SOMI:SE Minor irritations
OK, since I already decided to take another look at Steam I thought that would be a good time to pick up SOMI:SE (actually I was hoping that SOMI:SE would be delivered via Steam, but not use Steam's DRM: Sadly they do).
The game is as good as it always was but there are some minor irritations that I think are thoroughly unnecessary. I won't talk about the style they chose for the graphics, because that has been discussed enough.
What irritations did you encounter?
For me most are interface related:
Cursor movement
The always-visible cursor that only turns the tip when you get near the screen border is a nice idea, but when you actually use it you realize that it just doesn't work. You focus on the big circle and wonder why it appears have a live of its own instead of following your directions. Static cursers may be oldfashioned, but they work much more predictable.
Verb selection
I know that you can't let XBOX users travel all the way across the screen just to select a verb, so I understand the decission to use Sam & Max style controls with cycable verbs. The thing is, if you want to do that you can't just put all the verb actions in there. That's as if they had put all verbs that textadventures understand into MI. You have to reduce the number, otherwise people will have to cycle through actions for so long that they'll forget what they wanted to do.
Matching animation speed.
This is not a problem that you'll find only in SOMI:SE, but here it's particular visible. When you decide on a framerate for animation, you should stick to it all through the game. Moving a 5fps animation over the screen at 50fps will at best make the walking animation unbelievable and in the worst case make the animation totally detached from the background.
Do you have similar issues?
The game is as good as it always was but there are some minor irritations that I think are thoroughly unnecessary. I won't talk about the style they chose for the graphics, because that has been discussed enough.
What irritations did you encounter?
For me most are interface related:
Cursor movement
The always-visible cursor that only turns the tip when you get near the screen border is a nice idea, but when you actually use it you realize that it just doesn't work. You focus on the big circle and wonder why it appears have a live of its own instead of following your directions. Static cursers may be oldfashioned, but they work much more predictable.
Verb selection
I know that you can't let XBOX users travel all the way across the screen just to select a verb, so I understand the decission to use Sam & Max style controls with cycable verbs. The thing is, if you want to do that you can't just put all the verb actions in there. That's as if they had put all verbs that textadventures understand into MI. You have to reduce the number, otherwise people will have to cycle through actions for so long that they'll forget what they wanted to do.
Matching animation speed.
This is not a problem that you'll find only in SOMI:SE, but here it's particular visible. When you decide on a framerate for animation, you should stick to it all through the game. Moving a 5fps animation over the screen at 50fps will at best make the walking animation unbelievable and in the worst case make the animation totally detached from the background.
Do you have similar issues?
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Comments
I'd be happier with the old graphics with the new sounds and voice acting.
I read that it's possible to switch to the old graphics. They will probably look much worse in high resolutions because it was 320x200.
Edit: I see, you can't have it that way as it looks from a youtube video. That's sad.
You can switch but the voice-acting and new music go away.
It doesn't mimic the old game, it is the old game. They've revamped the SCUMM engine and put the new graphics on top, but the actual game code (SCUMM script) is supposed to be the same. When I played it I found that it was word for word, item for item, screen for screen identical.
SOMI:SE is a dot.net application, so it needs a little more processing power than a normal game, but not that much. The graphics are rendered entirely by the GPU, so that doesn't take up much CPU power either.
Haven't had much problem with it. I'm playing on PC though not XBOX, it's probably easier to manage the cursor with a mouse.
The idea was to faithfully recreate the original, not redesign it. Changing the verbs would have been a departure from the original, including having to change puzzle solutions to some extent.
But I agree selecting verbs can be bothersome. On PC, you can scroll the mousewheel to change the verb selection but I haven't been able to get used to it.
Yeah... SOMI:SE could be subtitled "Monkey Island On Ice!" This had something to do with limitations on the old SCUMM engine I think. They could have dug into the SCUMM code to allow them more fluid character animations... but oh well. I haven't been too bothered by this really.
I've only looked at the data so far and for that it really only mimics the old game. All music from MI1 has been recorded into WMA files, all images have been converted to DXT5 and are rendered through your 3D accelerator.
Maybe the game logic is identical (although I'm not so sure about that either), but for everything else it really just mimics MI1.
There is a way to bring up all verbs in a table, but i don't understand what he say's how to bring it up.
Inventory Video
To me it sound's like "press the left sugar"???
The new verb interface has been annoying to me, however I've found a relatively usable solution (on PC) - most verbs are hotkeyed to the first letter. So for example, type "G" to activate "Give", "P" for "Pick up", "U" for "Use", etc. This saves a lot of time. Overall though, I really dislike not having the verbs readily accessable and ESPECIALLY the inventory. Trying to use verbs *on* an inventory item is particularly annoying.
But at least they mapped some of them to the Right Mouse Button. Look and in the case of doors, Open (or Close) saves a lot of time.
Then they'd have to mimic the old interface as well. In its current form it's really quite annoying. Pressing "Ctrl" is a workaround at best because they too realized that it doesn't work.
Me neither.
Press the left control key.
Wow, that sounds inconvenient.
- can't skip dialogue lines.
- font looks kind of wrong.
- the cursor is annoying. A simple "X" works better.
- LeChuck's design doesn't really work for me.
- animation problems. Also, Guybrush moves too slow.
- current controls and interface make no freaking sense.
- lack of voice and/or music options for the old game.
- unanimated portaits. They don't even move their lips.
- they could have given portaits to every character. I know it wasn't in the old game, but the world won't end if someone draws a few more screens.
- the graphic sometimes is awsome and other times sucks big time. For example, the archway at "lookout point" is very sloppy and flat. It was the first screen I saw and it kinda bothered me.
Also, I think they took out Ctrl-Shift-W. I tried to do it to no avail
If they didn't do it this way the ability to press F10 and be at exactly the same point in the old game would not have worked. Yet if they didn't include it yet more people would complain. You can't please everyone.
They didn't in the original, and as I explained, it's kept the same so you can swap between versions.
You can press "return" (what logic is that? return to skip? period ftw!!!
also i have a problem with the dialogs anyhow... seems like you have to click right under your selection in the new version... press F10 you can klick anywhere on the text and guybrush will say it... is this realy so difficult to do right?...
voices and music rocks ^^ ... with the old graphics it would be godlike ^^
About skipping speech. Sometimes Enter works, sometimes backspace. Sometimes neither. Pretty messy if you ask me.
Well, you could add additional frames. You would have to duplicate frames in the original, but it's entirely possible. They just didn't want to do it. Either because they wanted to save money (and they reasoned everyone would argue like that anyway) or because they felt that the framerate was an integral part of the old game and they didn't want to disturb users by adding more. It's fine with me, really, if they hadn't decided to do movement and effects at the maximum framerate.
As far as i'm concerned, the soundtrack was the only thing that interested me (don't get me wrong : i'm glad they re released it, and the reworking will obviously help in attracting new players, which is a GREAT thing for adventure gaming as a whole. Now i just don't care about pixelated screens, and i'm not so pleased with the art style they chose.. so basically, since i own the old one, no point for me in getting it).
Not saying this because of what I wanted out of this, but it seems obvious than the more "features" the more likely they were to please everyone...
It WAS pretty clever of them to leave the possibility to play the original instead of JUST redoing it, but being able to add the sound to this version as well would have been way cooler IMO.
The no lip synch on the closeups was a little lazy as well. They totally could have done that but meh, doesn't bother me too much.
Guybrush's hair.. oh good god.. it's horrid.
and Elaine almost has a mono brow hahaha hahaha. ahem.
Estevan's face in general... I was like 0_0 WHAT THE HELL!? He looks like he got his face stuck in an industrial press or something. It's squished and pointy.
But overall, it was pretty cool to see how close to the original a lot of the backgrounds were for instance.
Im very grateful that Launch of the Screaming Narwahl turned out to be a great game, so I didn´t need to be angry at two Monkey Island-games at once.
THAT's the way they should have released it :eek:
The game is obviously designed for the 360 more than PC. Also it has cool achievements. If you have the option, then get it on 360.
One thing that bothered me was that they seemed to have missed some animation out. Look at the candles in the church and the fire in meathooks as examples where it used to be animated, but now isn't!