Udvarnoky
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Posts posted by Udvarnoky
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https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/327085/Telltale_Games_initiates_majority_studio_closure.php
Most people will remember this studio for The Walking Dead, I guess, but my enduring memories will be of cow races, freelance police, Strong Bad, puzzle agents and a satisfying fifth Monkey Island installment I never thought I'd get. I still have and cherish my Sam & Max case file, my Jared Emerson-Johnson soundtrack CDs and my collector's edition big boxes. I still treasure my copy of the Surfin' the Highway re-release which was manifestly a labor of love. I still remember those early launch day rituals, where Emily and Jake and Tabacco would politely field anguished questions about what time the new Sam & Max episode would drop while they (I imagined) kept humming servers from melting down with a cartoon-sized bellows at half-past midnight. Those early days were a blast to follow.
As with LucasArts, the actual shuttering of Telltale comes years after they stopped making games that interested me, but I will always remember the studio for its best work and will always be grateful to the individuals responsible for it. There's a hell of a lot of quality in that library, and I'm furiously re-downloading all my old purchases while I still can. To anyone reading this who helped generate those good times, thank you. They meant a lot to me.
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For those who missed the memo, Escape from Monkey Island was released on GOG this week. All fourteen LucasArts adventure games are now officially available for what must be the first time in fifteen years.
Now if only they'd offer the EGA version of LOOM and the non-SE versions of Monkey Island 1-2.
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6 hours ago, dium said:Curse of Monkey Island is, arguably, why I play PC games. That, and the first two MI games that came bundled with it.
Separately: I don't think I've ever obsessed over a game before release as much as I did for Escape from Monkey Island. I was 10, and probably too young to be as disappointed as I think most people were.
Escape is underrated, but there's no denying that it had an impossible standard to live up to where atmosphere was concerned once the decision was made to try to realize a lush cartoon world with the Grim Fandango engine. Also, I think pushing the plotline so far into satire, while funny, had the unintended side effect of making the world less engrossingly piratey, which is one of the fundamental come-ons of the series. It's an above average adventure game by any objective metric, though.
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Not true! GOG has it, although for some reason not Steam.
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Well, the GOG/Steam version just comes bundled with SCUMMVM, which you could have indeed been using to run the game since XP. But hey, there's a legal way for people to get those game files again, without having to resort to the second-hand marketplace.
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As I'm sure a lot of you are aware, The Curse of Monkey Island made its way to GOG and Steam this week. With the exception of Escape from Monkey Island, that makes all of the LucasArts adventures officially available* through digital distribution, and that's an awesome milestone. Especially considering that for the longest time these games were not legally available at all.
*Yes, the version of Loom that's being sold is not the EGA version, and there's some controversy about the fidelity of the Monkey Island special editions, even in Classic Mode, to the original releases, but let's keep this positive for at least post #1.
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I'm very happy with the remaster. My main objection was the harsh way audio transitions at the end of cutscenes, as gerbil points out.
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I respect Tim's policy that the remasters should be headed up by the original team leads, but it's kind of devastating to think that this will be the last one after Double Fine has built this pipeline and forged this valuable relationship with Disney. I hope serious consideration has been given to reaching out to Hal Barwood, Brian Moriarty, etc. and inviting them to take advantage of these hard-earned resources for their own restorations. If Double Fine currently has the ability to scour the Lucas vaults, we should not assume that access is indefinite.
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Apparently the remaster includes a recreation of a magazine demo for the game because it features unique dialog and Tim wanted all of Roy Conrad's voicework preserved in high quality. Awesome.
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From the sounds of it those SMUSH action scenes powered by Rebel Assault technology were pretty hacky under the hood. I bet it was a nightmare to update that stuff.
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If the figures originally given were different then I understand the pique, but honestly the numbers you quoted don't sound unrealistic to me. It's why I didn't understand why everyone was so excited about the investment option when it was announced, aside from maybe the principle of the thing. But what return on investment were people expecting? We're talking about a sequel to a cult game that managed 1.7 million sales over ten years - the majority of those certainly being at far less than the original retail price.
Psychonauts wasn't profitable for its original publisher, and they had way more stake in the game than any individual fan can realistically chip in. If anyone was anticipating a non-trivial profit off this, I'd love to see their math.
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That this game is still in pre-production is arguably the most ¬¬ thing that ever did ¬¬.
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Yeah, it seems like the game's major failing from Blizzard's perspective is that it came off as a solid adventure game for 1994, when they were going to put it out in 1998. But with this much distance it is much easier to judge it for it is, especially for people* characterized by an unnatural obsession with 90s era adventure games.
*us
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I'm shocked that the game was in such a state of completion when it was cancelled. Did not indulge myself, but from what I've read it's playable to finish and all it's missing is completed cutscene audio and a final coat of polish in general. It's a testament to how large marketing costs had risen even in the 90s that cancelling a nearly finalized product could be justified as "cutting losses."
I know there's a story that the real reason the game got axed is that Blizzard had so much integrity that they couldn't bear to ship a game that was merely "good" and not bleeding edge, but even if that's true I'm happy the hard work of designers, animators and artists can at least be seen by those who would be appreciate it.
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You might recall this as the bite-sized adventure game by the Autumn Moon guys (Bill Tiller) that got Kickstart'd by the skin of its teeth. Now it has a publisher in Alliance Media Holdings, and the crowdfunded game will be the first episode in a five-part series that debuts in November.
I'm really happy for these guys. After A Vampyre Story and Ghost Pirates Bill has had a hard time getting funding for an adventure game, at one point launching a Kickstarter for a prequel to AVS (because the unfinished sequel was tied up with publishing rights) that wasn't successful. They deserved to catch a break and so I'm stoked they found a publisher. I hope it's a success and Bill can keep working on graphic adventures full time.
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This was fantastic.
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Re-releases of those legacy games have been overdue for a long, long time. Even as a dyed in the wool cynic I can't find one negative feeling about the fact that these projects are now a reality. Guess it goes to show that you really can't win.
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The company's got multiple teams these days, so no.
Also, them working on Brutal Legend 2 is a massive If.
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though Lucasfilm/Arts/Disney does not own the rights to Sam and Max, Steve Purcell does.
There would have been nothing untoward about them showing a Hit the Road asset though. The Telltale games literally have nothing to do with LucasArts. Even a screenshot from Tales of Monkey Island would have made some degree of sense; that game wears a Lucas logo by virtue of the fact that they licensed the property out.
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I didn't know there was a screenshot. Could you share it?
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http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/5/9854484/full-throttle-remaster-ps4-announced
Frankly, I'm running out of dreams for Double Fine to fulfill here.
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If you scroll down to the logos at the bottom of Double Fine's Grim and DOTT sites, it looks like Disney is using "Lucasfilm" rather than "LucasArts" as the licensor. Makes sense -- if it only serves as a clearing house now, there's little point in breaking it up into different labels.
The Lucasfilm web site was redesigned at one point to reflect the fact that they've swept up all their properties under the single parent name. Hilariously, the screenshot they use for the Sam & Max franchise toward the bottom of the games page comes from Telltale's game. Whoops!
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I'm wondering what the hub world of Psychonauts 2 will be? Is it that island in the trailer? The fact that the original game had the summer camp thing going on was such a big part of its identity and appeal (at least for me). I hope Double Fine can come up with a comparatively fun hook now that Raz has presumably joined the actual agency of psychic espionage.
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Those are all adventure games and rpgs, though, which are the game genres that most depend on the quality of their story to carry them. The quality of an adventure game is arguably more dependent on story and presentation than on any "gamey" element (I do say arguably, don't fight me on this). That's just plain untrue of the type of game Psychonauts is.
I don't know if I agree with that. Psychonauts is particularly story-driven in a way that isn't true of most platformers, and I'm unconvinced there's a "type" you can compare it against. Which of course is what makes it special. It embeds story in the gameplay itself at times, like when you drop down the sewer in the black velvet level and find it filled with high school bleachers.
I enjoy that the whole "the story is great but the gameplay isn't" canard is still in full force, but I've never really agreed with it. Gameplay is more than a control scheme, and the controls were rock solid anyway.
Psychonauts 2
in Video Gaming
Posted
So Double Fine has been acquired by Microsoft Studios, we have some new previews, and there's a spiffy new trailer. A pretty active E3 for this game.