Zeusthecat

The Big LucasArts Playthrough

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I'm tempted to reply some of the Lucasarts game I haven't played to death yet. I'm pretty sure I've only play Zak McKraken only once.

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I played a little more Zak Mckracken last night.

 

Picking up where I left off in Cairo, I went inside the pyramid where I found it was another dark area. I made it into a second room where I was able to light a torch but after looking around for awhile I couldn't find anything to interact with. I messed around in there for a little while longer and eventually had a cutscene pop up showing me some girl (I can't remember her name even though she's in my party now) back in San Francisco opening the door with the dropbox and talking about expecting something. So I immediately reloaded a save I had back in Miami and flew back to San Francisco.

 

After dropping the crystal in the dropbox I was treated to another cutscene that explained a few more things and once I had control of Zak again I found that I could switch to the two girls on Mars and the other girl in San Francisco. I quickly got the CashCard for the main girl and then switched back to Zak to go back to the airport where I took a flight to Lima, Peru.

 

As soon as I left the airport in Lima I found myself in a jungle maze. I started taking random paths until I came to a clearing with a bird feeder and a sign telling me to put bread crumbs down. Unfortunately I still had the full loaf of stale bread and couldn't figure out how to turn it into crumbs so I resorted again to the Universal Hint System and saw that I needed to use my garbage disposal to grind up the bread (I was kind of bummed I didn't figure that out because I had even taken out the pipe earlier and tested the garbage disposal, it just never occurred to me to try the bread there). Once I reloaded an earlier save (again) and got the bread crumbs I went back to Lima and put them on the feeder so the bird would come down. And that is where I stopped.

 

At this point I am seriously considering just going through the rest of the game with a guide. I do really like the story and characters and I think it is a big step up from the Maniac Mansion story but I am getting kind of frustrated with the way the areas are so separate from each other and just how unclear the path forward can be. I have a number of destinations I can go to at any time but I have no idea which one I should go to first or if that even matters. Now that I have multiple characters it's even more complicated because I don't know yet how the different characters work and where I will need to use specific ones to make progress. Unlike the other LucasArts games I've played so far I feel that this one can't be solved purely through being smart and doing smart things. Instead it feels like there is a fair amount of luck and trial and error.

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Just reading that brings back all the painful memories of Zak McCracken. Ugh. Fucking jungle maze.

 

Yeah I kind of want you to use a guide, haha, just because I can't wait until you start talking about Full Throttle.

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That was just the nudge I needed. Fuck it, I'm using a guide for the rest. I'll post back here when I'm finished, probably tonight or tomorrow sometime.

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Monkey Island 2 ramblings:

 

After my initial success with besmirching Largo, I'm once again stumped at how to get his clothing for the voodoo doll. His dirty clothes are now at Maaaad Marty's laundry service, but he keeps saying I need a claim ticket for them. So that creates two options: either I steal the claim ticket from Largo, who I can only encounter in his room. I don't think I have to boobytrap the room again somehow, so that leaves option two: create a claim ticket of my own. The easiest thing would be to dirty my own clothes and hand them over, but Guybrush won't have it. I thought about ripping Largo's signature from the inn's guestbook, but that won't work either. I do have a blank piece of paper from Wally, but no one will write on it to counterfeit the document.

 

So all that's left to me is enjoying the awesome way iMuse mixes up the Woodtick soundtrack as I enter the buildings and street.

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Loom is great, if you don't have the original manual you'll need a place to write down spells and that should be enough to keep you safe, I don't think you can mess up in this one?

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Isn't Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade next? I'd recommend the FM Towns version if you can. Maybe PM me.

 

I might actually play Last Crusade with you because I've been meaning to play the FM Towns version myself with the enhanced music. I've finished the DOS version 3-4 times as a kid, but I want to go back one day and get all the points as listed in Thunderpeel's guide: http://indyguide.mixnmojo.com/lcindex.shtml Now might be the best time for me to do this actually.

 

Crusade has some dead ends but they are much harder to achieve than Zak McCracken or Maniac Mansion. A lot of it depends on keeping your health up during fist fights, especially during this crazy Nazi castle labyrinth. I have a soft spot for the game though, even though it's probably LucasArts second "worst" adventure game, as the Zak McCracken hate seems about unanimous. The plot isn't the easiest to understand unless you've seen the movie, which I actually saw after the playing the game. Also there's a stupid copyright puzzle that requires the manual.

 

After my initial success with besmirching Largo, I'm once again stumped at how to get his clothing for the voodoo doll. His dirty clothes are now at Maaaad Marty's laundry service, but he keeps saying I need a claim ticket for them.

 

Thinking about it, this is a very dumb puzzle and it could have been designed well with just one simple change. I guess they purposefully made it hard since there's not a ton of rooms in the first act. The vague hint I can give you is that

you have already solved this in a way, actually. It's also a puzzle duplicated in Day of the Tentacle and I had found that to be the only idiotic puzzle in that game as well, since DoTT lacked a monkey wrench and all.

 

Loom is great, if you don't have the original manual you'll need a place to write down spells and that should be enough to keep you safe, I don't think you can mess up in this one?

 

Nah, Loom brings on the age of no dead ends. As a side of trivia, is Loom the first adventure game ever to have no dead ends? Maybe it doesn't count because technically you could forget to write down a spell since they are randomly generated and get stuck, but I swear they always throw in a way to recover the spell (by solving another puzzle) in every area you may need it. Either way, it's silly of someone to play that game and not write down the spells.

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That reminds that I'm tempted to try other versions of the games, the C64 version or version 1.1 of Maniac Manion, the Sega CD version of Monkey Island and such... of course, I'd need to emulate them, but since I own a version or two I wouldn't feel too guilty.

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Isn't Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade next? I'd recommend the FM Towns version if you can. Maybe PM me.

 

Yes, that's the next game followed by Loom. I bought the LucasArts Adventure Pack which included Last Crusade, Loom, Fate of Atlantis, and The Dig so I was planning on playing those versions instead of the originals on Scummvm. So... do I have the FM Towns version with the one I bought or is that a whole separate thing?

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Yeah for some reason the Steam version has PC speaker sound, not even MIDI.  And the FM-Towns version has full CD audio, I believe.

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That reminds that I'm tempted to try other versions of the games, the C64 version or version 1.1 of Maniac Manion, the Sega CD version of Monkey Island and such... of course, I'd need to emulate them, but since I own a version or two I wouldn't feel too guilty.

 

...the PS2 version of Escape From Monkey Island...

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Thanks, Synthetic, that hint was at once vague enough not to spoil anything, but it did bring me in the right direction. I'm mildly unpleased though, since the solution was

 

that the claim ticket was hidden behind the door. What a lazy, illogical place... This was the exact opposite experience of solving the bucket puzzle. That one made me feel smart and elated. This one just made me cross, because it made no sense for Largo to put it at the back of the door if he were hiding it.

 

Onto part 2! Already enjoying LeChuck's walking animation, and I laughed when Guybrush talked to the voodoo lady and she told me to continue looking for Big Whoop: "Oh yeah, I was doing that, wasn't I?" Such a true moment, since I too had forgotten all about it. Great alignment of player and character experience.

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Zak Mckracken completed. I used a guide for the rest of it and jesus christ that would have been tough to do otherwise. Unlike the other games I felt zero guilt for using hints because the puzzles seemed to either require omniscience or a shitload of patience.

 

I liked the story but there were just way too many places you could go at once and it would have taken forever to figure out the right order of places to travel to. Some of the puzzles seemed to make sense but there were quite a few that were obscure and I think would have frustrated me to no end. Still glad I played it though and it was worth the couple hours I put in.

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Now that's you're done with both Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, did you read my earlier not a hint?  Every time you mentioned the chainsaw in Maniac Mansion I wanted to say something but I didn't want to ruin the joke.

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Now that's you're done with both Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, did you read my earlier not a hint?  Every time you mentioned the chainsaw in Maniac Mansion I wanted to say something but I didn't want to ruin the joke.

 

Thanks for the reminder. Yeah, when I found that gas can in Zak Mckracken and he said it was for another game I immediately got the reference. That was pretty fucking awesome and I can see how my mentions of the chainsaw during Maniac Mansion were funny. The references they make to other LucasArts games is another thing I love about playing through each of these games.

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Last Crusade is the last SCUMM game where dead-ends are possible.  You should be fine though if you do what you've been doing, which is saving often and more importantly in multiple slots.  It's far more linear than the two previous games.

 

EDIT: Be sure to download the Grail Diary!  I believe Steam provides the unabridged version as a PDF.

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I started

 

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

 

So far I have obtained the Grail Diary from the stack of letters on my desk and I got a painting from my dad's house. I also did a round of boxing practice at the school so I have an idea of what I'll be in for when I have to fight some dudes. After grabbing those couple items I flew to Venice and got the pylon thingy and the rope near the roman numeral tiles in the library. I saw that I could use the pylon to pry open the tiles but I did the wrong one so I reloaded a save and need to figure out which is the right one. So far I like the game. It feels like it will be less stressful than Zak Mckracken.

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Yeah and the studio made a notable graphical jump with this one too.  Last Crusade pretty much has Monkey Island 1's interface except the "What Is" verb continues to linger.

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God damnit yes. Here's a fighting related tip that's not really a spoiler, though I'll put it in such a tag nonetheless:

Though you'll never get yourself stuck in Last Crusade, a lot of situations can end up in fisticuffs if you say the wrong thing or don't have the right thing. I think you can avoid pretty much all fistfights by doing classic adventure gaming like dialogue, inventory stuff, etc.. So though it's sort of cheating, I would recommend frequent saving, and when you get in a fight: reload and try a different dialogue path or coming back later. There's so many great puzzles you'll miss if you don't do this and just kick everyone's ass.

Anyone else want to comment on this?

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I think in Fate of Atlantis there's a way to basically one hit KO the enemies during fights.  Is there an equivalent move in Last Crusade?  I usually avoid fights in FoA and haven't played Last Crusade.

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Thanks for the tip toblix. I keep about 5 saves going at once in these earlier games to avoid the whole fail state thing. I'll definitely approach any fights with caution and avoid them whenever possible.

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toblix: You can definitely get stuck in Last Crusade.

Are you sure? I seem to remember it being unstuckable ...

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