The "last adventures I played" thread

[Renegen]

Playing "A New Beginning" right now, it's really great. Strongest points are graphics and the story, puzzles are logical too.

 

[asper]

Just played “It came from the desert”. A 1989 Amiga classic. If you can call it adventure, because it incorporates some action sequences as well. It’s a great homage to the 1950’s B movies. Set in the town of Lizard Breath the player investigates strange events after a meteor crash only to discover an invasion of giant mutant ants. The gameplay is particularly tough as you races against the clock and can’t take time with the puzzles. Quick decisions are a must. The game is a nice combination of traditional point-and-click adventure with elements of shooter, platformer and even flight simulator. But the combination feels very natural and even increases the immersion. The story is also pretty good and features many references to the old camp horror classics. Definitely an overlooked gem. I recommend the Amiga version. The PC port is hard to find and doesn’t include nearly as good graphic or sounds (the original amiga sounds were superb).

I've wanted to play this for a long time. Did you use an emulator? Can you recommend one (preferably one that works on linux)?

 

[Kjujik]

Just played “It came from the desert”. A 1989 Amiga classic. If you can call it adventure, because it incorporates some action sequences as well. It’s a great homage to the 1950’s B movies. Set in the town of Lizard Breath the player investigates strange events after a meteor crash only to discover an invasion of giant mutant ants. The gameplay is particularly tough as you races against the clock and can’t take time with the puzzles. Quick decisions are a must. The game is a nice combination of traditional point-and-click adventure with elements of shooter, platformer and even flight simulator. But the combination feels very natural and even increases the immersion. The story is also pretty good and features many references to the old camp horror classics. Definitely an overlooked gem. I recommend the Amiga version. The PC port is hard to find and doesn’t include nearly as good graphic or sounds (the original amiga sounds were superb).

I've wanted to play this for a long time. Did you use an emulator? Can you recommend one (preferably one that works on linux)?

The game is definitely worth a play. Unfortunately I have to use an emulator, as my old 500/CDTV is currently back at my folks place. I usually switch between WinUAE or WinFellow depending on whether I just want fast start up and quick play (WinFellow) or detailed settings to recreate the exact feel of my Amisia (WinUAE, with enabled CD support). Also Fellow has, IMO a better system for recording in game sounds, but that’s just a matter of taste. Not sure about Fellow, but UAE definitely has a Linux version. For the more hardcore approach you might try setting up a new HDD partition and installing AmigaOS and Workbench. There are some community hacks that allow booting PC under AmigaOS with the Workbench interface. Never tried it though, so can’t tell you how it works in practice but there are loads of articles on Amiga message boards that explain the exact procedure. Apparently it allows to boot games directly from floppy disks or VHS tape backups (but there are some issues with pluging in the VBS to a modern PC), instead of having to use roms.

 

[Ringhausen]

Been playing adventure games like crazy this year.

A New Beginning - Really liked it, excellent visuals, good atmosphere, puzzles suited my difficulty level. The writing is stupid in some parts, but it still forms a coherent whole and is decent.

Alpha Polaris - Loved the setting, unfortunately it became a simple horror story too early on and is mostly confined to the research center. The developers had their heart in the right place when designing the puzzles, like entering into the text parser what to do instead just clicking on a hot spot and watching a scene, but man did some of them drive me nuts. You're just expected to guess that a random cave man symbol means Cave and some of the ones based on logic are simply drawn Wrong so I have no idea how anyone could finish it without a walkthrough.

The Dig - Lovely beginning with the cinematics, visuals, music, atmosphere.. then it becomes one boring crystal based puzzle after the other. And the ending.. ough, the most stupidest, offensive video game ending I've ever seen. Regret playing it.

Scratches - liked the story, the way it was told, the atmosphere. Rage quit on the last day when the puzzles became extremely pixel hunty and stupid.

Hector: Badge of Carnage ep 3 - like the previous episodes, easy, some of it was amusing, some completely unfunny and drags into TLJ style awfully long dialogues. Okay game overall.

Grim Fandango - Nice. But I didn't get the "best game ever" feeling people talk about. The chapter in Rubacava was way better than the rest of the game.

Lure of the Temptress - good, charming little game.. with the worst pathfinding I've yet to see. Want to talk to that guy right next to you? How about infinitely looping around the room? And the 'music' was the kind of noise you'd expect to come out of an atari machine.

 

[SCO]

There are two Dig endings.

The "bad one", that you probably saw, is the more appropriate though (it still sucks for the same reasons as the other though).

 

[Ringhausen]

Yeah, the bad one is slightly darker but it's still the same.

And I thought Spielberg ruined Minority Report and AI with those honey-sweet feel good endings, this.. this was even worse.

 

[Telengard]

Hope you'll forgive me for a little resurrection.

The last one I played was The Dame was Loaded, from the FMV era. Don't remember too terribly much about it, except that it often felt more of an Interactive Story than an Adventure - only natural with FMV, but it didn't make me look too kindly on it at the time. However, it has one of my favorite puzzles ever, caused by the fact that you have a limited amount of time to solve the case before you, and you are a currently-dry alcoholic PI, who suffers a shock, pulls out a bottle and gets drunk, unless you hide the bottle from yourself ahead of time. You don't have to hide the bottle, but if you don't, you lose half a day of your limited time to drunkenness and a hangover.

Plus, it was my first encounters with a game that actually allowed you to affect different aspects of the ending with your choices.

 

[circ]

I don't remember the name. I stick to replays of Infocom stuff. It was point and click puzzle stuff that I got because my sister likes the stuff but I ended up trying it out. Everything was gray or brown and you played some kind of tin can robot stuck on a moon(?) or something, that went from screen to screen and tried to fix some pump or gear thing at one point.

 

[Joff1981]

circ Sounds like Machinarium.

I've been replaying GK (done), GK2 and playing through Tex Murphy: Overseer and QFG2 (remake) having just done QFG1 as a magic user. Good times.

 

[SCO]

Played Salammbo today. I never read the Flaubert book, but this was a downer to me. Maliciously doing everything possible to burn down and pillage a alternate Carthage with no alternative at the behest of a bunch of idiots (love struck idiot being especially stupid), made me

Those poor whores... better that Spendius got killed in one of the many ways that can happen.

 

[Keshik]

Finished off GK, going on to GK2 soon. Might also replay Normality, found the disc and it looks in good shape, game was kinda so-so as I recall.

 

[Erebus]

I just watched a LP of GK2 and, unlike the first game, it didn't seem very good to me. Maybe it's because of the FMV, but the game sometimes feels like a slightly interactive movie. Also, most of the parts with Grace seem downright boring.

I'd be interested in the opinions of people who've actually played it.

 

[SCO]

The Grace parts are indeed boring (also in GK3), especially since it's very easy to get stuck by missing a hotspot on both of them. There is a 'worthy' (aka, fiendishly hard) puzzle in the Gabriel part (on 3 this belongs to Grace).

 

[kaizoku]

Played Salammbo today. I never read the Flaubert book, but this was a downer to me. Maliciously doing everything possible to burn down and pillage a alternate Carthage with no alternative at the behest of a bunch of idiots (love struck idiot being especially stupid), made me

Those poor whores... better that Spendius got killed in one of the many ways that can happen.

That sucks

I saw a video on youtube and I completely loved the artistic direction of the game. Which made me put it on my "to play" list, even though I hate first person view.

How would you rate if from 0 to 5?

 

[Outlander]

I recently replayed The Dig. Still as good as I remembered.

 

[Renegen]

Playing Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper, really good. For those who completely missed this genre/franchise, give it a spin.

I'd be interested in the opinions of people who've actually played GK2.

I played GK2 and it wasn't very enjoyable, it's hard to describe why. Overall the realistic setting just made the environments and options much more bare, there was nothing to do. Most areas had 2-5 things you could click on. After 2 chapters, I watched an LP for the others.

 

[Ringhausen]

I briefly tried GK2 and couldn't stand it at all. The thought of having to pixel hunt through those ugly pictures depresses me even now. And that pointless FMV. Watch a 5 second video of Gabe walking across the room, then unzipping a bag. Click on cross, one sentence of information. Watch a 5 second video of Gabe rezipping the bag and walk back. And that puzzle with the voice recorder? That just wasn't fair.

 

[SCO]

I saw a video on youtube and I completely loved the artistic direction of the game. Which made me put it on my "to play" list, even though I hate first person view.

How would you rate if from 0 to 5?

:hipster: i don't believe in ratings.
It's a very easy game with some annoying timed sequences (that, to be honest, are eventually easy to figure out since the puzzles are easy). Story wise, it was irritating for the reason in my previous post, but i liked it. It reminded me of the Carthago in Mary Gentle - Ash. In fact i think they ripped off the worldbuilding from the same primary source (the Flaubert book, thou since the game is a adaptation, i'm not complaining - just didn't expect such a alien setting from that book, now i'm curious to read it).

Background scenarios (especially the sky) are very unfortunately slightly pixelized. I'd play around with the resolution, and/or a window if you can manage it.

It's pretty short, will take about 1-3 days.

 

[EmoBunny]

Eric the Unready

4/5

 

[abnaxus]

I saw a video on youtube and I completely loved the artistic direction of the game. Which made me put it on my "to play" list, even though I hate first person view.

How would you rate if from 0 to 5?

:hipster: i don't believe in ratings.
It's a very easy game with some annoying timed sequences (that, to be honest, are eventually easy to figure out since the puzzles are easy). Story wise, it was irritating for the reason in my previous post, but i liked it. It reminded me of the Carthago in Mary Gentle - Ash. In fact i think they ripped off the worldbuilding from the same primary source (the Flaubert book, thou since the game is a adaptation, i'm not complaining - just didn't expect such a alien setting from that book, now i'm curious to read it).

Background scenarios (especially the sky) are very unfortunately slightly pixelized. I'd play around with the resolution, and/or a window if you can manage it.

It's pretty short, will take about 1-3 days.

You should read the comic, Druillet's studio actually finished the game after Cryo went bust (which probably explains the rageworthy 3 second ending movie).

 

[Redlands]

To those people who don't like GK2: maybe give it a bit more time because the intro is pretty bad. It's nowhere near as good as the first one, but I stuck with it and it does have its charms.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I'm currently playing the new Back To The Future game. What surprises me the most is that I'm laughing at some of the jokes, and the attention to detail in the background (at least in 1986) is pretty good.

Just finished the first episode, actually somewhat looking forward to playing the rest.