Oh please. Like this has anything to do with what I said.
Invention, in this case, is making logical conundrums that are topologically different. Anyone who's dabbled just a tad with mathematics, game mechanics or puzzles know that essentially, most of what is produced is very similar in how it functions, if you look at it in a more abstract fashion. Puzzles generally aren't inventive, at all; and they pretty much can't be, unless they're made a lot more advanced.
This has nothing to do with how gaming as a whole is bad, the strawman-argument of me "settling for less" or whatever you're blabbering on about. This has to do with how designing good games aren't about just sitting down "being innovative", but about making sure the game ends up as a work that feels whole and autonomous. The design process isn't just arbitrary throwing together "innovative" stuff. You've got to take into account if the puzzle elements fits into the story, the feel of the game, if you can incorporate (or even use existing) premises of the setting or artwork, if the puzzle fits the humour or the atmosphere, or even the pacing.
You act as if similar puzzles is some kind of key indicator of gaming quality in general. Of course it isn't. Yes, gaming is in shambles right now, but that has nothing — at all — to do with how classic puzzles are used in puzzle games like Professor Layton or Puzzle Agent. I can tell you that right now, even without knowing anything about the puzzles in PA. So, let's just wait and see how the puzzles incorporate into the game, and don't get our panties in a twist just because some simpleton over at Joystiq can't think outside of comparisons.
Goddammit. I had a really long reply and Telltale's forums just lost it all. This is the second time in a few days.
Whatever. The general gist was:
1) You're taking my comments too personally. We're having an intelligent conversation, so I don't know that there's a need to. I never meant for my comments to reflect all of gaming (though innovation is not limited to just puzzles). They were only meant to reflect what *I* want out of *puzzle* games. There is absolutely a market for familiarity, but it's not personally what I want, because I play puzzle games to think. With Telltale Games, the story and atmosphere are always key ingredients, but part of it has to be the satisfaction of solving the puzzles, and if I know the answer after a cursory glance because I've seen the puzzle before, I didn't solve anything. I pretty much answered a trivia question.
2) You're 90% right about abstraction. Most puzzles *are* just different takes on the same puzzle. What we consider to be innovation is often just smoke and mirrors, and if my mind is fooled into thinking what I'm seeing is new, then what's the difference? However, even a slight change to the given rules of a puzzle is enough to provide a whole new experience. Do you know how many variations on Sudoku there are? Dozens. And most of them are more interesting than the original.
I do think we do have to leave a little room for the truly new, hence the 90%. If I've already seen some form of every puzzle that will ever be, I'll be depressed.
But let's take the sock puzzle for a moment. My main beef is that there IS no abstraction. They could have gotten rid of the socks and kept the main probability mechanism, and then at the very least I would have had to read the puzzle and say "Hey, this is kinda like that sock problem!" If there is no abstraction, that means that the puzzle had to have come first, and that means it had to be shoehorned (sockhorned?) into the story. I can't tell without playing the game whether that was done well or not.
Anyway, I'll stop ragging on a game I haven't played. Just realize I don't think the gaming industry will implode because of its misuse of puzzles. I didn't throw Red Dead Redemption into the trash because of its lack of puzzles. I know there are people out there who called Red Dead Redemption derivative of Grand Theft Auto (Grand Theft Horse), but I think most would agree that it's abstraction on the main concept in its story, atmosphere, and gameplay was enough to make it a great game.
Yep. But there are none that don't like Mint Chocolate Chip. (Hehe. Just kidding, but until stuff like Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough came out, it seemed like it was always the first ice-cream to run out first.)
That was a much better review for three reasons
1) He didn't go on about Professor Layton
2) He actually mentioned Grinkle and that the game was made with Grinkle fans in mind
3) He gave a much better image of what to expect from bove the gameplay and story
That was a much better review for three reasons
1) He didn't go on about Professor Layton
2) He actually mentioned Grinkle and that the game was made with Grinkle fans in mind
3) He gave a much better image of what to expect from bove the gameplay and story
Fixed. At least I assume that's what you mean, as I saw no mention of it.
That was a much better review for three reasons
1) He did go on about Professor Layton
2) He actually mentioned Grickle and that the game was made with Grickle fans in mind
3) He gave a much better image of what to expect from bove the gameplay and story
That was a much better review for three reasons
1) He didn't go on about Professor Layton
2) He actually mentioned Grinkle and that the game was made with Grinkle fans in mind
3) He gave a much better image of what to expect from bove the gameplay and story
Example A. I'd list more, but I don't want to spend the time necessary when I need to be getting ready for my flight tomorrow afternoon.
HOW DARE THEY RIP OFF PROFESSOR LAYTON. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE. THEY- what's that? Dr. Brain came out 17 years before Layton?
Ah.
Well then.
Clearly there's a connection in The Time Warp of Dr. Brain, wherein he traveled forward in time to rip off Professor Layton. Professor Layton invented hints after all.
I'd give the game a 6 or 7. Promising but lots of room for improvement. I think I remember seeing a spelling error in one of the text bubbles, which made me chuckle.
Now that I've actually had a chance to play the game, I can actually speak to the quality of the puzzles...
...and it turns out most of my fears about unabstracted chestnut puzzles were unfounded. There were a lot of quality puzzles, I had to put my mind to work often, and even the puzzles that I had seen before were presented in such a way to make them at least slightly interesting again. For example, I knew the Moose Ear Sign puzzle answer after 5 seconds, but it still had a neat, obscuring presentation.
The sock puzzle, though, remains my least favorite because (as stated before I played the game) it doesn't present itself in an original way at ALL, nor does it even try to connect itself to the plot. I can't remember for sure, but I don't even think the character picking out socks is the same character that you get the puzzle from.
Did I have any other problems with the puzzles? Just minor quibbles...as stated in other threads, a few puzzles were a bit ambiguous. The main offender was the puzzle in the alley where you had to guide the stream. I ran into the same problem that everyone else ran into: I assumed that you didn't need to fill every outlined square.
Also, this isn't really a problem with the *game* per se, but I am a lover of puzzles like Sudoku, Nurikabe, Slither Link, etc...logic puzzles with one unique solution. The benefit of such puzzles is that, when you're right, you know you're right. Several of the puzzles in Puzzle Agent were of the type "Find the minimum solution" which are all well and good, but it's pretty darn hard to prove that the solution you have is the minimum one. It's leads to moments of trepidation, your hand hovering over the submit button unsure of whether you should press.
A good puzzle, to me, gives you a feeling of satisfaction because you know you've solved it. A "minimum solution" puzzle *might* provide satisfaction, but for me they primarily either provide worry and then disappointment, or worry and then relief.
Overall, great game, and the puzzles were significantly better than I feared.
Lordkinbote, did you know the answer to the moose ear sign puzzle from "The Simpsons"? Who else other than me instantly remembered that episode where Lisa can't figure out the puzzle so she thinks she is dumb?
Lordkinbote, did you know the answer to the moose ear sign puzzle from "The Simpsons"? Who else other than me instantly remembered that episode where Lisa can't figure out the puzzle so she thinks she is dumb?
I totally know what you're talking about, but I've seen it so many times other than in that episode that it didn't cross my mind. I like to give it to my math students when we're studying patterns.
Lordkinbote, did you know the answer to the moose ear sign puzzle from "The Simpsons"? Who else other than me instantly remembered that episode where Lisa can't figure out the puzzle so she thinks she is dumb?
No wonder it's a bad review. It's Justin. He's like the worst writer for that site.[Removed my incorrect comment here. He's their podcast guy. There was another Justin they hired during E3 who messed up big] @Yare
That's because when a game makes a genre well known everyone acts like it invinted it. People tell me CoD invented modern combat games. (I wrote a longer [and better]response but my laptop's mouse pad glitched and when typing it refreshed the page.) People were constantly telling me Brutal Legend was a copy of Dynasty warriors (don't know why). Or everytime I play 3D Dot Game Heroes people always say "HOW DID NINTENDO NOT SUE THEM?! THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO GO OUT OF BUISNESS!" and such, despite them not even playing the game. Or how a lot of people(from personal experience) act like FF invented RPGs. Everytime I play an SMT game it gets called an FF clone and that the company (once again) needs to go out of buisness. Except Nocturne and Devil Summoner. Which those get called Pokemonclones (despite them doing that since SMT and MT games on the NES).
Lordkinbote, did you know the answer to the moose ear sign puzzle from "The Simpsons"? Who else other than me instantly remembered that episode where Lisa can't figure out the puzzle so she thinks she is dumb?
No wonder it's a bad review. It's Justin. He's like the worst writer for that site. He even said some pretty negative things about Sony's, Nintendo's, EA's, and Ubi's E3.(Even his interviews were so bad that they had to have someone re-interview Miyamoto due to him pissing off half of joystiq for such a terrible interview)
@Yare
That's because when a game makes a genre well known everyone acts like it invinted it. People tell me CoD invented modern combat games. (I wrote a longer [and better]response but my laptop's mouse pad glitched and when typing it refreshed the page.) People were constantly telling me Brutal Legend was a copy of Dynasty warriors (don't know why). Or everytime I play 3D Dot Game Heroes people always say "HOW DID NINTENDO NOT SUE THEM?! THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO GO OUT OF BUISNESS!" and such, despite them not even playing the game. Or how a lot of people(from personal experience) act like FF invented RPGs. Everytime I play an SMT game it gets called an FF clone and that the company (once again) needs to go out of buisness. Except Nocturne and Devil Summoner. Which those get called Pokemonclones (despite them doing that since SMT and MT games on the NES).
SMT= Shin Megami Tensei
MT= Megami Tensei
Persona 4 = Greatest JRPG ever created. Nuff said.
Persona 4 = Greatest JRPG ever created. Nuff said.
Not to sound like the cool hip guy orwhatever. But my first one played was Nocturne then DDS before Persona was made an SMT game. I remember when 3 came out and I was like "Why's it an SMT now?"
Granted I do own all SMT games on the PS2 and DS. Currently trying to get the rest of them(PS one, Saturn, GBC, and down).
I've yet to play P4 (Trying to finish up The Answer for 3 but just grinded out, plus everytime I play my brother does nothing but try to make fun of the game and talk about how they need to be sued since they're shooting themselves in the head and how it can affect children, and blah blah blah. Which I always want to call him a hypocrit because he always badmouth's retarded lawsuits such as that.) but I like DDS better then P3, and not due to the if your leader dies it's game over, or uncontrollable party, just felt DDS was better.
Not to sound like the cool hip guy orwhatever. But my first one played was Nocturne then DDS before Persona was made an SMT game. I remember when 3 came out and I was like "Why's it an SMT now?"
Granted I do own all SMT games on the PS2 and DS. Currently trying to get the rest of them(PS one, Saturn, GBC, and down).
I've yet to play P4 (Trying to finish up The Answer for 3 but just grinded out, plus everytime I play my brother does nothing but try to make fun of the game and talk about how they need to be sued since they're shooting themselves in the head and how it can affect children, and blah blah blah. Which I always want to call him a hypocrit because he always badmouth's retarded lawsuits such as that.) but I like DDS better then P3, and not due to the if your leader dies it's game over, or uncontrollable party, just felt DDS was better.
P4 is significantly better than Persona 3. A lot of grievances are fixed, combat is better and you can control your entire party. The plot is also a lot better, it even explains all the loop holes in a bonus chapter. The characters also have better voice actors and are a lot more likeable.
And no shitty "Oh, you died at the end" ending. Which makes the game infinitely better than the shite ending of 3. I didn't play FES though, but read the summary online.
Apparently the main dude IS ressurected, it's hinted at in a social link (that I didn't do, read online) in P4.
Way to spoil some of P3 there.
And I love P3 and feel it has good voice acting and a nice story.
P3 is nice, it had some problems since the people were AI controlled but it was a great game with a good story. And the ending to P3 I felt was great. Granted, now if people here are playing through P3 or planned to or whatever you did just ruin the ending, which is something to have avoided. And to ruinP4 for me aswell.
Why thank you. Who wants to waste time on playing good games anyways right?
If you haven't played a 4 year old PS2 game by now, you wouldn't be playing it in the future. The only way to buy it is to get it second hand online.
I didn't even spoil anything anyway. The entire game goes on about "Memento Mori" and "Remember that one day, you will die" from the opening cutscene, so it was hardly surprising.
Comments
Goddammit. I had a really long reply and Telltale's forums just lost it all. This is the second time in a few days.
Whatever. The general gist was:
1) You're taking my comments too personally. We're having an intelligent conversation, so I don't know that there's a need to. I never meant for my comments to reflect all of gaming (though innovation is not limited to just puzzles). They were only meant to reflect what *I* want out of *puzzle* games. There is absolutely a market for familiarity, but it's not personally what I want, because I play puzzle games to think. With Telltale Games, the story and atmosphere are always key ingredients, but part of it has to be the satisfaction of solving the puzzles, and if I know the answer after a cursory glance because I've seen the puzzle before, I didn't solve anything. I pretty much answered a trivia question.
2) You're 90% right about abstraction. Most puzzles *are* just different takes on the same puzzle. What we consider to be innovation is often just smoke and mirrors, and if my mind is fooled into thinking what I'm seeing is new, then what's the difference? However, even a slight change to the given rules of a puzzle is enough to provide a whole new experience. Do you know how many variations on Sudoku there are? Dozens. And most of them are more interesting than the original.
I do think we do have to leave a little room for the truly new, hence the 90%. If I've already seen some form of every puzzle that will ever be, I'll be depressed.
But let's take the sock puzzle for a moment. My main beef is that there IS no abstraction. They could have gotten rid of the socks and kept the main probability mechanism, and then at the very least I would have had to read the puzzle and say "Hey, this is kinda like that sock problem!" If there is no abstraction, that means that the puzzle had to have come first, and that means it had to be shoehorned (sockhorned?) into the story. I can't tell without playing the game whether that was done well or not.
Anyway, I'll stop ragging on a game I haven't played. Just realize I don't think the gaming industry will implode because of its misuse of puzzles. I didn't throw Red Dead Redemption into the trash because of its lack of puzzles. I know there are people out there who called Red Dead Redemption derivative of Grand Theft Auto (Grand Theft Horse), but I think most would agree that it's abstraction on the main concept in its story, atmosphere, and gameplay was enough to make it a great game.
You mean there really exist people who don't like peppermint ice cream?
1) He didn't go on about Professor Layton
2) He actually mentioned Grinkle and that the game was made with Grinkle fans in mind
3) He gave a much better image of what to expect from bove the gameplay and story
Fixed. At least I assume that's what you mean, as I saw no mention of it.
Me? I won? Really?
You wrote it? well it is a bit shoddy, and beating Joystiq isnt that much of an accomplishment.
Oh sure. It's shoddy when I wrote it! :P
Well duh, it's you. i'm not expecting much from you anyway
Well you burnt my toast!
Will people quit calling it 'Grinkle' already?!
It's GRICKLE. Geez.
Uhh... I don't think anyone has.
Example A. I'd list more, but I don't want to spend the time necessary when I need to be getting ready for my flight tomorrow afternoon.
This series is one of the main reasons I tended toward math/logic/programming growing up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_of_Dr._Brain
HOW DARE THEY RIP OFF PROFESSOR LAYTON. THIS IS AN OUTRAGE. THEY- what's that? Dr. Brain came out 17 years before Layton?
Ah.
Well then.
http://www.culturalzest.com/2010/06/30/review-nelson-tethers-puzzle-agent/
It's not my fault I can't spell... well it is but.. SHUT UP!!!
...and it turns out most of my fears about unabstracted chestnut puzzles were unfounded. There were a lot of quality puzzles, I had to put my mind to work often, and even the puzzles that I had seen before were presented in such a way to make them at least slightly interesting again. For example, I knew the Moose Ear Sign puzzle answer after 5 seconds, but it still had a neat, obscuring presentation.
The sock puzzle, though, remains my least favorite because (as stated before I played the game) it doesn't present itself in an original way at ALL, nor does it even try to connect itself to the plot. I can't remember for sure, but I don't even think the character picking out socks is the same character that you get the puzzle from.
Did I have any other problems with the puzzles? Just minor quibbles...as stated in other threads, a few puzzles were a bit ambiguous. The main offender was the puzzle in the alley where you had to guide the stream. I ran into the same problem that everyone else ran into: I assumed that you didn't need to fill every outlined square.
Also, this isn't really a problem with the *game* per se, but I am a lover of puzzles like Sudoku, Nurikabe, Slither Link, etc...logic puzzles with one unique solution. The benefit of such puzzles is that, when you're right, you know you're right. Several of the puzzles in Puzzle Agent were of the type "Find the minimum solution" which are all well and good, but it's pretty darn hard to prove that the solution you have is the minimum one. It's leads to moments of trepidation, your hand hovering over the submit button unsure of whether you should press.
A good puzzle, to me, gives you a feeling of satisfaction because you know you've solved it. A "minimum solution" puzzle *might* provide satisfaction, but for me they primarily either provide worry and then disappointment, or worry and then relief.
Overall, great game, and the puzzles were significantly better than I feared.
I totally know what you're talking about, but I've seen it so many times other than in that episode that it didn't cross my mind. I like to give it to my math students when we're studying patterns.
The Island of Dr. Brain was a favorite for me. Programming the robot was so much fun back then.
Right here.
@Yare
That's because when a game makes a genre well known everyone acts like it invinted it. People tell me CoD invented modern combat games. (I wrote a longer [and better]response but my laptop's mouse pad glitched and when typing it refreshed the page.) People were constantly telling me Brutal Legend was a copy of Dynasty warriors (don't know why). Or everytime I play 3D Dot Game Heroes people always say "HOW DID NINTENDO NOT SUE THEM?! THIS COMPANY NEEDS TO GO OUT OF BUISNESS!" and such, despite them not even playing the game. Or how a lot of people(from personal experience) act like FF invented RPGs. Everytime I play an SMT game it gets called an FF clone and that the company (once again) needs to go out of buisness. Except Nocturne and Devil Summoner. Which those get called Pokemonclones (despite them doing that since SMT and MT games on the NES).
SMT= Shin Megami Tensei
MT= Megami Tensei
Yep. Got that puzzle in 4 seconds.
Persona 4 = Greatest JRPG ever created. Nuff said.
Not to sound like the cool hip guy orwhatever. But my first one played was Nocturne then DDS before Persona was made an SMT game. I remember when 3 came out and I was like "Why's it an SMT now?"
Granted I do own all SMT games on the PS2 and DS. Currently trying to get the rest of them(PS one, Saturn, GBC, and down).
I've yet to play P4 (Trying to finish up The Answer for 3 but just grinded out, plus everytime I play my brother does nothing but try to make fun of the game and talk about how they need to be sued since they're shooting themselves in the head and how it can affect children, and blah blah blah. Which I always want to call him a hypocrit because he always badmouth's retarded lawsuits such as that.) but I like DDS better then P3, and not due to the if your leader dies it's game over, or uncontrollable party, just felt DDS was better.
P4 is significantly better than Persona 3. A lot of grievances are fixed, combat is better and you can control your entire party. The plot is also a lot better, it even explains all the loop holes in a bonus chapter. The characters also have better voice actors and are a lot more likeable.
And no shitty "Oh, you died at the end" ending. Which makes the game infinitely better than the shite ending of 3. I didn't play FES though, but read the summary online.
Apparently the main dude IS ressurected, it's hinted at in a social link (that I didn't do, read online) in P4.
And I love P3 and feel it has good voice acting and a nice story.
P3 is nice, it had some problems since the people were AI controlled but it was a great game with a good story. And the ending to P3 I felt was great. Granted, now if people here are playing through P3 or planned to or whatever you did just ruin the ending, which is something to have avoided. And to ruinP4 for me aswell.
Why thank you. Who wants to waste time on playing good games anyways right?
Oh, you weren't playing through P3 or planning to were you?
Or were you commenting on how he just read P3's story and made a oppinion about it then?
If you haven't played a 4 year old PS2 game by now, you wouldn't be playing it in the future. The only way to buy it is to get it second hand online.
I didn't even spoil anything anyway. The entire game goes on about "Memento Mori" and "Remember that one day, you will die" from the opening cutscene, so it was hardly surprising.
This must also include the thousands of people who hadn't played Monkey Island until this past year. :rolleyes: