Groo miss old games
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No videogame will ever makes me as happy as just hearing the intro music of a new point and click Lucas arts Indiana Jones game made at it's time. Playing them again isn't the same thing, at the time they were new and everything about them was awesome.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - Intro – 07:41
— mikosoft
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@groo almost an exact copy of Countdown... which was one of the greatest games I ever played.
Countdown came out in 1990 by Access Software.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis by LucasArts originally released in 1992.interesting.
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@groo
Thimbleweed park this Friday!!
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@groo said in Groo miss old games:
No videogame will ever makes me as happy as just hearing the intro music of a new point and click Lucas arts Indiana Jones game made at it's time. Playing them again isn't the same thing, at the time they were new and everything about them was awesome.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - Intro – 07:41
— mikosoftQFT. But I'm disappointed this was captured on a computer with a sound card.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - internal speaker – 06:48
— Daniel WishartEdit:
it switches to voiced dialog!
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Oh man, nostalgia.
Monkey Island 2 - EGA graphics, internal speaker – [01:16..07:31] 07:31
— Daniel Wishart
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@groo I would ask why you wouldn't listen to the Roland MT-32 version of the music, but then I remembered most people didn't have sound devices that supported MT-32 (or converted it to General MIDI on the fly) back then.
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@groo said in Groo miss old games:
a new point and click Lucas arts ... game
You may be interested in this:
It's by some of the guys behind some of Lucasart's most beloved point-and-click adventure games, and looks like it'll be pretty good too.
Disclaimer: I'm a Kickstarter backer of this game
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@RaceProUK said in Groo miss old games:
You may be interested in this:
I'm getting a Zak McKracken vibe out of those graphics. And on that note...
Watch out. It's loud:
Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders - PC Speaker Theme – [00:14..01:39] 01:39
— Stan's Previously Owned Soundtracks
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@groo, ITYM Groo -- the miss of old games.
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@Zecc said in Groo miss old games:
Edit: it switches to voiced dialog!
From the description:
I'm amazed they included this on the CD version, and the game still outputs the "talkie" dialogue in internal speaker mode.
Sounds like it was the "internal speaker version" of the music, but was actually output on the sound card. Either that, or PC speakers are much better than I thought.
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@groo, really, thimbleweed park looks great.
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@RaceProUK said in Groo miss old games:
You may be interested in this:
From the page:
Coming March 30th, 2017 to Windows, Mac, Xbox One, and Linux. iOS, Android, and other platforms will follow soon after.
That's... tomorrow !!!
/me take out my wallet
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@groo Ah I remember Fate of Atlantis. Weren't these LucasArts games some of the ones where the copy protection was "what is the 2nd word on the 53rd page of the manual" or whatever?
edit: Ah, no, it was the sun/moon/volcano positions from the manual
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@loopback0 said in Groo miss old games:
@groo Ah I remember Fate of Atlantis. Weren't these LucasArts games some of the ones where the copy protection was "what is the 2nd word on the 53rd page of the manual" or whatever?
edit: Ah, no, it was the sun/moon/volcano positions from the manual
LucasArts didn't do that on the CD versions, though. Then again, this was when CDs were brand new. No one will ever be able to copy CDs!!!!111
Side note: Day of the Tentacle used the super battery schematic with the actual "code" being the amounts of oil and vinegar in the battery, plus iirc the placement of the croutons. Don't ask me why a battery made using oil, vinegar, and gold has croutons on it.
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I remember Prince of Persia (at least the Mac version) using the potion rooms where you had to drink the potion with the 8th letter on the 5th row on page 12 of the manual. Such a shitty copy protection scheme.
I wonder if my friend's parents still got that Mac lying around. The nostalgia if it would be still working so I could play all those games that were on it!
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Dungeon keeper, alone in the dark, syndicate, stunts. Much more fun than these just another FPS games from today.
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@Atazhaia said in Groo miss old games:
I remember Prince of Persia (at least the Mac version) using the potion rooms where you had to drink the potion with the 8th letter on the 5th row on page 12 of the manual.
Ah yes, I remember that one.
Star Control II used "name the star at coordinates x:y on the map". I forget the details of what the original Star Control used but I'm pretty sure it was a variant of "look up this word on this page of the manual".
Unlike @groo I don't miss old games; I still play many of them regularly :)
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@groo I almost recommended Evil Genius as a Dungeon Keeper-like game, but it's pretty buggy. Mainly because the game was kinda rushed out and even then, the developer went out of business shortly after the game was released.
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Buying games on or shortly after release date?
I did that only a few times.
The vast majority of games I own has been old when I bought them already.
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@powerlord said in Groo miss old games:
@groo I almost recommended Evil Genius as a Dungeon Keeper-like game, but it's pretty buggy. Mainly because the game was kinda rushed out and even then, the developer went out of business shortly after the game was released.
I've never played Evil Genius, but someone recommended me its OST. It's pretty good.
Evil Genius complete Soundtrack – 44:03
— Sierra Chest
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@RaceProUK said in Groo miss old games:
@groo said in Groo miss old games:
a new point and click Lucas arts ... game
You may be interested in this:
It's by some of the guys behind some of Lucasart's most beloved point-and-click adventure games, and looks like it'll be pretty good too.
Disclaimer: I'm a Kickstarter backer of this game
I've completed Thimbleweed Park. If you like the mentality of slightly illogical puzzles (and some of them are) and the fact the game is basically a love letter to 1987, sure.
I should post my review from Steam (which is Do Not Recommend) but that would ideally require me figuring out how the fuck spoiler tags work around here because it's quite long. And note that I'm not saying DNR because it's a shitty game or that it isn't what it claims to be. I'm not recommending it because it's exactly what it seems to be. Complete with self-aggrandizement.
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Use a details tag
<details><summary> This will be visible </summary> This will be hidden </details>
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@powerlord said in Groo miss old games:
I almost recommended Evil Genius as a Dungeon Keeper-like game, but it's pretty buggy.
Someone did that to me, and Evil Genius is absolute garbage shit and I never forgave them. It's nothing like Dungeon Keeper. Nothing. It's also nothing like "a fun game that is enjoyable to play".
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@blakeyrat said in Groo miss old games:
@powerlord said in Groo miss old games:
I almost recommended Evil Genius as a Dungeon Keeper-like game, but it's pretty buggy.
Someone did that to me, and Evil Genius is absolute garbage shit and I never forgave them. It's nothing like Dungeon Keeper. Nothing. It's also nothing like "a fun game that is enjoyable to play".
It's trying to be Dungeon Keeper except failing on every level.
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So my review for Thimbleweed Park on Steam if you care enough about such things (and if not, nothing to see here...
OK, so I'm a veteran of gaming of the adventure kind. I played pretty much everything LucasArts put out and loved it at the time.The non-spoiler version, I guess: if you're a die-hard fan of the 1980s/1990s style of games and wish we were back there, this would completely be the game for you. And if I were the me of that time period, I'd love this game and recommend it to everyone that played adventure games because it's a solid game that exemplifies everything we know and love about the genre as it was then.
The problem is, that's exactly what it is: a love letter to that time, unfortunately 20-odd years too late. I'm not the person I was 20 years ago and in fairness, it is exactly what it seems to be. I wasn't missold on it being a retro-themed game. I'm just bitter that it feels like it violates every one of Gilbert's own 'how not to design an adventure game' rules, whilst piling on the nerd/fanboy references.
Now we've got the tl;dr version out of the way and the people who care about being spoiled are also out of the way, I want to look at what is wrong with this game, and why it is not the game I hoped it would be.
Graphically, it's exactly as presented. I'm a huge fan of the pixel aesthetic and this really shines. The fact that they can use the power of modern graphics to do things not doable in the real resolutions of the day is actually cool; the ghost effects when playing as Franklin after his initial flashback works rather well to set the mood. The tilting of Ransome's trailer gives you a sense of immersion not previously really doable in such games.
But from the off, it sets itself up in so many other bad ways.
Firstly, the references. I'm a fan of the old games. Yes, I know Sandy and Dave were in Maniac Mansion. Yes, I know about the 1138 stuff. Yes, I know who Bernard is. I know about the SCUMM engine. The in-jokes asked at one point which profession was involved, be it flooring inspector, pirate, or leather jacket salesman. I got these. I got them all because I remember.
I don't even mind the occasional wink to the audience, but when it's done gratuitously like this, where you can't move for references to things. It stops being an adventure game with a plot and starts being a love letter to times long ago. And if that's what you want in a game, sure, go for it. Unfortunately I wanted a game with a plot, with the occasional nod to the audience for fun.
Speaking of the plot. The plot is a mess. I get the mechanics of the multi-player making it very hard to have, say, cross-person dialogue. I accept the mechanics required everyone to know things that they individually shouldn't be able to know. I even grudgingly accept the additions to each characters' todo lists to reflect things even when sometimes those things didn't actually reflect the individual character's motivations or goals. But at the same time, the plot is paper thin in places, and obtuse throughout pretty much the story's second act onwards where people do things because the game insists they do them, without rhyme or reason behind it other than the player can direct them to do things. Of course, this does make some grudging sense given the climax, but it's such a cop-out to hand-wave everything in this fashion. More, possibly, of a cop-out than any explanation given after the ending of Monkey Island 2. Big Whoop indeed (even referenced in this game)
Though, I'll add, the todo list was a nice quality of life addition, with this many characters and potential lines of inquiry, it was a nice to have rather than expecting the player to track everything.
Then we have the puzzles. Holy monkey bladders. I will admit up front that I'm clearly insane and tried it in hard mode, and that possibly explains why the puzzles are that obtuse but I refuse to believe this was anything other than bad game design - Gilbert's own list and various articles of his outline what good game design should look like, and I see no reason why this should not extend to the 'hard' version.
There are puzzles that are definitely in the 'why didn't I think of that sooner' territory. And there are puzzles that I simply would not have solved without trying every object with every object in every location because it's simply not that obvious. I mean... the location of the secret bunker. There are so many things in that puzzle that just don't fit together as things you'd logically do to solve it. (SPOILERS AHEAD)
Let me break it down. So there is a secret bunker in the forest. I was vaguely aware this was a thing. But to have to take Delores' trophy, collect some radioactive waste, put it in the puddle in the trailhead, wait for someone to walk through it and then follow the footprints. This is something that would have seemed like a "logical" puzzle in the 1980s. Unfortunately it's 2017, as the game helpfully jokes about on multiple occasions about what life might be like.
And the problem with that being, the genre has moved on. What is considered 'acceptable' by players has moved on. Players who thoroughly favour the illogical hoops to jump through are firmly in the minority now - anyone who has played the Wadjet Eye Games will see the difference; none of those have anything like the guess-the-thing-to-use-with-the-thing games going on.
I still remember the Old Man Murray article that Gilbert referenced on occasion, that 'adventure games killed themselves' with the breakdown of a puzzle from Gabriel Knight. This is exactly what this feels like, a series of things that just happen to work together that don't actually connect except laterally. Gilbert himself stated on multiple occasions that he wanted to set up for the style of puzzle where the player has a problem and has to go find the thing to solve it, rather than being expected to collect everything along the way and somehow be expected to know when to use it - but here even tagging everything along didn't help in the slightest. I don't, for example, know if pewter can withstand radioactive waste - it certainly wouldn't have occurred to me as a first, second or even third thought.
Then there's the thimbleberries. I find this particular puzzle annoying for the wrong reason. I haven't tested it but I find it suspicious that the route to the thimbleberry bush is eeriely similar to a certain set of instructions that could be dancing lessons from a map written in 1990... It was the first thing I tried and it led me straight to them. To say that was disappointing...
And this leads me onto the ending. The ending is horrible. Utterly horrible. It undermines everything the game set itself up for. We had a cast of characters that were annoying to various degrees - but I at least cared about the outcome of them. I wanted Reyes to get his closure. I wanted Ransome to get redeemed (hoping that the interview with Natalie would somehow do this). I didn't know until quite late what Ray's real objective was, and finding out actually undermined her, she seemed like a good agent for the most part (though where she said that all she did was as little work as possible didn't help her at all!)
But I had a cast of characters I had some investment in. And then the finale killed whatever investment I had. Closure for Franklin was nice but overshadowed by the Big Reveal. Reyes getting his closure by way of the newspaper was valid, though it irked me that he didn't keep his promise to Willie and that we didn't actually 'solve' Boris' murder as far as the sheriff-a-reno was concerned. (Also, the a-reno, a-who and a-boo thing was stupid. Very stupid. And it didn't really answer the point from the journal that the coroner had been fired and replaced. Though the coronor was even worse at his job than the sheriff, and that irked me too)
Lots of nice ideas and some technically excellent execution but it's the wrong end of a time warp for me. Wrong end of a time warp and in search of a plot. Shame, too. I really wanted it to not be that.
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@Zecc said in Groo miss old games:
Use a details tag
<details><summary> This will be visible </summary> This will be hidden </details>Put a blank line after
</summary>and before</details>if you want it to not break horribly.
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@ben_lubar Did my post break horribly then?
Thimbleweed Park
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