syntheticgerbil

Does this constitute as lazy in your opinion? That sounds frustrating as if the game was released untested.

Amen, brotha! Praise the lord!

Yep!

Oh really? I hear the opening and closing of doors and parrot squawks from Secret of Monkey Island on TV and movies a lot. I also hear this loud saxophone noise from the first Rayman game in Bandland on TV and in some songs from time to time as well. Oh and in terms of the podcast, I guess I'm one of the few people that has beaten all of the Zelda's to completion with all items besides the CD-I games, Zelda BS, and (not yet) Phantom Hourglass or Twilight Princess. They take longer than almost any other game I play in general, but it always feels sort of satisfying... I feel like the endings from Link to the Past and on don't disappoint. I mean I did use guides on some parts, more on Majora's Mask and the original 2, but I feel like a freak. I even played through the second quest on the first Zelda, which makes no sense and consists of you pushing through tons of invisible doorways in the dungeon. Big freak here. Also I just looked up The Act, and while I'm not the biggest fan of the character design, it looks very beautiful and I want to play it on PC! WHY?!

Well his sense of atmosphere is good, as well as his concept art, if not a bit boring. He was a comic artist in the past I hear and he really knows how to layout a background. I don't feel like the 3D artists at Microids made his work look so good when putting it in the third dimension. I don't think video games suit him well though, at least not with him at the lead. I had to force myself to finish the first Syberia just to see what all the hubub was about, and it was a constantly tedious and disappointing exercise. I should have known better because I had tried a few years before that to force myself to finish Amerzone, also by Sokal, to no avail.

If that set comes with all of the original Genesis Sonic games and Comix Zone, I don't think you will be disappointed either way.

Hmm, I was at a industry convention Dallas a month ago and Michel Gagne was there showing a lot of gameplay footage (that apparently wasn't public yet) as well as selling his books and short films DVD. He was kind of a butt and ragging on programmers for not always being able to handle his smooth 24 fps animations and that when the frame rate drops, he gets really angry. He was also going on some ridiculous rant about artists drawing, painting, and animating on the computer and that his stuff in this game is handdrawn from start to finish besides the scanning part. Which I guess he was trying to say it made him better? I don't know. In my opinion you would get the same results if you used Illustrator and save time to boot, but eh... that's me being presumptuous. There was a video play through of the complete first level and boss, so it did look good and it looked like a lot of fun, though. At one point he did say the music was not final and that they were just using his favorite band or whatever. He is apparently trying to get Dimmu Borgir to do the music for real though. Maybe that deal won't go through and we can rejoice? EDIT: And now the video disappeared due to copyright while I typed all of that.

Well, I kind of understand what you are saying, growing up on them and having played many more adventures than the normal person... but I don't have a problem with them now granted they are made as well as the old ones I used to love. I definitely had a syndrome when I was in highschool where I was on Gametz tracking down tons of adventure games I haven't played with my minimum wage, and even though I found some gems, I was more than mostly disappointed. I think there are a lot of people, especially on Adventuregamers.com who will buy up any adventure that comes out and rate it highly even if it is bad quality, just because high quality adventures don't come out much. I would have never played Little Big Adventure or U.F.O.s if I hadn't have done that though. Why people like certain adventure games or designers like Benoit Sokal is beyond me. I mostly get rid of the adventures I didn't want on Ebay or left them at my parents house. I can't stand most modern adventure games though, especially the ones that all have that boring static 3D background consisting of only blue and brown look. I think they have lost their appeal more because of bad craftsmanship, boring characters, and bad writing more than the gameplay mechanics, which are never going to be too much different than what they originally were it seems. I frequently see on forums where people are disappointed over and over again with new games like Runaway, Still Life, and Ankh yet still buy them all just because of the genre. While Adventuregamers.com is somewhat better, it doesn't help that ugly sites like JustAdventure.com and their ilk seemingly start with their lowest grade being an 8/10 possible and working their way up from there. I would rather people just not buy low quality adventure games and openly criticize them so developers don't think it's alright to deliver a subpar experience. I'm sure this happens in other game genres, but the adventure game is the only game I've ever been a genre nerd about. I am looking forward to the Whispered World being good. Waiting for a definite English release.

I was wondering that as well. I think you'll have to wait until Thunderpeel plays through it to know accurately whether or not there are any glitches. He would be able to tell you about any missing IQ points too.

And in a way, the book series is just so personal, it is just odd someone would want to add a new part, whether heeding Adams written tips or story ideas or not.

I'll definitely agree with that. Many older games were relatively short, but it was the simple fact you had to master almost every single one of them to see the ending, consoles especially. Now everything is mostly easier on the difficulty and liberal with the saves, but the game is usually padded out to get to the 20 hour or more mark. I thought Beyond Good and Evil for instance was exactly as long as it should have been, without any tediousness, but it could have stood to be a little bit more difficult in terms of puzzle or stealth sequences and enemy battles.

You should upload screenshots of the shopkeeper with the huge pixel chunks sticking out. I kind of figured the art would be sloppy in some places based on what I've seen so far, but I'm getting the feeling the thing was rushed without much quality control. But this is me complaining without having bought it. It's not at the top of my list to play anytime soon. I'm just not looking forward to amateur mistakes on Monkey Island 2. That game almost doesn't need to be improved at all if it's going to be the same team.

That's awesome. I think you should not add porn but see if you can find some frames of like a Hello Kitty movie or something and insert them in there.

Series directed by a guy who did a lot of various work on Samurai Champloo... Maybe I'll need to go check this out somehow. Thanks!

Haha, well some parts of the game are admittedly enjoyable when the puzzles are more based on inventory and investigating rather than pushing blocks around and completing quick time sequences. But maybe the biggest problem is that there's this horrible song called "We Love U" over the end credits that just made the game irredeemable in my eyes..

Yep, I think a lot of developers need to pay attention to the point when the game turns into more of a chore than fun. I don't usually play games like that and try to find out ahead of time what may become a chore the best I can. But everyone once and a while I'll find myself gritting my teeth through a good game that's just a tad too long. It makes you not want to play it again later. Not that I have time to do that anymore or ever again.

Not really trying to get at you, but I get the feeling you haven't played too many adventure games. The Broken Sword games (or almost any Revolution game) for instance, are littered with trapped sequences. Maybe not so much in 4 and 5. I have no clue, I never played past Broken Sword 3, which was just atrocious.

It's pretty standard adventure game fare. It may be almost harder to find a third person adventure that doesn't use the trapped situation at one point.

Well the latter was cut because apparently the CD version team wanted to get lip synching to work but either failed to do it correctly or had no time to finish, so the close-ups were completely scrapped altogether, which is unfortunate.

Hah, well you still have the option of reading old Idlethumbs articles if you want. Maybe in a few weeks I'll ask a question about an article one of the guys wrote in 2004.

But I like that part. It has the kind stability of Mr. Rogers!

God, what's up with the bump mapping on those bricks? Did someone draw some black lines that looked kind of bricklike with MSPaint and throw them on there? Yuck, some of EMI is better left without a second look.

No, it still works. You're just missing out. But if you only played the FM-Towns or floppy disk 256 color version, you would also be missing out on the voices and scored cutscenes. Loom is really just this lose/lose situation.

Ah well, LucasArts never owned Sam and Max in the first place as they were originally comic characters first copywritten and trademarked to Purcell, so it should really be expected. There was nothing to even consider mourning in the first place even though there are some LEC "Sam and Max 2" nutsos out there (That game looked like it was shaping up to be more mediocre than EMI). Anyways, what I'm trying to say here is, Steve Purcell should do a 5 issue miniseries run of Toybox before he dies.

Huh?