Zeusthecat

The Big LucasArts Playthrough

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I'm not sure either, but I think I might have messed up a game or two of the Last Crusade. I think the game does give several solutions to each puzzle, but you can still mess up? 

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Right, many puzzles have variations, but there are still fail states (not merely deaths).  They are naturally considerably less obnoxious than Zak, but there are a few.

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This got me curious, has anybody actually played the C64 Labyrinth game? I didn't even know it existed until recently.

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Any examples? I was 100% certain you always had a way out of whatever pickle you were in.

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One I remember has to do with obtaining the wrench when you're on the zepplin, which you need to get to the scaffolding area.  There's a puzzle involving distracting the radio operator by paying the pianist to play a song.  I think if you wreck the radio before grabbing the wrench you're boned because the radio operator will no longer leave.

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I got a little further last night.

 

After picking up the post and red cordon I spent some time trying to open random tiles and eventually found out that I could read the grail diary in the library. The diary indicated that I would need to go to the room that had the same stained glass picture as what was in the book and follow "the first on the left" or something like that. I figured that meant the first number shown on the left statue and that turned out to be correct. It was a pretty simple puzzle but I still enjoyed it and it gave me a small sense of accomplishment that I don't think I ever really got in Zak Mckracken.

 

Once I broke through the tile I found myself in a maze. I explored every area in the maze and eventually came across a hook but nothing else. There is a torch that I can't do anything with, a grate locked with a rusty lock that I can't open, a pool of water with a plug on the bottom that I can't reach, and a square slab that I can't do anything with. I went between all these areas and tried everything to no avail. After exhausting all options I went back to the surface to see if I had missed anything else.

 

First I went around the outdoor eating area and tried to grab a bottle of wine with no success. It looked like there was nothing else there that I could interact with so I flew back to the US and scoured the college and my dad's house. I found nothing at the college but after some searching at my dad's house I saw that I could pull that bookshelf down and there was a piece of tape on the back. I picked up the tape, tried it on a few things, and then quit playing for the night.

 

After going to bed I thought about the tape some more and remembered that he said it was lumpy when I looked at it. So first thing I am going to try when I play again is to open it or pull it to see if there is a key to my dad's chest stuck to the tape or something like that. If there isn't then I'm not sure what to do. I've been pretty thorough so far and have searched through all of the areas so all I can think is that I possibly missed something in the library which would suck because I can't go back there now.

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I haven't tried since I flew back to the US to search for more stuff. Before I flew back though I had tried to go back in the library and Indy said that I couldn't go back in there. I assume I'll be able to fly back to Venice so I can finish getting whatever else is in that maze that I can't reach right now.

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Ah, yeah you can't reenter the library once you've already gone underground.

 

I've also started this, but I'm just trying to get 506 points (supposedly the maximum) for a full playthrough and do 800 series points by saving and reloading a few games for the alternate paths. Until you get to the castle, nearly all the points except for the ones in the classroom in the beginning are mandatory. So this is where it gets good.

 

I guess I'm going to talk my way through every guard, then fight them. This is going to be tough. I think I may end up messing around with ScummVM's save states and slowing the game down for the fist fights as I remember as a kid I pretty much avoided any fight I could because the depletion to your energy is permanent (at least for the chapter I think?) and the fighting controls are really clunky.

 

Also the FM Towns version doesn't have that dorky Venice song even though so far it has added music in many other places that were completely silent. I was looking forward to hearing an orchestral rendition of it.

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I got a little further last night.

 

After picking up the post and red cordon I spent some time trying to open random tiles and eventually found out that I could read the grail diary in the library. The diary indicated that I would need to go to the room that had the same stained glass picture as what was in the book and follow "the first on the left" or something like that. I figured that meant the first number shown on the left statue and that turned out to be correct. It was a pretty simple puzzle but I still enjoyed it and it gave me a small sense of accomplishment that I don't think I ever really got in Zak Mckracken.

 

Once I broke through the tile I found myself in a maze. I explored every area in the maze and eventually came across a hook but nothing else. There is a torch that I can't do anything with, a grate locked with a rusty lock that I can't open, a pool of water with a plug on the bottom that I can't reach, and a square slab that I can't do anything with. I went between all these areas and tried everything to no avail. After exhausting all options I went back to the surface to see if I had missed anything else.

 

First I went around the outdoor eating area and tried to grab a bottle of wine with no success. It looked like there was nothing else there that I could interact with so I flew back to the US and scoured the college and my dad's house. I found nothing at the college but after some searching at my dad's house I saw that I could pull that bookshelf down and there was a piece of tape on the back. I picked up the tape, tried it on a few things, and then quit playing for the night.

 

After going to bed I thought about the tape some more and remembered that he said it was lumpy when I looked at it. So first thing I am going to try when I play again is to open it or pull it to see if there is a key to my dad's chest stuck to the tape or something like that. If there isn't then I'm not sure what to do. I've been pretty thorough so far and have searched through all of the areas so all I can think is that I possibly missed something in the library which would suck because I can't go back there now.

 

This is exactly where I got stuck when I was younger. I tried for days to get past this point, and finally gave up. I recently downloaded the game again, got stuck in this same place, and quit again. I ended up looking at a walkthrough (ThunderPeel actually has one on GameFAQs) but I was so bummed that I never went back to it. Minor hint follows:

 

There's a way to get that wine bottle

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I played for exactly 30 seconds last night (went to bed early with the wife). The tape is too sticky to open. Hmmm, I remember there was some solvent in Indy's office. I wonder if I can use that to make the tape less sticky. I'll toil a little bit longer but seeing that Dewar has also been stuck at this point I'll use a hint before long.

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I thought the wine bottle was required to even finish Venice.

 

I finished the castle multiple ways last night using Thunderpeel's guide to up my series score. I kept having problems early on with guards spotting me from way across the hallway and then I realized because I was talking my way through people and then going back and beating them up. So I left everyone alive and tried again after guard 4 wasn't even going to talk to me and I was still having issues with the guard after him. Turns out in my save I had punched out the drunk guard and that still heightens everyone's alerts. So, started the castle over again.

 

I had always played where I thought I was supposed to get caught rescuing my father so I had never even realized you could get out of the castle without being seen or disabling the alarm and opening the safe, so a lot of this stuff is new to me. It strikes me how much of the stuff the game wants you to do in the castle doesn't matter and that finishing the most obvious way where Indy and Henry are caught seems to the most exciting. Plus you don't get to go to Berlin and have a chance to punch Hitler if you are not caught.

 

I also read ahead in the guide and realized you can skip the whole Zeppelin sequence as well. Seems like there are many easy ways to make the game much less eventful.

 

Anyway, having fun dismantling this game for all the points. I had some strange bug where the music sounds like awful bleepy garbage in Berlin.

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I just bought Dark Forces. After playing about 10 hours of Doom a week for the past 6 months, on a nice shiny platform like zDoom, it's nuts to go back to something that looks and moves like this. Having played neither game when they first came out, I really don't know if Dark Forces is really that much more primitive than Doom, or if the version of Doom I play is just that far removed from vanilla Doom. But man, the low-resolution and lack of Y-axis mouse look is really bumming me out.

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I really don't know if Dark Forces is really that much more primitive than Doom, or if the version of Doom I play is just that far removed from vanilla Doom. But man, the low-resolution and lack of Y-axis mouse look is really bumming me out.

 

My friend is currently playing Duke Nukem 3D, "just like I remember it," as he put it.  I replied, "But you're using a mouse!  And racking up Steam achievements!"

 

It actually wasn't until repeatedly dying in Quake II that I switched to WASD and a mouse.  My heart still belongs to Arrow Keys and Control!

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It's been ages since I played Dark Forces. I remember it as being a lot more sophisticated than Doom in terms of level design, atmosphere. Playability was more or less the same. I couldn't for the life of me tell you how it holds up today! But surely shooting stormtroopers is still every bit as fun today as it was 18 years ago?

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It's been ages since I played Dark Forces. I remember it as being a lot more sophisticated than Doom in terms of level design, atmosphere. Playability was more or less the same. I couldn't for the life of me tell you how it holds up today! But surely shooting stormtroopers is still every bit as fun today as it was 18 years ago?

 

It's probably just being used to zDoom and foolishly thinking that it is graphically close to what Doom looked like in 1992. Seeing Stormtroopers scale down into tiny messes of pixels surprised me.

 

I guess I mostly am confused why I cannot run 40 miles per hour in this. I'll report back after my adjustment period.

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I managed to make a decent amount of progress last night and ended up having a great play session.

First, I was very happy to see that the solvent actually worked on the tape (I love that the solution to the sticky tape was actually logical). As soon as I got the key out of the tape I went back to my dad's house and got the old book out of the locked chest. I flew back to Venice and pondered what the hell I was going to do with the old book and after trying it in a few areas within the maze I realized it wasn't going to do me any good. So I went back to the surface and started messing around in the restaurant area.

After 'looking' at some of the people I went back to the couple with the bottle of wine and eventually ended up 'looking' at the bottle. This prompted Indy to say something about it being shitty wine which apparently made the dude feel embarrassed. After that I was able to take the wine and went back into the maze. From here I had an awesome series of puzzle solving moments.

I quickly found that I could use the bottle of wine on the torch to start loosening the mud that made it stick to the wall. It apparently wasn't enough so I immediately tried to refill the bottle from the pool of water which also worked and was enough to finish the job. After doing that I was able to pull the torch and fall to the floor below. I went around the maze area some more and ended up in a room under the pool with the plug. I went into the next room and read the inscriptions on the wall and then came back out to try to figure out how to get the plug out. I couldn't reach it but I was able to stick the hook into it which gave me just the fixture I needed to use my whip (finally!).

Once the pool was drained I continued on until I reached the room with the three statues. After a minute or two I pulled out the Grail Diary and sure enough, Indy opened to a page that showed the correct pattern. That got me to the next area where I soon came to a room with a bunch of skulls I could push. Out came the diary again and bam, door opened. That finally got me into the room with the casket where I was able to 'look' at the dead dude and determine where I was supposed to travel to next. I stopped playing right at the start of the next area (something that starts with an "I" outside of a Nazi building).

This whole series of events happened within a span of about and hour and a half and it was fucking awesome. It was one of the best 1 1/2 hour spans of adventure gaming that I've had and has me feeling really good about this game. I'm sure I'm in for some less fun times soon but last night was just fucking awesome. And no hints used yet!

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot about the red cordon on the machine. That was cool too.

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Haha, awesome, I'm glad the tape and the solvent led to a series of events where everything clicked. I didn't want to say anything about your plan because I knew you'd figure it out. I'm pretty sure in my first playthrough long ago that I did not use the tape with the solvent as I would have thought you would have to pick it up in order to use it with another object, so I was never able to get the kid version of the Grail Diary.

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Good on you for getting the wine bottle. I don't know why I was never able to figure that out.

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Monkey Island 2:

 

It felt great giving Wally his monocle back! I was so sorry for the guy, whimpering in his (fantastic) room. Thanks, Mr. Brush!

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I'm so glad they never went through with their plans to have Wally drop his monocle in the ocean. It would have broken my heart.

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Okay, those less fun parts I was anticipating are here now. Jesus Christ I am really struggling with this fighting thing. It sucks so bad.

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