The trial and error puzzles aren't really trial and error puzzles though. You are supposed to sit and think logically what you need to do. Going through clicking on everything defeats the purpose of figuring out the puzzle. Why do you want to solve the last puzzle of the first season within 30 seconds?
How exactly are you supposed to "sit and think logically" to solve the Midtown Cowboys episode?
How exactly are you supposed to "sit and think logically" to solve the Midtown Cowboys episode?
There is some experimentation involved there, granted, but I think once you
get the right disguise (a 50:50 chance), therefore seeing the "this is our chef" option, and realise the other item you can pick up is a plate
, it seems pretty obvious. Experimentation is not the same as trial and error - in that case you're testing the water to come up with an idea, not blindly or systematically trying every item and every dialogue tree until you find the answer.
Experimentation is not the same as trial and error - in that case you're testing the water to come up with an idea, not blindly or systematically trying every item and every dialogue tree until you find the answer.
I would hazard to guess that most people didn't get it right on their first go, or indeed, their second. In fact the whole "puzzle" was deliberately designed to give the user bizarre multiple choices that would lead them to a different "hilarious" conclusion with each thing they tried. Experimentation may not be the same as trial and error, but it's pretty damned close.
Well, I got it the second time, because the first time I spoke to Mr Featherly after choosing the chef option and ruined the show. I was lucky to choose the right hat (which does seem like a more appropriate disguise than the plate, surely!) and from there it wasn't difficult to see where it was going. I'm afraid I still don't agree that experimentation is the same as trial and error. Experimentation is a matter of exploring your options - in this case seeing what the dialogue choices are for each disguise and thinking where to go from there. You can't expect to solve puzzles without knowing anything about them first.
On the other hand, trial and error is having 10 items and 10 things to try them out on, and going through every combination until something happens.
I would hazard to guess that most people didn't get it right on their first go, or indeed, their second. In fact the whole "puzzle" was deliberately designed to give the user bizarre multiple choices that would lead them to a different "hilarious" conclusion with each thing they tried. Experimentation may not be the same as trial and error, but it's pretty damned close.
I did it on my second attempt.. so there are lots of different conclusions? I'll need to play that part again then. I was just lucky though and happened upon the right choices, not really any thinking involved on my part (except the
Between pure luck and the kind of feel for sitcoms that one gets after watching every major sitcom for at least the last decade, I actually got that puzzle in the first go. I wish I hadn't, with all the fun you can have with it. It actually took me a while after that to realize the fun you can have using the
People just get over the logical puzzles, because its not the way or ever going to be the way to solve them, the way to solve puzzles is to think like sam & max. dunno if anyone notices, but the world of sam & max isnt about logical or common sense :P
Hehe - see I like that! It's ridiculous, but kind of passes for an explanation within the Sam and Max universe.
I think a silly explanation (rather than none at all) is exactly what would fit the game, but I didn't really mind the lack of any explanation at all, even though it looked mostly like the result of budget restrictions.
I've been thinking about the old question of combining inventory objects as a way of introducing a different kind of puzzle. I've just been playing Dreamfall, and the inventory system there works quite neatly for combining objects, but then in Sam & Max you tend to be carrying more diverse things, so it'd be a bit of a fiddle. I wondered if it would be possible for Sam to have a "work bench", somewhere specific he could go (in a corner of the office?) to do DIY on things he's carrying.
I have this one critique, though understandably it's due in part to how the game is distributed. Sam & Max is delivered in an episodic way, so key puzzle areas have to, in a sense, be recreated. Areas in a previous episode don't necessarily carry over into the next episode.
I believe that this is a big hinderence to Sam & Max as a puzzle adventure game. In quite a few games of the genre, the player is led from place to place and new areas open up. Sometimes the player has to return more than once to an area to solve a puzzle. In Sam & Max, there tend to be two key areas: Sam & Max's apartment block and an offsite location.
I haven't played episode 6 yet, but I'm guessing it follows a similar formula. I think it would be neater to have an episode merge all of the offsite areas from the previous episode. This would make the puzzles harder because there would be more permutations of objects to interact with, it would make the world seem a little more populated, and it would tie all of the episodes together.
The feeling I get with playing the episodes, is that the world is so tiny. This makes it relatively easy to narrow down where and how to solve most of the puzzles. Instead of delivering the episodes as standalone, they could be delivered as a patch to the base game. I note this because all of the datafiles seem to be packed into one game. If the game is delivered this way, the d/l files might also be smaller since you're resuing the engine and just providing new parameters, sound, and graphic models instead of the whole thing. Then again the distribution is a bit under the hood from my perspective.
Well, that's just my two cents. The game is still pretty good.
I agree; however, I don't think we're going to see an end to the episodic format, about which there are also some very good aspects. A possible compromise might be having more reusable locations than just the office, Sybil's and Bosco's, which would reduce the amount of work required to maintain a higher number of locations in all episodes. If there could be more than just one new place each episode as well, that would be great, but the budget and deadlines are unlikely to allow it.
If I was Telltale, I would hire a couple more employees to help make more enviroments for Sam & Max. Now that the series is established, well known, and going to be in the retail market as well, there shouldn't be much trouble paying the wages.
If I was Telltale, I would hire a couple more employees to help make more enviroments for Sam & Max. Now that the series is established, well known, and going to be in the retail market as well, there shouldn't be much trouble paying the wages.
Didn't it have more to do with wanting to keep the downloads somewhat small? Splitting the engine itself into a seperate download would help with that, though requiring people to initially download two packages (smart downloader?).
As for puzzle areas; the trouble with episodic games is that any episode has to usable stand-alone.
That brings to mind an interesting question; how many stand-alone episodes were sold to people NOT buying them all? (someone refresh my memory, do you need HL2 in order to play HL2:Episode-1 ?)
It would be a pity to see something as dull as the file size place restrictions on the quality of the game. I don't know how other people's connections compare, but I'm on about the slowest incarnation of broadband there is (ah, I remember the good old days when it seemed SO fast in comparison to 56k!), and it still doesn't take long to download the files at their current size. If it were to take 2, 5, even 10 times as long, I'd just leave it going and do something else for a while!
Splitting up the downloads into their components sounds like a good idea to my uneducated mind. It must be inefficient having to provide the same reused locations (the office, Bosco's, Sybils, the street) and accompanying animations, sound files etc. in every episode, so maybe there could be the option to only download them all once, either standalone or as a part of the first episode only. Minor changes to the basic locations could still be included in each episode. It could get rather complicated having to have two versions of the download, though - one for people with the master template, the other for those without. But perhaps some clever person at Telltale can think how to make it so simple, we don't even notice
(I take it that's the kind of thing a 'smart downloader' sorts out, is it?)
I agree with most of the constructive criticism here (more areas, more NPC's, less guess-dependent puzzles like the showdown with Culture in Ep 1), but I'd like to add that I wish Sybil and Bosco were more mobile. By episode 5 or 6 I was sick of going to their respective shops over and over again seeing practically the same interior decorating with whatever new theme was added.
Can we get them doing something else besides sitting behind a desk/counter? The closest thing was in "Abe Lincoln Must Die" when Sybil magically popped up in DC briefly and then magically popped back to her office. Maybe have them take vacations in places Sam and Max explore, or accompany them on their travels, or maybe even take a break for an episode and have a new character come around?
That said, I enjoyed Season 1, especially for the humor value. A more hectic, manic Season 2 would definitely get me to whip my credit card out. =p
I wouldn't call the Brady showdown guess-dependent, because you're just exploring possibilities. I enjoyed the solution; it was pretty clever, in my opinion. But yes, whether that's one or not, there are a few examples elsewhere.
As for Bosco and Sybil, I guess this is the first time we've seen anything like them in a game. Appearing in every episode with new content means they get loads more screen-time than with any other secondary character in a full-length game, and I think it's become a bit of a challenge to come up with ways to keep them interesting. Having them move about sounds like a good idea to me - they could pop up unexpectedly, putting an end to the 'visit Bosco, visit Sybil' routine at the start of every new episode, and have a much more original involvement in the story. It would also mean if the ideas for either of them were running a little thin for any particular episode, they wouldn't be obliged to appear at all. Look at Jimmy as an example - his appearances are always different, always entertaining and never feel forced. He just turns up as much or as little as is necessary for the plot.
My thoughts based on all this are that maybe we could do with a couple more familiar characters to interact with, to take the weight of responsibility off Bosco and Sybil a bit. It's great to have them, but I feel they need a break sometimes.
The lack of being able to combine items was kind of a letdown for me
I loved building a compass out of it's basic parts in curse of monkey island, it would have taken a lot of that puzzle's magic away if you just found a compass sitting around somewhere.
Yeah, the compass was a great puzzle. You knew what the end result you needed was, but there were hindrances all along the way, creating a net of fantastically intricate puzzles.
2. Sometimes there can be more than one solution to a problem. For instance in the last episode I wanted to put the unicorn in the moon-boot-trace and heat it up that way. It wasn't under the rocket engine but it was close to it. I thought that it should have worked but it didn't, instead I had to travel back to earth and the microwave - have more than one solution to problems.
3. More locations and characters, you don't have to make a big deal out of each one. Get em in let em do their thing get em out sort of. Let there be a wacky messenger, some crazy guy on the sidewalk that doesn't progress the story but add athmosphere... heck in the last episode I didn't even get to see how they got to the moon! I expected some major rocket launch show but you just ditched them their with their car.
You really should make it so that there is more they one way to do something. It will make the game more like real life. Puting people and objects in which will not help you would also make it more like real life.
I like Sybil and Bosco. I'd miss them if they went away entirely. I think a good compromise would be to have different characters playing such central roles in each episode but still have them have recurring minor roles.
Yeah, I think Sybil and Bosco were good too. Maybe if they both had a new gimmick this time it might spice things up a bit, but I'd be happy if they were still the same (although nothing could top Bosco's disguise in episode 6).
Bosco and Sybil were ok. The trouble with esp. Bosco was that he was mostly used for the same thing. He didn't seem to have much to do besides providing a solution to a problem.
Sybil at least changed more per episode, at least that's how it felt playing.
I wish they will keep Bosco and Sybil in season two, but adding extra characters as well. I wish some more people could help sam & max with their quests/assignments, so it's not so obvious who will most probably help you solve the problem you have at a given time(like, even though some characters are reoccurring characters, they don't have to be the people you MUST talk with in every episode).
I love you got to walk around and talking with different characters about stuff that seemed just like chit chat, like for example on the moon where you had a lot of characters to talk with. It made the episode feel more alive.
I wouldn't mind Bosco and Sybil both staying, but with reduced roles. It just gets boring and tedious at times seeing them both all the time in every episode. If there were more characters to share the episodes with, which Stinky will at least help with, then it wouldn't be nearly as bad. I was kind of hoping their would be a cook and a waiter though, but I can understand the bussiness considerations behind it.
I hope that additional characters won't reduce the amount of speech alloted per character (except for Sybil or Bosco), that would be very bad. So hear me out Telltale, don't reduce the voice acting per character to compensate for there being more characters!
You really should make it so that there is more they one way to do something. It will make the game more like real life. Puting people and objects in which will not help you would also make it more like real life.
The game isn't really meant to emulate real life. It should be entertaining, and it should be a challenge, and having multiple solutions not only reduces this challenge but creates extra work that will have to come out of improving the game elsewhere. If there seem to be several ways to solve a puzzle, a one-line comment as to why each of the incorrect solutions doesn't work should suffice to prevent anyone feeling cheated.
I'm not opposed to having multiple solutions to problems, at least in some situations. With unusually difficult or complex problems, multiple solutions could make it both more interesting and less people would become hopelessly stuck.
Multiple solutions mean some elements of the game are simply wasted, though. You miss chunks, and I'd rather experience it all. I believe the interest spawned by multiple puzzles comes in the form of web-like solutions, as we were discussing earlier, where lots of puzzles come together to a particular solution, not in having five different ways to reach the same old conclusion. A criticism I'd make about this season's puzzles is that they were often quite linear - not so intricately woven as classic Lucasarts - and I'm sorry to use Lucasarts games as exemplar material, but the truth is they were immensely enjoyable and it's arguable that some elements of what made them successful are integral to adventure games and deserve emulation.
You really should make it so that there is more they one way to do something. It will make the game more like real life. Puting people and objects in which will not help you would also make it more like real life.
I meant to mention last time that I do at least agree with the last bit. Nothing gratuitous, but a few non-essential characters like that man in the Ball of Twine museum and the bigfoots at the party from HTR can help to make a scene feel more alive.
I still don't think so. The replay value is better contained in all the little extra things you can do, as detailed in the Play It Again sections. It's still new stuff, with new surprises, rather than dawdling about the same point continually. Isn't a normal game better than one of half the length that you can play a second time for a mildly different experience?
I'm not saying everything have multiple solutions. I mean only the most difficult puzzles, perhaps once every episode or every other episode. For example, in "Mystery Island" you could do just about everything in two different ways. I thought that was way overdoing it. It was interesting, yes, but I often found myself accidently making items that I had no idea how to make. There were so many combinations, it was easy to accidently find one.
I personally don't like when there are two paths because I can usually tell when I'm coming up to a split in the path, and feel like I'm going to be missing part of the game. That's a bummer. Unless the game is something really built around there being a zillion different things to do, I like it when there is just one main path with lots of little optional side diversions (as seen in all the weird extraneous dialog branches, look ats, and open ended puzzle ordering in Sam and Max games). It obviously depends on the game, but in straightforward adventure games it definitely irks me when the game presents me with a point where I have to choose between seeing one piece of content or another, but not both.
I'm confused, though. If you fail to explore all the dialogue branches and look-ats on your first playthrough, doesn't that you mean you ARE missing part of the game? I fail to see how a puzzle with multiple solutions would be any different. Particularly if there's a case when, say, you need to find a pocket knife with which to cut out the face of Humphrey Bogart from a poster, but already have a perfectly good pair of scissors in your inventory. Is it really so terrible to allow players the option of using the scissors?
Also, to give an example specific to Sam & Max (Episode 2),
did there HAVE to be only one solution to the Midtown Cowboys puzzle? I personally think there could have been plenty of valid comedic masterpieces made therein, and the fun for players would come from building their own sitcom rather than trying to guess what Dave & Brendan had in mind. Damn, why didn't I think of this last year, and bring it up at the brainstorming session?!
The issue of feeling like you're missing something in branching storylines is more understandable in my eyes, and that's why I feel it's better not to have choices in an interactive story be too overt, i.e. having small sets of little choices add up to the outcome of an event, rather than one big fork in the plot. (Of course, this also depends on the particular story and the point it wishes to convey.) Furthermore, it all depends how the story is written as well; if the designers intended for there to be one "primrose path" in the game with all the other outcomes being "bad endings", then I do feel a lot of pressure to get it "right", so to speak; however, if all paths are equally satisfying and meaningful, I feel a lot more as though I'm exploring the story, and I find that to be a lot of fun.
I'd love to know what some of the Telltale designers' opinions are on these thoughts.
The lack of being able to combine items was kind of a letdown for me
I loved building a compass out of it's basic parts in curse of monkey island, it would have taken a lot of that puzzle's magic away if you just found a compass sitting around somewhere.
*sigh* Yes, Grim Fandango would have been a MUCH better game if the player could have only combined the inventory items :rolleyes:
To quote Alan Moore: "It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience, they would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."
Thanks, that's exactly how I meant it Squinky. I think little multiple choices like that used occassionally would really enhance the feeling of freedom of choice and immersion. It would be a little more work, but it doesn't need to be used a lot.
Comments
I don't understand your ancient terms. Was it "lol" funny, or "LOL!!!" funny? Perhaps "rofls" funny?
How exactly are you supposed to "sit and think logically" to solve the Midtown Cowboys episode?
There is some experimentation involved there, granted, but I think once you
I would hazard to guess that most people didn't get it right on their first go, or indeed, their second. In fact the whole "puzzle" was deliberately designed to give the user bizarre multiple choices that would lead them to a different "hilarious" conclusion with each thing they tried. Experimentation may not be the same as trial and error, but it's pretty damned close.
Well, I got it the second time, because the first time I spoke to Mr Featherly after choosing the chef option and ruined the show. I was lucky to choose the right hat (which does seem like a more appropriate disguise than the plate, surely!) and from there it wasn't difficult to see where it was going. I'm afraid I still don't agree that experimentation is the same as trial and error. Experimentation is a matter of exploring your options - in this case seeing what the dialogue choices are for each disguise and thinking where to go from there. You can't expect to solve puzzles without knowing anything about them first.
On the other hand, trial and error is having 10 items and 10 things to try them out on, and going through every combination until something happens.
I've been thinking about the old question of combining inventory objects as a way of introducing a different kind of puzzle. I've just been playing Dreamfall, and the inventory system there works quite neatly for combining objects, but then in Sam & Max you tend to be carrying more diverse things, so it'd be a bit of a fiddle. I wondered if it would be possible for Sam to have a "work bench", somewhere specific he could go (in a corner of the office?) to do DIY on things he's carrying.
Just don't go KOTOR II on me... that became kinda tedious.
I believe that this is a big hinderence to Sam & Max as a puzzle adventure game. In quite a few games of the genre, the player is led from place to place and new areas open up. Sometimes the player has to return more than once to an area to solve a puzzle. In Sam & Max, there tend to be two key areas: Sam & Max's apartment block and an offsite location.
I haven't played episode 6 yet, but I'm guessing it follows a similar formula. I think it would be neater to have an episode merge all of the offsite areas from the previous episode. This would make the puzzles harder because there would be more permutations of objects to interact with, it would make the world seem a little more populated, and it would tie all of the episodes together.
The feeling I get with playing the episodes, is that the world is so tiny. This makes it relatively easy to narrow down where and how to solve most of the puzzles. Instead of delivering the episodes as standalone, they could be delivered as a patch to the base game. I note this because all of the datafiles seem to be packed into one game. If the game is delivered this way, the d/l files might also be smaller since you're resuing the engine and just providing new parameters, sound, and graphic models instead of the whole thing. Then again the distribution is a bit under the hood from my perspective.
Well, that's just my two cents. The game is still pretty good.
-Deaddecoy
Didn't it have more to do with wanting to keep the downloads somewhat small? Splitting the engine itself into a seperate download would help with that, though requiring people to initially download two packages (smart downloader?).
As for puzzle areas; the trouble with episodic games is that any episode has to usable stand-alone.
That brings to mind an interesting question; how many stand-alone episodes were sold to people NOT buying them all? (someone refresh my memory, do you need HL2 in order to play HL2:Episode-1 ?)
Splitting up the downloads into their components sounds like a good idea to my uneducated mind. It must be inefficient having to provide the same reused locations (the office, Bosco's, Sybils, the street) and accompanying animations, sound files etc. in every episode, so maybe there could be the option to only download them all once, either standalone or as a part of the first episode only. Minor changes to the basic locations could still be included in each episode. It could get rather complicated having to have two versions of the download, though - one for people with the master template, the other for those without. But perhaps some clever person at Telltale can think how to make it so simple, we don't even notice
(I take it that's the kind of thing a 'smart downloader' sorts out, is it?)
I think most people buy every episode..so they are gonna put more time into the longer arc of the season..
Can we get them doing something else besides sitting behind a desk/counter? The closest thing was in "Abe Lincoln Must Die" when Sybil magically popped up in DC briefly and then magically popped back to her office. Maybe have them take vacations in places Sam and Max explore, or accompany them on their travels, or maybe even take a break for an episode and have a new character come around?
That said, I enjoyed Season 1, especially for the humor value. A more hectic, manic Season 2 would definitely get me to whip my credit card out. =p
As for Bosco and Sybil, I guess this is the first time we've seen anything like them in a game. Appearing in every episode with new content means they get loads more screen-time than with any other secondary character in a full-length game, and I think it's become a bit of a challenge to come up with ways to keep them interesting. Having them move about sounds like a good idea to me - they could pop up unexpectedly, putting an end to the 'visit Bosco, visit Sybil' routine at the start of every new episode, and have a much more original involvement in the story. It would also mean if the ideas for either of them were running a little thin for any particular episode, they wouldn't be obliged to appear at all. Look at Jimmy as an example - his appearances are always different, always entertaining and never feel forced. He just turns up as much or as little as is necessary for the plot.
My thoughts based on all this are that maybe we could do with a couple more familiar characters to interact with, to take the weight of responsibility off Bosco and Sybil a bit. It's great to have them, but I feel they need a break sometimes.
I loved building a compass out of it's basic parts in curse of monkey island, it would have taken a lot of that puzzle's magic away if you just found a compass sitting around somewhere.
Yeah, the compass was a great puzzle. You knew what the end result you needed was, but there were hindrances all along the way, creating a net of fantastically intricate puzzles.
You really should make it so that there is more they one way to do something. It will make the game more like real life. Puting people and objects in which will not help you would also make it more like real life.
Sybil at least changed more per episode, at least that's how it felt playing.
I love you got to walk around and talking with different characters about stuff that seemed just like chit chat, like for example on the moon where you had a lot of characters to talk with. It made the episode feel more alive.
I hope that additional characters won't reduce the amount of speech alloted per character (except for Sybil or Bosco), that would be very bad. So hear me out Telltale, don't reduce the voice acting per character to compensate for there being more characters!
The game isn't really meant to emulate real life. It should be entertaining, and it should be a challenge, and having multiple solutions not only reduces this challenge but creates extra work that will have to come out of improving the game elsewhere. If there seem to be several ways to solve a puzzle, a one-line comment as to why each of the incorrect solutions doesn't work should suffice to prevent anyone feeling cheated.
I meant to mention last time that I do at least agree with the last bit. Nothing gratuitous, but a few non-essential characters like that man in the Ball of Twine museum and the bigfoots at the party from HTR can help to make a scene feel more alive.
Replay value.
Also, to give an example specific to Sam & Max (Episode 2),
The issue of feeling like you're missing something in branching storylines is more understandable in my eyes, and that's why I feel it's better not to have choices in an interactive story be too overt, i.e. having small sets of little choices add up to the outcome of an event, rather than one big fork in the plot. (Of course, this also depends on the particular story and the point it wishes to convey.) Furthermore, it all depends how the story is written as well; if the designers intended for there to be one "primrose path" in the game with all the other outcomes being "bad endings", then I do feel a lot of pressure to get it "right", so to speak; however, if all paths are equally satisfying and meaningful, I feel a lot more as though I'm exploring the story, and I find that to be a lot of fun.
I'd love to know what some of the Telltale designers' opinions are on these thoughts.
*sigh* Yes, Grim Fandango would have been a MUCH better game if the player could have only combined the inventory items :rolleyes:
To quote Alan Moore: "It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn't be the audience, they would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need."