thorn

I'd like to go against the flow and point out something wierd/irritating that has nothing to do with the UI. Why does the game store the savegames in My Documents\Telltale Games\Launch of the Screaming Narwhal rather than in the directory in which it's installed? My 'My Documents' is cluttered enough as it is. On a similar note, it would be brilliant if Telltale would let me choose where to put the Start Menu shortcuts, so I can put them with all of my games, rather than demanding an exclusive Telltale zone.

In Grim, there's also the bit where you have to save Meche from Domino's vault and end up locking yourself in.

From here.

So you're saying that the belt buckle protects Eddie's enemies?!ThunderPeel2001: If you were suggesting that I shouldn't think too hard because it's a fantasy game, then that's just ridiculous. Any fantasy world needs to have internal consistency. And unless the demons have some magical armour that cops out after being hit once or twice, it just doesn't make sense.

As I've said elsewhere, I really don't like that Eddie does the standard video game attack movement of 'Hit enemy three times then do finishing move'. I mean, how can any character - demon or no - be hit with a battle axe and not have bits fall off?

Following on from my post last night, I've had a bit more thought about why I actually liked the inventory system and the method for combining objects. In the past, pretty much every adventure game I've played does it as follows: Click object #1 Click object #2 A completely new object appears in your inventory There's never any sense of transformation; of the character pulling both objects out of his/her pocket, fiddling with them and producing the combination. Of course, that's a game mechanic we're all used to and it's not necessarily a bad thing. I just liked the way that the ToMI inventory actually gives the sense of the two objects being combined and transformed in a flash of light. Also that when you put incorrect objects in to the combination boxes, it feels like the game is trying to combine them but failing. As an extra comment: This game really needs a way to skip cut-scenes. If you can deal with some crappy controls and some annoyance with Monkey Kombat (which, if you're good, you can beat pretty quickly) for the sake of good puzzles and great dialogue, yes. Take a look at my earlier post in this thread for my full impressions.

Just finished Launch of the Screaming Narwhal and I have to say that I loved it. Liked the setting and characters, thought the puzzles were great and felt really Monkey Island-y. I even thought the inventory was pretty good (shock horror) and thought that the method to combine objects was intuitive and easy to use (especially in comparison to the comments I'd read in this thread). My only significant complaint is the movement controls. It was just too awkward to click and drag to move around. Whenever I had to cross more than one screen to get somewhere, I always switched to keyboard mode. It would have been good if I could have stuck to it, but I had to use the mouse controls when exploring and clicking on things. It was really quite frustrating to regularly move my hand back and forth between the keyboard and the mouse (EDIT: I only just realised I could have used WASD with my left hand and kept my right hand on the mouse). In the end, what I mostly did was click on hotspots near to where I wanted to go and then use the mouse controls from there. For instance; when I was near the glass blowers house and I wanted to leave that location and go to the forest, I would click on the pillars, wait for Guybrush to go to them, start talking about them, right click to cut the dialog short and then would click and drag the mouse to walk out of the scene. I would looooove it if the future games had mouse control similar to Sam & Max or at least the ability to click on a hotspot to immediately walk to and out of the location. Other minor quibbles include that there wasn't as much dialogue I would have liked (ironic since I complained about EMI for having too much), though the writing and acting was excellent. I had to look at the walkthrough for the first map puzzle after I'd done it perfectly three times and ended up nowhere, simply because I hadn't clicked the map on the well to tell the game I'd officially started on the trail. That shouldn't have been necessary. Also, I'm being really anal retentive here but in all the previous games, the Voodoo Lady disappeared enigmatically once you stopped talking to her, rather than staying and watching you wander through her house. But, all that said, I loved Launch of the Screaming Narwhal and I am really, really looking forward to the rest of the series. High-five to Jake and the rest of the Telltale team!

I'm pretty sure Kingzjester just meant that Purcell's IP lost popularity within Lucasarts. As in, he didn't mourn the fact that the various Sam & Max sequels didn't happen because he knew that Purcell still owned the IP and could sell the rights to other companies (not to mention produce more comic stories on his own). As compared to MI, which was owned fully by Lucasarts and thus metaphorically locked in a vault.

When did he say that? On another note, it almost feels like there should be a seperate thread specifically about playing ToMI, to protect people like me who are avoiding spoilers. EDIT: Which is not to say that everyone hasn't been brilliant with their spoiler tags so far. It's just that when I see those black boxes, I have an irresistable urge to click on them, even when I know I shouldn't.

Doesn't that mean that (hypothetically, if they were using the ScummVM) Lucasarts would have to publish the entire source code of all the games?

Do you mean SCUMM? I'm pretty sure they said they were creating a new engine, not using the VM.Could Lucasarts legally use the ScummVM to port the older game and sell them? Seems like a fairly twisted web of dependencies.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/4070/back_in_the_water_the_monkey_.php Interview with Dave Grossman with the famous Chris Remo. Sidenote: A google phrase search for "the famous chris remo" comes up with a perhaps surprising number of hits.

Well, I was right about this news and yet so, so wrong. The only games on that list I give two squats about are The Dig (which I already own) and LOOM (which I've never played but want to). Why none of the true classics like DoTT or Sam & Max? I want to buy the full talkie versions of the games I only have on floppies.

Yeah, you're probably right. I'd still like to have seen how he would have done it. Plus, given that MI1 and MI2 are among the best adventure games ever made (even when you take them as stand-alone games) I'd like to have seen what he'd saved up for the third and final part.

No-one's suggesting that the imagination thing wasn't an intentional setup. I'm just suggesting that the imagination thing is only a plot twist. Not the final plot twist. I believe that Ron was going somewhere but didn't get a chance to show us where.

Except that he's repeatedly said that he originally only wanted to make one game but the plot was too large, so he split it in to a trilogy. I am a member of the tribe that holds that he did have a plan for what MI3 was going to be about AND that the whole 'Guybrush being a kid' thing was a voodoo curse (about which more would have been revealed in MI3), rather than that it was the incredible truth revealed. I mean, if we assume that he did have a plan for MI3 and that two kids playing in an amusement park would be a stupid idea for an adventure game, we have to assume that it was just a curse and that Guybrush the pirate was reality.

My guess (and hope) is the old games released on Steam.

I suspect he meant a wholesale remake, like Sierra used to do with their early quest games. The entire layout of locations would be changed and puzzles added for no good reason. Generally things would be change for the sake of changing them. But the new remake seems to be faithful to the original. And, Ron has never revealed his intentions of MI3. Why do you think he's constantly hounded for the true Secret?

For what it's worth, I'm about 2/3 of the way through and have surprised myself by liking it a lot. The graphics are reasonable. The puzzles have been fairly intuitive and interesting. The writing is really good and has had a few good laughs. My only significant problem with it is that there's too freaking much of it. This might seem like a strange thing to quibble over, but I'm one of those anal retentive sorts who goes through every single dialogue tree and even saves the game when there are options that I won't have a chance to go back to. And there are sooooo many characters, most of whom don't actually contribute anything other than making the world seem populated or giving hints so obvious that I'd already worked them out myself. I feel like I'm spending the entire game in conversation rather than puzzle solving. But that really is just a minor quibble. On the other hand, my major quibble is the controls. Other people have mentioned them in this thread but if you haven't played the game, you can't begin to imagine how painfully bad they are. Guybrush moves and turns unpredictably, the paths and entrances are really narrow so you can often miss where you're trying to go and end up spinning around 180°. If you try turning whilst walking on a narrow path, he'll just keep on going forward and ignore your commands. If you're running in the wrong way, you need to stop, press right and wait as Guybrush sloooowly spins on the spot and then go back the way you came. On a related note, the exits to many rooms are so big that I found myself constantly accidentally walking out when trying to just walk past, and then having to negotiate my way back in again. Also, it feels like they've cut out half the game; there are buildings that look like they're meant to be meaningful and pathways and exits that catch my attention but when I try to explore them, Guybrush just spins around and runs off in the other direction. I never know whether it's because they're irrelevant or because of the shoddy controls. On a positive note, it's been shocking that when I start the game, it appears immediately (with no loading screens!) and save games come up in about half a second. I can't remember when I last played a game like that. So, total summation: some minor quibbles, one major headache, but overall I'm really enjoying it. That said, I'm not yet up to Monkey Kombat, so my opinion may yet change.

I imagine that new copies must be pretty rare. Lucasarts probably hasn't printed/pressed their adventure games for years, excluding the wierd blip in which they were available in Australia in 2007 for about two weeks. Second hand copies seem to be at around the $10-$20 mark.

There are tons of copies on Ebay. That's how I got CoMI years ago.Also, for some reason, there is an auction that claims that this is a MI branded playset:

Now available for pre-purchase, released for realz in July.EDIT: Whoops, totally missed that there was another page.

Thus far the only place I've seen that lists everything (including one or two other snippets) is their facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brutal-Legend/92348519843

Oh god, you're right. The ripple on the left starts before she even reaches out. The wishful side of me hopes that that's just the Natal camera being overenthusiastic about a minor movement it detected. The rest of me is not so charitable.

Soooooo... DNF is still happening?