Just beat the game
and I got to say, bravo. a lot of funny characters in this one, and a lot of great voice acting, i was glad to see that gran'ma ben and thorn had been replaced. It took me about five hours to beat it, about twice the time it took me for the first, I liked the little inside joke about the length at the beginning. The graphics were awesome to say the least, I love the movement of the background, very cool.
*SPOILER ALERT* If I'm not mistaken, in the latest blog where it said "we put in a little inside joke that true adventure gamers will appreciate..." was it when Fone Bone said "that's the second biggest pot of soup I've ever seen"? Or something along those lines?
Thank you for releasing this game on one of my days off, I love you guys.
P.S. For some reason, I can't seem to find my original download of the first bone game, I hope I didn't somehow overwrite it when I downloaded the Great Cow Race. I had played through it already a few times, so it's not really a big deal, but it's just strange. Any idea why this has happened?
*SPOILER ALERT* If I'm not mistaken, in the latest blog where it said "we put in a little inside joke that true adventure gamers will appreciate..." was it when Fone Bone said "that's the second biggest pot of soup I've ever seen"? Or something along those lines?
Thank you for releasing this game on one of my days off, I love you guys.
P.S. For some reason, I can't seem to find my original download of the first bone game, I hope I didn't somehow overwrite it when I downloaded the Great Cow Race. I had played through it already a few times, so it's not really a big deal, but it's just strange. Any idea why this has happened?
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The first game did not install into the same Telltale Games folder as the Great Cow Race. (On my computer there's an empty folder called Out from Boneville in the Telltale Games folder, but the game itself is in Program Files.) Check and see if it might be there instead.
If not, Udvarnoky's right that you can just download the game again and reactivate it.
I did enjoy the game quite a bit (hence the reason I finished it in one sitting), and you surely can't argue with the price. I'm willing to forgive some of the smaller quirks because of that.
My biggest complaint is that I found the open ending largely unsatisfying. I don't know how many episodes there are going to be before we finally see a conclusion, but chances are that I'll have forgotten alot of the details 6 months down the road. If we're talking two, three, or even four more episodes, this could be a big problem.
Also, it's great that you're including in-jokes in your games. The joke that McGoiter pointed out prompted a replay from me - which is a great thing, since I didn't replay Out From Boneville after I beat it. The joke at the beginning was a great touch too. I knew I was in for something special after I saw it.
This game just seemed a lot more better overall than the last one. The whole time I was playing Out from Boneville, I always got the impression that I was playing a game on a new engine, and never got immersed into the game. This game just "felt" better. There were portions of the game where I was reminded of classic LucasArts games - especially Grim Fandango. Which was a real surprise to me. You can just tell that a lot of blood, sweat, and tears were put into this game - and I appreciate you guys for it.
There are a few issues I have to address. I'm a bit of a knuckle-head when it comes to puzzles. I was trying to figure out how to get the luggage into the cart for the longest time. I'd ask Grandma Ben about it, and she'd just say that I had to work on it. There were a lot of mentions about luggage, so I was looking all over for luggage, but couldn't find it. It took me forever to figure out to use the cart. For puzzles like these, it would be nice if the luggage was outside of the cart, so you could either click the luggage or the cart to start the mini game. My brain is a little single-minded, so that would have saved a lot of frustration on my part.
The other thing that I have to point out has to do with interaction between the Bone cousins. When the game had you do multiple sets of tasks between Bone cousins with only one set of instructions, my single-minded brain got confused. After I was finished with Fone's task, I did not remember at all what Smiley was supposed to do. Something like "All right, time to [insert task here]!" would have gone a long way, and wouldn't have been out of character at all for any of the characters to say in the game.
Those nuances aside, the game was really great. It's great to see a company that takes constructive criticism to heart (and it's even greater to see that you guys have a sense of humour about it!).
Of course, this is true of the Bone books, too. It would be hard to give a conclusion to the game because the story hasn't reached its conclusion yet. It's also true with TV shows... by the time a new Soprano's season comes out, no one remembers what happened in the last season!
With this episode, we included a few features that should help refresh your memory from the last game. There is the Who's Who accessible from the main menu, as well as this page on the Bone part of our website that recaps the story from the first episode. If you click on the picture of Smiley on that page, you'll see a video recap from the first episode (the same kind of recap that's included on DVDs of TV series so you can get up to speed). There's also a recap of the story in the game manual, which can be downloaded here.
We'll continue to include these kinds of extras in the Bone games to help people remember what came before. Of course, you could always replay the games, too.
If you click on the cow suit, Smiley does run through what he still needs to find in order to finish it. But I know what you mean... in some game the character has a journal that lists out what has been done and what needs to do next. Do you think something like that would have helped in Cow Race?
Yeah, that's a good idea, and it definately would have helped. It's hard to keep track of tasks between the cousins when you have the ability to switch between them as-you-please throughout the game (the ability of which is definately a good thing, don't get me wrong). It would have been great if there was a tasklist type thing that added tasks as the characters discovered new things (they wouldn't have to be specific - just general things that the characters hinted on. Like Fone having to find a present, for instance).
On my second play through, I noticed something else that could add to some confusion. If you ask Jon to bet last, his cutscene won't come up after you switch to Fone. You have to switch to Fone, then back to Phoney, then back to Fone again in order to activate it. It makes it a bit confusing, since Jon isn't there to get him to bet, yet he isn't where he's supposed to be after the bet either.
Just one question: Is there any chance, that you update your graphic engine? Don`t get me wrong: I don`t expect shader-power like in Oblivion or Doom (although it would be nice for reflections on the eyes) since this game should run smoothly on even the lowest of PC settings. But it shouldn´t been to hard to add some more option to pimp up the graphics like AA, AF and an options to set the screen resolution manually, since this is all stuff, which doesn`t raise the production costs (that much).
Further Niggles I experienced was a really poor background when talking to Smiley (playing as Phoney) in the Tavern, and does anyone else the Rat Creature models could be improved, especially the eyes.
Cheers Guys.
next time - use the P button to pause the game, and give some visual aid.
and about the loading times - DX8.1 has few nice tricks of screen blur that can be used to show the next screen is loading, think about it - when the character is moving form one screen to another the image blurs, the next scene is loaded and the new image get sharp again. (b.t.w. it can be simulated easily on DX7.0 cards).
apart from that I must say i'm having a great fun playing this game (i'm in the middle or so)
I'm gonna post a 95% positive review on my website during the week-end.
Dom (Italy)
http://lucasdelirium.cjb.net
I was disappointed that I never got a chance to give Thorn the poem, the honey, the stuffed animal. It would have been nice to give them to her after all that work!
There was one weird bit where Fone was talking to Smiley at the end by the soup bowl while Phoney was hung up ... but I didn't see Fone anywhere around. Last time I saw him, he was getting the cart but then his body never reappeared anywhere.
Great game though. I can't wait for the next one. Lots of fun. Good work!
Siobhan
Overall though, I loved the Great Cow Race, and it's probably the most well realised adventure I've played post 90s. I'm one of the people who considers interaction with the environment to be possibly the most fundamental element of the genre, and was thrilled when I heard you'd be concentrating on it more than this game. I'd have been happy with just more objects for the characters to comment on, but all of the animations (sniffing flowers, picking up debris, etc) really went beyond my expectations (and what I thought possible, from a perspective of producing content (an unexpected advantage of 3D perhaps?)). I can only hope this sort of thing develops even further as the series progresses. Another thing I really liked was the implementation of the actual race. It really reminded me of Full Throttle's ending (which I thought was one of that game's strong points) only further developed.
My other niggling issue with the game was a tendency to place the cameras too close in cutscenes; a lot of the time it just seemed to emphasise the low-res textures and low poly models without actually doing anything interesting in terms of composition or enhancing the character's expressiveness. The game looks great most of the time, and the characters are designed and animated well enough that they can be expressive without being seen all that close. This is one area I think, where backing off, and even doing less work, maybe to the point of keeping the camera in the normal gameplay position in most dialogues could actually be beneficial to immersion.
I want to emphasise though, that I consider The Great Cow Race quite an achievement and that as a result of it, whatever the next installment is called is now at the top of my most anticipated games list (and I'm not some blinkered adventure gamer with no interest in other genres).
Jesus, that ended up a long post, but hopefully it conveys at least something worthwhile.
But there is! You just haven't found it yet.
First of all, it is possible to try to give the things to Thorn before Tom shows up. Try just winning a stuffed animal, or just getting the honey, and bringing it to her.
Secondly, if you win 20 small cows to get the big cow, there is a payoff at the end. Not going to spoil it and tell you what it is, though.
Siobhan, thanks for mentioning the "missing Fone" conversation near the soup pot. Someone else posted about that, too. I'm going to submit it as a bug so it can be fixed in a future version of the game.
To be honest, I was a bit disappointed buy Act 1. I thought it was lacking interactivity, fun, length...
Act 2 is a fantastic accomplishment. Funny with a lot of good puzzle... perfect mix of 3D and point and click. The only problem I had was with the loading times, which were a bit long sometime, especially during the cow race. But overall it was a lot of fun.
I had the chance to meet Ron Gilbert in Paris recently and we talked about Telltale and the hope it was for the future of adventure games. I'm so happy to see we were right.
I hope you guys will sell a lot of those.
Ho and by the way, if you're thinking about a French translation of the game, it would be a great honour to help you.
Cyu guys and thanx again.
Romain
It was root beer!
It was wonderful, and I will tell you what I liked about it (contains some spoilers).
The puzzles that are one step ahead of you. This was a trademark of LucasArts and I was extremely pleased to see it again in Cow Race, specifically trying to smoke out the bee. When he grabbed the straw and puffed like a cigar that was absolutely brilliant. Back to the drawing board.
The world was alive, even if it meant kicking a stone or sniffing a flower or having a description for a non takeable item. This was the biggest improvement over Boneville, and I hope to see even more of it in the next installment. This also involves the chickens, talking to cows and the possum kids always-tied rock-scissors-paper idle animation.
The Cow Race puzzle was brilliantly executed, and nice to see the rat Creature chase as something different (inventory based).
There may have been a few too many times you had to feed straw to the cow, but if it works once, it's logical it's to work again.
Once I figured out how to activate the packing the cart puzzle (which wasn't that obvious, I'd walked around for a long time trying to find the objects to go in) I loved the variation of a first person 2D puzzle.
I experience one hang-up when the scene froze as Phoney went to attend to the punching bag. I thought, hmmmm, walking around he building in real-time. But after a minute or so figured game had crashed. After restarting game and loading a recent save everything went fine.
While I wasn't sure quite how to 'solve' the bashing pans puzzle, it was a heck've a lot of fun. It seemed to solve itself after a while, but I'm kinda unsure if it was due to a sequence of pans or not.
Jeff Smith was right to insist the bulging muscle and jaw-drop animations were included. Great cartoony stuff.
I turned on and used the hint system once and felt dirty afterwards (regarding a potato and a key).
The models and voices were excellent, had no problem with that aspect in the least.
Satisfying end-game, though I thought I was being primed for another puzzle at the farmhouse just before the credits rolled. And what an awesome credit sequence it was.
The main negative, as has been stated before was the long pauses between screens, often with a black screen and no loading icon. On more than one occasion I thought the game had crashed when it was simply transitioning.
Looking forward to shadows and alternate resolution possibilties further down the track.
So thank you!
When's #3? Octoberish? #-o