Messages

SH*** (I just hear the news from the Night of Meteor FB page)
It's been years since I had any news. Basicaly since his website, Pixelgeddon, is offline.
Numerous hours on Stickham, talking about games, old stuff and politic. Me, pissing him off that he was not a real american if he didn't own a .357 magnum.

Holy mad cow in confinement Batman, it's Ponch !  I'm so going to try the sh** of of this.

There's cliché, and there's

Spoiler

"*Hahahahhahahahahahah*Sheldon, it's like in adventure games !", "All of this was a dream. Even for you KrustyRansome. THE END" cliché.

[close]

We don't want to make a game “inspired by,” or “paying homage to” classic point & click adventures, we want to make a real classic point & click adventure.

There is "being stuck" and "being stuck by bad design" (mostly from a game sooo proud of the MM revolution...)
12/18 hours is redoing the same maze 20 times before you get hinted that it was purely for MI1 nostalgia purpose and have nothing to do with the solution even if there is a shovel in the game. It's using the same item on the different characters even if the item are not use by the game (as far as I know). It's listenning (without skipping) to 2 long lines of unhandled event for an item that's going to be use as a totally random tool at the very end.

So... I still believe it's pretty much the size of a RON game. If you stretch downtown with empty buildings, double/restart the puzzles, add 12 floors to a building, add a slow elevator and put 4/5 playing characters (so the player rarely know if something was plain impossible or just character-related) add pseudo-mazes, use the same twice...

Most interesting rooms are empty. More it was difficult to access a room more empty it's going to be (and therefore not rewarding, the worst, imho, being the Pizza room). Pretty much all location after 2 hours of gameplay fits that description. In fact, pretty much everything after 2 standard gameplay hours cross the line of decay. And it doesn't really matter, because... well, you know, Ze ending. Arround the end the player can't even talk, the characters cutscene together. At a point, the game even suggest to watch the game trailer to have a clue. (Yes this is empty) 

Anyway, enough Thimbleberries for me.

(My bad, by "paperworks" I meant all the Agendas / Security book etc... that you collect within the game, the ones that use a non-horizontal font)

[Originality / Story]

[...] comments insinuating that every other Tom, Dick and Harry on AGS forums regularly makes better games for free and Ron Gilbert with the team got funded because of some stupid undeserved hype just to show how incompetent they really are and make an inferior overpriced product

Well,
Is the game actually overated ? : Yes.
Ok, the graphics are professional (they are really nice indeed) and there's voice acting but :

Originality / Story : Zero. I'm very very sorry here, but yeah. I dunno how people will buy the "it's ok because it's all about nostalgia" rhethoric, but overall it ends up to be our average Lucasart fan game until the game switch to a very annoying and predictable *cliche* "twist".   
Gameplay : Missing at least 50 hotspots and 100 lines of dialogues. Empty ginormous rooms. Inconsistent interface. The game tempo is broken.
Puzzles : Some inside the motel are clever, but otherwise fairly standard. Logical solutions to random problems created to justify puzzles. 
Duration : I get through the game in 18 hours (Hard), two-third of them wasted because the to-do lists are somewhat misleading and the puzzle solutions are chapter-related. And, my bad, I didn't know how to skip repetitive speeches. Otherwise, it's basically an average-size RON game with fewer locations, fewer interactions and fewer characters which none of them are particulary original nor interesting.

The game is excellent for 30 minutes, then it slowly self-destruct itself not really knowing if it's a drama, humoristic, adventurous (clue: it's not) or post-neo-budhist-4th-wall-breaking-b.s. (spoiler: it is)

EDIT :
Snarky, I was refering to the font inside the paperwork.

I know I have hell of expectations here.
But after 30 minutes so far, it doesn't look like a 'labor of love'. Impossible to skip intro... interfaces seems unfinished (no Mouse-over over some buttons, awfuly badly imported TTfonts, kinda missing sounds and many things seems mecanically pixelised). Some very predictable interactions are not taken into account (Talk to Corpse).

I'm enjoying it so far, but like Dualnames wrote earlier, we all know people arround here doing more for less...
(I found the Chainsaw of expectations !!  )

Yeah right, The Prince, "color illustrated"

Makes me think of : Wonderfully Weird Books , but in mirror image.
With wonders like :
       

[Tutis publishing]

Anyways, they say you should never judge a book from its cover,
but I say whoever said that never saw anything from Tutis publishing

That really made my day.

Well, because I was bored, because I'm a self-hatred bookworm and because Bethesda Softwork s***

 

Blade Runner ?

Omagad ! I soo wanna play it !

You and Me ?

It's the Toe Cutter's friend. The Night Rider !

Bl...
I Don't Know.

Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.
- Confucius

Thousands of years of wisdom simplified in that Matisse-meet Dali-meet-Dadaism-game.
Short, but how instructive. If all AGS game were like that, the world would be a nicer place. (And the tech forum will be empty)

Wow ! I should browse the Forums more oftenly. Gratz on the release ! I'm very happy you get through it. Going to buy it next month.

The Case of the Missing AGSer ?

Under Siege, the original Disney version ?

RED ?

Le Hill de la silence ?

Akira ?
James Bond ? (The one with a british spy in it)

I'm sorry but I can make it bigger only by zoom. I can post other more revealing screenshots if you'd like.

.

Please do.

Weird.  I know that, but can't put a finger on it.
- Code 46 ? (Can't be, too much budget)
- A.I ? (Can't be, too much budget)

Dunno.