Zeusthecat

Okay, that makes more sense then. I use Installshield quite a bit at work to put together our installation packages and we typically just check for specific registry keys to determine if the installer needs to install any Visual Studio or DirectX components. So it's a pretty basic check in our case. I never realized having a version of DirectX installed didn't necessarily mean that you had all of the binaries for that version.

Ah I see, I think I'm fine with the music ramping up during combat. And speaking of the ambient sound, it is really good. I stealthed my way through that first hostage/prisoner rescue mission in the middle of night and all the ambient sound effects really set a fantastic atmosphere.

I started this last night. Music is pretty low key and seems fine to me so I think I'm going to leave that on unless it turns to crap later. As far as the saving goes, I see that there are designated save points and that I can also save in the game menu. Is there any point to using the save points since I can just save in the menu? And I can tell I'm gonna like this game. Seems like there are quite a few different game mechanics to keep track of and it seems pretty compelling so far (at least gameplay-wise, story seems pretty standard).

Why does Steam try to install DirectX and Visual Studio redistributables with every single new game I boot up? Is there something I need to do to get it to detect that I already have all of that installed?

For anyone who hasn't been reading the Monkey Island 2 thread, I am new to graphic adventures and have just recently played Secret of Monkey Island (my very first one) for the first time. Now that I am wrapping up Monkey Island 2 I have realized that I have an unquenchable thirst for these types of games. So I am going to play through all of the LucasArts graphic adventure games and post about my progress here so that I can share my experiences with others. From the recommendations I've received, I'm thinking of starting with Maniac Mansion and moving chronologically by release date from there. If anyone would like to join in, let me know. I would absolutely love to have someone else play through some of these with me. Some basic requests that I have regarding this thread: Please don't post solutions or hints unless they are in spoiler tags. I hope to solve most of these puzzles on my own but I fully expect to get stuck and ask for hints from time to time (especially with the older games). If I am about to start a game that has an un-winnable state, feel free to let me know. I would rather know ahead of time if it is possible for me to get permanently stuck and have to start over. Please join me. If anyone else ends up playing through one of these for the first time with me I will make sure to put my thoughts into spoiler tags so as not to influence anyone else trying to solve these puzzles. If it is just me though I will post what I am thinking for all to see. I am still open to recommendations too. If I see a consensus that I should skip a particular game or change the order up then I will adjust my course. Also, if anyone has any advice for how best to obtain these games (I'm using Scummvm and would prefer to play original versions if possible) please let me know. If not I will just google that shit. I'll post here again before I start the next game. UPDATE - Here is the list of games and the order I will be playing them: Maniac Mansion (Posts 69 - 122) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=240247 Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders (Posts 126 - 165) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=241304 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Posts 169 - 205) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=242419 Loom (263 - 273) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=245471 Secret of Monkey Island (already completed) Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (already completed) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (Posts 285 - 337) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=246568 Day of the Tentacle (Posts 357 - 436) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=252218 Sam and Max Hit the Road (Posts 451 - 529) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=256965 Full Throttle (Posts 542 - 584) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=262536 The Dig (Posts 606 - 641) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=265582 Curse of Monkey Island (Posts 645 - 760) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=268882 Grim Fandango (Posts 797 - 946) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=281308 Escape from Monkey Island (Posts 976 - 1048) https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/8703-the-big-lucasarts-playthrough/?p=292662

I finished The Last Crusade last night with an IQ of 451. This time, since I was using a guide, I actually made notes of each of the hints I needed to determine which was the real grail and then read through the grail diary pdf (which Steam was kind enough to provide a link to right on the game's launch screen) to figure out which one was the correct grail based on the hints in the catacombs and the picture in the art room at Castle Brunwald. Having to go through that was really awesome and I wish more games did that (the cursive handwriting was a little tough to read in some spots though). I really like the whole idea of having a separate thing outside of a game that you have to do to figure out a puzzle in the game. It seems like a really cool way to actually make a game manual more meaningful beyond just having basic information on how to play the game. I miss game manuals.

They were so close! They already have that last stand mechanic too. Couldn't they have just gone one step further and made my dreams come true?

One thing that really annoys me about online shooters is getting tea-bagged. Getting killed is already frustrating enough, but when it is followed up by a vicious tea-bagging I just want to reach through my tv and punch that person in the nuts (assuming guys do most of the tea-bagging in online shooters). If a video game were to actually recognize the act of tea-bagging, this is how I think it should go: when you're on your death screen, if someone runs up to you and starts tea-bagging, the game should give you a little QTE prompt with a description that just says "BITE". If you complete the QTE, your character lurches up and bites that fucker's nuts off. You are then given a second wind and the person that tried to teabag you has to stay curled up in the fetal position on the ground completely immobile until some kind person decides to end their life so they can respawn.

This is such a disturbing and hilarious collection of stories about people doing horrible things in The Sims: http://kotaku.com/the-sims-players-confess-their-most-evil-deeds-1694855714

Evolution in action. It will inevitably lead to us becoming completely lava resistant which will be handy when that super volcano under Yellowstone pops.

My daughter started doing the whole "floor is hot lava" thing recently and that got me thinking. Is this a game that is hardwired into every human being and naturally surfaces at some point during adolescence without any external factors? I don't remember ever teaching her the art of the hot lava game and I don't remember anyone passing that knowledge down to me either despite the fact that I played it in every grocery store that had differently colored tiles interspersed among the normal tiles. Maybe it is just a manifestation of our burning desire as human beings to form and recognize patterns.

I managed to put 3 hours into Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade last night and got through the Castle Brunwald section without getting into any fights. What was originally my least favorite part of the game turned out to be freaking awesome once I understood what I needed to do to get through it non-violently. The different dialog options and disguises you have to use for each soldier is pretty smartly done and I really like how you can glean clues from the environment or from what the soldiers say to give you more options in future encounters. It's just too bad that it is virtually impossible to get through non-violently without a guide or a lot of trial and error because this section really did a good job of capturing that Indiana Jones feel. And this time since I'm not playing the FM Towns version I get to enjoy the sparse and not-so-good bleep bloop version of classic Indy tunes. It's not horrible but the FM Towns version was leagues better.

Oh wow, that's pretty cool! As much as I would have liked for Boston and company to have an additional companion, I think having a fourth character would have made the situation seem a little less dire and isolating. That and it's just hard to imagine another character mixing well with the dynamics between Boston, Brink, and Maggie. Also, for some reason, when I think about how absurd the ending to this game is, the first thing that comes to mind is Lemmiwinks from South Park.

I'll be starting this in a few days. The suspense has been building for years and it will probably be impossible for it to live up to it's legendary reputation but I'm excited to get my first video game malaria!

The intro to LittleBigPlanet is the best intro in all of gaming

I think they explicitly stated somewhere that the suspend/resume feature is not supported for online games. From what I've read it works with pretty much any game that doesn't require you to have a connection. And it doesn't really make sense to support this for online games in my opinion. I would imagine that would create some unnecessary additional load on backend servers to support maintaining a bunch of connections from consoles that are in rest mode for most hours of the day. Edit: pretty much what J.C. said.

My wife and I finally got around to watching John Wick last night. Really awesome and possibly my new favorite action movie. I don't really care too much for action movies these days but this one just had so little bullshit and got straight to the point with pretty much every scene. And the ending was pretty much perfect.

I finished my second playthrough of The Dig last night and this time I think this game probably has the best atmosphere of all of the LucasArts games. Aside from some of the obtuse puzzles, the first 80% of the game just has so much fantastic dialog between characters and is much more smartly written than I remembered. Everything they say is just so on point and believable and the environments and music create such a fantastic mood. And then all that space-time 6 nonsense crops up near the end and the game kind of shits on itself. Regardless though I really like this game quite a lot and being able to go through at a decent pace without getting stuck on some of those shittier puzzles made for a much better experience.

I finished replaying Loom the other night. The voice acting was super low quality and the dialog clips seemed to cut off rather abruptly with a lot of the dialog but I think I generally preferred this one with voice acting anyways because the game is just so quiet without it. I had forgotten how little there was in the way of sound effects and music so having some extra noise was welcome. Also, man, Bobbin is such a stupid name. I also inadvertently played through on expert this time, forgetting how the different difficulties worked. So I had the additional challenge of trying to work through the notes for each spell by just listening to them and trying to repeat the sequence on my stafff. I'm not too good at this type of thing so each spell took a few attempts to get the notes right but I managed to get them all and wrote them down as I went. In the end, it really wasn't all that much more difficult than the standard mode. I like this game though and look forward to a possible sequel!

My parents suck ass. My mom suffered from "depression" when we were growing up and used that as an excuse to be verbally and emotionally abusive to us growing up. Even through adulthood she's been visibly jealous about any of the successes we've had and she's kind of narcissistic. About 5 or 6 times a year we get a message from her that she's in the emergency room for some stupid reason and of course the doctors never find anything wrong and just send her home. She also has a vicious addiction to valium and vicodin and is quite literally crazy. That being said, we do still include her in our lives and try our best to be around her without getting into the negative stuff. But there are frequent fights and I've more or less cut off any emotions I've had towards her as my mom for my own peace of mind and sanity. My dad is a hollow shell of a person with absolutely no emotion. He's a pretty bad alcoholic and barely says anything to anyone anymore. My kids don't even know that he's their grandpa. He was never abusive growing up, he was just there, barely contributing and didn't really seem to give a shit about any of us. Also, because of my mom and dad, we lived in seventh day adventist towns up until I was 8 and continued to be stuck in seventh day adventist schools till I was in high school. The good thing about all of this though is that it gave me incredible motivation to pave my own way in life and not repeat the same shit I had to deal with. Started working when I was 14, got straight A's through high school and almost straight A's through college and then landed a solid job that I've been at ever since. So in a way I guess I owe a lot to my shitty parents.

I had a similar problem with my PS2 in the past and was able to get it reading discs again by running one of those PS2 lens cleaning discs. It was basically just a DVD with a little brush on the underside that ran for like 5 minutes. Worked like a charm for me. Here's one that might be worth trying: http://www.amazon.com/Trisonic-CD-ROM-Laser-Cleaner-Liquid-Included/dp/B000P24DMY

I'll also be picking this up sometime in the next few weeks (I'd rather wait a little bit for the always necessary patches before I jump in).

Oh hey that doesn't sound half bad. I'll have to check those out. My daughter loved watching me play Monkey Island so I'm sure she'll be interested in those, especially if they are geared towards younger kids.

Never heard of those games before. Are they any good?

I think there is a difference between disagreeing with someone and making a value judgment on something they choose to partake in that literally has no effect on anybody else.