That game sucks so hard. One of the bleakest releases in triple A games from that generation, in my opinion.
What doesn’t suck though is Day of the Tentacle, which I have been playing the last couple days and finished just now. Its Warner Bros cartoon style and single-stage puzzlebox design really appealed to me, and so far I think it may be my favorite point-and-click adventure game I’ve played. Honestly reminded me a ton of Resident Evil which sounds like a strange comparison, but with the comic horror vibe and the adventure game roots of RE it probablly really isn’t. Interested to hear people’s opinions on DotT, especially as it stacks up to other games from that era, and if you think it deserves its praise and what not. I know I really loved it. Even interested to maybe play Maniac Mansion? but probably not.
The sense of space in Maniac Mansion is something special, with the entire game being a set of interconnected rooms mostly open from the beginning that sometimes change while you’re not in them. And the meat of the game is multi-character logic puzzles like Lost Vikings but on the stage of the entire game. I never finished it but it’s interesting to try exploring a bit to get the flavor. There’s a little bit of magic to it
(Typed this message on my phone while half-ignoring Lara Croft getting hunted down and killed by slo-mo wolves 5 times in a row)
This is Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. It’s probably my GoTY if you don’t try to marathon it. Playing it in large chunks quickly ruins it but picking at it every few days is very pleasant.
edit: only one of the sequels i played was rise but i don’t think i’ve as viscerally hated a game in a long while. it is so boring about absolutely everything it does which is far worse than being actively bad.
Wow I did not expect to get so pedantically annoyed at Aegis Rim from the start. The game nominally takes place in the 1980s Urban Japan. Except everyone’s hair styles are from 2019, they all talk like an*me stereotypes from 2019, and none of this was present in Real Japan 1985 or even An*me of 1985. there’s also a character from ww2 era japan who absolutely does not sound like they are from ww2 era japan. one of the easiest shorthands for time travel stories is to lean into the distinctions of each time period.
I will continue with it but that first session ended after 40 minutes because I was too mad that the story was not what I wanted it to me. That I have to configure my brain to ignore this glaring flaw to see what these an*mes will do.
Both Maniac Mansion and Day of the Tentacle are favorites of mine. I am especially fond of the NES version of Maniac Mansion because of its music.
I remember some of the puzzles in Day of the Tentacle being impenetrable without a guide, but I don’t remember where I found a guide back in those days.
agreed – one of my only strongly held opinions on scumm stuff is that the original maniac mansion is a way, way better place to start than you’d think from the way people talk about monkey island and the 90s stuff. it’s both predictable and messy in a way that really improves adventure games.
play that and Loom for sure imo, then maybe DotT, Monkey Island 2, and full throttle
Lots of love for Maniac Mansion! Maybe I’ll actually give it a serious shot. Think I’ll play the version that’s within DotT, unless another version is suggested like the NES port.
me and the girlfriend have been playing a bit of grim fandango remastered. that game holds up so well, I think she really enjoys the atmosphere and art. I’m enjoying the snappy writing.
I think the furthest I’ve ever got is year three so looking forward to finishing the game with her. we’re using a guide as needed for the trickier puzzles - e.g. in the city the tube switcher and the pigeon puzzles are a little more difficult than they should be. it’s hard to notice that you can interact with the deadbolt on the door of the machine, and it doesn’t make sense for the pigeons that you can’t just pop the balloon with your sickle.
I enjoyed playing Grim Fandango in 2015 but there is one notoriously bad puzzle in the last act that you must look up to save yourself the frustration.
I don’t like when these games have verb systems - too fussy for me having grown up on Humongous Entertainment games with just contextual uses.
But the game itself shouldn’t vary much. (Other than that only the earliest NES version allows you to put the hamster in the microwave. But I don’t think I ever did that anyway.)
Neither do I so I just finish them with a guide. I’ve found walkthroughs to be really lame, but there are some guides for these games out there that just give you increasingly obvious hints. That way you still gotta think of stuff and puzzle it out on a lower level than the logic the game wants you to.
I think you also get better versed in the logic of the puzzles the more you play, and specifically the more you play by certain writers. They’re extremely genre defined things, so if it looks like zaney cartoons then it’s going be using a cartoon logic. Same with tough guy logic, adventure serial logic, etc. This is probably my favorite thing about them tbh.
All this talk about adventure games is reminding me of when my sister and I played through the Goblins 3 game as young teens. We’d never played Gobliiins or Gobliins 2, but that’s another single-screen-at-a-time cartoon logic adventure and we had a lot of fun with it, but we definitely looked up some puzzles at a couple points. I should see how it looks today.
The CD-ROM versions of the LucasArts adventures came with guides! Or at least Day of the Tentacle and Sam & Max did. They were very good though I don’t think they used any Invisiclues shit.
All the official guides should be on Archive and I recommend using them over any websites (unless they’re sites that let you uncover hint tiers by clicking) since they all do the escalating hint thing.
Playing adventure games like they’re weird walking sims is the best, I think everyone should play King’s Quest 1 and see how far they can get before they start cheating and then once they cheat they should finish the game to see how bonkers it gets.
Got grid autosport and played a bit this morning. I suuuck, I took it off the rookie difficulty and it felt much better, I didn’t realize it was enabling auto-brake
Deleted some screenshots from my switch and remembered my unfinished Mario Maker course of hook jumps. I love the weight of smb1 and 2j, but the upward and downward hooks that are possible with nsmbu gravity are sliick.
