Ben X

Phaedrus' Street Crew
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    6161

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Ben X

  1. Posted

    Gave up on Maniac Mansion, after finding out I had fallen foul of a dead end by using some paint remover on some paint. There are a few cruel dead-ends like that, apparently. Even apart from that, the game is just not entertaining enough to push on with - it's incredibly aimless and you're just wandering around looking for stuff that might work together without any way of knowing why you might want them to, juggling loads of keys around and shifting kids back and forth. In theory, the idea of kids with different abilities that lead to different puzzles and endings is cool, but in effect it's just a bunch of tedious character and inventory management, and a lot of time wasted doing stuff you don't need to. Still, at least I got to explode a hamster in the microwave and destroy everything within a 5-mile radius by pushing the big red Do Not Push button on a nuclear device before I gave up, which was fun. I think a fan remake of this with just a few tweaks could improve it tenfold. - there's one effort along those lines with DOTT-style graphics called Night Of The Meteor which as of last year was still going, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.

     

    Mix-n-Mojo's article: https://mixnmojo.com/features/sitefeatures/LucasArts-Secret-History-1-Maniac-Mansion/1
    (Interesting to read that, compared to its contemporaries, Maniac Mansion was fair and logical!)

    Post-mortem talk by Ron Gilbert:

     

     

    Onto Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade!

  2. Posted

    Okay, have played it for an hour or so, and the fun has drained away! I'm getting flashbacks to playing Wolfenstein 3D at the start of my FPS playthrough, where you can see the beginnings of the genre trappings, and some good moments, but overall it's a real slog with a dull layout and seemingly endless rooms and no nice music or pretty graphics to distract. I've already had to resort to a walkthrough because to escape the dungeon you have to find the tiny 'loose brick' hotspot with no hint that it exists. An early example of the dreaded pixel-hunt! I think I may have created a dead-end for myself already, but I've got a couple more ideas to try before going to the walkthrough again and seeing if I can be bothered to carry on...

  3. Posted

    Well, as I vaguely remembered, this is a pretty rough experience for a modern adventure gamer, even someone who started getting into them around four years after this. No music, no Look At or Talk To, tons of small fiddly inventory items, unpredictable NPCs. And I believe there are a fair few dead-ends in here too.  First things first, I need to choose some appropriate music to listen to, in much the same way that I'd put Nine Inch Nails on loop when playing Quake back in the day. Something era-accurate, but also befitting a teen-slasher parody. John Carpenter and Sisters Of Mercy are what immediately jump to mind...


    On the positive side, it really pulls you in as much as it can, with the fun, cinematic (for its time) opening, the easy first puzzle, and the excitement of getting caught randomly by Nurse Edna then slung in the dungeon.

  5. Posted

    I've got a pretty big games backlog, and my Big FPS Playthrough really helped make a dent in it, so I'm going to do the same with adventure games and once more post my thoughts here. It'll likely take a long time - I don't have that much time for gaming at the moment - so this thread may not get updated very regularly. I'll give up on a game or resort to a walkthrough if I get too stuck or am not enjoying it. I'm going to try and stick to the original experience, so no mods unless it's needed to recreate that experience (say, if the audio is terrible played straight on modern computers). I'll allow some genre-mixing, but I'm not going to count interactive novels, puzzle games, narrative experiences - I'm mainly looking for the meat and potatoes inventory/dialogue/exploration Lucasartsian experience. Some I've played previously and will replay if I liked them, post what I can remember of my reasons if I didn't. I'm only playing games I own, so if anyone really wants me to play a particular game not on the list, they'll have to buy it for me!

     

    My list:
    (for my own easy future reference, I'll give a colour rating as I go, based on my final enjoyment level rather than a broad review of the game as a piece of art; some release dates are estimates)

     

    Spoiler

    Maniac Mansion  (1987-10-05) link
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989-07-01) link
    Loom (1990-01-01) link
    The Secret Of Monkey Island (1990-10-01) link
    The Secret Of Monkey Island 2 (1991-12-01) link
    Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (1992-06-01) link
    Lure Of The Temptress (1992-06-01) link
    Day of the Tentacle (1993-06-25) link
    Sam And Max Hit The Road (1993-11-01) link

    Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (1993-12-17) link
    Beneath a Steel Sky (1994-03) link
    Full Throttle (1995-04-30) link
    Discworld (1995-06-01)

    The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (1995-06-30) link
    Flight Of The Amazon Queen (1995-07-01) link
    The Dig (1995-11-01) link

    Spycraft: The Great Game (1996-02-29)
    Space Quest franchise (1986) link
    Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (1996-09-30) link
    I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1996-10-31)
    Toonstruck (1996-10-31)

    Discworld II: Missing, Presumed...!? (1996-11-30)

    The Last Express (1997-03-30)
    Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror (1997-10-17)
    The Curse Of Monkey Island (1997-10-31)
    Blade Runner (1997-10-31)
    Starship Titanic (1998-04-02)

    Sanitarium (1998-04-28)
    Grim Fandango (1998-10-03)
    Discworld Noir (1999-06-01)

    Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999-11-19)
    Escape From Monkey Island (2000-11-08)
    Syberia (2002-01-09)
    Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon    2003-11-14
    Syberia 2    2004-03-29

    The Shivah (2006-08-14)

    Secret Files: Tunguska (2006-09-04)
    Sam & Max: Telltale Series 1-3  (2006-10-17)

    The Blackwell Legacy    2006-12-23
    Nelly Cootalot: Spoonbeaks Ahoy!    2007-03-06

    Blackwell Unbound    2007-09-04
    Ben There, Dan That!    2008-07-14

    Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventure 2009-03-24

    The Blackwell Convergence    2009-07-22
    Tales Of Monkey Island    2009-07-07
    Time Gentlemen, Please!    2009-07-22

    Machinarium (2009-10-16)
    Back To The Future The Game    2010-12-22
    Gemini Rue    2011-10-26
    The Walking Dead    2012-04-24
    The Dream Machine    2012-05-11
    Resonance    2012-06-19
    Deponia    2012-08-07
    Deponia The Complete Journey    2012-08-07
    McPixel    2012-09-25
    Edna & Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes    2012-10-16
    Chaos on Deponia    2012-11-06
    Primordia    2012-12-05
    The Journey Down: Chapter One    2013-01-09
    The Inner World    2013-09-27
    The Wolf Among Us    2013-10-11
    Goodbye Deponia    2013-10-17
    Edna & Harvey: The Breakout    2013-10-25
    Stick It To The Man    2013-11-19

    Broken Age (2014-01-28)
    Broken Sword 5 - the Serpent's Curse    2014-06-20
    Sherlock Holmes Crimes And Punishments    2014-09-30
    Metal Dead    2014-10-06

    Tales From The Borderlands (2014-11-25)
    Life is Strange    2015-01-30
    Adventures of Bertram Fiddle: Episode 1: A Dreadly Business    2015-04-02
    Her Story    2015-06-24
    Dropsy    2015-09-10
    2064: Read Only Memories    2015-10-06
    Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet    2016-03-22

    Kathy Rain (2016-05-05)

    Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter (2016-06-10)

    Batman: Teltale Series 1&2 (2016-08-02)

    Silence: The Whispered World 2 (2016-11-15)
    Thimbleweed Park    2017-03-30

    Syberia 3 - 2017-04-20

    The Darkside Detective (2017-07-27)
    The Journey Down: Chapter Three    2017-09-21
    Life is Strange 2    2018-09-26
    Trüberbrook (2019-03-12)

    Whispers of a Machine (2019-04-17)
    Horace    2019-07-18
    Feria d'Arles    2019-12-06
    The White Door    2020-01-09
    The Supper (2020-01-28)
    The Blind Prophet (2020-02-05)
    Lair of the Clockwork God (2020-02-21)
    Delores: A Thimbleweed Park Mini-Adventure (2020-05-09)

    There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension (2020-08-06)
    Lacuna (2021-05-20)
    If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers (2021-08-01)

     

  16. Posted

    On 3/18/2020 at 9:35 PM, Ben X said:

    LOTCG, Justin McElroy's favourite smaller game of 2020 so far, is now available for Mac and Linux, and on GOG too!

    On Steam
    On GOG
    On Steam bundled with the first two Dan & Ben games at an overall discount

     

    Okay, I'll shut up about it again until we get on another store or platform!

     

    As threatened: LOTCG will be out on Switch and XBox One on September 4th!

    Pre-order now and get 15% off! (Not all regions have it up on the webstore yet, so you might have to go via your console.)

     

    Nintendo Switch
    XBox One

     

     

  17. Posted

    I haven't seen Captain Corelli, but isn't he nice in that? And he's a goody in National Treasure, obviously. I wonder whether your girlfriend gets an asshole vibe off him even when he's playing ostensibly nice characters!

  19. Posted

    Hmmm, what about Peggy Sue Got Married? This is a good opportunity to troll her, though - keep telling her you think you've found the one movie where he plays a non-asshole, then put on Vampire's Kiss or Wicker Man or Bad Lieutenant...

  25. Posted

    Just finished S4. So, from episode 9 onwards, it gets AMAZING. They perhaps weren't playing with the most original ideas -

    Spoiler

    evil doppelgangers, evil robots, a dark timeline where the Nazis won

    - but they made them their own and made them sing. Consistently clever, exciting, funny and touching. Wow. If S5+ can at least stay in a place between S3 and this, I'll be happy.