[Spoilers ahoy] Favourite & Least favourite puzzle in "Narwhal"
Almost without exception I thought the puzzles were absolutely top notch. The satisfaction on knocking the captain off the Narwhal, as well as finding the axle for the last spin-wheel thing were excellent!
My favourite puzzle though, possibly of all adventure games EVER, was the one in the lab when you are restrained. It wasn't particularly hard, probably took me 25 mins all up, it was just a great learning curve, and such satisfaction when you pull off what you realise needs to be done. The masochistic monkey just added to the delight!
My least favourite... starting the fight in Club 41. When I was turfed out I thought I had to do something else. Was quite surprised when I realised just getting in the door was the whole task. Just involved finding the (pretty obvious) pass and absolutely nothing more.
There was that great 'out of sight puzzle' in MI1 (or was it 2, it's been a while?) in a mansion which was a huge joke when the unbelievable options you would have picked appeared on screen, while you saw nothing of it. If this was trying to replicate that joke, it pretty much failed.
But generally the puzzles were pitched (to me) absolutely perfectly.
How far off is one month away, again? Aaaargh!
My favourite puzzle though, possibly of all adventure games EVER, was the one in the lab when you are restrained. It wasn't particularly hard, probably took me 25 mins all up, it was just a great learning curve, and such satisfaction when you pull off what you realise needs to be done. The masochistic monkey just added to the delight!
My least favourite... starting the fight in Club 41. When I was turfed out I thought I had to do something else. Was quite surprised when I realised just getting in the door was the whole task. Just involved finding the (pretty obvious) pass and absolutely nothing more.
There was that great 'out of sight puzzle' in MI1 (or was it 2, it's been a while?) in a mansion which was a huge joke when the unbelievable options you would have picked appeared on screen, while you saw nothing of it. If this was trying to replicate that joke, it pretty much failed.
But generally the puzzles were pitched (to me) absolutely perfectly.
How far off is one month away, again? Aaaargh!
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Only to be beaten by the underwater idol puzzle in MI1, of course.
I kinda found it funny that the fire neither went out nor burnt down the pier...
And the part in DeSinge's lab was great too.
It took me ages to find out I could adjust the vertical orientation of the chair though.
My least favourite was the fact you had to do jungle maze puzzle at least twice and then run round the jungle again for the idols.
Found it odd you couldn't use mouse control for that puzzle, but it worked very well with the keys. Made me feel more 'restricted' too, which was probably the point.
I thought the jeans were the object I needed to manipulate, as there was that cutscene of them passing under the underpants. Trying to break the stitches on the britches, remove a peg, put the bomb in the sock to make it drop into the jeans...*
Heh, designers were one step ahead, as any good adventure game puzzle designers should be!
Which reminds me, I should check out the Hints/Help forum (do we have one yet?), as that's always a good indicator of when puzzles may be slightly flawed.
* Also spent much time trying to figure out how to break the Captain's crank handle.
I can't think of a least favourite one, I liked them all.
MI2 has the spit puzzle in LeChuck's fortress, EFMI had the bound to the mast puzzle (not dissimilar to this one), and Psychonauts had the brain out of body puzzle.
Some of the more memorable moments in adventure games happen are when you're trapped in one area, with one goal to complete.
And if you wait five minutes, there's the "throw the knife in the water" joke.:p
Getting the glassbreaker would be my least favourite seeing as that was purely coincidental for me. I ran into a snag with the idols too, I didn't know how to see all the gods on the windvane. Kept clicking it and clicking it and it wasn't until I saw a hint on the forum that I realised what I should be doing... My own silly fault, never moused over the socket thing you see.
Overall I thought the puzzles were really good.
The lab scene makes up for it though, the puzzle and graphic quality was pure old school.
Favourite puzzle: Ninja Dave, because it was funny and cruel, I especially liked the olive on the sword, i mean katana.
Least Favourite: Club 41. Too easy, pick up a card and you have completed a 1/3 of the initial quest.
Both map puzzles were a big disappointment to me, because Guybrush spells the first one out for you ("Oh hey I'm gonna comment on how noisy the jungle is whenever looking at the map for no reason, I sure hope you didn't plan on figuring it out yourself even though you turned off all the hints") and there's also a lot of handholding for getting to read the second map (one guy shows you the exact tool to break the glass, the other gives you the exact tool to read the map), not to mention the little jingle for each screen you got "right". Is there no room left for the lateral thinking that went into the previous games' maps? There must be, since the cheese wheel's still got the flavor of the old puzzles.
When I first (randomly) shot the cannon, I thought it had hit the just-wounded Narwhal captain, and that was the joke. Thouht it was bloody funny too. But alas...
Took me a long time... LONG TIME (after putting the unbreakable bottle in the cannon and finding it not on the ship, but outside the glassblower's shop), ... to try it again and realise it was the unicorns I had smashed in the first place.
I spent quite some time trying to prise those carvings off the jail wall...
Me too, I was just a few minutes away from a visit to the hints forum. Very glad I resisted though, so much more satisfying.
I agree, but on the other hand, i think it was cool to somehow point out that you have to listen... Probably not in that way, tho, but i dunno, it seems pretty easy to ignore those screams because you think they're just ambiance sounds.
I didn't like the first map puzzle, I don't know if I was doing it wrong, but I assume you were supposed to follow the animal noises, but that didn't seem to go right for me. I just used guess work in the end, and memorised what way to go.
Anyway, my favourite was lab puzzle, which was just brilliant, for all of the above reasons.
My least favourite was probably the hand puzzle at the end - if only because it had to click every item on the boat a second time just to work out which caused me to fall on the tar...but even that was pretty fun.
I did that too and found it quite annoying. Anyone found a logical solution other than Trial and Error?
My least favorite puzzles was probably hand to tar puzzle in the ending, it didnt have much to offer, but a very hard way to do things. Club 41 was also too easy, and it could've been larger puzzle.
Yes I did,
Lol, ye know, during that cutscene I immediately thought about the MI1 puzzle you're talking about. It worked for me!
You know that the idols were on the island map? You just had to click where you wanted to go.
and about the 1st map puzzle I think it was really easy.
Favourite was done by fluke - putting the parrot through the door. Loved the fact that that actually worked for something (I thought it was just a little joke thing!)
Well, the varying sounds seems obvious to me but maybe you're right. I think they could have found a more subtle way to point it out though.
Yeah, so did I. That means it does something I like, identifying a problem before giving you the solution. But the bit I found intuitively was the cheese wheel. When I came across the idol with a missing wheel and looked through my inventory I didn't have to try everything, just by reviewing the objects the cheese wheel made sense, and the game confirmed it nicely and subtly by allowing me to put it into place even without the eye imprints. Once I got that the lightbulb obviously went off in my head about how I could use the soft wheel to make imprints of the eyes. It's much better than OH HEY SURE LOOKS LIKE THE WEATHERVANE (for that one you should've been able to take a better close-up look at the weathervane and make Guybrush's comment be a hint and it'd have been better).
That puzzle where very different but still funny, one of my favourites. But I also loved the "take over the Screaming Narwhal" puzzle. It was so obvious and funny.
The hard part is realizing that you have to
Fav puzzle:
Lab (majority of votes). Took me ages (well 5min) to figure out that the chair could be tilted. I kept pressing the banana pedal expecting the system to overload and knock me out of the chair
Least fav:
Getting into the bar
Among my favourites is the table puzzle, for being a nice, closed system. Plus, the various bits of dialogue really help make it fun. He he; "embiggening device".
Then there's the U Tube puzzle. It was pretty much immediately obvious, but it was just so evilly delicious because you knew what was going to happen next.
And finally, the root puzzle for being a completely awful pun that had me shaking my head even as I chopped it off.
But I think the table has to win this.
For least favourite, I'd start with the idol with the missing wheel. I'd seen it in the jail, but I was convinced I had to remove it somehow. Maybe a single comment from Guybrush about the cheese having, I dunno... the pattern of some nails in the deck impressed on it might have twigged it.
Then there's the idol with the missing axle. I never got the dialogue where he says he'll come back to it, so I never assumed I couldn't solve it yet. I'd actually assumed that solving the axle might change something to get my thrown in jail so that I could then, somehow, get the missing wheel.
Finally, there was getting the Marquis back to the portal. He kept going on about evidence, and I thought what I had to do was expose him to the town. But he never touched the face, so it obviously can't be evidence; none of the townsfolk seemed to care about it. The dialogue in the game just seemed to be setting the puzzle up completely differently to how you were supposed to solve it.
Then there's the other aspect to the idols: putting the weather vane ON the idol. I'd gotten so used to examining the vane to see the direction that I never even considered using it any other way. What really threw me off is that if you examine the vane for the first idol, at the big statue, the face shown towards the camera is the one you need for that idol! So I was convinced that I had to examine the idol in different places to see the various faces.
It doesn't help that when I'd previously tried to put the vane on to the idols when I noticed those suspicious holes in the top, I'd been told that wouldn't work. Stuff shouldn't be prohibited at one point then silently be allowed later with no indication.
I think the idols have to collectively win "least favourite puzzle" because they just don't feel well designed. They were clever, but there was really no indication as to how any of them should be solved, and the game frequently pushed down completely the wrong path.
also quite nice how the game zoomed out for the map and you see how guybrush moves over it, reminds me of the one from Hit the road.
The jungle was fun and reminded me a bit of the swamp in an earlier game, tobad the jungle wasnt a little more mysterious and spooky
Funny, i barely even noticed there WAS a puzzle there...
I messed around at the door as soon as i got there and pretty soon got the face thingie off it... It made me want to keep on trying to open it and i quickly got to throw the bird through the hole (which i'm assuming saved me some trouble later on too)...
I then returned to town to see if anything had happened, thought "okay, let's see if the groggie has anything to say now" and it was set.
About the first maze one, what bugged me is that i kept thinking the map would be oriented in standard way... You know, when looking at it, i thought up was north, down was south, etc etc... So even tho i figured i should use the animal sounds, i kept starting to head "south". Since the first direction was off, i didn't get the little gay sound and guybrush comment and assumed i was right... Until i arrived at the place where the axle-less idol is, with rocks blocking the way. Spent a while trying to figure out how to blow them up before i realized i should pay attention to the sounds a bit earlier :eek:
Also liked the funny puzzle with knocking winslow off the Narwhal:D
Same here, but the overall idea with sounds was great. If only I didn't waste so much time doing it over and over without using the map on the well first...
As for my favs, the lab one easily tops everything else. It's definitely one of the coolest puzzle I've ever experienced.
Also, I actually enjoyed the whole bar fight thing. I thought it's a great homage to the manor scene in MI 1.
my least favorite was...
even though i thought the bar fight was funny and a great homage to MI1 i felt that the puzzle was a bit too easy
I really loved the map puzzles. I like these puzzles in games, and these had a real Monkey Island feel to it, as there are maze puzzles in every game.
the idea to use sounds this time was quite fresh.
The lab table puzzle was excellent too! Again very Monkey Island-ish. (Compare: Underwater with the idol in MI1, LeChuck's dungeon in MI2, being inside the snake in MI3 etc...)
All in all, I think this was the best Telltale Game so far, and the one I wanted to finish the most, and as quickly as possible to see what happens at the end. Can't wait for part 2!!!!
The map in the jungle with animal sounds (first map). I got how it worked (I love the story but I'm not the world's best adventure gamer!) and I just liked the idea.
I also loved the doctor's office. Good fun.
The end and the scene taking place in the lab were really awesome, and I didn't mind the club 41.
My least favorite were the jungle puzzles, i hated all the walking.
the second jungle puzzle kinda reminded me of a puzzle in CMI. The one where you're in the quicksand and you have to get the balloon to the otherside of the quicksand. I always forget that you have to "talk" to the balloon thereby blowing on it. It's like the second jungle puzzle in the sense that the part with the cheesewheel seemed so obvious after i figured it out, but i was clueless for like 30 minutes before i figured it out.