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Frede

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Everything posted by Frede

  1. But... there's a sketch in the corner that pretty much spells out what you have to do. Which arguably makes this puzzle even dumber. It's not even particularly challenging. It's just monkey see, monkey do. And don't even ask me why the sign of the cross grants access to something linked with the darkest and most ancient voudoun...
  2. Well, in all fairness, it is a catholic churchyard (isn't it?). As an atheist, the idea of a divine squirrel bothers me more. But I agree with you and Harlan. This addition adds nothing.
  3. I found that one pretty easy, though. But also a bit stupid in that whether you have access to the drawer is determined by your ability to do the sign of the cross. I agree - it's just not good enough.
  4. Okay, I've now tried using MUNT via the SVN Daum build of DOSBox to get MT-32 sound in GK1. That was... pretty easy, actually. Nowhere near as complex as I had feared. Now to wade through all my DOS games that come with DOSBox bundled and repeat the procedure... :)
  5. The Desktop Adventures were good games. Great, casual fun.
  6. Definitely grabbing Sam & Max. I can only hope Day of the Tentacle is also released there some day. I wouldn't mind getting Dark Forces either.
  7. OHMYGODYES, please let this be true! I'll pay good money for these games!
  8. Has it been a year already? Damn. Feels like yesterday Troels asked me to wing something about the AdLib VS the MT-32. He didn't know exactly what, because he had no idea how the format was gonna be yet. What a difference a year makes!
  9. That sounds really cool! I'll consider that; Interceptor's offices are about an hour and a half away from the city I live in. Thanks for the tip :)
  10. Indeed. You'd have to wait for a pretty spectacular GOG sale to mnatch 3D Realms' price tag, though. That said, I did own some of these games, and am aware I could've bought them on GOG or Steam, but DRM-free Keen and Wolfenstein kinda sealed the deal for me. It's always nice when the studios actually care, instead of just slapping a semi-working port onto Steam. Seems appropriate to add a little heads-up: if you buy this and you've already got Duke Nukem II via GOG, though, you may want to keep that version installed; the version 3D Realms are offering is, sadly, the edited one where Duke wears sunglasses...
  11. It's been a couple of days, but considering many (all?) of us are into retro gaming in general, this may interest you: http://3drealms.com/news/3d_realms-is-back/. Yes, like Sierra, 3D Realms is officially back in business. But unlike the former re-branding, the new 3DR has a few of the old alumni on-board. Plus, they're owned by the Danish company Interceptor Entertainment, which I obviously think is insanely cool, and I'm not a patriot in the slightest. Many of the games published or developed by Apogee/3D Realms were main fixtures of my childhood, so it's nice to see the company going back into business with a bang. Many of these games are obviously available elsewhere, but to my knowledge, this is the only DRM-free download of games like Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen 1-5 out there. I also think the $19.99 they're currently selling this pack for is a very reasonable price. You even get a cool little album of "re-rockestrated" music from a few of the games. So, there you have it. If you know these games, you already know why this is likely gonna be the best way you can spend 20 bucks. If you don't, you owe yourself to find out!
  12. That's brilliant! Especially given Trent Reznor's height! :D
  13. But it's not even her own shower! If you make her carry around anti-slip mats to use in random motels, the "Psycho" title suddenly refers to someone other than Mr. Bates. As far as I'm considered, you didn't exactly refute it. You merely pointed out that Roberta wasn't as insane around the KQ1SCI time as she was when KQ5 happened a short time later ;) I do agree with you and Collector that hours of fun can be had by falling out of that tree, though, speaking of "Psycho"!
  14. I agree to a certain extent. But if Hitchcock had worked with death the way Sierra often did, Janet Leigh would just have tripped and hit her head in the shower. Jane Jensen tended to do death the right way. In KQ6, GK1 and GK2, death always adds to the tension and never feels totally unfair the way King Graham's fabulous five-inch falls do.
  15. Not until the admin takes a vacation.
  16. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOs4vsthLD0
  17. Someone tried to track down Ray Trace once, but he's a shady fellow.
  18. The "puzzle" probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact that the cash register in St. George's books is said to contain about $20 worth of change that Gabriel cannot pick up. A couple of millions worth of blood money, giving away a $20 gift certificate (seriously, what is it with Jane and her 20 bucks?) and stealing from the dead? All peachy. But using your own revenue to help you save the world from the clutches of evil? No way. Someone needs to introduce Jane and her team to Occam's Razor; if I need $20 and the cash register miraculously contains $20, then the game better allow me to pick up the $20 without throwing divine critters at me. Of course, I wasn't aware that Activision had Phoenix on a leash to that extent, so I guess it makes sense that the game had to come out now. Okay, that makes me a bit more forgiving, but I still think Phoenix are repeating a few too many old mistakes.
  19. Gabriel Knight is a sexist asshole, and I think it's fair enough if some people can't see past that. I think it makes him endearing, and the other characters often get to one-up him, making him the butt of a lot of jokes. It makes the outcome of his romance with Malia all the more heartbreaking and it paves the way for a series-wide character arc. He's a lot mellower in The Beast Within as a result of his experiences in the previous game. As opposed to someone like King Graham who's essentially a walking cardboard cutout throughout the King's Quest series. I don't think it has anything to do with "progressiveness". Seems that some people just don't like human ugliness in their games. I completed the game yesterday. I'm not gonna write a long-winded review, but here's my personal low-down: Pros: The cutscenes are brilliant. Especially the new cutscene in the police station, as well as the way the ending plays out. The music is (mostly) great; there are still some cues that sound like overcompressed crap (listen to the way the drums drown out everything in the Gedde Mansion theme), but there are fewer of them than there was on the pre-release soundtrack. The new take on the Voodoo Museum cue is awesome. The animations are much, much better than Moebius. I'm so happy Phoenix are finally using motion capture. No more drunk hunchbacks! The new voices are surprisingly good, with the lone exception of Wolfgang Ritter whose accent is a Frankensteinian mess of German and American accents. It didn't take long before I had gotten over the loss of Curry, Hammill, Remini and Dorn. In fact, the actor playing Dr. John manages outstage Michael Dorn, in my opinion. The remake sometimes manages to outcreep the original. The rope-skipping girls outside the police station freaked me out and Hartridge's dead body looks a tad grislier to me. I wish Phoenix had let the horror element shine a bit more, cause when they have the balls to do so, they pull it off better than I expected. I love that Gerde, Schloss Ritter and Rittersberg have been retconned to match the more realistic way they're handled in the sequel. No more Disney castles, nor snowfall in June. And Gerde is confirmed to consume food other than a truckload of potatoes. Cons: The vase-busting cemetery squirrel, Sam's advertising campaign, the Ask-the-Loa machine and the Ritter crest slider puzzle are all - to be frank - moronic additions. The new stuff should have been optional. The former two could have been written by Roberta Williams in her overrated, Cheese Machine-writing "prime" and the two latter, while being relatively easy to solve, don't fit into the narrative at all. The only positive thing is that the first one allows Willy Walker to be even more of an asshole. "I said $120, m'sieur." That made me laugh. The game is still buggy as hell. Now that I've finished it, I feel that my rage against Phoenix was way over-the-top, but it still kinda tarnishes their reputation to me. Why not wait 1-2 months longer before releasing it? Big Finish pulled it off and I'm sure that time helped them make Tesla Effect more stable. It amazes me that the QA team weren't able to find the Moseley's wallet bug on their own and it gives me the (wrongful, I hope) impression that the testers frankly aren't very good at their job. The graphics are rather good most of the time, but sometimes, they also drop the ball. Like Richard Corbett mentioned in his review, some of the gritty locations in the original game are now clean as a whistle. Not the biggest of problems for me, but the graphics often just aren't as atmospheric. Some screens, like the Dixieland Drugstore, are welcome exceptions. Ultimately, while I think the cons are pretty big, I feel there are more pros to this game. I do recommend that fans of the original play it, and I hope we might see a re-adaption (rather than a 1:1 remake) of The Beast Within some day, if not a Gabriel Knight 4.
  20. Holy shit, I didn't know he'd actually gone to those lengths. Surely that's a breach of contract? I feel tempted to share the copy that was... ahem... graciously bestowed upon me by one of the people who actually contributed positively to the game when I stated that I'd never played it because I refused to give Paul any money.
  21. Aaand the game has now reached an unwinnable state as I have run into this bug. It has apparently been patched, which I am happy to hear, but I still can't continue till the patch is rolled out to GOG.com users :( EDIT: I tried pulling the trick suggested in the same thread and that did the trick. Still one hell of an ugly bug; I'm glad Phoenix have been so swift to fix some of the most glaring issues with the game.
  22. The Klorox II sequence is definitely a great little piece of sci-fi horror. And the same music lends an equally foreboding atmosphere to the early scenes on Thrakus.
  23. Mother Mary and Joseph! I just laughed out loud at that. That is brilliant. I'd heard about it, but I've never seen it until now. That face is some twisted shit for sure. I don't know if it's "scary" as such, but the alternate Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers ending which plays out if you forget to summon Mosely to the voodoo hounfour is incredibly disturbing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hoVRI1MG4I. Dr. John practically bashes Grace's skull in. This was the first ending I got when I played the game, and I don't think I'm alone in that regard. It's really easy to get to the hounfour without alerting Mosely. Something is just off about the way this version of the scene plays out. The game has some pretty grim moments, but few of them compare to DJ destroying Grace's head with one single punch. And that relentless chanting... And, of course, when speaking about Gabriel Knight, there's no ignoring this classic moment from The Beast Within: http://youtu.be/i-Gis_JqFRU?t=9m57s In the third place, from the beginning of Police Quest 4, we have the most depressing dumpster of all time, coupled with the very effective sound of an AdLib card throwing up: http://youtu.be/U-G7C48efH0?t=5m38s. Yeah, now that you mention it, Sierra did have some truly scary/disturbing moments. Looking forward to the ensuing discussion :D EDIT: I have decided to change my avatar so you can all get to enjoy it several times a day, and my signature because I thought it was a nice fit. Enjoy.
  24. Stuff like that also gets me riled up. Again, you can almost hear someone go "Pah, no one will notice." Trouble is that the adventure game community is arguably one of the most anal ones out there. Of course we're gonna notice; the games we play require us to notice because shitty German grammar could easily be a story clue.
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