JimmyTwoBucks

Yeah, it's clear you have to find a bridle, the game tells you that pretty directly... It's the location and the fact that I actually had typed "look at ground" and "look in boat", etc. and it still didn't pop up. I could only trigger it by standing in exactly the right spot in the middle of the boat and then searching.

Ah, thanks - that makes sense now, I thought it was completely plucked out of the air. Now trying to find the fairy tale about the bridle that is found in a boat on an island but is hidden from sight.

I DID IT, I MADE IT ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE FIRST FOUR KING'S QUEST GAMES!!!!!! So King's Quest 4... I found it really good in parts and frustrating in others. My first thought was, "so I'm... a princess?" I tried typing in "find a man to help me", but to no avail. I then figured maybe taking off all my clothes would help, but alas: "Not in front of the game players!" All jokes aside, I did find it interesting playing as a female character (I don't think I've played a game where the lead is female before), and I was very much aware of the reactions of other characters to her and how the game was presenting her and seeing things from her point of view. For example, I was genuinely fearful for her when all the dwarves came in for dinner in a way I probably wouldn't have been with a male lead. I was a bit surprised when I typed in, as a joke, "clean house" and it worked... though I guess this game was made back in the 1980s when women still didn't have the right to vote and for the most part toiled day and night in the cotton mills... it was a different age. I thought the story was great for this one and felt the most fully developed so far, no complaints there. I got to face-off against my old nemesis... stairs. I think this had some of the hardest stairs of the whole series simply because of the bizarre twisty angles they went in. The main things that kind of messed the game up for me were the logic of the puzzles and the dead-ends. It all started when I randomly threw the gold ball at the frog and that apparently was what I was meant to do. It's at that point that I began to not trust the game as much, wondering what random stuff I'd have to do next. Also, after two games of swimming around in the sea and finding nothing (I spent hours and hours swimming around in the previous games just to see if there was anything), I was like, "well I know there won't be anything out at sea, so I won't bother this time." Which was incorrect. The cave and the whale were pains in the ass, BUT a bigger pain in the ass was finding the bridle and how there is a dead end if you don't get it. First, there is nothing to suggest there is anything on the island, let alone a random bridle. You can quite happily leave the island without getting it. And this is the worst bit... even though I eventually looked it up and knew what to do, IT STILL TOOK ME NUMEROUS ATTEMPTS TO ACTUALLY GET IT TO WORK. You have to be standing in almost exactly the right spot. I tried 7-8 times to stand in the boat and "look at ground" or "look in boat" and nothing was found, so if I hadn't looked it up I would have assumed that I had been very thorough on the island and that nothing was there. I also seemed to come across a bizarre bug in my version of the game: When it was daytime I went into the crypt and went down the ladder and the mummy came out and got me and the mummy says something like, "how did you get in here without the scarab" and the game also says something like, "those guys are fast for their age". Then at night, I went back in with the scarab and got Pandora's Box.... Then once I had finished the game I was like, what was the point of the haunted house and organ and graveyard? Because I didn't do anything with those.... So I look up the walkthrough and there's a whole part about getting a key for the crypt, yet I somehow didn't need it when I played... I looked it up on the internet and people seem to say you can only get the mummy death thing by "cheating," but I didn't use any debugging or anything, I just played it as normal. So I couldn't work that one out, no idea how I managed to skip getting the key part. With KQ overall, if someone asked me now if I would recommend the first four, I would probably just say go ahead and play them all, bearing in mind that KQ1 is a bit different from regular adventure games and that KQ3 has a crazy timer thing. In order of enjoyment I'd say KQ2 was the best, then KQ4, then maybe a tie between KQ1 and KQ3. I WAS going to play KQ5 and KQ6, both of which I played as a kid - I didn't ever finish KQ5 as a kid, but I got about halfway and I've seen someone else play through it all since then. I got 95% of the way through KQ6 as a kid, but then I got stuck and probably had some sort of dead end thing going on. I don't think I can face playing KQ5 again and I've done most of KQ6, so I think I'll move straight onto KQ7 now.

This update was amazing - there's so much in it that it's hard to even comment on because where do you start... I will say the best parts in particular for me were the videos where we got to see a few of the game locations in action. My favorite parts were: --Garage and Home Scene Elevator Test This really gave a good sense of the "fullness" of the locations and the detail and hopefully puts to rest some fears people might have from the demo scenes that there isn't going to be enough sort of organic-ness to the locations, as these had a really nice feel and seemed really fleshed out and reminiscent of the best Space Quest locations. The Mule delivering stuff in the garage was also cool because it had some unique interaction with the scene (besides characters walking about) and felt fully developed. --Rooter Repair scene I really liked the close-up scene in the demo of the area with the magazine and drill bits, etc. and this was along those lines too, I think these types of scenes are particularly well done from what we've seen so far. --Inside crane and crane area Even though parts of this were in incomplete stages, it was cool to see characters walking about in it and how far along the inside of the crane scene is too. --Taco Nova Excellent stuff, I immediately wanted to see the inside of Taco Nova as well!

Troels' new job: Spend hours trying to placate 3-4 unwaveringly pessimistic morons on a comments section no one else checks.

"The game sucked, but man, those updates... those updates. Wow. They were of the likes we'll never see again." "The game is the best I've ever played, but the lack of updates 6 months ago ruined the game for me completely." ^^ Two things no one will ever say.

I have a kind of love/hate thing with Mr. Bungle... I love the musicality and the oddness of the actual music, but I'm not so keen on the lyrics in general...

The metal I listen to is mainly from the late 80s and early 90s, though I was always a little bit more into grunge, mainly Alice in Chains and Soundgarden. Also loved Faith No More (again, probably not really out-and-out metal), and their Real Thing and Angel Dust albums and I like most of what Rage Against the Machine put out. Can we count Primus as metal? I love Primus too. Also I was a big, big fan of Tool, haven't listened to them in a while though. And Ugly Kid Joe and Green Jelly, though out of all these bands those might not stand up as well today. I've dipped in and out of the albums of a lot of the other major metal groups like Metallica, Helmet, Pantera, Megadeth, Anthrax, White Zombie, etc. and I like bits and pieces of all those groups without really consistently loving their stuff. I really like the first Black Sabbath album and some of the other pre-metal stuff, Deep Purple, etc. I also enjoy a little of the lighter side of metal too, some of the glam stuff, Alice Cooper, Cinderella, Guns N Roses, Skid Row, Saigon Kick, Tesla, etc. I never really got into any of the nu-metal stuff myself, though of course it was inescapable for a while there in the late 90s, early 2000s. I haven't really listened to any metal that's come out in the last 15 years or so. Also, my main musical love is hip-hop from 1986-1994, so metal has always been on the backburner a bit for me, I've never been able to devote the time to it that it deserves.

It's funny with parsers... I had played parser games as a kid, SQ, Police Quest, etc. and never had a problem with them, but then more recently when I thought about them, I assumed I liked point-n-click better and that parsers were a pain... This was one of the reasons I was hesitant to play the first four King's Quest games, as I had kind of convinced myself that parsers are a pain in the ass, having to write all the stuff in, do I really want to go back and play a parser game, etc. I kind of associated them with too much typing, having to guess too many words, having almost too many options to try, being too complex, etc. But when I went to play those early KQ games, I didn't even notice the parser... it was so intuitive and simple for the most part that I forgot about my whole prejudice against parsers almost immediately. Even when there was some word or word order I wasn't getting right, I didn't even really put that down to the parser systems fault really, I just put it down to the programmer not putting a few more words in it, rather than the actual parser function itself. So yeah, I guess what might happen with parsers is that people's idea of what they're like is different from what they're actually like, especially if they've never played a game with one in before, or if they haven't played one for a long time.

I'd love to know what you guys think happens if these handful of commenters on the kickstarter page don't get their updates and their "proof". What is the actual consequence? There isn't one. The Two Guys don't have to show anyone any "proof" or sway anyone's opinion. The kickstarter already got the money. I would agree with you guys if they were still trying to get the kickstarter funded, but at this point there is no bargaining power on the side of the commenters. The commenters can make a million comments on the kickstarter if they like, if that's how they want to spend their time. It's just shouting into the wind. People are acting like these few commenters are the CEOs and they have the power to shut down the project or something, and that they need some evidence of progress. They have no power, they can't do anything. The Two Guys should just get on with making the game at this point. Save "solid PR" for when the game comes out, not to placate a handful of commenters. The only thing that matters is bringing out a good game, and you don't do that by taking time out every five seconds to craft updates. I think stopping the updates was a great idea... most backers will just get on with their lives until there is something definite, like the finished game or whatever the Two Guys want to show. As much as I want to see stuff, it will be better if I don't see the entire game before it comes out.

"OMG, backers think there's no money left and that it's not coming out and that this is just like another game that also had problems, and, and..." ...and so what? It's cool if backers do get to see stuff, but if there are certain backers acting like knuckleheads and throwing their toys out of the pram and making all types of unwarranted gossipy assumptions, and "sky is falling" predictions based on nothing, then screw em, I don't really see why they have to be pandered to with carefully crafted updates... they don't have to see anything at all. Let them worry over nothing and get an ulcer if they like, what difference does it make? As long as a great game comes out at the end, that's all that matters. Intelligent people understand what the Two Guys and their associates are trying to do. It is noted and appreciated. The dummies of this world make the most noise and say things specifically to rile people up and get a reaction - don't let them dictate the course of the conversation.

I have finished King's Quest 3. Let us never speak of this game again. :mellow: Ok, I guess it did had some redeeming features, but my time spent with KQ3 was pretty horrific on numerous levels. I didn't think I was going to finish it, so I'm surprised I'm able to report back. So here's how it went for me: After doing some chores (yay), I went and got a lot of the items from down in the village place, but then of course I had taken too long out of the house, so I went back to the house and got killed... I then assumed that it was a case of restarting and getting all the things again, but slowly... getting some, coming back, hiding them, putting things back in its place, then getting some more items, etc. But, that was not enjoyable at all to me, it was like I was going to have to play through the same things a whole bunch of times before I get it "right" and get the timing down, then figure out even more things and then restart and get their timing right too. It seemed more like actual work than a game. I didn't want to do the "BYE BYE WIZARD" thing in the debug mode (I had to type in "rats ass" to get the debug mode by the way, Alt-D didn't work), because I didn't want to miss things from the game, so instead I put in the code "SLEEP WIZARD" which doesn't get rid of him, it just sends him to sleep, so then I could at least go do all the spells with all the stuff I had while he was asleep. Gathering the items was ok, nice enough adventure game type stuff, but I think because the designers knew the main thing was avoiding the wizard, the item-getting didn't feel that fleshed out in terms of puzzles. Onto the spells...zero fun. It's a nice enough idea, but there is so much text and so many spells that it felt like I had started a data entry job at a large corporation, where my only job was to input the KQ3 manual into my computer, with the added bonus that if I mess it up at all I get to start the spell over again. And some of the manual was wrong too. It was a pain and I never want to do it again. So I finally finish the spells, I give the wizard his porridge and sigh in relief that this part of the game is over and I can finally maybe just play the rest of the game out as "normal". But no... I hadn't counted on: "If the player waits too long after speaking to the Oracle, the pirate ship will set sail." So I was at a dead end, I'd done AAAALLL that stuff to get to that point, but it was unwinnable because I didn't realize the ship would sail. I was going to quit playing then because there was no way I was going redo all that stuff, the data entry job, etc. As a side note, I think these are one of the worst kind of deadends - at least normally you can go back and restore somewhere where you still had some of your stuff. With this game, you have to restore far back enough to when you were in a certain position AND had enough time left, so in the case of the pirates, I'd have to go way, way back and leave the Oracle thing until last or whatever. Also I think some of the timed things might be a lot less frustrating if they'd have at least had something like: "the wizard has gone out for a while, he's usually gone for about 25 mins or so" and "the pirates are probably gonna set sail in half an hour, so pick up the pace". BUT, instead of quitting, I checked the other debug codes to see if there was a way around this, and there kinda was... there is "PUT UP BOAT" and it starts you at the beginning of the boat journey with your stuff still intact (I didn't fancy teleporting at random until I ended up there). Phewf, so I could continue. I actually took a big break here because I couldn't face the rest of the game so soon... but once I did, the rest of the game was bizarrely easy for the most part and I finished it in about 45 mins. The couple of things I had a little trouble with were the spell that goes "Slumber, Henceforth!" It doesn't recognize the comma or the exclamation mark from the manual, BUT "slumber" has to have a capital "S"... nice and random. Then the other thing was that once you've effectively finished the game... "ROSELLA, GET THE FECK OUTTA MY WAY, I'M TRYING TO GET DOWN THE DAMN STAIRS!!!" What was all that about, why was she being such a pain? Anyway, I reasonably enjoyed the second half of the game, even though it felt kinda undercooked... very nice locations, but not a lot of puzzles. Could have done way more interesting things on the ship and in the mountains, etc. My main problem with the game is that to beat parts of it, you've basically got to waste huge stretches of your time/life doing things that aren't enjoyable, which is pretty unforgivable for a game, I feel. And normally you get to experience what it might be like to be an exciting explorer/adventurer... but this game brilliantly simulates what it would be like to be an evil wizard's embittered servant, which lo and behold, is not much fun. The overarching story is the only bit that I think improves on the previous games, but otherwise I much preferred KQ2's assortment of colorful characters and tasks, even if they were random. So now onto KQ4!

I only accept it as truly being Graham if it looks like this: Every other design is a needless aberration to me.

That all sounds very promising... My biggest concern now would be the level of the puzzles and them being too simple. I just hope they're not the kind where you need an apple, and there is an apple tree on the same screen and you just go over and pick one up, etc.

I did pretty much the exact same thing - started with that album, then began getting the rest... though I soon realized I'm more of a Captain Beefheart kinda guy, and his discography is easier to collect.

I love Day of the Tentacle, but I've found that I feel a bit "meh" about re-releases so far... It's either pretty much the exact same game just on a few of today's systems, or they change something minor (lighting in Grim Fandango) or they impose horrible new artwork onto the game (Monkey Island, etc.)

Yeah, I understand why they do it - they think they will get both the existing fans of the franchise, as well as appealing to fans of other games, so wins all round right? Well no, because you end up getting rid of the core fans and you also have to compete with bigger budgeted games for the fans of those other genres. The kickstarter ones already did well in the marketplace because the kickstarter IS the marketplace - that's the audience and they've already paid for the game. Double Fine got over $3 million... as long as they haven't been dummies and blown all that money on celebrity voice-overs and fancy animation, then they should be making a great profit on it. Anything they sell outside of that kickstarter audience should be a bonus if they've done the math correctly. Telltale is different again in that their biggest successes are not with existing adventure game brands, but with movie and TV brands. The turning point for them came when they did the Back to the Future game and then The Walking Dead - the brands sell the games. Put an official Walking Dead game out and it will sell simply because of the TV show's huuuuuge popularity, as long as the game isn't a total stinker. They've realized this is a winning formula now and that's why they've got Game of Thrones, etc. Is it a rebirth though if it's something unrecognizable as a King's Quest game, and is King's Quest in name alone? You could take Grand Theft Auto V, put the name "King's Quest" on it and voila, the King's Quest name is famous again... but for what? To make JUST the name famous again without any of the gameplay? The point of using an existing name like King's Quest is because it already has a fanbase. But the strategy then seems to be: screw the fanbase, we want a new, bigger fanbase for this franchise. Well then why use the name at all, seeing as you're starting your fanbase from scratch, just give it a new name. Imagine if Gears of War had come out and had been called Monkey Island... yay, Monkey Island is famous again! But it's not actually Monkey Island, so why bother? I think most adventure gamers are open to new things as part of the existing adventure game format... But the "rethinking" is almost never that - it's just changing the genre of the game to one that's more popular right now.

It's a weird thing they try to do with adventure game franchises... It's like buying Pizza Hut as a brand, but then only selling burgers... With the logic that they think kids today are too dumb to appreciate the complexity of pizzas. Or associating point-and-click with some mythical past world like, "people only liked that in the 90s", like some weird rare breed of people who were psychically in tune with point-and-click... No one ever goes, "oh, jumping, that went out in the late 80s with Mario, no one will buy a jumping game today," "shooting stuff is SO 1992 and went out with Wolfenstein, you think kids want to shoot stuff today? Get your head out the 90s." I just wish game makers had a bit of confidence in the format/genre, without switching the whole genre of the game. You don't see it with other types of games, you don't get a new Call of Duty where it's now a car racing game and there is no shooting and fans going, "I'm happy Call of Duty is branching out and being different, we can't expect it to be stuck in the past with all that shooting, car racing is what the kids want now." It also doesn't make any sense from a marketing angle either: You're supposedly making an adventure game, but you water down or almost completely remove the adventure game elements. So that's your core market gone - adventure gamers who actually recognize the franchise name, or new gamers who might be open to the idea of an adventure game. Those are out of the picture now. But here is the part that is even crazier: you then try to make a big action game with your minuscule adventure game budget. A game that will now have to compete in the same genre with games with huge budgets and massive teams with ginormous marketing pushes. So you leave the niche in which you could totally dominate for a mainstream arena that you don't have a chance in. What would get more of an audience is not trying to swap the existing audience for a different, larger audience (who everyone is trying to target already) by changing the type of game, but to grow the existing audience for adventure games by making a really good one.

But on the plus side, they did an awesome job of completely overhauling Grim Fandango for the remaster... New character models and animation, beautiful redrawn/rendered backgrounds, can switch between control systems, surround sound mix of the music, 16:9 aspect ratio... Joking... they just did new lighting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mi_uHSTbL6g

WHERE HAVE THE FRICKING PIRATES GONE, HOW COULD THEY HAVE SET SAIL WITHOUT ME??!! Arse.

I hate this wizard.

YYYYEEEESSSS, I JUST FINISHED THE ORIGINAL KQ2 AND IT WAS AMAZING!!!! Ok, maybe "amazing" is exaggerating a little, but I did enjoy it a lot. This might be due to a combination of things... --I liked the graphics and the locations and it had more characters and everything seemed a lot fuller and more colorful and interesting than the first KQ. I really liked the underwater area (even though most of it wasn't explorable) and the clifftop and how you went to an enchanted area, etc. --Also I had a better idea after playing the first KQ of what the deal was, like I knew some items were just treasure, and that if something has a word on it then you can just say that word (thanks to the bowl puzzle). --Miscellaneous stuff... the couple of adverts for SQ1 and KQ3 in there were great and also there were more save spaces in this one, which was handy. It was almost like the first KQ was a little test run for this game or an extended demo for it. This one also seemed more logical and thought-out with the puzzles, I felt the game was relatively fair with the puzzles, and so I was less inclined to look anything up (I find in general that I turn to walkthroughs more readily if a game has screwed me over several times with crazy logic... I then don't trust the game to be fair to me in future puzzles) I did have to check a couple of things out, they were sort of more game mechanic things than puzzle answers though... --I had read the inscription on the first door (with there being something to do with water), so I took this as just a hint and I couldn't be arsed to walk aaaaalll the way back to the beach, so I restored a previous game where I was at the beach already (I had all the same items, so I figured I didn't lose anything by doing this). That was a mistake, because reading the inscription is what actually triggers the mermaid to appear, so I was wandering around for ages looking for something that wasn't there. --I got the first key but then couldn't unlock the door... tried "key in door", "open door", "put key in keyhole" etc. etc. Turned out it was just "unlock door". Doh. The rest of it I completed fine, though I had already heard about not crossing the bridge too many times, so I avoided that pitfall. I didn't get full points... I assume there is something more complicated to do with the snake, but I just smashed that dude with the sword because why give me a sword if I'm not going to use it. Onwards to KQ3!

I heard that the trailer for SpaceVenture would either be attached to the Hobbit or would debut on TV during the Rebels mid-season finale...?

Also, how did the gnome manage to get through life with a name like "Ifnkovhgroghprm"? How is that even pronounced?

That's a key point about being able to finish the game without figuring out all the puzzles... Thinking about it now, I was definitely playing it with the underlying assumption that I HAD to to figure them all out to complete the game (as you would expect in later games), and that was probably the wrong way to go about playing KQ1. As you say, I was looking up solutions to puzzles that didn't even need to be completed in some cases, as I could have finished it without solving them. I just assumed that they all needed solving otherwise I wouldn't be able to progress to the next puzzle. I think coming to the game after having already played a whole bunch of later, more typical adventure games meant that I subconsciously brought those modes of thinking with me and applied them to everything, like, "I have a gold egg, now is there a particular situation that calls specifically for this item and its attributes of being an egg and gold" or things like where you need a helmet and you have a bucket, so you make a makeshift helmet from the bucket... Thinking like that probably made it more frustrating when it turned out the "answers" weren't really along those lines in many cases. And obviously when the game first came out, no one had any of those approaches built up in their minds already, so I'm guessing they could be more "open-minded" almost and would probably try things I didn't (like the jumping that you mentioned). Out of the puzzles I had issues with (gnome/bowl/bird), I think only the bird one is actually necessary to complete the game? I think I read the gnome one doesn't need to be answered correctly and I don't think you need the fiddle from the woodcutter (the clover keeps the leprechauns away and I don't think you need the sceptre to complete the game) so that would mean you don't need to complete the bowl puzzle. So from that perspective it does seem a lot better weighted in terms of difficulty if you know you don't HAVE to solve everything... It's almost like instead of having an easy/medium/hard difficulty setting at the beginning (like Nintendo games used to sometimes have), it's like the different difficulty settings are built directly into the game through the puzzles. That's really clever, though I can see the dangers of it (if it had been used in all the later games) - eg. a player might finish the game quickly the easiest way possible and then not really want to play it again, especially if they had already opening up all the areas of the game. In more regular adventure games opening up a new area to explore is almost a kind of reward for solving several relatively tough puzzles, so the KQ1 approach might not work as well in larger games. Having said that, some games could have definitely done with a couple more solutions to notoriously difficult puzzles... the skate-o-rama having just one more way to get past the police would have been good.