Anybody here tried out Outcry?

[Wyrmlord]

I was just reading this review for the game and it sounds extremely cool.

It's an adventure game based on extremely obscure and difficult-to-find clues. There is alot of in-game text from pieces of paper and journals, and they all contain clues to the various problems in the game. The game does not spell anything out for the player, and often the solution to one puzzle might be in a random unrelated item in a whole different area. Everything works out in a rather twisted fashion wherein doing something in one place causes a staircase to appear somewhere else, or a door to a hidden room to be opened.

It also has some amazing dark and gritty visuals and that really add to the atmosphere.

I love stuff like that in games. I believe it's one of the main things that I like in games like Deus Ex or Betrayal In Krondor; the whole "clues leading to secret places" sort of stuff. I love the sense of accomplishment from solving obscure situations in games. I am especially intrigued by the comment made by the reviewer which says:

Outcry is weird with a capital "W," as thick with atmosphere as a snowy night in St. Petersburg. Like a piece in one of its own puzzles, you can pick Outcry up, but good luck figuring out what to do with it.

 

[bossjimbob]

Sounds interesting, but I'm not big into games that bury relevant information under mountains of text. I agree that it's probably a nice change of pace from all the hand holding that most modern games do, but then again the reason for that is because so many people got pissed off and discouraged by the punishing difficulty of old school adventure games. If you do play this, post your impressions.

 

[Kaiserin]

It's an adventure game based on extremely obscure and difficult-to-find clues. There is alot of in-game text from pieces of paper and journals, and they all contain clues to the various problems in the game. The game does not spell anything out for the player, and often the solution to one puzzle might be in a random unrelated item in a whole different area.

That's a good thing? Most adventure puzzles are obtuse and counterintuitive enough. I understand the merit of providing a challenge, but I loathe developers who force you to start clicking every pixel of the screen only to find out that it was a bullshit puzzle anyway.
For instance, there's a puzzle in Sanitarium ...

Spoiler

You have to ring a church bell. Timmy O'Toole tells you that they can't ring the church bell because they don't have a rope. Well, there's a girl jumping rope in front of the church, you can even ask her about the rope. But oh no, you pick up a non-descript and barely noticeable rock and throw it at the church bell. Stupid.

It's nearly impossible to determine if you're on the right track, because the protagonist never says a word and the interface doesn't offer up any information about your surroundings. There's no indication that you've solved a puzzle, and when you click valves or levers into the right position you never receive "You've done it!" triggers like green flashing lights or the noise of a door opening in the distance. Instead, to check on your progress, you have to run off to see if the door has opened, the water has been turned on, the stairs have moved into place, and so forth.

I mean really, are you reading that and thinking about how awesome that must be?

 

[bossjimbob]

I guess if you like your games "so realistic they're not much fun" then perhaps this is a real treat. There was a really stupid puzzle in The Longest Journey involving clamps, a clothesline, and a rubber duck. I must've wandered around for an hour trying different things until I gave up and found a walkthrough. Not only was I pissed at myself for not figuring it out, but I was livid at the designers for crafting such a bullshit puzzle.

 

[Wyrmlord]

It's nearly impossible to determine if you're on the right track, because the protagonist never says a word and the interface doesn't offer up any information about your surroundings. There's no indication that you've solved a puzzle, and when you click valves or levers into the right position you never receive "You've done it!" triggers like green flashing lights or the noise of a door opening in the distance. Instead, to check on your progress, you have to run off to see if the door has opened, the water has been turned on, the stairs have moved into place, and so forth.

I mean really, are you reading that and thinking about how awesome that must be?

I am playing Ultima Underworld right now, and it is exactly like that. TBH, I made three attempts before to get into the game, but now I am addicted to it.

I like the kind of meticulous attention that UUW requires, because that makes everything a huge accomplishment.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

often the solution to one puzzle might be in a random unrelated item in a whole different area.

How am I supposed to "puzzle" something out if there's no logic to any of it? Aren't all you doing then is just randomly clicking on random stuff yourself in the hopes something else random happens? How is that a game?

 

[Vaarna_Aarne]

It's an adventure game based on extremely obscure and difficult-to-find clues. There is alot of in-game text from pieces of paper and journals, and they all contain clues to the various problems in the game. The game does not spell anything out for the player, and often the solution to one puzzle might be in a random unrelated item in a whole different area.

That's a good thing? Most adventure puzzles are obtuse and counterintuitive enough. I understand the merit of providing a challenge, but I loathe developers who force you to start clicking every pixel of the screen only to find out that it was a bullshit puzzle anyway.

This is precisely why I like The Awakened so much: There wasn't a single puzzle like that.

Even on those two times when I checked a walkthrough for the answer to the mathematical trick questions I only felt stupid because the answer was SO DAMN LOGICAL.

 

[MountainWest]

I've put six or so hours into the game. It might be my extremely high IQ or my strikingly good looks, or both, but I don't know what the fuck he's talking about.

SPOILARS: Starting area.

You start in your missing brothers apartment. There's no pop-up telling you that your goal is to find out what happened to your missing brother... but guess what, I know it's a stretch of imagination, but that's what you're supposed to to.

So. You pick up like books - extremely dense, thick volumes consisting of like a staggering 500 words - notes, and diary fragments that says cryptic things like: "I need to turn the valves to 5-2-2-2 to get enough cooling to my mind-from-body-ripping-machine". In the basement you find four valves and two more notes that says: "Valve two is shut, I need to put that amount of water through number 1" and "I miscalculated: I need to reduce valve 2 and add it to valve 3."

Now, with an understanding of mathematics granted only minor Gods and me, I deduced that it all adds up to 6-1-3-2. And lo and behold, I turned the first, third and fourth valve, HEARD the water rush more violently, and I was done. My god, I'm brilliant. And it was all by chance, cuz the game didn't give me any hints.

Why I wrote HEARD is because the Gamespot moron wrote that there isn't anything telling you when you've done something correctly. There is, but maybe not if you "TURN OFF THE SOUND EFFECTS CUZ I DON*T WANNA HEAR THAT GUY SPEAK; LULZ".

Same thing with the amplifier "puzzle". Use you ears, dumbfuck. And, when the unlit lamp attached to the puzzle suddenly starts shining like a bright sun and the room starts vibrating, odds are you've done something right.

However, there was one puzzle in the starting area that I didn't find a solution to, nor a hint. It's 5 levers, up or down. I started with all up and then went through all 2^5 solutions, running back and forth to the mind-body-ripping-machine, trying to open the locked door. The solution was all down. But, for all I know, I missed a hint somewhere.

There's also a puzzle where you have to make a drug. One of the journal fragments says something like: "I need to mix the plant with 5 parts alcohol and 3 parts ether. The plant needs to be grinded. Mixing the alcohol and ether produces a clear liquid."

On a nearby table there's a grinding-machine and one of those labarotory thingies with vials and shit - alcohol and ether included. Yeah, fucking mindboggling it is, what you're supposed to do.

And that's pretty much it for the first area. There's a handful of cases of pick-up-and-use, but they're all pretty obvious.

Which leads me to:

The last piece is right in front of you in one scene, and it looks like you can simply reach out and grab it.

My brain, the size of Jupiter, didn't exactly interpret things like the brain of our dear GS-moron. My brain noticed that the thing "right in front of me" rested on an ISLAND LEVITATING OVER A DARK VOID OF ETERNAL FUCKING NOTHINGNESS. My brain thought: "I need something to reach it with". And then, later, when I found the straight metal pole and added it to the knowledge of the hammer in my possession and the unused vise in the next room, then I thought AHA! And the obvious was correct.

There are some problems though. Cases of flip the switches - go look what happened. It's not not you don't know what you want to happen, it's just that it is tedious. The protagonist is boring. Flipping through the diary gets more tedious the more papers you find. You don't feel exactly motivated to find you missing brother. And so on and so forth.

What it comes down to is that even though I put six straight hours into it, I can't really get myself to start it up again. I will, I've just reached the fourth (or fifth?) area and want to check it out, but I'm not thrilled about it. The game is just not that fun.