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» Hatrack River Forum » Active Forums » Books, Films, Food and Culture » Video Games of Summer Vacation (Page 2)

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Author Topic: Video Games of Summer Vacation
The Black Pearl
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This is now the videogames of the holidays thread.
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Raymond Arnold
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I tried playing Machinarium. I loved the art style and was really excited for it... but honestly point and click adventures where the puzzles are solved mostly by random guessing just didn't do it for me. I like games like Portal and Braid, where the puzzles build off a particular skillset. I don't care much for games where the puzzles are combining random heretofore unknown inventory items together.
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The Black Pearl
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They're not all random guesses. Sometimes if/when your stumped you'll just click everything and see what works, true, but there's still plenty of logical positioning and solving the puzzles that are built in to devices that you operate or logically noticing something in the environment(the glow in the dark clock hands). But yes some of them are for more unpredictability (and I dig that) but a lot of them are pretty cognitive.

Like that one part in the beginning, where your trying to get the crane to move in the right pattern, so you can activate it and move there in the right time so it drops you on a platform. Thats one the easier ones .

And yes, Portal and Braid both rule.

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scifibum
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quote:
Originally posted by Raymond Arnold:
I tried playing Machinarium. I loved the art style and was really excited for it... but honestly point and click adventures where the puzzles are solved mostly by random guessing just didn't do it for me. I like games like Portal and Braid, where the puzzles build off a particular skillset. I don't care much for games where the puzzles are combining random heretofore unknown inventory items together.

I cope by reading walkthroughs whenever I start to get frustrated with a puzzle. It makes it less fun overall, but for me, still better than endless random poking at things to see what will happen. So when the puzzles are accessible or sensible enough for me personally, I play as intended, and otherwise skip ahead.
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The Black Pearl
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Man, entering the town in Machinarium made me smile like a peeping Tom.

I had to gamefaq for the bird puzzle, but I might have gotten that if I wasnt so distracted with a couple items I wasn't using (was supposed to use one of them long before that room) and toying around with that clocktower.

And i spent a lot of time thinking I had to do something with that clocktower. ****ing clocktower.

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Raymond Arnold
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For the record, I DO like things like Myst (in particular the later ones), where the puzzles are mostly logic based. There's a bit of random clicking, but the knowledge you gain from those clicks builds on itself. By the end of the first game, you know that Myst is primarily (at least 55%) about figuring out whatever power source drives a particular island and following pipes to figure out how to manipulate it. You develop an intuition about which things to click on based on previous experience.

Maybe if I had played more of Machinarium it'd have looked more like Myst. Also may have helped if I had a friend to play it with (I never finished Myst until I played through with a friend, having two brains instead of one made a huge difference, plus witty banter).

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TomDavidson
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The only bit of Machinarium that I found unnecessarily cryptic was the cat puzzle.
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twinky
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That's because your brain has been trained to solve arcane and obscure adventure game puzzles. [Wink]

I liked the aesthetic of Machinarium, but even in the demo I found the puzzles didn't fit my brain.

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The Black Pearl
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Trying to get a gaming podcast started--anyone wanna come on basically for mock-podcasting. We're just gonna strike up a whatcha been plain'-excited for convo and edit out the boring.
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The Black Pearl
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Myst rules. Is Myst 4/5 good?
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Raymond Arnold
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Myst IV was excellent, except that there was a bug that prevented me from progressing to the final stages. (Couldn't complete the Jungle age, so I couldn't get a key necessary to progress through the Hippie Age). I assume if you got the game today that'll be fixed, or there's a patch or something.

Myst V seemed thoroughly terrible. The whole point of Myst, IMO, is to NOT be in realtime because there is no reason for Myst to be in realtime. Keeping it point and click allows it to have amazing prerendered graphics that I can't get anywhere else. Someday we will real a point where realtime and prerendered graphics look identically flawless, but we are not there yet and until then, if I wanted to play a realtime game with pretty graphics, I'd play Bioshock or something.

Myst V's storyline is also very disconnected from the others. From what I gather it follows the story from the Myst MMO that they tried a while back, and they just stuck "Myst V" on the box to sell more copies.

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The Black Pearl
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Speaking of the podcast, can anyone get on skype so I can make sure that i can record a call?
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The Black Pearl
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Also, the time based puzzle levels in Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in time are really great.
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Sean Monahan
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quote:
Originally posted by umberhulk:
Also, the time based puzzle levels in Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in time are really great.

Agreed.
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Samprimary
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Anyone here who is a fan of classic platformers in any way, shape, or form who is not playing Super Meat Boy is making a terrible, terrible mistake.
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MattP
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Noted.
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The Black Pearl
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I'm close to finishing Halflif2 Episode 2. I love it, still not nearly as muchas Halflife 2 though.
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The Black Pearl
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Anyone amped for the VGA premieres. I hope Bioware unveils Baldur's Gate 3. None of them may be great games, but we'll see some good looking stuff.
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BlackBlade
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I *need* a new Baldur's Gate game.
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The Black Pearl
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gog.com
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Sterling
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I've been enjoying Super Scribblenauts on the Nintendo DS, but I'm occasionally a little annoyed when I'm balked on a puzzle because of the creators' lack of imagination rather than my own. (Yes, I could get to the head of a line by bribing everyone with something they want. Or I could just fly over their heads to get to the front, or shoot them all with a tranquilizer gun, or frighten them away with a monster... except I can't.) Still, the glossary is quite expansive, and the huge number of things you can "create" is amazing given the perceived limits of the hardware.
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BlackBlade
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quote:
Originally posted by umberhulk:
gog.com

So....tempting....
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C3PO the Dragon Slayer
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quote:
Originally posted by Sterling:
I've been enjoying Super Scribblenauts on the Nintendo DS, but I'm occasionally a little annoyed when I'm balked on a puzzle because of the creators' lack of imagination rather than my own. (Yes, I could get to the head of a line by bribing everyone with something they want. Or I could just fly over their heads to get to the front, or shoot them all with a tranquilizer gun, or frighten them away with a monster... except I can't.) Still, the glossary is quite expansive, and the huge number of things you can "create" is amazing given the perceived limits of the hardware.

I love the Scribblenauts games, but I find myself enjoying the title screen more than the actual levels, since I can do anything I want, even if there is no real goal. In a way, that makes Scribblenauts more of a video toy than a video game, but that doesn't mean it is any less of a legitimate accomplishment for the industry.

I'm personally hoping 5th Cell realizes that Scribblenauts is an amazing social experience (I enjoy it the most coming up with wacky solutions with friends) and tries to make the formula include multiplayer, local or online. The ability to have multiple Maxwells in the same world, competing or cooperating to come up with the most creative scenarios and solutions, would be the best way to improve on Scribblenauts at this point.

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The Black Pearl
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Finishing Link to the Past for the first time. It still holds up. I'm not bananas over it though, but the puzzles in the game are still great. I'm just a retard whose so used to doing backflips and stuff in Zelda games I guess. But Lttp is genrealy harder on those games.
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The Black Pearl
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Final Fantasy V and Xll are so good.

I wish knowing where to go wasnt such a chore in V though.

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