Anyone who didn't like "Hit the Road"?

edited March 2007 in Sam & Max
Hi everybody!

I have no idea if this has been discussed before (taking my chances, I am sure it has...) but as I have seen some messages around the forum about how people loved the old S&M adventure game Hit The Road, are there some people around here who didn't like it really (like me)?

To me, I was really one of the biggest fans of the LEC adventures at the time, having played MI2 and Indy4 and DOTT in succession and having been etremely proud the I could solve them without any outside hints etc. (I was only 14/15 at the time), but when Hit the Road came out, I was quite frustrated because I was really stuck a lot and had no idea what to do in the game...

Maybe it was the new Sierra-style interface that made the game harder. Because I played a lot of the Sierra games too at that time, I was quite used to that kind of interface, but in S&M I missed a lot of essential places to click on just because you would only notice an object existed when you pointed the "walk" icon on it, as the "eye" icon for example didn't react to it (the door in the back of the Bigfoot convention, anyone?).

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the Dott-style graphics, the humour and the great and wacky dialogues, but in terms of overall enjoyment, (maybe just because of the new inteface) it was and is one of the weaker LEC adventure games to me.
I even prefer "The Dig" to it, because of its great atmosphere, music, and inventive puzzles, and , I guess, intuitive interface.

Having said all that, I really enjoy the simply interface of the S&M games, the great diaolgues, and especially the new episodic format which makes you come back to this world every month and re-meet all the characters we are all growing fond of at a fast pace. Sybil's one my favourites!

Keep up the good work, guys!
Kord

Comments

  • edited February 2007
    No.. the appeal of hit the road is how funny it is...

    funniest.game.ever
  • edited February 2007
    Hey Kord!

    This Retronauts podcast on Sam and Max, which Telltale linked to earlier last year says a lot of the same things you mentioned, about items in the scene that look like they're just part of the background and whatnot. So your sentiments aren't exactly singular.

    Me personally, I think I played it maybe around when I was 12-13. I don't remember as much and I've lost my CD and I can't recall having played it since, so this is what I recall, for what it's worth: I was a real flagrant walkthrough abuser at the time, but I didn't have access to a full walkthrough initially, so I often ended up stuck for hours (the mini-games helped, of course). In the end I think I gave up and followed the walkthrough a lot--which really sucked a lot of the enjoyment away. Still think it's probably the most insane and funny game out there though.

    I think I enjoyed DOTT more, I got through more of it without hints--mainly because, if you got stuck on one location, you could just switch to another character. Might also be Tim Schafer's knack at creating empathetic characters, since I also love Full Throttle and Grim Fandango.

    I also enjoy this episodic approach. I think Sam and Max is almost the perfect license to take this sitcom-like episodic gaming approach--they've already taken that form in their TV series and comic books, so they're not alien to it. Were episodic applied to some other game, like The Dig, I'd say those episodes should be more like Lost and less like the Simpsons.
  • edited February 2007
    I wouldn't say I didn't like it, but... Hit the Road isn't in my top 5 LucasArts adventures. I think it's somewhat overrated. I entirely understand why it has the cult following and why some people put it at number 1 - but yeah, for me it was disjointed and the story was pretty weak.

    I'm finding these episodes a lot tighter in the narrative, more snappy in the pacing and the puzzles make a lot more sense. And yes, that IS a good thing.
  • edited February 2007
    HIt The Road is a Sam & Max MUST.
  • edited February 2007
    Thanks numble for the link to the retronauts.
    Funny to actually hear people talk about some old games I liked. In recent years I felt as if I was the only one around who ever played and enjoyed those games. I would like to talk about those games with some fellow-minded indivuals, too. (Did that a bit yesterday over a bottle of wine, when I told some acquaintances of mine about this great new computer serial, Sam and Max!)

    So again, and thanks for the info, I think next month I will join the funny forum threats when waiting for episode four... and I will try to work the work glockenspiel into the conversation!
  • langleylangley Telltale Alumni
    edited February 2007
    Hit the Road is probably one of my least favorite LucasArts games. It's kind of a blasphemous thing to say, but it's true. It had a god awful interface, the story really fell apart after Bruno was freed, and the puzzles were just plain frustrating. Granted, it's funny and the animation was great, but that's about all of the positive things I can say for it. When going back to play the old graphic adventures, Hit the Road and The Dig feel more like a chore to me. Those two games just seemed to be missing a certain amount of polish.

    But like you, I'm really enjoying Telltale's Sam and Max episodes.

    EDIT: I should amend that to say that Hit the Road is one of my least favorite LucasArts ADVENTURE gamers. Lord knows they've had a lot of crap titles that were way worse than Hit the Road.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited February 2007
    Though I love LucasArts adventure games, love Sam & Max, and started what is now the longest running active Sam & Max fan/news site online, Hit the Road is also not at the top of my list of LucasArts games. I love the humor and the settings of Hit the Road - the Cone of Tragedy is still one of my all time favorite things from any game - but I had to set that game aside for about two years because I got so bugged down with the puzzles that I was wandering around between about 15-20 rooms with apparently nothing I could do in any of them. I love Sam & Max to death, so, needless to say, this was a depressing state of events. It took a friend of mine's buying the Mac port two years later and playing up through where I was stuck to get me back into finishing it. That game does some things second to none, but it's also made me want to tip my computer off over the back of my desk and out the window. :)
  • edited February 2007
    I'll be absolutely frank here. I never would have been able to finish it without a walkthrough if it weren't for all the spoilers I picked up on here... :(
  • edited February 2007
    Yeah, some of the puzzles sucked. I distinctly remember hating the "Tunnel of Love" puzzle (use Max to short-circuit the ride) - I don't know how anyone was supposed to figure that out. Some fantastic moments, though: The Bigfoot gathering, the musical number, etc.
  • edited February 2007
    Sam and Max was the first LucasArts game I had completed (I'd casually played Monkey Island before that - hey, I was only 12 when I got my hands on Sam & Max), and was immediately hooked. I actually love all the LucasArts adventure games from 1989 upwards (excepting Escape from Monkey Island which I've replayed 8 months ago. I've never completed Maniac Mansion & never even seen Zac McKracken (both pre-1989)). For me, it's in my top 5 for a great number of reasons.

    That aside, I used to know many people who didn't like Sam & Max as much as, say, DOTT or other titles. I think it was due to the puzzles being illogical at parts (I disagree - it just needs a certain kind of logic to solve them. It helps if you're 12 years old and have a vivid imagination).
  • edited February 2007
    I can't think of anything negative to say about HTR. I remember how I loved that animation of Sam and Max driving off in their DeSoto (when you started the car in the street). I'd say its the most brilliant animation I've ever seen.

    --Erwin
  • edited February 2007
    People seem to forget how truly awful some of the puzzles in Sam and Max: Hit the Road were. Some talk about the satisfaction of solving a puzzle after spending hours trying to figure it out. That's nice, but it doesn't make up for the bleeding forehead and permanent brain damage incurred from banging your head against the monitor thousands of times before you finally figured it out.

    The new Sam and Max games aren't quite to the level of comedic quality of the first game, but it's a funnier game overall, simply because the pacing is nice and tight. Puzzles in the game actually make sense, so you can go through the puzzles pretty quickly. Judging by the aspects of Hit the Road that you liked, and the problems you had, the new games should be right up your alley.
  • edited February 2007
    The puzzles of hit the road made sense.. Once you solved the first puzzle by grabbing the commisioners orders out of a cat you should have known what to expect.
  • edited February 2007
    Hero1 wrote: »
    The puzzles of hit the road made sense.. Once you solved the first puzzle by grabbing the commisioners orders out of a cat you should have known what to expect.

    I second that.
  • edited February 2007
    I liked Day of the Tentacle most out of all the Lucasarts adventure games, probably. I was never thrilled with the interface for Hit the Road. But with Sam & Max it's hard to go wrong.
  • edited February 2007
    I played through the three games on the Lucasarts Archives Vol 1 - S&M, Day of the Tentacle and Indy and the Fate of Atlantis - before I knew about walkthroughs. And yes, I stopped playing it for a week after going through the Tunnel of Love for the 74th time. But it's comparable to a point in DOTT where I had no idea what I was supposed to do until I was desperate enough to try and vandalize the vending machine.

    Both are still games I love and cherish, even though I don't actually have my copy of S&M anymore.
  • edited February 2007
    Ah. The Tunnel of Love... "Lighten up, Sam!" :D

    --Erwin
  • edited February 2007
    sam & max - hit the road is probably the most illogical game I ever played. It's a typical classic adventure game - the puzzles are illogical and even when follow a walkthrough point by point you sit there and wonder "how the h... were I supposted to guess that?". It reminds me of some of those real classics in adventure games, even though I can't remember any of their names at the time. At least, most adventure games pre-1993 were not that logical. It was first when people started playing point and click games and windows 95 came infested peoples PCs that puzzles in adventure games got logical. I don't remember when point-n-click games were born, but sam & max was for sure one of the first point and click games... so the puzzles were about as logical as the puzzles in the typing games. I seem to remember playing Larry 1 and typing "Look at bar." "There is a woman sitting at the bar" "Pick up girl." "I don't know how to pick up girl" "take out glass", "I can't take that!!!". Well, some of the sam & max - hit the road puzzles are at that level. They are really illogical, but o so hillarious. The stuff you have to combine rarely are stuff you usually would have combined, but yeah, that game was awesome still. But I'll rather replay it with a walkthrough than to struggle through all those insane puzzles.

    But when all that is said. I never laughed so much during a game, and the voices of sam & max are just hillarious. I laughed so much that I'll never forget that game. Also, the illogical and absurd puzzles kind of matched with the mad world of sam & max... so in a way it became logical in an insane way, lol.
  • edited February 2007
    Hero1 wrote: »
    The puzzles of hit the road made sense.. Once you solved the first puzzle by grabbing the commisioners orders out of a cat you should have known what to expect.

    I remember there being a slight hint for that one tho, where Max says something like "Maybe I can help". So that puzzle in particular made sense. Most of the other puzzles that involved using Max stumped me to no end back in the day.. wonder how I'd fare now that I'm older and wiser to the ways.. ...
  • edited February 2007
    Hero1 wrote: »
    The puzzles of hit the road made sense.. Once you solved the first puzzle by grabbing the commisioners orders out of a cat you should have known what to expect.

    It was nice of them to tell you so early in the game that the puzzles were terrible, yes. :D
  • edited February 2007
    Oilers99 wrote: »
    It was nice of them to tell you so early in the game that the puzzles were terrible, yes. :D

    You've got to be kidding.. thats one of my favorite puzzles.. I still remember that moment using Max on the cat and seeing what happened.. pure joy for a 13 year old.. To each his own I guess.
  • JakeJake Telltale Alumni
    edited February 2007
    Hero1 wrote: »
    You've got to be kidding.. thats one of my favorite puzzles.. I still remember that moment using Max on the cat and seeing what happened.. pure joy for a 13 year old.. To each his own I guess.

    Agreed. ALl the differnet little jokes an solution payoffs in Hit the Road are top notch, at least in my book. I just got to a point where I had discovered dozens of rooms, and had about that many inventory items as well, but for the life of me I couldn't find anything to do with any of them.
  • edited February 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    Agreed. ALl the differnet little jokes an solution payoffs in Hit the Road are top notch, at least in my book. I just got to a point where I had discovered dozens of rooms, and had about that many inventory items as well, but for the life of me I couldn't find anything to do with any of them.

    Sounds like a great party joke opener. "So, what did you do?" *takes a sip*
  • edited February 2007
    I really liked Hit the Road. I wouldn't put it up there with the first three monkey island games and DOTT, but it's still a classic.

    The puzzles... yeah, some of them werre a little ludicrous, but on the other hand, I solved almost all of them without assistance, and I was really pleased with myself. There's something to be said for that. Still, I would NOT call for a return to the difficulty of puzzles those days.

    The main asset of the game, of course, was its humor, but I don't think anyone here disagrees with that.
  • edited February 2007
    I concur agree with all of the above too... The games humour and characterisation was great, but the interface was dire and the puzzles way too illogical for the sake of extending playtime (anyone notice how short all the LEC adventures are if you actually know the solutions to all the puzzles).

    I can't remember exactly, but wasn't Sean Clark involved in Hit The Road? That guys penchant for adding manic 'random result' puzzles that change every time you start the game (i.e. the random rocks in HtR, Monkey Kombat in MI4 and 90% of the puzzles in The Dig) annoys me no end.
  • edited February 2007
    Jake wrote: »
    Though I love LucasArts adventure games, blah blah blah back of my desk and out the window. :)
    Wow. I kinda agree, my experience being similar... Oddly enough, I always considered it an undefined taboo to criticize anything and everything S&M in your general vicinity.
  • edited February 2007
    My main beef with HtR was the binoculars puzzle. I didn't even realize there was a puzzle to be done there at first, I thought ScummVM just screwed up the binocular controls, making the view spin. Oh, and the alligator mini-game was frustrating, I kept moving them just a tad too far.
  • edited February 2007
    I finished replaying Hit the Road last night once again. The need to replay it actually came from this thread. I have to say there's not a single thing I don't like about that game. I love every pixel of it. So all of you can go rub Max's fur and get electrocuted for all I care! Have at you!
  • edited February 2007
    Most of the game did have an effective sort of bizzare internal logic, I will certainly agree that there were a few instances where the game was just too obtuse for it's own good.

    There were a couple puzzles where, while they make sense in retrospect, had no hints or anything to lead you to the correct conclusion.

    Overall it's a fun game and absolutley hilarious, but denying it suffered from many of the same hangups as other adventure games of the time is just being silly.

    (At least there wasn't anything quite as bad as PUT BRIDLE ON SNAKE)
  • edited February 2007
    MrSneeze wrote: »
    I finished replaying Hit the Road last night once again. The need to replay it actually came from this thread. I have to say there's not a single thing I don't like about that game. I love every pixel of it. So all of you can go rub Max's fur and get electrocuted for all I care! Have at you!

    Hear Hear! :) Sam & max is the only adventure game I regularly play again every couple of years
  • edited February 2007
    I never got used to the interface on Hit the Road, it always got on my nerves having to cycle through every option, and going past the one I wanted and cycling through again.
    It didn't help that I was playing it on ScummVM for the PSP either, seeing how I tend to button mash any non-mouse controller I get.

    I didn't have any problem with the puzzles themselves though, but the ones I got stuck on most were the more logical ones for some reason, which probably says quite a lot about me.
  • edited February 2007
    I found the puzzles in Hit the Road to be infuriating and illogical for the most part. But then again, that was standard for adventure games back then. They wanted you to call their hint lines so they could make more money, which I bet they did quite well at. But while it's puzzles were nearly unsolvable, Sam & Max themselves more then made up for any negatives aspects of the game. I just finished HtR for the first time about a year ago, and I had to almost have a walkthrough at hand the whole time I was playing. That's what I call a bit too difficult, sheesh! :rolleyes:
  • Dave GrossmanDave Grossman Telltale Alumni
    edited February 2007
    marsan wrote: »
    you sit there and wonder "how the h... were I supposted to guess that?"

    Exactly the yardstick I use to judge a puzzle. When somebody tells you the solution, if you say, "oh, of course!" then that's good, but if you say "how did they expect me to think of that?" then it's not so good, it just makes you frustrated and possibly angry.

    Like many of you, I thought Hit the Road was really funny, but too many of the puzzles had that problem of being arbitrary and unfair.
  • edited February 2007
    shame on you dave! :D :p :p
  • edited March 2007
    I liked hit the road, but many of the puzzles were nonsensical. It made the game far too difficult, especially the pillars at the end of the game. Why would a
    dinosaurs tooth
    ever have anything to do with anything?
  • edited March 2007
    ShaggE wrote: »
    My main beef with HtR was the binoculars puzzle. I didn't even realize there was a puzzle to be done there at first, I thought ScummVM just screwed up the binocular controls, making the view spin.
    Same here, I still haven't got past that bit. Help? :confused:
  • edited March 2007
    Bubbel wrote: »
    Same here, I still haven't got past that bit. Help? :confused:

    Left and right click on the control thingie.
  • edited March 2007
    Oookay, I'll have a look at that, thanks.
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