On one hand, future vision can be quite spoilerish. But on the other, it can be a really clever way to solve puzzles.
An example of the second is the puzzle with the banana peel outside the pawnshop. That was ingenious and extremely funny as you kinda expected the gorilla to slip on the banana peel and fall into the sewers. In this case, you needed future vision to solve the puzzle but it didn't reveal the exact outcome (all you saw was that Sam was looking down into the sewers).
If TTG is going to continue using future vision in future episodes, that is the kind of puzzles I think they should strive to make.
I agree, this use of the future vision was pretty funny. The thing I'm complaining about isn't the wittiness of the future vision, though. Even in this case, the riddle was way too easy after having used future vision. Funny, but awfully easy.
Did Future Vision really offer that many hints that wouldnt have already been in the game, even in a similar place?
"I'm glad we used that demon broth and that power core to wake up the brain!" says Future Vision Sam. If it was an episode without Future Vision, you would have still needed to know what it took to wake up the brain. Odds are, instead of hearing it from yourself in the future "after you already solved it," you would have heard the exact same instructions from Grandpa Stinky, or Momma Bosco, or the Brain itself as it died, or a note pinned to a wall, etc. There are a lot of puzzles you solve backwards because you have the solution first, but it's not that different from a game which gives you the objective.
Maybe its the presentation, the way it feels, that makes it seem easier? Is it the same people who always say our games are easy who are now saying that The Penal Zone is easy, but now they can cite Future Vision specifically as the culprit for why its too easy, instead of just citing the game as a whole as being nebulously too easy? Easy easy?
Well we could have done without the future vision revealing you have to give something to Harry, and feed something to that pigeon, and plug the cable in the box and turn up the heat and play keep-away with the monkey.
Maybe its the presentation, the way it feels, that makes it seem easier? Is it the same people who always say our games are easy who are now saying that The Penal Zone is easy, but now they can cite Future Vision specifically as the culprit for why its too easy, instead of just citing the game as a whole as being nebulously too easy? Easy easy?
+1
And I'll not blame my lack of English Vocabulary this time. I just realized thanks to Jake. I didn't feel the puzzles were too easy for Future Vision. I had more context this time thanks to Future Vision, but this morning I was thinking about it: Normally, we know the end anyway, because the writting is done to give you some hints of what you have to do. Now, the writing do not have to do that, because there's future vision.
@Jake: No, I was okay with the difficulty of previous Sam & Max games. But in previous games, neither the future vision nor any other person would have told us: "Let the space gorilla fall into the manhole - and btw the banana could be helpful". ;p
(I think it was actually the first Sam & Max game I could play without ever wondering what to do next - except for one little thing at the end where I just missed one item on a screen.)
I'm not saying that it was wrong for all riddles. The one you mention was of course okay. As there would be no way to find out what to do otherwise. And it still left enough things open that we had to solve ourselves (for example where those items are).
But other visions told us more or less exactly which items to use where - and they could be found in the exact same screen (or were standard inventory items). When our task is just to copy what we see in the vision without seriously having to think or search, there's no other way to call it but "too easy".
I don't want to offend you, as I love the game series, I just dislike being robbed of the necessity to think for myself.
Maybe its the presentation, the way it feels, that makes it seem easier? Is it the same people who always say our games are easy who are now saying that The Penal Zone is easy, but now they can cite Future Vision specifically as the culprit for why its too easy, instead of just citing the game as a whole as being nebulously too easy? Easy easy?
Jake, I'm enjoying the difficulty just fine. The girlfriend and I have been having a great time and just when we get stumped, we think of something and it works like a charm. I think some adventure gamers like the ambiguous variety of puzzles that involve trial and error all over the place -- not a lot of fun there.
Did Future Vision really offer that many hints that wouldnt have already been in the game, even in a similar place?
"I'm glad we used that demon broth and that power core to wake up the brain!" says Future Vision Sam. If it was an episode without Future Vision, you would have still needed to know what it took to wake up the brain.
It's funny you cite this puzzle as an example - for me, it was the worst use of Future Vision in the game. I was stuck for a good fifteen minutes before I could wake up Gordon. I knew the
demon broth goes into the tank
- it was just obvious, dunno, maybe I played too many of your games When the brain didn't wake up, I associated to the
jumpstart cable
in the inventory, and I knew
a generator was at large somewhere
, so I knew what the solution was, I just couldn't find the last component. Being stuck, I started to have fun with Future Vision, and when I saw the cited scene, I was like "tell me something I don't know". Then I leave the spaceship and what happens?
Flint Paper walks into Stinky's!
It was a low blow, really - quite honestly, I think this "triggered by an independent event" method is not good design.
Maybe its the presentation, the way it feels, that makes it seem easier? Is it the same people who always say our games are easy who are now saying that The Penal Zone is easy, but now they can cite Future Vision specifically as the culprit for why its too easy, instead of just citing the game as a whole as being nebulously too easy? Easy easy?
In my case, yes - although I'm not this specific to Future Vision as the cause. Still, there's a difference between a subtle hint and a solution handed over in technicolor.
Anyways, I really like what you're trying to do with the psychic powers - and I think the Future Vision + Teleportation combo puzzles are quite clever. Not to mention some of the excellent jokes based on the powers. I'm really looking forward to seeing where these will go in the later episodes!
Did Future Vision really offer that many hints that wouldnt have already been in the game, even in a similar place?
"I'm glad we used that demon broth and that power core to wake up the brain!" says Future Vision Sam. If it was an episode without Future Vision, you would have still needed to know what it took to wake up the brain. Odds are, instead of hearing it from yourself in the future "after you already solved it," you would have heard the exact same instructions from Grandpa Stinky, or Momma Bosco, or the Brain itself as it died, or a note pinned to a wall, etc. There are a lot of puzzles you solve backwards because you have the solution first, but it's not that different from a game which gives you the objective.
Maybe its the presentation, the way it feels, that makes it seem easier? Is it the same people who always say our games are easy who are now saying that The Penal Zone is easy, but now they can cite Future Vision specifically as the culprit for why its too easy, instead of just citing the game as a whole as being nebulously too easy? Easy easy?
This answer is a great way of thinking about it. You're obviously looking to find the reason people are having this experience with the tool, and your creative ways of thinking about why people have certain problems is pretty consistently valuable and insightful.
But in this case, I think that you're pretty mistaken. Of course, the example you gave is not one of the problems with the system. It told you "what you had to get done" on a "big picture" level, there were still a couple other puzzles to solve before you got there.
I've never thought that the Sam and Max games were exactly difficult, but I've never found them to be this frustratingly straightforward before. I think Future Vision was used far too much on a "little picture" level". Another problem is that it's often used at every stage of the puzzle, rather than at one point. The example you gave was fine. Okay, I have to get those things, and now I have
It's not Future Vision ITSELF that is the problem, but how it was used in the episode. To try and give constructive feedback for this, I'm going to give some examples of what I'm talking about:
In the final puzzle, usually the most difficult or complex puzzle in an episode, you can use Future Vision and get the "Worth a shot. Come here, Max, ground me" vision(I'm paraphrasing). You can use Future Vision on the molemen to see them sweating and wanting you to "turn something off". Unless you miss the boiler next to the wall socket(which I wouldn't have been surprised to see let you use Future Vision on the thing to realize that you plug things into wall sockets), almost every element of the final puzzle is given to you.
I didn't feel like I had to experiment at all, or figure out how a puzzle aspect "worked". It just told me, and I felt like I could have figured it out on my own had I known that I didn't need the future vision. It was the most disappointing final puzzle in Telltale's catalog, and that includes final puzzles that were easy because they followed a particularly difficult second-to-last puzzle.
What of the lottery ticket? It is hinted with a future vision on Stinky, the Radio, AND Harry Moleman, on top of Stinky loudly proclaiming that if only his money woes would cease, he could totally leave the broth.
These are just a couple examples, definitely, but I felt like the Future Vision wasn't acting like a normal "hint", even a strong one. I don't think Future Vision is flawed on principle by any means, but its use has to be constrained or carefully moderated.
Dashing: this idea is based on the assumption that the final puzzle must be the hardest. For what it was, I thought the final puzzle was a little anti-climactic, but only because it took me a while to find the solution (I had to pixel hunt to find the boiler switch, for example; the camera angle used on the sweating mole men prompted me to look in the wrong side of the room).
But a final puzzle needs to be paced as an ending: imagine, for example, if the puzzle had taken you 45 minutes. Any urgency left with fighting Skunkape is gone; poof. It reminds you you're just playing a game. Imagine if the final battle in Portal had been hard.
For what it was - the climactic moment of the first of five episodes - it was done well enough. But remember that difficulty shouldn't be proportional to how far you're into the game; difficulty should be a tool for pacing.
But a final puzzle needs to be paced as an ending: imagine, for example, if the puzzle had taken you 45 minutes. Any urgency left with fighting Skunkape is gone; poof. It reminds you you're just playing a game. Imagine if the final battle in Portal had been hard.
But the final puzzle wasn't urgent at all. You could go walk your dog and come back in 2 hours and Skunkape would still hang on for his life to avoid being sucked into the portal. If you had say, 30 seconds to complete the puzzle before the portal closed and Skunkape killed Sam and Max (making you have to reload a saved game), then you might say that there is some sense of urgency.
But the final puzzle wasn't urgent at all. You could go walk your dog and come back in 2 hours and Skunkape would still hang on for his life to avoid being sucked into the portal. If you had say, 30 seconds to complete the puzzle before the portal closed and Skunkape killed Sam and Max (making you have to reload a saved game), then you might say that there is some sense of urgency.
That's the tricky thing about designing "you can't die" adventure games, I think. You're either immersed or not. Even that bastion of adventure game boss fights, the Monkey Island 2 one, would be boring if you're not immersed in it.
The payoff in this particular scene wasn't the suspense of whether or not Skunkape would get sucked into the Penal Zone (teehee), it was the satisfaction of finally getting him in there. It's the inevitable conclusion, and you've "done" it once, tried to do it once and now finally succeeded for real, aka the final payoff to something that's been set up at the beginning. It taking too long would have cheapened the impact, I think, though obviously some of you wanted a more difficult challenge. I personally thought it came close, but it didn't hit the nail on the head.
---- Also:
Hey guys. Not to add to the negativity of all these topics (even though "The Penal Zone" is a great game; so much ridiculous complaining), but listen: demanding certain characters returning for the sake of them just returning is harmful. This isn't a curtain call; it's not even a bad curtain call. I've been seeing people demand the return of Bosco or Sybil or whoever just because they were amusing in the last two seasons.
Because TTG listens to its fans, I'm going to ask you guys to stop it less we end up with The Phantom Menace. If and only if a character is irreplaceable, they must be brought back. Otherwise, no. It's the number one rule in writing sequels. (The second one is not to name your work something stupid like Star Wars: Clone Wars.)
I liked the game and I trust TellTale to make the season great.
I do have a few concerns though, but I think most of these stem from the fact that TellTale is trying to make it so that you can play this season without playing the other games first. As this being the first episode, I expect a lot of the things that seemed a little overdone to me to die down a lot in the next ones.
I have some qualms with the Narrator, though I love his character and completely understand the parody, but I am quite annoyed that he speaks directly to me. Narrators seldom speak directly to the reader/listener/player, and that makes it feel a little too much like a movie rather than a game. He doesn't appear that often, though, and there's usually at least one really great line every time he does, for example:
bowel tingling climax!
I like Future Vision, but I do think it made some things to easy, not all just some. Even just a few tweaks here and there to the dialogue could have made it feel a little more like I was doing some detective work.
For instance, to revive the Brain.
He says something like "Easy peasy! All it took was a little of Stinky's Demon Broth and Momma Bosco's power core!" Why tell us who owned them? The phrase "Demon Broth" is suggestive enough, who on the street do we know that is fond of both demons and cooks? Or even, which building on the street involves food in some way? Grandpa Stinky/Stinky's, of course! I think this seems off to me because I've played all the other games and so I instantly associated it. This is part of what I expect to die down later on, but considering the street is very small and there's not that many people to talk to, I think the player could have been trusted to find out who made the Demon Broth on their own. It's not that the game was that easy, it just wasn't as subtle as I remember it.
The only other thing is the foreshadowing. It was a little overdone. Too many interactions that lead you to believe that
something bad is going to happen to Max!
Just a few, or just Momma Bosco's comments and that "distant future" bit at the end would have been enough to build unease, in my opinion. (Though I've heard of a cutscene that happens if you teleport too much, but I haven't seen it myself)
Apart from that, I loved everything. Skun-ka'pe was a brilliant villain and has some of my favorite lines (apart from the aforementioned one of the Narrator.)
I come to you with a message of Peace and Love.
Uh... Sorry about that building.
*talks about molemen riding his "fantastic gamma beam"*
...(I don't kill them.)
But, all concerns/whining aside, the strength of these games is when you play through all 5 of the episodes of a season and get the full story. And I am confident that when I finally play through the final scene it will feel just as much of a masterpiece as the other two seasons.
I may be over-exaggerating but, I think THE PENAL ZONE WAS AWESOME!!!! I especially liked the beginning of how it took us to the alternate ending. I can only think of a few flaws:
1. occasionally the lighting on Sam or Max would screw up
2. Mama Bosco's hair being black instead of gray
3. wasn't the subway tunnel once a tunnel for the soul train?
4. I miss Sam and Max's office (I could've said Bosco, Sybil, Bluster Blaster, or Lincoln, but by now everyone already said it so I'll stick with the office)
other than that: THE GAME IS ALREADY AT AN AWESOME START!!!!! And as a response to all those hating on the future vision: without it I wouldn't know anything about the power core or the Demon Broth
Can you imagine how bad the pacing would have been had they decided to make that puzzle harder?
No. This is an example of FV being using right.
Seriously, if I could get the banana without using future vision I would have solved it myself as well. And then there are 5(!) visions that tell the complete answer. Not hints, not parts of the solution, no, the whole solution.
(If this would have upset the pacing I don't want to know how bad you think the pacing of the game was, all others being more difficult and generally better than this one.)
Don't you think that's a little too easy? Worst puzzle in the entire game.
Now, Jake's example makes sense, some way we need to know what we need to revive the brain. If not FV then some other way, that puzzle wasn't the problem. Neither was the bird one. But ones like these were the answer was given were.
What I think the best puzzle, using FV of the game was was the one with the gorilla's at BoscoTech. There FV was more a subtle hint, instead of the solution presented to you on a platter, the way I think it should be.
PS. I think the difficulty of S&M1 and 2 was just fine. But W&G, ToMI and S&M3 are noticably easier than both titles...
Seriously, if I could get the banana without using future vision I would have solved it myself as well. And then there are 5(!) visions that tell the complete answer. Not hints, not parts of the solution, no, the whole solution.
The joke went over your head. You only think they give you the solution.
The joke went over your head. You only think they give you the solution.
And what 5 visions?
No, they did give you the solution. At least the part you had to do. The fact that there is an accompanying "OH HA THAT IS NOT WHAT YOU EXPECTED TO HAPPEN" joke(which admittedly was a good gag) does not retroactively make the puzzle(the gameplay part of the game) a good one, or even not a bad one.
The joke was good, the puzzle was horrible.
1: Sam (solution)
2: Gorilla (solution)
3: Manhole (solution)
4: Pawn shop (solution)
5: Thrash cans (okay, not the exact solution here, but still...)
Trash can vision was actually a good use in my book. If you looked at the trash can first, Sam would say "It's just a bunch of trash. If only I knew what I was looking for..." It was a simple enough puzzle, but probably the best they can do with "use future vision" as the answer.
Oookay, I've gone through quite a few pages, but not all, so if this was already discussed I hope you'll all forgive me, *bows to floor*.
What's with all the ghostly floating crap when we're inside Max's head? I love it, obviously, but I don't get why it's there. Any of you superfans have ideas?
Trash can vision was actually a good use in my book. If you looked at the trash can first, Sam would say "It's just a bunch of trash. If only I knew what I was looking for..." It was a simple enough puzzle, but probably the best they can do with "use future vision" as the answer.
Yeah, the trash can vision was the only one we needed. Everything else could have been inferred through the usual means. I had some misgivings about how Future Vision was being used in other cases (though there were some excellent uses as well, such as the lauded "knock out the two research assistants" puzzle). But this was the only time all the extra "hints" felt extraneous to the point of making the whole puzzle stick out like a sore thumb to me.
Oookay, I've gone through quite a few pages, but not all, so if this was already discussed I hope you'll all forgive me, *bows to floor*.
What's with all the ghostly floating crap when we're inside Max's head? I love it, obviously, but I don't get why it's there. Any of you superfans have ideas?
I have two -- currently very, very vestigial -- theories:
1) We're talking about Max with psychic powers. Infer what you will.
2) We're talking about Max. Infer what you will.
Also, I used "infer[red]" too many times in this post. Oh well.
What's with all the ghostly floating crap when we're inside Max's head? I love it, obviously, but I don't get why it's there. Any of you superfans have ideas?
But this was the only time all the extra "hints" felt extraneous to the point of making the whole puzzle stick out like a sore thumb to me.
I guess you guys just wanted a bit of subtlety. Though, I know adventure gamers and these forums well enough to think that, had the puzzle actually been a hard one, you'd have started complaining that it was Sam and Max's answer to Tales of Monkey Island's jungle puzzles. The whole point was the gag. You do it, you get over it. Remember that this puzzle doesn't actually contribute that much to the story. You just remove some random guard from a location.
Though, I know adventure gamers and these forums well enough to think that, had the puzzle actually been a hard one, you'd have started complaining that it was Sam and Max's answer to Tales of Monkey Island's jungle puzzles.
Wait... did I miss anything (like... the jungle puzzles being called hard anywhere by anyone at any time?)
Remember that this puzzle doesn't actually contribute that much to the story. You just remove some random guard from a location.
Same with the guard at BoscoTech. But that puzzle is quite good. So there's no excuse...
Comments
An example of the second is the puzzle with the banana peel outside the pawnshop. That was ingenious and extremely funny as you kinda expected the gorilla to slip on the banana peel and fall into the sewers. In this case, you needed future vision to solve the puzzle but it didn't reveal the exact outcome (all you saw was that Sam was looking down into the sewers).
If TTG is going to continue using future vision in future episodes, that is the kind of puzzles I think they should strive to make.
So, no, don't TTG. Please?
"I'm glad we used that demon broth and that power core to wake up the brain!" says Future Vision Sam. If it was an episode without Future Vision, you would have still needed to know what it took to wake up the brain. Odds are, instead of hearing it from yourself in the future "after you already solved it," you would have heard the exact same instructions from Grandpa Stinky, or Momma Bosco, or the Brain itself as it died, or a note pinned to a wall, etc. There are a lot of puzzles you solve backwards because you have the solution first, but it's not that different from a game which gives you the objective.
Maybe its the presentation, the way it feels, that makes it seem easier? Is it the same people who always say our games are easy who are now saying that The Penal Zone is easy, but now they can cite Future Vision specifically as the culprit for why its too easy, instead of just citing the game as a whole as being nebulously too easy? Easy easy?
+1
And I'll not blame my lack of English Vocabulary this time. I just realized thanks to Jake. I didn't feel the puzzles were too easy for Future Vision. I had more context this time thanks to Future Vision, but this morning I was thinking about it: Normally, we know the end anyway, because the writting is done to give you some hints of what you have to do. Now, the writing do not have to do that, because there's future vision.
(I think it was actually the first Sam & Max game I could play without ever wondering what to do next - except for one little thing at the end where I just missed one item on a screen.)
I'm not saying that it was wrong for all riddles. The one you mention was of course okay. As there would be no way to find out what to do otherwise. And it still left enough things open that we had to solve ourselves (for example where those items are).
But other visions told us more or less exactly which items to use where - and they could be found in the exact same screen (or were standard inventory items). When our task is just to copy what we see in the vision without seriously having to think or search, there's no other way to call it but "too easy".
I don't want to offend you, as I love the game series, I just dislike being robbed of the necessity to think for myself.
Jake, I'm enjoying the difficulty just fine. The girlfriend and I have been having a great time and just when we get stumped, we think of something and it works like a charm. I think some adventure gamers like the ambiguous variety of puzzles that involve trial and error all over the place -- not a lot of fun there.
It's funny you cite this puzzle as an example - for me, it was the worst use of Future Vision in the game. I was stuck for a good fifteen minutes before I could wake up Gordon. I knew the
In my case, yes - although I'm not this specific to Future Vision as the cause. Still, there's a difference between a subtle hint and a solution handed over in technicolor.
Anyways, I really like what you're trying to do with the psychic powers - and I think the Future Vision + Teleportation combo puzzles are quite clever. Not to mention some of the excellent jokes based on the powers. I'm really looking forward to seeing where these will go in the later episodes!
Can you imagine how bad the pacing would have been had they decided to make that puzzle harder?
No. This is an example of FV being using right.
But in this case, I think that you're pretty mistaken. Of course, the example you gave is not one of the problems with the system. It told you "what you had to get done" on a "big picture" level, there were still a couple other puzzles to solve before you got there.
I've never thought that the Sam and Max games were exactly difficult, but I've never found them to be this frustratingly straightforward before. I think Future Vision was used far too much on a "little picture" level". Another problem is that it's often used at every stage of the puzzle, rather than at one point. The example you gave was fine. Okay, I have to get those things, and now I have
It's not Future Vision ITSELF that is the problem, but how it was used in the episode. To try and give constructive feedback for this, I'm going to give some examples of what I'm talking about:
I didn't feel like I had to experiment at all, or figure out how a puzzle aspect "worked". It just told me, and I felt like I could have figured it out on my own had I known that I didn't need the future vision. It was the most disappointing final puzzle in Telltale's catalog, and that includes final puzzles that were easy because they followed a particularly difficult second-to-last puzzle.
What of the lottery ticket? It is hinted with a future vision on Stinky, the Radio, AND Harry Moleman, on top of Stinky loudly proclaiming that if only his money woes would cease, he could totally leave the broth.
These are just a couple examples, definitely, but I felt like the Future Vision wasn't acting like a normal "hint", even a strong one. I don't think Future Vision is flawed on principle by any means, but its use has to be constrained or carefully moderated.
But a final puzzle needs to be paced as an ending: imagine, for example, if the puzzle had taken you 45 minutes. Any urgency left with fighting Skunkape is gone; poof. It reminds you you're just playing a game. Imagine if the final battle in Portal had been hard.
For what it was - the climactic moment of the first of five episodes - it was done well enough. But remember that difficulty shouldn't be proportional to how far you're into the game; difficulty should be a tool for pacing.
But the final puzzle wasn't urgent at all. You could go walk your dog and come back in 2 hours and Skunkape would still hang on for his life to avoid being sucked into the portal. If you had say, 30 seconds to complete the puzzle before the portal closed and Skunkape killed Sam and Max (making you have to reload a saved game), then you might say that there is some sense of urgency.
That's the tricky thing about designing "you can't die" adventure games, I think. You're either immersed or not. Even that bastion of adventure game boss fights, the Monkey Island 2 one, would be boring if you're not immersed in it.
The payoff in this particular scene wasn't the suspense of whether or not Skunkape would get sucked into the Penal Zone (teehee), it was the satisfaction of finally getting him in there. It's the inevitable conclusion, and you've "done" it once, tried to do it once and now finally succeeded for real, aka the final payoff to something that's been set up at the beginning. It taking too long would have cheapened the impact, I think, though obviously some of you wanted a more difficult challenge. I personally thought it came close, but it didn't hit the nail on the head.
----
Also:
Hey guys. Not to add to the negativity of all these topics (even though "The Penal Zone" is a great game; so much ridiculous complaining), but listen: demanding certain characters returning for the sake of them just returning is harmful. This isn't a curtain call; it's not even a bad curtain call. I've been seeing people demand the return of Bosco or Sybil or whoever just because they were amusing in the last two seasons.
Because TTG listens to its fans, I'm going to ask you guys to stop it less we end up with The Phantom Menace. If and only if a character is irreplaceable, they must be brought back. Otherwise, no. It's the number one rule in writing sequels. (The second one is not to name your work something stupid like Star Wars: Clone Wars.)
I was so stupid the problem was about the raigon only !!
thank you guys for helping me ..
I bet we have to wait until final episode to find out. (:
I think
I do have a few concerns though, but I think most of these stem from the fact that TellTale is trying to make it so that you can play this season without playing the other games first. As this being the first episode, I expect a lot of the things that seemed a little overdone to me to die down a lot in the next ones.
I have some qualms with the Narrator, though I love his character and completely understand the parody, but I am quite annoyed that he speaks directly to me. Narrators seldom speak directly to the reader/listener/player, and that makes it feel a little too much like a movie rather than a game. He doesn't appear that often, though, and there's usually at least one really great line every time he does, for example:
I like Future Vision, but I do think it made some things to easy, not all just some. Even just a few tweaks here and there to the dialogue could have made it feel a little more like I was doing some detective work.
For instance, to revive the Brain.
The only other thing is the foreshadowing. It was a little overdone. Too many interactions that lead you to believe that
Apart from that, I loved everything. Skun-ka'pe was a brilliant villain and has some of my favorite lines (apart from the aforementioned one of the Narrator.)
Uh... Sorry about that building.
*talks about molemen riding his "fantastic gamma beam"*
...(I don't kill them.)
But, all concerns/whining aside, the strength of these games is when you play through all 5 of the episodes of a season and get the full story. And I am confident that when I finally play through the final scene it will feel just as much of a masterpiece as the other two seasons.
1. occasionally the lighting on Sam or Max would screw up
2. Mama Bosco's hair being black instead of gray
3. wasn't the subway tunnel once a tunnel for the soul train?
4. I miss Sam and Max's office (I could've said Bosco, Sybil, Bluster Blaster, or Lincoln, but by now everyone already said it so I'll stick with the office)
other than that: THE GAME IS ALREADY AT AN AWESOME START!!!!! And as a response to all those hating on the future vision: without it I wouldn't know anything about the power core or the Demon Broth
(If this would have upset the pacing I don't want to know how bad you think the pacing of the game was, all others being more difficult and generally better than this one.)
Don't you think that's a little too easy? Worst puzzle in the entire game.
Now, Jake's example makes sense, some way we need to know what we need to revive the brain. If not FV then some other way, that puzzle wasn't the problem. Neither was the bird one. But ones like these were the answer was given were.
What I think the best puzzle, using FV of the game was was the one with the gorilla's at BoscoTech. There FV was more a subtle hint, instead of the solution presented to you on a platter, the way I think it should be.
PS. I think the difficulty of S&M1 and 2 was just fine. But W&G, ToMI and S&M3 are noticably easier than both titles...
But that doesn't clarify
I just checked, is when
Anyway, I could be that surprised if wasn't, but I still think
The joke went over your head. You only think they give you the solution.
And what 5 visions?
The joke was good, the puzzle was horrible.
1: Sam (solution)
2: Gorilla (solution)
3: Manhole (solution)
4: Pawn shop (solution)
5: Thrash cans (okay, not the exact solution here, but still...)
What's with all the ghostly floating crap when we're inside Max's head? I love it, obviously, but I don't get why it's there. Any of you superfans have ideas?
Yeah, the trash can vision was the only one we needed. Everything else could have been inferred through the usual means. I had some misgivings about how Future Vision was being used in other cases (though there were some excellent uses as well, such as the lauded "knock out the two research assistants" puzzle). But this was the only time all the extra "hints" felt extraneous to the point of making the whole puzzle stick out like a sore thumb to me.
I have two -- currently very, very vestigial -- theories:
1) We're talking about Max with psychic powers. Infer what you will.
2) We're talking about Max. Infer what you will.
Also, I used "infer[red]" too many times in this post. Oh well.
Max is insane. That's pretty much it.
I guess you guys just wanted a bit of subtlety. Though, I know adventure gamers and these forums well enough to think that, had the puzzle actually been a hard one, you'd have started complaining that it was Sam and Max's answer to Tales of Monkey Island's jungle puzzles. The whole point was the gag. You do it, you get over it. Remember that this puzzle doesn't actually contribute that much to the story. You just remove some random guard from a location.
If so, that would mean that Leonard's
When the narrator say "It's a familiar tale" in the part about Max, Max do not appear. Apparently, those missing stuff are random.