjet Eye games had Daedalic's engine. Or Daedalic games had Wadjet Eye's ambition and innovations.

 

[bertram_tung]

Loved Blackwell, Loved Primordia, Loved Gemini Rue, Currently Loving Technobabylon.

I could never quite get into Resonance, though. I think the characters and the setting just bored the shit out of me. Or maybe it was the interface. I don't remember and I don't care to revisit it.

 

[evdk]

I wished Wadjet Eye games had Daedalic's engine. Or Daedalic games had Wadjet Eye's ambition and innovations.

Sadly, the Daedalic's engine would be useless without the Daedalic's budget.

 

[pippin]

I didn't liked the game very much. The story was bland and the characters were bland as well. This is made clearer when *that* moment happens. People who played the game might know what I'm talking about, and in this moment I noticed half of the characters weren't as fleshed out as the others. The multiple characters at once felt more like a gimmick than a real innovation. The memory thing was nice. The puzzles are ok, with the exception of the one with the robot arm and the document. I had two different walkthroughs with me and it took me a while to figure it out. Maybe I'm just stupid but at least I'm not alone, I guess. But yeah, the game suffers the most because of its poor story in my opinion.

And yes, Gemini Rue's interface is worse than this game's. It becomes evident when you must combine items. But Gemini Rue is a better game, however.

 

[RuySan]

I finished the game, and overall i enjoyed it. But while there were some great puzzles, there were also many annoying ones where we are left to struggle with the interface (magnets puzzle, i'm looking at you).

Definitely not as good as Primordia, but i liked it a bit more than Gemini Rue, mostly because Gemini's puzzles were bland.

 

[Infinitron]

I'm beginning to notice a pattern with the use of the word "bland".

 

[Anthedon]

I finished Gemini Rue and Technobabylon recently, now I'm giving Resonance a shot. So far it's my least favorite of the three. Mainly due to how much a clusterfuck the clue/inventory system is, time sensitive puzzles and a maze section are not helping either.

 

[Ivan]

Very Good Adventure game.

I loved the everyday locales, the opening, Ed's initial story arc (didn't see the twist coming)

Context Dialogue options a very innovative idea.

Interface is clunky, rounding up all the dudes is annoying.

Better than Gemini Rue

 

[MRY]

For $2.50 you can get Resonance in what looks like an otherwise shovelware bundle. Or you can pay a 50 cent premium to buy it directly from Steam.

While opinions may differ, I still think this is the best designed WEG title in terms of puzzles, and I think it has the best sprites. At the same time, I think it lacks some kind of essential spark and also has a very cumbersome mechanic for switching among characters during the middle third of the game. On balance, I think it's well worth trying for $2.50. Plus, you'll get Go Away, There's Kumis Over There! (exclamation in original)

 

[Jaesun]

I still haven't finished this. I did like what little of it I played though...

 

[Gambler]

Say what you want, but Resonance is one of those games that advance the genre forward. The fact that a lot of reviewers called it an "old-school" adventure tells you lots about the quality of gaming press these days. It's a very modern game, and that's a good thing. I would make it a mandatory "reading material" for new game designers.

I do agree that the narrative lacks a certain spark, though. The events make sense, but they don't seem to be driven by any kind of higher-level ideas the game tries to express.