S.l.a.g.,u.
The moment I saw that magical folding map thing in chapter 4, I knew there was no way in Hell I was going to finish the game. I have been confounded by folding paper since I was a wee little boy, and failed in my every attempt to fold and cut holes in pumpkin shaped paper to make a jack'o'lantern decoration for my pre-school's classroom. Later in my life, I found myself faced with the mystery of girls' fortune teller paper popper devices, wherein I discovered that no matter what number I picked, or what color I preferred, my life would turn out horribly. And then I learned to read and write, and that's been a tremendous burden on me ever since. I hope you understand why following a terrain shifting folding map to solve some BBW's obscure food riddles would be nigh impossible for me.
I have a solution that would be mutually beneficial to everyone. I'd like an "I give up" button, similar to what Nintendo has provided in the New Super Mario Bros. Wii game. If Mario is getting his butt whooped too often, all he has to do is hit a green block, and the level will play itself for the player. Rather than having to alt-tab to some poorly worded strategy guide that gives away all the best jokes, how about a Monkey Island Super Guide for when players feel like giving up on going through the same dialogue trees over and over and over in the vain attempt to find one more clue at what the fudge is supposed to be combined into what and shoved into where to make who do what to how?
My fellow stupid, lazy adventure gamers, we must unite against the tyranny of hurty brain inducing puzzles. Join me in petitioning Telltale to dumb it down a little, that the needs of we, the lowest common denominator, can be met. WHO IS WITH ME!?
I have a solution that would be mutually beneficial to everyone. I'd like an "I give up" button, similar to what Nintendo has provided in the New Super Mario Bros. Wii game. If Mario is getting his butt whooped too often, all he has to do is hit a green block, and the level will play itself for the player. Rather than having to alt-tab to some poorly worded strategy guide that gives away all the best jokes, how about a Monkey Island Super Guide for when players feel like giving up on going through the same dialogue trees over and over and over in the vain attempt to find one more clue at what the fudge is supposed to be combined into what and shoved into where to make who do what to how?
My fellow stupid, lazy adventure gamers, we must unite against the tyranny of hurty brain inducing puzzles. Join me in petitioning Telltale to dumb it down a little, that the needs of we, the lowest common denominator, can be met. WHO IS WITH ME!?
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Comments
If he really is, graphic adventure is not his game genre.
Actually, I found the folding map puzzle very interesting and challenging, without being really difficult.
The hints in Sam and Max were possibly best, as Max usually gave a hint as to which room I should be in next. Strong Bad's and Monkey Island's were both a bit too vague, and Wallace and Gromit is just plain frustrating, especially as Gromit, since he can't speak and so you can't get any important information about your surroundings.
Also, the folded map puzzle ultimately
Having played so many more adventure games, I've come across WAY more irritating puzzles, believe me..
Graphic adventure games are wonderful, I love them! I've proudly bought Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis eight times throughout my life, each time for a different yet wholly justifiable reason. I made Maggie die twice in The Dig, I'm done with 1.5 seasons of Sam and Max, I beat Day of the Tentacle before I learned algebra, and I bought the season pass of ToMI before it was released. Do not question my credentials, I don't need no stinkin' badges! (But if you want to see my XBL achievements my tag is BreaknekBeatnik.)
Now, I don't love pixel hunting games. Those are terrible, I hate them. I also hate sitting and staring at a glowing rectangle going "durrr" because a puzzle is too obscure, or I'm over-analyzing an off hand chicken with a pulley in the middle related comment. I also don't want to be bothered by a puzzle enough to search for hints on the internet, risking spoilers and interaction with you horrible forum people, just because I want to continue an interesting story. Not to mention all the tasteless erotic ASCII art floating around at gamefaqs.com... oh god i am having flashbacks of admiral ackbar eating a banana wuurblhearble
A better in-game hint system would be wonderful, but I still like the "I Give Up" button idea better. You people who play games because you like pain don't have to use it, but people like me will have a better alternative to finishing the story, without having to look up some hardcore Linkin Park fan's poorly edited machinima.
Nintendo's Super Guide is actually patented, so you won't see that in a non-Nintendo game anytime soon. (unless of course it was done differently)
Anyway, I like the way SMI:SE did the hint system (even though I never saw that system, but I assume it was good from what I heard).
Did I say Nintendo Super Guide? I meant that Telltale should copy the, uh, Sega Mega Sherpa.
Ooh, I want one of those now...
It's the craziest hunch, but judging by your past posts, I get an odd feeling that you're not fond of TOMI's puzzles.
Just use the walkthrough. What? don't want to use the walkthrough? Then WHAT KIND OF LAZY ADVENTURE GAMER ARE YOU?!! YOU DON"T BELONG IN SLAGU, YOU... UNLAZY PERSON!!!
It's called a YouTube walkthrough.
I'd hope that it's a vocal minority rather than a majority.
How about The Secret of Pirate Island? It's an interactive DVD - you can influence the story's direction at various points throughout the movie. No difficult puzzles involved.*
*This may be because it's aimed at an audience of under-5s, but hey. It's piratey.
Needing a hint doesn't necessarily say anything about your intellect or ability or anything at all. While someone might be lacking if they fail to use an obvious key in an obvious door, most of the time I find people get stuck not because they can't figure out the puzzle logic. More often it seems to be because they just are not sure where the game wants them to be, at the moment, or they haven't noticed a small item that's pick-upabble, or they know what they want to do but have a trivial failure in implementing it (I remember I and a few other people got stuck on Spinner Cay because we thought we needed to get the rubber tree back to Spinner Cay - I figured out I didn't need to eventually, but I spent a good 20 minutes trying things.)
I don't see what's so cowardly or stupid about wanting a gentle nudge from the game hinting at you where/how to focus your efforts, it doesn't seem to me to take less intellectual effort than wandering aimlessly until you stumble on the right thing - it just cuts out some of the time. Time which I don't think you should feel obliged to waste in order to feel 'legitimate'
For me, it's not exactly the implications of intelligence when using hints or walkthroughs, it's just that every time I get a hint to a puzzle, it kind of weakens the feeling of accomplishment I get when I solve it. There's nothing wrong with using hints or walkthroughs, I just don't like to use them.
It's less so of a common occurrence now, but back in the old days of video gaming, there would be a phenomenon known as "hitting the brick wall." That's when a player is enjoying a game, coasting through intuitive if challenging puzzles, progressing and feeling a sense of achievement, and then, finds the brick wall - a poorly designed puzzle or challenge that cannot be surmounted except through tedious amounts of trial and error testing, or an outright resignation to getting the solution from an official source, breaking a game's immersion and diminishing the experience. Many a "screw this, I'm gonna play Counter Strike instead" was uttered due to otherwise intelligent games' having too many brick walls.
This "brick wall thing" was once an inherent flaw in adventure games, and killed the genre dead for about a decade. In addition to ensuring that few people knew Tim Schafer's name until Jack Black started man-hugging him and that games like Grim Fandango were banished to the distant memory of a select few masochists, it also led to the announcement and then immediate cancellation of Full Throttle II, and the retail failure of Beyond Good and Evil, a travesty which I think we all agree was easily on par with that drunken David Hasselhoff video. Let's not allow the stink of the adventure game genre's dark age reemerge from the armpits of the Telltale staff. Get behind s.l.a.g.,u.! instead, and vote no on brick walls.
Are you a hardcore adventure game enthusiast who never uses hint systems and likes to entertain others with behind the scenes trivia about Loom or amusing dialogue you heard one time in Culpa Inata? Congratulations on choosing to spend your life like that, but the rest of the world of warcraft can't be bothered to spend more than five minutes on one puzzle when there are better financed games with only slightly less soul waiting for their consumer denominations. Either ease up on your main thruster, or get sucked into that Star Destroyer's tractor beam.