A little too easy
I remember when playing Monkey 1, 2 and 3 when I was a little boy it was SO hard to solve the puzzles... playing for months to acheive a little task.
Chapter 2 I solved it entirely in just 4-5 hours without hints
Hopefully chapter 3 will be impossible and I will be stuck for several days :P
Cheers
Chapter 2 I solved it entirely in just 4-5 hours without hints
Hopefully chapter 3 will be impossible and I will be stuck for several days :P
Cheers
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And still 4-5 hours is quite long. Multiply it by 5 and you have more playtime for 35$ than in any other 50$ adventure game that has been sold in the last 10 years.
Okay maybe Myst IV took more time to complete the first time. But that is an exception and a recommendation if you like impossible puzzles. But then again: the game is not at all funny.
Ep2 took me just over 5 hrs which was slightly more that Ep1 - That is more than I was expecting before the series started.
You answered this problem in your post. You were a kid when the others came out. Of course they are going to be much harder back then. And 4-5 hours on just one chapter is pretty good, considering that there are 4 other chapters with later ones most likely going to be increasingly difficult.
Games today are a lot more fair and fun for the user.
You don't die in games. You don't get a GAME OVER with no save point.
The reason for that is that people are tierd of wasting a life-time on solving a game.
Same thing with adventure games:
The average user would rather have fun for 4-5 hours (which, smartlly, can take you a week if you play less than an hour a day).
Playing 24\7 for half a year to solving a game is a waste of a lot of time and energy.
15 years ago it was really fun. I remember that as well. But actually, I think being able to solve the puzzles with LOGIC and not randomness is a lot more fun, even though it makes the game a lot shorter.
p.s.
I started playing Full Throttle recently, and boy, this game is just plain ANNOYING. The puzzles are so stupid and unlogical, you could NEVER think of them without trying all of the possibilities. After 10-20 minutes of playing I just can't go on. It's no fun, not fair, and you can't solve it without a guide or some hints. After a while, i'm actually thinking of giving up. This game isn't worth my time if it's just not fun playing.
I'm glad games today don't have the "too hard for a human" problem.
You can't be serious.
Full Throttle's puzzles are fantastic. And quite easy, too - definitely easier then MI2's or The Dig's for example. The only irritating bits are the action sequences, especially the motorcycle fights. But puzzlewise Full Throttle is ingenious.
Still one of my favorites though. Very atmospheric.
But I still think the motorcycle fights were the worst part of the game. First you have to wait for the randomizer to give you the opponent you want to fight, then you fight both him as well as the lousy controls, and after you lose you are left wondering whether you fought badly or you are missing something puzzle-wise.
Still, even with its faults, the rest of the game is so charming and full of character it's easy to forgive the warts. I still chuckle when I remember the way you get your hands on fuel for your broken motorcycle or the bunnies scene with Wagner blaring in the background...
Yes, this exactly. And even when I do win I don't seem to acquire anything that made it worth bothering. I haven't really enjoyed Full Throttle at all aside from some of the humour and now that I'm having to battle through the motorcycle fights I'm not sure I'm going to carry on...
For instance, to get the chainsaw you have to throw fertilizer to the guy (or was it a girl?) yielding it. Yet you have to collect the fertilizer first, which is not obvious. Only the board works against the vulture, and you need the chainsaw to get the board. The guy with the booster on the other hand can be beaten with the simple chain, but you have to be quick; I mistakenly assumed that he, too, needs a special weapon or some other prerequsite (like putting oil or something on the road so he would crash) and it was quite frustrating to realize that it was not the case.
Destruction derby is also kinda frustrating, but at least that one provides some in-your-face hints what you should be doing...
I just find it bizarre how so many adventure gamers find the smallest action puzzle sequences so annoying. I can understand some complaints for some more annoying action sequences or parts in that game, but the motorcycle fights aren't that bad - it's no MI Monkey Kombat.
So which is it? Seven or five? Or was it three?
I think I had played Super Mario so I had some inbuilt patience for that kind of thing.
I'm can't remember as far as the 1st episode but i got the same feeling during that too. Causing a fight in the bar was too easy aswell.
There has been a general outcry for the episode's puzzles to be slightly more convoluted for quite a while and you sometimes wonder if the guys at Telltale take our frustrations into account when working on new episodes....?
No, i missed that interview, thanks for pointing that out.
But don't you ever feel that after receiving items like the raft ticket and the bucket so freely that they could have done a bit more, make it a bit more of a puzzle?
Hate to break it to you, but obstacles in your way to the goal *are* the actual game. Otherwise we would have this:
Talk with merperson.
- Guybrush, you need three summoning artifacts. They are on the shelf over there, be a dear and get them for me please.
Go to shelf. Pick up artifacts.
- Good work Guybrush! Here, have Esponja Grande!
Pick up Esponja Grande.
- Yay, the pox is lifted! You won!
(credits)
Only if it makes sense for the story. Elaine giving you the ticket works for me, because with her personality I figure that when she goes on vacation she brings along a map, two tour books and immediately buys a Citypass upon landing. You're told you get the pass from the chieftain, who is busy angrily arguing with a maniacal half-zombie pirate at the time. To have the chief suddenly stop arguing and say, "Oh yes, you want a muni ticket? Here you go. Now, where was I? Ah, that's right! You will never get our holy trinket!" would be kind of weird. And the bucket ... it's a bucket. Having to solve a puzzle to receive a mundane item can be funny, but it can also be kind of boring. Like the first puzzle you have to solve in Wallace and Gromit, where you have to make Wallace breakfast. It's a good introduction to the series, but having to make someone breakfast is actually more fun in real life than it is in the game. For me anyway. At least all the puzzles that are in The Siege of Spinner Cay are fun, for me at least, and I think that's the most important thing.
P.S. I don't want anyone to think I'm casting aspersions on Mr. Hartzell here. I think he's a good game designer, The Bogey Man being tied for my favorite Wallace and Gromit episode, it's the just the first entry into any new series is usually the "weakest" for Telltale. Which makes sense, it's the introduction. ToMI has actually surprised me with how good it was right off the bat.
Sorry about that unrelated rant.
Now. I think the way you get items in these two cases is nice. The bucket parrodies the adventure mentality, while the ticket is something your wife just had. Are you supposed to armwrestle everyone for every old shoe and a crooked nail in sight? Sometimes people would just give you things if you ask them nice enough.
Hate to break it to you, but that's your opinion. Sometimes they were more than mere obstacles. I can deal with obstacles. But blatant non-story driven (that is, having nothing to do with the story whatsoever) grasping-for-straws attempts to make the game seem longer is boring. At least nowadays. And, again, I speak for myself. Don't take what I say to be truth for everyone. And don't try to convince me of your own views.
KQ5 takes place in Serenia, not Daventry (where Graham is king). So no, you aren't the king. Doesn't anybody ever watch the intro sequences? But yeah, I agree with you about most of it being nonsensical.
So.. MI2 is full of blatant non-story driven grasping-for-straws attempts to make the game seem longer?
...in my opinion. Still a great game. And I enjoyed it at the time. I just don't anymore.
yes it is. But it was still fun when it was released.
Examples please. I really can't think of a single one: puzzles in LeChuck's Revenge may be considered too hard, sure, and sometimes unfair; but never "blatant non-story driven...". Many overrated adventure games from recent years were full of frustrating puzzles which had absolutely nothing to do with the story; but Monkey Island? Gameplay here is always deeply story-driven: puzzles are an integral part of Guybrush's world and adventures.
The other one is the battle with LeChuck near the end, but it's not a blatant non-story blah blah - it's integral to the story as well as a nice parallel with the first battle with LeChuck in MI1.
Apart from those, every puzzle in MI2 is downright perfect, logical and story driven. If you took some of Sierra's Quest games as an example, or some recent(ish) dreck like "The Longest Journey" (which tries to hide the lousy puzzle design by smothering you with what feels like weeks of neverending badly written dialogue) then I might agree, but MI2, one of (if not the) best point-and-click adventures of all time? Come on.
The puzzles could get a lot more creative too. In the previous MI games you had to be pretty inventive and use and combine items in unexpected and not so obvious, yet almost always very logical ways once you thought about it. I didn't see much of that in this game. Take the “hot coals-puzzle” (if you can even call it a puzzle) for example, … surely Telltale could have come up with a more clever way for Guybrush to pick up the hot coals then to simply give you a bucket.