It's mostly for its sequel though, Maniac Mansion 2, also known as Day of the Tentacle.
I really dislike Day of the Tentacle, and love Maniac Mansion. The second is a disappointment on so many levels.
Maniac Mansion was the game to premiere the SCUMM system(note that it's called SCUMM for a reason, it's the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). As far as I'm aware, it CREATED the verb bar, practically INVENTING the point and click, which before had been a text adventure or graphical text adventure genre.
The original Maniac Mansion, has a selection of skilled characters. When you're playing, each character will solve puzzles as per their expertise. Puzzles have multiple solutions, and you have to think "like" a character or toward their given specialty in order to get through the game.
I loved the way Maniac Mansion handled death. You killed of *a* character, not *the* character. This essentially meant that when you screwed up, you ended up with a less diverse set of puzzle-solving tools and a smaller cast rather than just restarting the game or, like in later games, quicksaving before doing anything and then restarting after you fail. This was especially important because it was a GAMEPLAY ELEMENT that was rolled into and really important for an ATMOSPHERE ELEMENT. This is HUGE. See, the entire game is a big parody of B horror movies, and to get that B horror feel you need a cast of young characters that get picked off one by one. Day of the Tentacle, by comparison, is horrendously average when it comes to comedy adventure games. The atmosphere is...a cartoon. There is one solution per puzzle. Your ability to select who does what is simply nonexistent. It doesn't bring anything really revolutionary to the table. It executes time travel puzzles fairly well, but it hardly created them, as Sierra and Infocom had released games with time travel puzzles a good deal earlier.
Day of the Tentacle did nothing. It did nothing well, but it did it in the stead of a game that looked at the way adventures were done and changed everything it could. By comparison, Day of the Tentacle toes the line of conformity with grace and poise and is heavily praised for it.
I cannot currently play a game. I have just been informed that the newest BioShock will likely not even *mention* me or my exploits. I am a hollow shell of a man, filled only with existential hell.
I cannot currently play a game. I have just been informed that the newest BioShock will likely not even *mention* me or my exploits. I am a hollow shell of a man, filled only with existential hell.
Wait until the twist ending where we were playing as you the entire time...
I cannot currently play a game. I have just been informed that the newest BioShock will likely not even *mention* me or my exploits. I am a hollow shell of a man, filled only with existential hell.
Stop complaining. Since this one takes place in the early 1900s(1910 or so) and you were born in 1896, you're far better off in this game than you were in Bioshock 2. Hell, you could be 20 or so, actually in the prime of your life, and if this takes place after 1919, you'll be IN America at the time of the game's narrative.
See, death is what made me shy about giving Maniac Mansion, Zak McKracken, and Indy 3 a chance. I'm well aware that I've become spoiled in this age where the traditional Game Over is dead, and that it's the reason that I'm really not looking forward to attempting to beat the copy of Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts I got as a gift, and it's a large part of why I have absolutely no interest in the Sierra adventure games. Maniac Mansion basically operates on a three lives system, except it goes a step further and increases the difficulty every time you lose a life.
Well, in the last year i have not played a lot of games, i have finished sam and max "alley of the dolls" well, more like 3 weeks ago after that i played puzzle agent, and lately i have finished plaing what on my opinion was a very bad game for wii:"tales of symphonia Dawn of the New World." ther are 4 reazons of way i finished that game. because i was expecting a fantastic animation at the end, as the first tails of symphonia, xD (wish i didnt have), my love for the old characters as zelos, the worlds, busses and puzzles were to easy to not be finished, and im just bored , the story was bad, and the mayne character sucks. DONT BAY IT!! A and im plaing again sonic chronicales the dark brotherhood for ds, i think it was a good rpg for ds, even when a lot of sonic fans dont like it, i think bioware did a better job with sonic characters than sega lately, but as i think that the continuation is never going to come T-T, So i just play the game again and again. But naw my favorite games are sam and max games, telltale games never disapoint me xD
Day of the Tentacle did nothing. It did nothing well, but it did it in the stead of a game that looked at the way adventures were done and changed everything it could. By comparison, Day of the Tentacle toes the line of conformity with grace and poise and is heavily praised for it.
So you're saying that if a game doesn't change up the status quo or provide new and previously unforeseen content, then it automatically sucks and is not worth your notice?
By this standard, EMI (or Grim Fandango) should be lauded for its console-targeted control system and then-newfangled 3D graphics. ugh... don't get me started.
There are a number of games out there that try new things and, though their ideas might sound good on paper, they turn out to suck. Sure, being innovative is good, and there are also games that set the standard for a certain style of gameplay which end up getting copycatted by games of lesser comparative quality. However, there are games that I've felt were really very good games that get lower review scores just because this-other-game-did-it-first and that really kind of annoys me.
Besides, at some point you can't have it both ways. At some point, there has to be a choice between 1) pissing people off for changing something and not keeping to the formula of awesomeness that was proven to work or 2) pissing people off for using the same formula, however awesome it is, because a game doesn't go out of its way to try new things and run the risk of people saying it sucks.
[edit:] oh wait, so games are getting it both ways from you then. Day of the Tentacle sucks because it's not new and innovative enough. Curse of Monkey Island sucks because it's innovative in a direction you dislike. [/edit]
Day of the Tentacle has good graphics, good puzzles, uses SCUMM (which is a plus because frankly, if it ain't broke don't fix it) and is appropriately funny. Really, I think this low opinion you have of DoTT says more about your expectations being unreasonably high.
So you're saying that if a game doesn't change up the status quo or provide new and previously unforeseen content, then it automatically sucks and is not worth your notice?
Certainly not! There are two things I was trying to get across, and that I'll try to get across as clearly as possible right here:
1. If one thing does things completely differently and extremely well, then it is worthy of more praise than something that follows convention and does so extremely well.
2. When a sequel to something that went completely against the grain is created, it's extremely disappointing when it not only decides to follow convention, but also abolishes the things that made the previous installment so different. As in, not only did the sequel not really innovate in any way, it redacted the innovations and changes that distinguished its predecessor.
If a game series is known for its iconic style of play, to then turn around and change it into something more like what everyone else is making is disappointing. Granted, this was one game, but the radical difference in design philosophy is extremely apparent within minutes of booting the sequel.
Day of the Tentacle has good graphics, good puzzles, uses SCUMM (which is a plus because frankly, if it ain't broke don't fix it) and is appropriately funny.
Certainly, everything but "Uses SCUMM" is purely objective, whereas "Uses all of the conventions of the LucasArts adventures of the time" is completely objective. The facts are that Day of the Tentacle ignored the gameplay of the originals in design in all but the most superficial way, and that the game followed the LucasArts formula of the time to the letter, completely. It tries nothing, it does nothing, it is safe. Whether or not it excels at this is debatable(personally I find it obnoxious, but this is completely a matter of personal taste), but the facts of its mundane framework are pretty inescapable.
Really, I think this low opinion you have of DoTT says more about your expectations being unreasonably high.
When its predecessor was so excellent, it's not unreasonable to expect excellence, or at least a respectful rendition of something approximating a similar gameplay style and atmosphere. There's a reason many fans of DotT dislike or hate the original game, and this is because they're made so radically differently that it's hard to say that Day of the Tentacle isn't a bad sequel, if not a bad game.
I certainly get what you're saying there. If I were a big fan of the original game, I would be rather confused as how dott got that way. Yours is definitely the unpopular position to take, but to be honest, I'm not quite sure how day of the tentacle got so popular either.
I would say that it was a solid game, and I certainly enjoyed playing it, but there wasn't really much else to it after it was all over. I dunno.
Dashing, I totally get what you're saying in theory, but in practice...well, I can't say anything about the whole Day of the Tentacle argument, seeing as I haven't gotten that far yet, so the most I can really say is that I'm just not seeing what you see in Maniac Mansion so far (though to be fair, I've barely started), so unless the game really surprises me, I'm not sure how well your argument will hold with me when I get there. Like you mentioned a few times, though, it's all a matter of opinion.
Size Matters is far from a perfect game, but it's way better then Secret Agent Clank, which I simply cannot bear to continue playing. Wrong on so many levels.
I started Monkey Island 2: Special Edition on the PS3 yesterday, played it from Start to Finish without a break and got 100% of the Trophies. I think it was my fastest time to.
Well, I started Mass Effect, but my computer got really grumpy and shut down on me. I'm trying to decide whether it was the game or my virus protection program that was the culprit before starting up again. Fun game though, from what I played of it.
Size Matters is far from a perfect game, but it's way better then Secret Agent Clank, which I simply cannot bear to continue playing. Wrong on so many levels.
I totally agree with that, not the best in the series.
Me and my brother is also doing a playthrough with all the games, to 100% with all guns and upgrades.
Done it on the 3 first, and was trying to do it on Gladiator but got a bit boring so we went on to Tools of Destruction. Only got Size Matters on PSP, and the controls there is horrible.
I totally agree with that, not the best in the series.
Me and my brother is also doing a playthrough with all the games, to 100% with all guns and upgrades.
Done it on the 3 first, and was trying to do it on Gladiator but got a bit boring so we went on to Tools of Destruction. Only got Size Matters on PSP, and the controls there is horrible.
I haven't got a PS3, so I'm stuck with the PS2 ones. I'd been playing through each in order and reviewing them, but I just stopped when I hit Size Matters and I can't seem to get back into it. Shame, it's not a bad game per se, it's just not up to the high standards of the others. And as for Secret Agent Clank... ugh.
The new Jak & Daxter game was all right though.
Someone mentioned the new Prince of Persia... I've played through that so many times now, I could almost do it blindfolded. I almost wish I was kidding. It's really weird going from that one to any of the other ones though. Having a separate button for rolling, needing to hold the direction to swing on a pole rather than pressing the right mouse button... so weird.
1:34 AM chyron8472 mod: Does it say "Live" in white-on-red in the lower left corner of the video interface? Nope. No it doesn't. So, no it isn't.
1:34 AM chyron8472 mod: I wonder how many people don't know about Livestream's "autopilot" feature...
... =p
edit: the Livestream "autopilot" streams previously recorded videos when no one is currently broadcasting live. You can tell Procaster to add your stream to the autopilot list automatically, or in the Livestream Studio you can manually add/remove videos from it ...or turn autopilot off completely.
I added Paap's run of Leviathan to the top of the autopilot list, so it will start with his run then eventually move on to bloog's and mine (if at least one viewer watches for long enough) instead of displaying the OFFLINE test pattern when noone is streaming Live.
When someone is streaming Live, it will say LIVE with white letters in a red box in the corner of the video streaming interface.
I've been sick, so I've been playing games and not writing about them, so I have a pretty big backlog to catch up on.
Since I last posted, I finished Monkey Island: Special Edition (here's my review).
I also finished Monkey Island 2: Special Edition (here's my review).
I enjoyed both games a lot, although I enjoyed the second game more since it is much more polished. The music and voice acting in both far exceed any short-comings though and make both special editions worth it.
I'm now playing Enter the Story: Les Miserables. I've never read the book, so this is a fresh experience for me. I'm enjoying it so far.
Got annoyed with Divine Divinity, so I tried Beyond Divinity but it was running in slowmotion so I gave up on that to, (have found a solution to speed it up now). But I have put that on hold for a while, while to try out Sacred that I borrowed from a friend, I really like that game so I will buy Sacred 1 and 2. But at the moment I am playing a bit of Titan Quest, only played it once since I bought it. I am also thinking about playing Neverwinter Nights 2 again, but not too sure yet.
PC: The day I knew there will be a new CSI game, I'm replaying the previous games. Right now, I'm with the second, Dark Motives.
PSP: Finished Star Wars: Lethal Alliance and Ratchet & Clanck: Size Matters, I ocasionally play a Lemmings level or two.
DS: Trying to 100% complete Lego Star Wars II and Lego Indiana Jones (both original trilogies games)
Comments
Maniac Mansion was the game to premiere the SCUMM system(note that it's called SCUMM for a reason, it's the Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion). As far as I'm aware, it CREATED the verb bar, practically INVENTING the point and click, which before had been a text adventure or graphical text adventure genre.
The original Maniac Mansion, has a selection of skilled characters. When you're playing, each character will solve puzzles as per their expertise. Puzzles have multiple solutions, and you have to think "like" a character or toward their given specialty in order to get through the game.
I loved the way Maniac Mansion handled death. You killed of *a* character, not *the* character. This essentially meant that when you screwed up, you ended up with a less diverse set of puzzle-solving tools and a smaller cast rather than just restarting the game or, like in later games, quicksaving before doing anything and then restarting after you fail. This was especially important because it was a GAMEPLAY ELEMENT that was rolled into and really important for an ATMOSPHERE ELEMENT. This is HUGE. See, the entire game is a big parody of B horror movies, and to get that B horror feel you need a cast of young characters that get picked off one by one. Day of the Tentacle, by comparison, is horrendously average when it comes to comedy adventure games. The atmosphere is...a cartoon. There is one solution per puzzle. Your ability to select who does what is simply nonexistent. It doesn't bring anything really revolutionary to the table. It executes time travel puzzles fairly well, but it hardly created them, as Sierra and Infocom had released games with time travel puzzles a good deal earlier.
Day of the Tentacle did nothing. It did nothing well, but it did it in the stead of a game that looked at the way adventures were done and changed everything it could. By comparison, Day of the Tentacle toes the line of conformity with grace and poise and is heavily praised for it.
Wait until the twist ending where we were playing as you the entire time...
Thumbs up on that, I love Ratchet and Clank.
So you're saying that if a game doesn't change up the status quo or provide new and previously unforeseen content, then it automatically sucks and is not worth your notice?
By this standard, EMI (or Grim Fandango) should be lauded for its console-targeted control system and then-newfangled 3D graphics. ugh... don't get me started.
There are a number of games out there that try new things and, though their ideas might sound good on paper, they turn out to suck. Sure, being innovative is good, and there are also games that set the standard for a certain style of gameplay which end up getting copycatted by games of lesser comparative quality. However, there are games that I've felt were really very good games that get lower review scores just because this-other-game-did-it-first and that really kind of annoys me.
Besides, at some point you can't have it both ways. At some point, there has to be a choice between 1) pissing people off for changing something and not keeping to the formula of awesomeness that was proven to work or 2) pissing people off for using the same formula, however awesome it is, because a game doesn't go out of its way to try new things and run the risk of people saying it sucks.
[edit:] oh wait, so games are getting it both ways from you then. Day of the Tentacle sucks because it's not new and innovative enough. Curse of Monkey Island sucks because it's innovative in a direction you dislike. [/edit]
Day of the Tentacle has good graphics, good puzzles, uses SCUMM (which is a plus because frankly, if it ain't broke don't fix it) and is appropriately funny. Really, I think this low opinion you have of DoTT says more about your expectations being unreasonably high.
1. If one thing does things completely differently and extremely well, then it is worthy of more praise than something that follows convention and does so extremely well.
2. When a sequel to something that went completely against the grain is created, it's extremely disappointing when it not only decides to follow convention, but also abolishes the things that made the previous installment so different. As in, not only did the sequel not really innovate in any way, it redacted the innovations and changes that distinguished its predecessor.
If a game series is known for its iconic style of play, to then turn around and change it into something more like what everyone else is making is disappointing. Granted, this was one game, but the radical difference in design philosophy is extremely apparent within minutes of booting the sequel.
Certainly, everything but "Uses SCUMM" is purely objective, whereas "Uses all of the conventions of the LucasArts adventures of the time" is completely objective. The facts are that Day of the Tentacle ignored the gameplay of the originals in design in all but the most superficial way, and that the game followed the LucasArts formula of the time to the letter, completely. It tries nothing, it does nothing, it is safe. Whether or not it excels at this is debatable(personally I find it obnoxious, but this is completely a matter of personal taste), but the facts of its mundane framework are pretty inescapable.
When its predecessor was so excellent, it's not unreasonable to expect excellence, or at least a respectful rendition of something approximating a similar gameplay style and atmosphere. There's a reason many fans of DotT dislike or hate the original game, and this is because they're made so radically differently that it's hard to say that Day of the Tentacle isn't a bad sequel, if not a bad game.
I would say that it was a solid game, and I certainly enjoyed playing it, but there wasn't really much else to it after it was all over. I dunno.
Oh my god, I remember that game!
If you couldn't remember a game from 5 years ago I'd be a little worried.
Surprisingly great.
I totally agree with that, not the best in the series.
Me and my brother is also doing a playthrough with all the games, to 100% with all guns and upgrades.
Done it on the 3 first, and was trying to do it on Gladiator but got a bit boring so we went on to Tools of Destruction. Only got Size Matters on PSP, and the controls there is horrible.
Sam and Max paint by numbers
The new Jak & Daxter game was all right though.
Someone mentioned the new Prince of Persia... I've played through that so many times now, I could almost do it blindfolded. I almost wish I was kidding. It's really weird going from that one to any of the other ones though. Having a separate button for rolling, needing to hold the direction to swing on a pole rather than pressing the right mouse button... so weird.
edit: the Livestream "autopilot" streams previously recorded videos when no one is currently broadcasting live. You can tell Procaster to add your stream to the autopilot list automatically, or in the Livestream Studio you can manually add/remove videos from it ...or turn autopilot off completely.
I added Paap's run of Leviathan to the top of the autopilot list, so it will start with his run then eventually move on to bloog's and mine (if at least one viewer watches for long enough) instead of displaying the OFFLINE test pattern when noone is streaming Live.
When someone is streaming Live, it will say LIVE with white letters in a red box in the corner of the video streaming interface.
*Edit And I just looked at the time. Duh.
Me too, but to be honest it´s not that fun, when you already played it once.
Need something new:)
Since I last posted, I finished Monkey Island: Special Edition (here's my review).
I also finished Monkey Island 2: Special Edition (here's my review).
I enjoyed both games a lot, although I enjoyed the second game more since it is much more polished. The music and voice acting in both far exceed any short-comings though and make both special editions worth it.
I'm now playing Enter the Story: Les Miserables. I've never read the book, so this is a fresh experience for me. I'm enjoying it so far.
I finished Sam & Max: The Devil's Playhouse: Beyond the Alley of the Dolls. (Here's my review).
It's one of my favorite Sam & Max episodes so far.
PSP: Finished Star Wars: Lethal Alliance and Ratchet & Clanck: Size Matters, I ocasionally play a Lemmings level or two.
DS: Trying to 100% complete Lego Star Wars II and Lego Indiana Jones (both original trilogies games)