The Big LucasArts Playthrough

[Roderick]

Yeah, he totally does that, but then the game is super on the nose about everything. It eventually spells out every twist. I was taken aback at the voice at the start as well, having pictured a more menacing, less 'human' voice. Instead we get what must be the most ludicrous intonation ever as AM talks about the German professor dude with a Nazi inflection. Zat izz korrekt!

[Roderick]

I finished Gorrister's part. It's all mercifully short, but I must admit I grabbed a walkthrough to get through it. The puzzles are so goddamn obscure, I don't even want to figure all this stuff out.

 

After getting the looking glass that magically appears in the urinal when you talk to the right person in the right way, you have to use it on inane things, like a slab of meat, to proceed. There's nothing to indicate any of it, you just have to use everything on everything, and that makes me go 'WELP, walkthrough is totally valid for this'.

[Tanukitsune]

I also got I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, but I'm wary of playing it because since it's an older game it might be riddled with dead ends and at the same time, I don't want spoilers?

[Roderick]

Well, playing it with a walkthrough is probably preferable to never playing it at all? In any case, you should be able to get ahead mostly without.

[Ben X]

Boy, I guess Zeus is really stuck on the Tunnel Of Love.

[Zeusthecat]

No. Real life punched me in the face again. I hope to be back on it soon.

[Nappi]

I believe that was what Ben X meant.

[syntheticgerbil]

YEAH ZEUS IS NOT YOUR MONKEY BOY TO JUST DANCE AND DANCE FOR YOU!

[Ucantalas]

He's not? Then why did I have to pay $65 to see him dance for me?

...those tickets weren't real, were they? ...I knew real tickets weren't made out of crackers.

[Roderick]

Yikes, struggling through Bennie's part in I Have No Mouth makes me realize this game is totally unplayable without a walkthrough. It's a shame, but the constant barrage of inexplicable things triggering for no apparent reason and objects you can only pick up when obscure conditions are met make this a huge drag. Here's how bad it is: even WITH a walkthrough right beside it, I'm struggling to get the right responses and steps down. Not every part is this bad fortunately. Pity, because the game has a lot to offer with its moral quandaries, but the design is uuuuuugggghhh.

[thorn]

Uhhh... 'I Have No Mouth' isn't a LucasArts game, is it? I mean, couldn't it have its own thread where I can safely ignore it?

[Roderick]

Well... I guess you're right.

[Twig]

Dang. Shut down!

[Zeusthecat]

For the record, I quite enjoy hearing about other people's adventure game exploits in this thread even if it's not a LucasArts game. I find it interesting to hear about different design decisions made in some of these other games since I have only been exposed to some of the best ones. It makes me appreciate the great design in these games even more.

 

I also finally made a little bit more progress last night in Sam and Max. I had left off at the fair and had seemingly exhausted all possibilities at that point so I decided to move on. First, I went to each of the gas stations which seemed to all be identical except for the sculpture out front. I ended up getting the restroom key from Max by following him to the bathroom and I also got the severed hand out of the jar by having the clerk open it. I wasn't able to do anything else here at this point but I suspect that I will be able to interact with the ice cream eating guy eventually and maybe be able to interact with those animal sculptures out front.

 

Next, I went to the fish place. After watching a helicopter swoop in and take the fish from the fisherman I went over and talked to him. He had some pretty hilarious stuff to say and explained to me that that helicopter regularly comes in to take his fish for some restaurant further north. After talking to him I picked up a nearby bucket of fish and found that I could climb into the giant fish thingy near the fisherman. It didn't seem like I could do anything else once inside besides ask Max to come in there with me. I figure at some point I will need to hide in there to thwart the fish thieves or something like that.

 

There wasn't much else to do there so I continued on to the area on the map with a road which brought me to some weird mini-game. I went through nine levels of Max jumping over signs and swerving back and forth before finally losing and I still have no idea what the point of that game even was. After this I tried to save and spent like 15 minutes trying to figure out why F5 wouldn't work before realizing that F Lock was turned off on my keyboard. Then I finally went to bed.

 

I'm starting to like this game a lot more now. My brain has become much more accustomed to the interface and the characters and locations have grown on me quite a bit. I especially liked that fisherman guy. He was hilarious.

[Ben X]

I liked his early, funny movies...

[Zeusthecat]

I liked his early, funny movies...

 

What was that a reference to? I had assumed it was maybe the Ernest movies but I think it went right over my head.

[mikemariano]

What was that a reference to?

 

I'll have to replay this, but I completely missed who the fisherman

when I played this as a kid.

[Patrick R]

What was that a reference to? I had assumed it was maybe the Ernest movies but I think it went right over my head.

 

I haven't played a lot of the game, but given the heavily Semitic nature of the fisherman in that YouTube video and the origin of "early, funny ones", I'm gonna assume it's a take on Woody Allen. "Early, funny ones" was a popular way to reference his pre-Annie Hall films, as originated in

.

[Zeusthecat]

I made a bit more progress the other day.

 

I went to the giant ball of string from where I left off previously and after taking the elevator up to the top, I discovered that I could pull the elevator's loose wires out and use them on the sightseeing binocular thingies. However, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do from here. I tried looking through the binoculars and moved them to various positions but it didn't seem to do anything. Sam said something worth remembering when I first hooked the wires up to the binoculars but now I can't remember what it was so I am just assuming it will rotate the elevator or something like that so I can access the room on the opposite side of where I went up in the elevator. Either way I'm stuck because moving the binoculars doesn't seem to do anything. Maybe I need a quarter to power the binoculars. Before leaving I also managed to get a bent wrench from the dude in the restaurant at the top of the string ball.

 

After exploring the area with the giant ball of string I went back to the fish place and found that I could use the bent wrench on the giant fish in the water. When I jumped inside after using the wrench and asked Max to join me the fish fell off the post and I was able to trick the fisherman into thinking I was a giant fish. He then fished me into the net and drowned in the process (I guess?). Then the helicopter picked me up and carried me to the area that was previously inaccessible at the giant ball of string. The fish cook's door in this area was locked and I eventually discovered that I could use Max on the ball of string to help us get back down and obtain a big piece of the string. And that's about the extent of my progress.

 

So I've explored every area open to me so far and need to go back through to figure out what I am missing. The tunnel of love is the most obvious place to start as well as the binoculars rigged up to the elevator wires and the ice cream guy at the gas stations. Also, I'm slightly intoxicated right now so I'm probably forgetting other stuff.

[Zeusthecat]

I played some more last night and made a couple more key discoveries. First, I found that I could play the whack a mole game at the carnival which resulted in me winning a flashlight. The flashlight didn't have a bulb so I used my blacklight bulb on it to get it working. I figured the only place dark enough to necessitate a flashlight was the Tunnel of Love so I went back through there and discovered a few things hidden in the darker areas including an electrical panel. After a few more trips through the tunnel I discovered that I could use Max to short the panel which stopped the ride and enabled us to get off and walk around. I then got the door in the back to open after the executioner statue guy cut off the other statue's head. In the back room I found a weird greenish guy that looked just like Roger from the show "Doug". I talked to him and was able to give him the box of chocolates I had been hanging on to in exchange for information on Trixie and Bigfoot as well as the key to Trixie's trailer.

 

This is the only progress I was able to make because I was stuck for awhile until I discovered that I could play the whack a mole game to win the flashlight. Hopefully I find something useful in Trixie's trailer because aside from that I'm not sure what I can do next.

 

Also, is there any real purpose to playing that driving game on the main map? After winning the flashlight from the carnival game I'm not sure if there are other items that I can only obtain through winning other mini-games and I'd rather not waste time trying to beat that driving game if I don't get anything for it.

[Udvarnoky]

Highway Surfing is a completely pointless mini-game, as are the ones you can purchase from the Snuckey's.  And yes, it's quite bizarre, with nebulous objectives.  As Mike Stemmle would concede a decade and a half later:

 

 

Let's just say that Highway Surfing was an interesting exploration into the limits of the SCUMM engine.

 

He also addresses it here:

 

Looking back, what aspects of Sam & Max Hit the Road's design would you do completely different this time around?

 

I'd either make Highway Surfing a better mini-game, or chuck it altogether. Thank goodness we were smart enough not to make it an integral part of the story.

 

The SCUMM engine always posed problems when the designers tried to implement arcade sequences with it.  Fate of Altantis had some iffy action scenes, as does Full Throttle.  I think in Monkey Island 3 they were successful in making the very few and light arcade sequences they included pretty fun, but of course that was the final SCUMM game.  As far as Hit the Road goes, I'm partial to Whack-A-Rat and Car Bomb (aka Battleship).  The cancelled Sam & Max 2 would have been extremely minigame heavy, apparently.

 

Ironically, I think the best example of SCUMM arcade sequences was the earliest, Last Crusade.  They're cruel in difficulty, but the biplane sequence and the Three Trials are actually pretty cool.

[Zeusthecat]

I wonder why they felt compelled to add some of these minigames to the various LucasArts games at all. I can't imagine too many people got much enjoyment out of them but maybe they just did it in an attempt to increase replayability?

 

I will admit that I enjoyed the Car Bomb mini game in Sam and Max but all of the others that I've played across the different games so far have been kind of not fun.

[syntheticgerbil]

Man, I just feel the Hit the Road frustration for you at this point Zeus. Winning a broken flash light from a minigame? That's a pretty stupid "puzzle." Forgot about that. Nothing I hate more in adventure games than getting some random object from some completely unrelated place.

Played Machinarium recently and there was a magnifying lens hidden inside a venus flytrap type plant. Dumb.

[Roderick]

I Have No Mouth is even better: there was magnifying lens in a urinal that only triggered after a very specific event. For no reason other than 'game design'.

[syntheticgerbil]

You're going to make me cry.