Way too easy for fans of the genre
Man, what a dissapointment. Each puzzle took only a maximum of two minutes to figure out, they practically tell you exactly what to do. Now I know it's episodic and the general length of the game was fine by me but if only the puzzles were a teeny bit challanging I would have rejoiced. The last Sam and Max had puzzles that took me up to three days to figure out with solutions that took much trail and error and creative 'thinking-outside-the-box' logic to it. Things with an internal logic that normally could never work but in the world of the game makes perfect sense. This was simply point A to Point B stuff. Now I know they want to draw in a fresh audience that might be turned away from any difficulty and I hope the next episode will ease into greater difficulty but to the people who actually have been waiting for this game for over a decade then it's a bummer. Maybe a difficulty setting next episode? Still made me laugh outloud though.
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It's a pretty good idea to capture a new audience and not turn them off by having them stuck hopelessly in the first episode they buy. You may have noticed the jump in difficulty between Bone 1 & 2?
I haven't had the pleasure of playing Sam & Max yet, but to me the FUN factor way overrides the puzzle difficulty. And every review I read says there is fun to be had by the bucketload! If I have fun while playing games, then the game was good. But I will concede that some people's idea of fun is beating fiendish puzzles, and beating a hard puzzle gives a certain sense of smug satisfaction.
Personally I'd be worried for Telltale if this first Sam & Max outing was making seasoned adventurers stuck. Bring in the new audience, hook them, then start ramping up the difficulty over the course of the season. Akin to the easier training level or two found at the start of most action games. Given the length of the episodes Telltale don't have that luxury within a single episode.
I'd imagine things will heat up as time goes on...
PnC Adventure Game puzzles during the early 90s were just so rewarding when you finally solved them, with the actual solution seeming to be so obvious that you can't believe it took you so long to figure them out.
It wasn't that the method of solving the puzzles was complex; it was that a lot of times the solution was just crazy enough to work, such as in HtR when Max gets in the plastic fish in the World of Fish, is picked up in a helicopter, and taken to the World's Largest Ball of Twine restaurant to get 'a piece of string'.
Puzzles aren't hard, they are just challenging to your creativity.
Ive not played it yet so I cant comment directly but as someone who has completed near all the Lucasarts old school point and click games, all of the Discworld ones and quite a few other ones here and there WITHOUT walkthroughs.
The problem with modern society is that although there are plenty of smart people out there who will find the simplicity of this game compared to hit the road a little patronising, there are a LOT of people out there are stupid. Im talking "has to take their shoes off to count past 10" stupid. I work in retail, I see it on a daily basis. There are people out there who do seem to be using 90% of their cranial capacity just to BREATHE.
Sorry to say it but its true.
BUT
To me, graphic adventures were never about solving puzzles anyway. The puzzles were just a handy prop to hang the story and characters and other design goodies on. I think Psychonauts was everything I wanted in an adventure game, but it played like a platformer. Puzzles are just a tradition and while it's good to make the best of them, it's not what's really important here.
Lol. Thinking about the in-game description of the hardest difficulty in Civ IV: "Muuhahaha! Good luck, sucker!".
I would disagree. The entire gameplay is puzzle (minus the short driving part) and if the core of the game isn't fufilling then all the frosting on the cake isn't satisfying. If i'm playing a shooter and all the enemies do is walk in a straight line, the story-line and style can be amazing but you still don't have a good shooter. So if you take away the strong point of the genre your left with somthing that won't appeal to the people that like it.
Yes, the puzzles are what makes up most of the gameplay, but they're not the things that make it an adventure game.
I play a shooting game because I feel an urge to blast stuff, and I play a RTS game because I feel an urge to use my brain to blast stuff. I play an adventure game because I feel the urge to lose myself in a story for a while. If it's puzzles that provide the mechanism for that, fine, but if not then at long as it provides me with a story a character focused experience that I've come to expect from adventures, I don't see what I'm missing.
The fact is, as gameplay, adventure puzzles historically aren't even that fun. Maybe two thirds or more of puzzles in adventure games are either easy enough to get right away or so hard that most people use a walkthrough to get past it. The remaining third are subtle ones that you might wonder about for a little while and then actually work out. If the puzzles were what really mattered I would have given up on adventures long, long ago. The FUN part about solving puzzles is being able to progress that little bit further in the story.
I think you're more right than a lot of people want to believe.
I thought the difficulty of Sam and Max was spot on. It was hard at places (I was starting to feel frustrated while breaking the hypnosis), but in general I felt like it flowed well. I did it all in one sitting (took me 4 or 5 hours), but near the end I felt like putting the game down (like I said, I'm not a fan of adventure games, but this one was one of the best I've played). The only thing that kept me going was the fact that if I finished this episode I'd be ready to start on the next. So if the game were more difficult, I would have probably started getting behind in episodes (and based on my experience of the episodic content of Wing Commander: Secret Ops, I know that ultimately means not finishing the series [I haven't finished WC:Secret Ops after almost 8 years])
I'll definately pick up the next episode (Thank God for Gametap!).
Some people are hardcore gamers, and they play their first person shooter games at the "nightmare" difficulty, while other unexperienced gamers choses to play with less enemies etc. It's natural in all other genres except the adventure genre.
I want mega-monkey.
Monkey Island II and III had it.
It's necessary because it's the only way to please hardcore adventure gamers AND people who just want to have a good story. Otherwise, you must chose one of them, and lose the other one.
So for it to work, Telltale would either have to make the game longer with harder puzzles in the extra bits, for hard mode, which would take a whole lot more time, or make it the same length but make easy mode much shorter than the already short 3-4 hours, which is no good either.
The only other alternative would be to make easy and hard mode the same length but make some of the puzzles completely different, but again that'd involve a much greater workload.
As far as I see the best compromise is to make the puzzles slightly harder than they are currently, but not enough to turn off the casual gamers.
Could you help me a little please?
I am facing off with Brady Culture, the 3 Pop Rockers are alternately influenced by him and me. Everything I try, he says, "Get the dog". I imagine there is an obvious solution, but I can't see it.
Help?
Rick
Actually, you just gave me a good idea for a suggestion. The trouble we have right now is that the game is too easy for veteran adventure gamers, but at a fairly good level for newcomers. It seems that making two difficulty settings would be difficult because you'd either have to remove content from the easy mode or make completely different puzzles for each, which would be too time-consuming (making the game take almost twice as long to develop.) So why not, instead, have an option where Max gives hints? The puzzles could be challenging enough for the adventure gamer, but if they're too hard for the newcomer, they can switch on "Max Hint Mode" and Max will give subtle clues, maybe three for each puzzle, each one making the answer a little more obvious. Newcomers don't get frustrated, adventure gamers leave satisfied, no one misses any content, it doesn't take any longer to design new puzzles. It's win/win!
I guess the cool thing about the puzzles in HTR is that when something WORKED, the resulting animation was so cool and it made me feel like I MADE THAT HAPPEN! Like, WOW! I made a helicopter pick up Max and take him to the BALL OF TWINE! See that?! I DID THAT!
That was an adventure game, for me, in the true sense of the word.
I haven't even played the game and I know it's too easy already. *SIGH*
There's no more creativity left in the world.
you know what? ....
It could work.... It could really work, and quite well.
DO YOU READ THIS TELLTALE? this is one of the better fan suggestions.
I hope you're not implying that difficult puzzles = creativity. Because, Hoo boy, that's a good one!
Not to defend the general populace as anything other than drooling imbeciles, but it also might have to do with the fact that while in 1993 a game could be supported by a relatively small group of people who took pleasure in applying paper cups to part of a broken golf ball retriever in order to get a glob of tar while bungee-jumping, you have to aim a little wider than that nowadays if you expect to be successful.
The games would be more fun to play (Telltale would have to make funny comments for every object in the game); it would lead to more things to discover (increasing the sensation of freedom in the game, making it seem less linear); it would get a higher replay value ; it doesn't make the solution of the puzzles wacky - just harder to figure out; and best of all - I might buy the games. (I just refuse to pay for a game that I can finish at one sitting)
Seriously. If you don't want to increase the difficulty of the puzzles, you can at least put in more things to interact with in the game.
But I would prefer if you just made the games plain harder, still increasing the amount of objects, and had a function where Max can give hints.
I'm such a sucker for that box art. I'd buy anything with it on. My mom persuaded me not to buy the walkthrough before I bought the game, but I nearly did, with my own pocket money...but then I wouldn't have been able to buy the game. And that would've sucked.
Useless items = suckie.
Don't even know why I enjoy adventure games. They're so...pointless. But I'm irresistably drawn to Sam & Max & DOTT. I suppose it's because it's like a cartoon, but FAKE-O interactive and involving.
My life is a video game.
I have to say, I used it quite a bit. But even with the use of the hintbook I still couldn't figure out the "use max with fusebox" in the Tunnel of love. the whole using the flashlight with max thing confused me.
I finally figured it out using the tab button to switch verbs (since it was a one button mouse on a mac)
"Wanna ride the Tunnel of Love again?"
Hehe, I remember riding that thing over and over again, until Max finally dropped a clue. I think he said "Lighten up, Sam" or something.
--Erwin
Same here.
Maybe you're just really smart. I've received a lot of emails from reviewers who are stuck on puzzles in Culture Shock. (And I got stuck a few times myself when I played it the first time.)
I've also received emails from more than one person who said the difficulty level was perfect and as busy people without a lot of free time for gaming, they appreciated being able to finish a game in a few sittings. Telltale is trying to reach as wide an audience as possible with these games, and that means making some decisions about how the games are designed. We're definitely reading the feedback, and thanks to everyone for giving it, but please remember that we have some very experienced designers working on these games who make their design decisions for a reason.
It's of course very disappointing for old fans of the adventure game genre to realize that their highly anticipated sequel proves to be just a simple "drive-through" experience.
I know that many of my friends would've bought the new S&M games if they were harder. I mean, they completed HTR in a few days WITHOUT walktrough. (yeah I know, I may be surrounded by smart-asses - but they are still potential customers).
But now I'm getting convinced that these games are not for me. They were never targeted to me in the first place, and will never be.
Tough luck, but there are other (old) adventure games out there to play.
That is to create puzzles that conform with the idiosyncrasies of a character. The player will be forced to get away from conventional thinking, because they cannot simply come up with their own logical interpretation of a circumstance. This could logically explain how puzzle solutions that seem reasonable to the player do not actually solve the puzzle (moving a chair across the room to reach higher would be ideal, except for the protagonist’s deadly fear of chairs).
It also benefits the story. If success is dependent upon understanding the character, you give the player that much more motivation to understand how the character thinks.
Personally, I’m also a fan of becoming someone interesting, and I feel much more absorbed in a game when I’m forced to think and act like someone else, than thinking and acting as I would. Not sure if this is the case for everyone else.
This does seem a little obvious, though. With the long history of adventure design, this theory has probably been implemented. But perhaps not to the level I have in mind.
I’d like to see the protagonist comment directly on how they view an obstacle, giving insight into how he or she views the puzzle. This isn’t to be confused with a hint (gee, I sure would love to have widget X right now!). Not an overt one, anyway. But maybe an indication of how the character would approach a problem. Take a locked door that the character must get through. Perhaps a shifty character would say something like “locks are made to be brokenâ€. Maybe a more impatient/violent character, like Max, would say “This door fills me with loathing and disgust. It must be destroyed.†Neither gives away how to do a puzzle, but it gets the player thinking along the lines of the character. If the designer wants, they can make it more obtuse than that, though. Perhaps simply by speculating on the character, the player can deduce how that character would approach an obstacle. Whether subtle or overt, making puzzles character centric rather than player centric is a great way to make puzzles obtuse without making them illogical or impossibly difficult.
But if you read the reviews, that's not really what people are saying.
No, if all you want are ridiculous puzzles and paper-thin story and characters you don't have to look much further than: every modern adventure game.