Constructive Criticism(Spoiler Warning)

DontEatRawHagis

I loved the Penal Zone, one of my top five so far, but when i compare it to previous seasons it seems a bit more discombobulated. I know that Sam and Max is wild and crazy and for the most part I liked the episode, until the Narrator and Future Vision were added.

The future vision was a complete mess for me, it was fun seeing odd stuff happening, but most of the time it felt like the device was there as training wheels. As if the developers said "They will never get this puzzle lets leave tell them how to solve it"
Example

When taking out the "Research Assistants" I understood that with Max being strangled that I could go up the fire escape and have the guy fall on the other gorilla's head. I did not use the goggles for it.

Maybe its so newbies get into the game a lot more easily but it felt like my hand was being held.

The entire future vision threw me off sometimes too, when I was at the

Meezo's Pizza and had to find items I didn't see the engagement ring in the Mama Bosco Level. So Sam kept saying use your future vision, leading to me being stuck there.

I got a little bit time sick as well(see Red Dwarf Reference).

Favorite puzzle was stealing the winning lottery ticket though

Having two items that said that they were missing a Name and Address respectively got me frustrated, thinking the game broke. The

receipt and post card went together really well I thought, but they ended up being completely unrelated/combinable.

These are minor quibbles I had and their really small when compared to all the rest of the puzzles. Think I did a lot of the puzzles out of order, by accident. Any one have anything else to add?

TonViper

I liked the future vision usage you had in the game. Without the first one you mention giving me the idea of death from above, I'd never have found the pigeon on the flagpole, since it hadn't occurred to me that you could move out onto it.

Having become too set in my habits from the first two games, it didn't occur to me that whenever I got max touching someone, it was a good idea to teleport them without the future vision.

Hassat Hunter

DontEatRawHagis wrote: »

Favorite puzzle was stealing the winning lottery ticket though

That was a puzzle?

But yeah, you kind of had to use Future vision everywhere to even get the required itemry (

Think the Pawn Shop bannana

) so you couldn't really afford *not* to use it on everything, making several puzzles far too easy (like the spoilered one above, which basically had the solution telling in each and every of the 5 future visions in that one area).

bobtheskutter

Agreed! Sometimes the future vision was like another hint function and other times it was absolutely necessary for puzzle solutions. This was infuriating. There was little sense of accomplishment in solving puzzles with these vision hints. But going around not using the goggles is not an option either.

Rather Dashing

The problem with FutureVision, I think, is that it was often only one step between the present and the vision. I think that, when you're doing FutureVision puzzles, you need to make the set-up more complex than the average Sam and Max puzzle, because you already have a big piece of the puzzle done already(knowing what needs to be done). I don't think FutureVision by itself ruins puzzles, I just think it was used poorly in this episode.

LeBart

The bannana peel part was probably the most frustrating because if you could get it without using future vision, then the rest of that puzzle would be self-explanatory.

I have to say though, using Future Vision on the toy shop was one of my favorite moments of the game.

lombre

The thing that annoyed me about the future vision is that certain visions were necessary to move on, and others were (far too helpful) hints. I don't know about other people, but I prefer to solve these puzzles on my own without hints. But there was no way to tell between the necessary visions and the hint visions until it was too late. I feel Telltale should have implemented some way to tell between the two. Perhaps make the hint visions sparkle a different color or something.

bobtheskutter

Well hint visions should only work if you have the hints turned on. That's what I think anyway.

LeBart

bobtheskutter wrote: »

Well hint visions should only work if you have the hints turned on. That's what I think anyway.

Great idea.