I think this is one of the best episodes of the both seasons. the animation of zombie sam and zombie max was both funny and creepy because of their blood-red eyes. the spooky atmosphere was just amazing, just what this season needed. I finished the game at 1.00 a.m. considering that I started playing around 10 p.m, you can just imagine how exhausted I feel.....
no matter, it was all worth it. ayayay!, it's 2.05 a.m. I think I ought to take a well-deserved nap. good nite,everyone. *huge yawn*
there is more to the conversation actually... while in the monster Ctrl+Shift+D and re enter the zombie factory club... then go up the elevator... you will pop back to the monster when you get back to the top, but inanimate versions of sam and max will be left on the stairs... click on max to have the conversation
Can someone post a video of the conversation so I don't have to all that stuff.
I think this is one of the best episodes of the both seasons. the animation of zombie sam and zombie max was both funny and creepy because of their blood-red eyes. the spooky atmosphere was just amazing, just what this season needed. I finished the game at 1.00 a.m. considering that I started playing around 10 p.m, you can just imagine how exhausted I feel.....
no matter, it was all worth it. ayayay!, it's 2.05 a.m. I think I ought to take a well-deserved nap. good nite,everyone. *huge yawn*
Ditto (except for the last part)
By the time I watched the clock around 1 am, I thought "Screw work, besides the boss is out, and probably they wouldn't mind I'm sleeping (or in a catatonic state watching a monitor "debugging" code) at work, or notice"
Needless to say, I arrived at work at 10am (I had to replay the game, so sleep time was reduced severely and woke at 8:30 am!)
Fortunately, the boss was still out and the project manager was on a meeting (since 8:15 am) so I dodged the bullet.
jmm, this is your project manager and im very dissapointed! Also Lars, i find it a bit odd that you complain about the lack of moutains in stuttgart, but not the abundance of vampires and zombies lol. I thought 203 was great btw. Also, why did jurgens soul seem to ascend into heaven?
You people at Telltale must've heard it a million times already, but I still have to say: 203 IS THE BEST EPISODE EVER!
One thing I particularly like about the recent S&M episodes is that, since 106, each episode puts our heroes in mortal danger. This make the games more involving and thrilling (even though me know they'll make it through all right). Who cares if a talk show host holds her audience captive, or if the whole populace of the East Coast get hypnotised by a stomping statue? We care about S&M!
The puzzles are classic: the puzzles in S&M stands apart in that that they're logical without being obvious. Instead of "spash-holy-water-on-vampire" no-brainers, the puzzles require you to observe how people behave and how things operate. My favorites in 203 are the one involving
holy water
and the one about
retrieving Jesse Jame's hand
. (Incidentally, my idea of good puzzles include the very first one in Reality 2.0, and the shoplifting puzzle in 106). The complete-a-verse puzzle is a let-down though: OK it is quite funny, but this format is tired.
Is Jared Emerson-Johnson the only composer in the house? He seems to be comfortable with so many styles. I think 203 has the best music so far: the Klezmer clarinet, the wistful gypsy violin...
Nice to see Flint Paper serving more than an ornamental role.
My favorite laughs:
The vampire's portrait in the Disco, and Sam's remark on it.
Mr Featherly "Let me quote from my award-winning one-act play, the Cloaca Monologs..."
By the way, I REALLY loved the fact that the whole episode was told in a flashback, and this brings me to the only real complain I have about it: More voice-over!
Having the series appear as a whacky version of the typical film noir, I was really hoping that you guys would be using more voice-overs from Sam. I've gotta admit, I really dig movies with voice-overs, so maybe there's more vested interest than reason, but as soon as that "I can't even remember how we got here..."-line came, I was hoping for it.
It was a stroke of genius though to have the big fight at the end freeze-frame and pan to the present action.
I think the freeze-frame told us all we needed to see, actually.
The part where Flint Paper
turns up and starts shooting zombies
reaffirms my belief that if there were ever a live action version of Sam and Max, he would be played by Bruce Campbell.
Oh, and I'm glad that I called Telltale and how they told me about all of the hidden puzzles in the secret second half of the game that are found when you enter the code "
I am an idiot for believing that there's an extra part of the game that can only be found by asking Telltale.
Monster: "Happy.. birth...day."
Mariachi guy: "Did someone say birthday?"
*mariachi music*
*silence*
Max: "Kinda sucked the horror out of it hu?"
Sam: *nods*
I liked this every time this happens acculy
Mariachi guy: "Did someone say birthday?"
*mariachi music*
*silence*
Did you notice the monster looks and voice reminds of some Ed Edison family member with a pet hamster from DoTT?! XD
Well, except the whole turning into a zombie thing, the best scene of this game is this!~!
Undead Fish! XDXD and one is dead!! XDXDXD
This is so cute!!! XD
For me, Night of the Raving Dead was of average quality, compared to the other episodes.
Spoilers ahead:
My gripe is that the dialog in 203 was not as funny as it was in some of Telltale's finest works. In my opinion, there weren't many lough out loud lines, it was always amusing but seldom as hysterically funny as for example 104. About the length - well, I'm glad that the episode was longer than 202. Still, I had hoped for more content after I read that there were only going to be 5 episodes this season. Oh, and the performance I get during the whole season is pretty bad. There seems to be a memory leak?
Those issues aside, there were many things I liked:
- Superball. (I can't understand why Sybil didn't choose him in a heartbeat.)
- The somewhat more active role the recurring characters played.
- Unexpected plot twists.
- The "boss fight" was fun.
- For me, Jürgen was the best villain yet.
- Sam and Max's gig.
- More puzzles were clever (turning the chocolate heart to gold, the turntables, figuering out how to move the bookcases) than uninspired (defeating Jesse James' hand).
- Little touches like letting the player control Max, coming up with a use for Jesse's hand, turning the first half of the game into some sort of flashback...
I was disappointed by the appearence of Flint Paper, though. With his crazy shooting and the ease with which he was knocked out, he seemed to be in very bad form. No comparison to his coolness in 201.
- Nice cliffhanger!
For me, Night of the Raving Dead was of average quality, compared to the other episodes.
Spoilers ahead:
My gripe is that the dialog in 203 was not as funny as it was in some of Telltale's finest works. In my opinion, there weren't many lough out loud lines, it was always amusing but seldom as hysterically funny as for example 104. About the length - well, I'm glad that the episode was longer than 202. Still, I had hoped for more content after I read that there were only going to be 5 episodes this season. Oh, and the performance I get during the whole season is pretty bad. There seems to be a memory leak?
Those issues aside, there were many things I liked:
- Superball. (I can't understand why Sybil didn't choose him in a heartbeat.)
- The somewhat more active role the recurring characters played.
- Unexpected plot twists.
- The "boss fight" was fun.
- For me, Jürgen was the best villain yet.
- Sam and Max's gig.
- More puzzles were clever (turning the chocolate heart to gold, the turntables, figuering out how to move the bookcases) than uninspired (defeating Jesse James' hand).
- Little touches like letting the player control Max, coming up with a use for Jesse's hand, turning the first half of the game into some sort of flashback...
I was disappointed by the appearence of Flint Paper, though. With his crazy shooting and the ease with which he was knocked out, he seemed to be in very bad form. No comparison to his coolness in 201.
- Nice cliffhanger!
Careful.... rant coming on the way (Not directed particularly to Mario)
[rant mode=on]
That's it, I'm fed up with the whole "memory leak" and "bad performance" issues that people are reporting.
I run S&M on a PC that is very far below of what's cutting edge today.
I have 1 Processor (AMD Athlon 64 @1,8 GHz - 1 SINGLE Core), an AGP 8x Card (GeForce 6200, this is not a PCI express card) and 2Gb of DDR 2 RAM (Running at 800 MHz), running on Win XP Pro, 32 Bit version.
I never had problems with performance or S&M dumping me to the desktop due to memory leaks or problems (In fact, the only CTD I had was caused by messing with the Debug Menu)
People before claiming "MEMORY LEAK!!!"
a) Clean your PC (Remove virus, spyware, rootkits, unused files) and Defrag your PC
b) Update your drivers (Video, Sound, Disk)
c) Configure your graphical settings accordingly (In game and on the card's control panel). If you have "the" HIPER-BLAST-MEGA-Card, that doesn't mean you can run every game at 3072x2400 with the card settings on top.
d) Install a decent cooling solution. Overheat is your enemy.
e) Disable thinks like: Indexing software, P2P clients, Unused software (If you have more than 4 icons beside your clock on the system tray, that means you!)
f) RUN ProcessIdleTasks (command line: "rundll32 advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks", no quotes) before launching the game and wait a few minutes to allow it to finish
g) Avoid using *bootleg* copies of Windows. That patched winlogon.exe file can slow things down.
h) If you have 512 MB or less RAM, get out of here and buy some RAM
[/rant mode]
I agree with you on two things:
1) The episode did have less LOL moments. In fact I found most of the jokes ha-ha moments. But the game still had its charm and the puzzles were top notch.
2) Flint was absolutely out of form. Sam sneaking that way was pretty predictable and Flint didn't saw that coming. Shameful.
I am thinking of a memory leak, because I have these problems only with Season 2. Season 1 still runs fine on my PC with a resolution of 1024 x 768. I replayed a few episodes only 2 weeks ago. The Season 2 episodes run well for about 45 minutes, than it becomes unplayable. I find it hard to believe that the somewhat more complex locations account for such a difference in performence.
My PC is old and maybe it's power lies exactly at the threshold where it can play Season 1 without problems but has major issues with Season 2 once I've changed locations two or three times, but that sounds a bit strange.
I just finished this episode, and I would say it's the best one so far. (The previous winner was Abe Lincoln Must Die.) It's either the funniest or tied for the funniest. It has the best, most exciting, most well-structured story. It has the hardest puzzles. It took a week for me to beat it, instead of a weekend. It re-uses a location (besides the streets) for the first time, and yet it feels like the least recycled episode yet.
I feel like in this episode more than any other, Telltale really crammed a lot of puzzle-solving into a small amount of locations. There was just always something going on.
I'm sure I'll think of more to say as I read more stuff.
EDIT: Here's more. I can't believe this episode actually had a reference to the moderately infamous flubbed line from Hit the Road: "I don't even know where I am, Sam!" (The emphasis was supposed to be on "I", because it's in response to Sam saying "I wonder where Bruno is.") I felt such nerd joy when they referenced that.
If you don't know where this is, it's
any time Jurgen steals your rhymes, after the first time
.
EDIT: Another gag/reference I liked was how they included "Sub-Zero!" among the various deep-voiced phrases you could play during the techno music.
Nobody's mentioned the Resident Evil "You Are Dead" screen...I was dying. Of course, I've been dying since the Metal Gear reference in 202...
I still can't believe the quality of the writing since the tail-end of last season, though. Amazing job, guys. You make me jealous.
I loves me some zombies, boy. All we need now is a Max zombie shirt in the Telltale store. And another season, of course.
I actually find that I like episodes better now that I'm older and I don't have as much time to play; it took me about a week to finish this game playing an hour or two at a time when I got a chance. That way it seems longer, and I don't have to wait forever to play another one.
I loved the bit when Featherly is asked about what he can do with his hands for Sybil and he says something along the lines of: "Well, I'm at a distinct disadvantage since I don't actually have hands... but I was an understudy for the lead roles in Amadeus and Ray."
Then when asked repeatedly: "Again, no hands."
I liked when you click on the pie and Sam says something like theres really not much to say about pie..referencing clicking on stuff and then sam & max commenting on them heh
[rant mode=on]
That's it, I'm fed up with the whole "memory leak" and "bad performance" issues that people are reporting.
Firstly: My computer is clean of spyware, etc. and the drivers are all up to date.
SamMax203.exe uses 85MB of ram to load the title page and 110MB on average for each scene. This is the same on both High and Low graphics quality. Use Task Manager to check my numbers if you want.
It caches all of its data until it reaches a point that is just over 50% of my system ram(I have 768, so 50% = 3 levels + a few lines of dialog). Once the cache starts throwing old data out, the game starts lagging for me. At first, this is about 500ms of lag every 3 seconds, even when standing still. So it appears that the music is being thrown out of the cache first.
The system requirements say you only need 256MB(<200MB available to game as OS takes >50MB), but given that this is only 1 scene + game data, you can imagine that you'd see a lot of lag when there is dialog or music.
Obviously the reason that jmm doesn't feel the lag is because he has 2GB of ram, which can easily hold the entire game in memory. I'm personally sitting on 768MB of ram, which means the game can play smoothly at full quality for the first 2 scenes, then will slow to a crawl after I enter a 3rd scene.
I propose 2 solutions to Telltale Games: 1) Manage your data better. Sounds don't need to be decompressed until they're played and textures don't need to be kept in system memory once you've loaded them into graphics memory. 203's data files were 330MB but the game seemed to want to use at least 700 to store everything. Its clear that decompressed data is sitting in memory even when it's not being used. 2) Make your cache smarter. When the game starts, check how much unused memory the computer has. If this is significantly under 50%, then set the cache size smaller, maybe 33%? Also, use prioritization or refcounts to make sure you're not throwing out music or things in use in the current scene.
Regarding the game play... I guess I'll get to see that when I have time to drag my beast with 2GB of ram out of hiding.
Just fyi, while I was playing I minimized the game to check for an online hint at one point that I got stuck (yes, I'm a wimp :P) and I noticed my computer (Athlon 64 X2 6400+, 2gb DDR2 800mhz RAM, GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB) was running very slow with nothing but S&M and a new instance of Firefox (and Vista) open. I opened up Task Manager and Sam and Max Ep203 was using 1.25gb of RAM. This may be a isolated occurance, but still that's a ton of RAM for a game that doesn't seem to be very hardware intensive at all.
I opened up Task Manager and Sam and Max Ep203 was using 1.25gb of RAM. This may be a isolated occurance, but still that's a ton of RAM for a game that doesn't seem to be very hardware intensive at all.
Right, there is a memory leak. Because after just playing the ending of this episode, the game was already using up over 1 gig of memory here too - while all the episodes of season one never used more than around 700 MB on my PC after playing them for a long time. I hope they can figure out what is causing it, and fix it, because it's a bit annoying with the lagging and slowdowns.
I enjoyed this episode a lot more than the other 2 this season. Definitely the best so far. I still think the episodes are too short and too easy though.
I did notice something rather weird that I thought for a moment might have been a bug.
When Sybil asks the question about what you would save in a romantic situation and there is a pause while moleman is thinking about it, if you leave before he answers, when you come back you can click the questions anymore. I only managed to get out of this situation when I stumbled on the solution of clicking on the chocolate heart.
Regarding the game play... I guess I'll get to see that when I have time to drag my beast with 2GB of ram out of hiding.
Wow. Just, wow. That episode was definitely worth a little bit of suffering trying to manage the memory issue.
With an Emo, Germans, gratuitous violence, the look on the Max's face when he described Jurgen as Fruity, etc. you have combined everything I love or love to laugh at into one awesome episode that I will be forcing all my friends to play.
Now on to the constructive comments:
I had to consult the walkthrough to be made aware of the
Gargoyle's Offering Plate
. If you took a page out of Valve's book and did something to make things like this more obvious(e.g. stuck a crow on it or made it drip something), I'm sure you'd make those of us that despise pixel hunting very pleased.
Also, the scenes from Season 1 where we were able to select lines of dialog for Max to say were fun, please bring them back.
Sam: What do vampires hate?
Max: Coffee-flavored ice cream.
Sam: Well, naturally, but I was hoping for something specific to vampires.
Max, on becoming a zombie: I've got 2 years worth of stuff that I want to do to my grade school teachers alone!
(and later) Max: Yet another of my life ambitions down the crapper.
I really like the improved driving minigame in this episode. This is the first one where I actually wanted to play the driving game beyond what I had to do to finish the main game. Up to episode 202, I was hoping that TTG would drop the damn driving sequences altogether, as in 105 and 106. At the very least, a change in venue was in order, as the same old street, basically unchanged since 101, was getting tired.
Sam: What do vampires hate?
Max: Coffee-flavored ice cream.
Sam: Well, naturally, but I was hoping for something specific to vampires.
Max, on becoming a zombie: I've got 2 years worth of stuff that I want to do to my grade school teachers alone!
(and later) Max: Yet another of my life ambitions down the crapper.
I really like the improved driving minigame in this episode. This is the first one where I actually wanted to play the driving game beyond what I had to do to finish the main game. Up to episode 202, I was hoping that TTG would drop the damn driving sequences altogether, as in 105 and 106. At the very least, a change in venue was in order, as the same old street, basically unchanged since 101, was getting tired.
I actually found the driving segment in 203 annoying. I spent probably half an hour just trying to get through the last stage...
This is totally my favorite episode out of both seasons so far. I laughed so hard at everything, and the puzzles were great
I loved the one involving the turntable and the poetry.
Favorite things... where do I start?
-Jurgen. He's so obnoxious. (to whom it may concern: please give William Kasten a high five for being awesome)
-How Sam & Max would start dancing if they happened to be standing on the dance floor
-The 'subtle' way the game lets you know when you gain access a new area
-
Zombie Lincoln being completely oblivious to the fact that he was dead. And his aversion to spoilers.
-
Seeing attempts at conversations from Zombie Sam & Zombie Max's perspective, and then seeing them from other people's perspectives
-
Zombie Max chasing his soul around in the ending. I was laughing so much I completely missed what Sam and Flint were saying the first time.
Favorite quotes:
"Superball." *thunder and lightning*
"Zombies!"
"I know!"
and subsequently,
"We're zombies!"
"I know!"
Everything Sam & Max said while they were body-swapped (the fact that Sam was talking with Max's voice and vice versa just made it funnier), and then when they were controlling the monster ("It's too crowded in here!" "Oh, no.")
If 204 is anywhere near as funny and clever as this episode, I can't wait.
And I dunno about you guys, but I'm definately voting Zombie Max for president this coming November.
Favorite quotes:
"Superball." *thunder and lightning*
I was actually expecting that this would be used in a quest. Oh well, TTG got so many things right in this episode, a few missed opportunities aren't that worrying.
BTW, did anyone check if this also happened when
I was actually expecting that this would be used in a quest. Oh well, TTG got so many things right in this episode, a few missed opportunities aren't that worrying.
I don't know if choosing not to base an entire puzzle around a throwaway reference to a 34-year-old movie could be called a "missed opportunity."
More like "a guaranteed way to get everyone in the audience younger than 35 years old really annoyed at the game designers."
I don't know if choosing not to base an entire puzzle around a throwaway reference to a 34-year-old movie could be called a "missed opportunity."
More like "a guaranteed way to get everyone in the audience younger than 35 years old really annoyed at the game designers."
I've got that on VHS (I know, I know). Still haven't watched it.
Anyways, I think that could have been an interesting puzzle, but I don't know that it's the most intuitive concept.
Comments
no matter, it was all worth it. ayayay!, it's 2.05 a.m. I think I ought to take a well-deserved nap. good nite,everyone. *huge yawn*
Can someone post a video of the conversation so I don't have to all that stuff.
Ditto (except for the last part)
By the time I watched the clock around 1 am, I thought "Screw work, besides the boss is out, and probably they wouldn't mind I'm sleeping (or in a catatonic state watching a monitor "debugging" code) at work, or notice"
Needless to say, I arrived at work at 10am (I had to replay the game, so sleep time was reduced severely and woke at 8:30 am!)
Fortunately, the boss was still out and the project manager was on a meeting (since 8:15 am) so I dodged the bullet.
You obviously have never been in Downtown Stuttgart on a Friday night.
It could also be a short name for Scandinava Online(www.sol.no - check out the bottom of the page, where it says the name of the company.)
One thing I particularly like about the recent S&M episodes is that, since 106, each episode puts our heroes in mortal danger. This make the games more involving and thrilling (even though me know they'll make it through all right). Who cares if a talk show host holds her audience captive, or if the whole populace of the East Coast get hypnotised by a stomping statue? We care about S&M!
The puzzles are classic: the puzzles in S&M stands apart in that that they're logical without being obvious. Instead of "spash-holy-water-on-vampire" no-brainers, the puzzles require you to observe how people behave and how things operate. My favorites in 203 are the one involving
Is Jared Emerson-Johnson the only composer in the house? He seems to be comfortable with so many styles. I think 203 has the best music so far: the Klezmer clarinet, the wistful gypsy violin...
Nice to see Flint Paper serving more than an ornamental role.
My favorite laughs:
The vampire's portrait in the Disco, and Sam's remark on it.
Sam's desk:
Having the series appear as a whacky version of the typical film noir, I was really hoping that you guys would be using more voice-overs from Sam. I've gotta admit, I really dig movies with voice-overs, so maybe there's more vested interest than reason, but as soon as that "I can't even remember how we got here..."-line came, I was hoping for it.
It was a stroke of genius though to have the big fight at the end freeze-frame and pan to the present action.
Genius indeed, they avoided animating the fight sequence.
The part where Flint Paper
Oh, and I'm glad that I called Telltale and how they told me about all of the hidden puzzles in the secret second half of the game that are found when you enter the code "
Monster: "Happy.. birth...day."
Mariachi guy: "Did someone say birthday?"
*mariachi music*
*silence*
Max: "Kinda sucked the horror out of it hu?"
Sam: *nods*
I liked this every time this happens acculy
Mariachi guy: "Did someone say birthday?"
*mariachi music*
*silence*
Sam: Hope you got the point Juergen!
Max: Yeah you suck!
Sam: Hey my line was better.
Well, except the whole turning into a zombie thing, the best scene of this game is this!~!
Undead Fish! XDXD and one is dead!! XDXDXD
This is so cute!!! XD
Spoilers ahead:
My gripe is that the dialog in 203 was not as funny as it was in some of Telltale's finest works. In my opinion, there weren't many lough out loud lines, it was always amusing but seldom as hysterically funny as for example 104. About the length - well, I'm glad that the episode was longer than 202. Still, I had hoped for more content after I read that there were only going to be 5 episodes this season. Oh, and the performance I get during the whole season is pretty bad. There seems to be a memory leak?
Those issues aside, there were many things I liked:
- Superball. (I can't understand why Sybil didn't choose him in a heartbeat.)
- The somewhat more active role the recurring characters played.
- Unexpected plot twists.
- The "boss fight" was fun.
- For me, Jürgen was the best villain yet.
- Sam and Max's gig.
- More puzzles were clever (turning the chocolate heart to gold, the turntables, figuering out how to move the bookcases) than uninspired (defeating Jesse James' hand).
- Little touches like letting the player control Max, coming up with a use for Jesse's hand, turning the first half of the game into some sort of flashback...
I was disappointed by the appearence of Flint Paper, though. With his crazy shooting and the ease with which he was knocked out, he seemed to be in very bad form. No comparison to his coolness in 201.
- Nice cliffhanger!
Careful.... rant coming on the way (Not directed particularly to Mario)
[rant mode=on]
That's it, I'm fed up with the whole "memory leak" and "bad performance" issues that people are reporting.
I run S&M on a PC that is very far below of what's cutting edge today.
I have 1 Processor (AMD Athlon 64 @1,8 GHz - 1 SINGLE Core), an AGP 8x Card (GeForce 6200, this is not a PCI express card) and 2Gb of DDR 2 RAM (Running at 800 MHz), running on Win XP Pro, 32 Bit version.
I never had problems with performance or S&M dumping me to the desktop due to memory leaks or problems (In fact, the only CTD I had was caused by messing with the Debug Menu)
People before claiming "MEMORY LEAK!!!"
a) Clean your PC (Remove virus, spyware, rootkits, unused files) and Defrag your PC
b) Update your drivers (Video, Sound, Disk)
c) Configure your graphical settings accordingly (In game and on the card's control panel). If you have "the" HIPER-BLAST-MEGA-Card, that doesn't mean you can run every game at 3072x2400 with the card settings on top.
d) Install a decent cooling solution. Overheat is your enemy.
e) Disable thinks like: Indexing software, P2P clients, Unused software (If you have more than 4 icons beside your clock on the system tray, that means you!)
f) RUN ProcessIdleTasks (command line: "rundll32 advapi32.dll, ProcessIdleTasks", no quotes) before launching the game and wait a few minutes to allow it to finish
g) Avoid using *bootleg* copies of Windows. That patched winlogon.exe file can slow things down.
h) If you have 512 MB or less RAM, get out of here and buy some RAM
[/rant mode]
I agree with you on two things:
1) The episode did have less LOL moments. In fact I found most of the jokes ha-ha moments. But the game still had its charm and the puzzles were top notch.
2) Flint was absolutely out of form. Sam sneaking that way was pretty predictable and Flint didn't saw that coming. Shameful.
My PC is old and maybe it's power lies exactly at the threshold where it can play Season 1 without problems but has major issues with Season 2 once I've changed locations two or three times, but that sounds a bit strange.
I feel like in this episode more than any other, Telltale really crammed a lot of puzzle-solving into a small amount of locations. There was just always something going on.
I'm sure I'll think of more to say as I read more stuff.
EDIT: Here's more. I can't believe this episode actually had a reference to the moderately infamous flubbed line from Hit the Road: "I don't even know where I am, Sam!" (The emphasis was supposed to be on "I", because it's in response to Sam saying "I wonder where Bruno is.") I felt such nerd joy when they referenced that.
If you don't know where this is, it's
EDIT: Another gag/reference I liked was how they included "Sub-Zero!" among the various deep-voiced phrases you could play during the techno music.
Nobody's mentioned the Resident Evil "You Are Dead" screen...I was dying. Of course, I've been dying since the Metal Gear reference in 202...
I still can't believe the quality of the writing since the tail-end of last season, though. Amazing job, guys. You make me jealous.
I loves me some zombies, boy. All we need now is a Max zombie shirt in the Telltale store. And another season, of course.
I actually find that I like episodes better now that I'm older and I don't have as much time to play; it took me about a week to finish this game playing an hour or two at a time when I got a chance. That way it seems longer, and I don't have to wait forever to play another one.
It really resembles the best thing ever.
Keep it up, guys.
And of course, Max still is a zombie...
Then when asked repeatedly: "Again, no hands."
Firstly: My computer is clean of spyware, etc. and the drivers are all up to date.
SamMax203.exe uses 85MB of ram to load the title page and 110MB on average for each scene. This is the same on both High and Low graphics quality. Use Task Manager to check my numbers if you want.
It caches all of its data until it reaches a point that is just over 50% of my system ram(I have 768, so 50% = 3 levels + a few lines of dialog). Once the cache starts throwing old data out, the game starts lagging for me. At first, this is about 500ms of lag every 3 seconds, even when standing still. So it appears that the music is being thrown out of the cache first.
The system requirements say you only need 256MB(<200MB available to game as OS takes >50MB), but given that this is only 1 scene + game data, you can imagine that you'd see a lot of lag when there is dialog or music.
Obviously the reason that jmm doesn't feel the lag is because he has 2GB of ram, which can easily hold the entire game in memory. I'm personally sitting on 768MB of ram, which means the game can play smoothly at full quality for the first 2 scenes, then will slow to a crawl after I enter a 3rd scene.
I propose 2 solutions to Telltale Games:
1) Manage your data better. Sounds don't need to be decompressed until they're played and textures don't need to be kept in system memory once you've loaded them into graphics memory. 203's data files were 330MB but the game seemed to want to use at least 700 to store everything. Its clear that decompressed data is sitting in memory even when it's not being used.
2) Make your cache smarter. When the game starts, check how much unused memory the computer has. If this is significantly under 50%, then set the cache size smaller, maybe 33%? Also, use prioritization or refcounts to make sure you're not throwing out music or things in use in the current scene.
Regarding the game play... I guess I'll get to see that when I have time to drag my beast with 2GB of ram out of hiding.
Right, there is a memory leak. Because after just playing the ending of this episode, the game was already using up over 1 gig of memory here too - while all the episodes of season one never used more than around 700 MB on my PC after playing them for a long time. I hope they can figure out what is causing it, and fix it, because it's a bit annoying with the lagging and slowdowns.
I did notice something rather weird that I thought for a moment might have been a bug.
Wow. Just, wow. That episode was definitely worth a little bit of suffering trying to manage the memory issue.
With an Emo, Germans, gratuitous violence, the look on the Max's face when he described Jurgen as Fruity, etc. you have combined everything I love or love to laugh at into one awesome episode that I will be forcing all my friends to play.
Now on to the constructive comments:
I had to consult the walkthrough to be made aware of the
Also, the scenes from Season 1 where we were able to select lines of dialog for Max to say were fun, please bring them back.
Sam: What do vampires hate?
Max: Coffee-flavored ice cream.
Sam: Well, naturally, but I was hoping for something specific to vampires.
Max, on becoming a zombie: I've got 2 years worth of stuff that I want to do to my grade school teachers alone!
(and later) Max: Yet another of my life ambitions down the crapper.
I really like the improved driving minigame in this episode. This is the first one where I actually wanted to play the driving game beyond what I had to do to finish the main game. Up to episode 202, I was hoping that TTG would drop the damn driving sequences altogether, as in 105 and 106. At the very least, a change in venue was in order, as the same old street, basically unchanged since 101, was getting tired.
Favorite things... where do I start?
-Jurgen. He's so obnoxious. (to whom it may concern: please give William Kasten a high five for being awesome)
-How Sam & Max would start dancing if they happened to be standing on the dance floor
-The 'subtle' way the game lets you know when you gain access a new area
-
Favorite quotes:
"Superball." *thunder and lightning*
"Zombies!"
"I know!"
and subsequently,
"I know!"
If 204 is anywhere near as funny and clever as this episode, I can't wait.
I was actually expecting that this would be used in a quest. Oh well, TTG got so many things right in this episode, a few missed opportunities aren't that worrying.
BTW, did anyone check if this also happened when
Me too. For a second I thought
More like "a guaranteed way to get everyone in the audience younger than 35 years old really annoyed at the game designers."
Anyways, I think that could have been an interesting puzzle, but I don't know that it's the most intuitive concept.
Hey Young Frankenstein is a classic! I'm 28 and have watched it plenty of times.