There’s a fine line between “stupid puzzle” and “unfair puzzle”. The hydrant puzzle may be “stupid”, but it’s pretty fair: the player knows what’s needed and it helps establish the role of tubes in the game and how much the town is obsessed with this stuff.
Plus, since none of your characters knows anything about plumbing, there’s not even another way of solving it. I would have found it unfair if the character was a plumber with a whole set of wrenches in his inventory, just refusing to do the obvious thing for the sake of an added difficulty.
It would be unfair if you had to come up with the solution yourself, but you´re pretty much lead through it and told what to do, thus introduced to the games internal logic.
That’s right, thanks for finding it. After playing TWP I was so hyped, I started studying several articles about adventure game design and story structure/telling. To bad I don’t have the time to create or contribute to a game.
Indeed that must be the reason, but still I think this is not necessary. In the real world tubes are the predecessors of transistors. In the real world you can actually use tubes to build radios, receivers, TVs circuit, TV’s screen, computers, and most other devices that go beyond a basic circuit. Some early computer prototypes were build with tubes. I think that all the other tube puzzles actually make sense based on the real world understanding of tubes. But a hydrant that is leeking water? This actually destroyed my intuition for what tubes can be used in the game making me to try out tubes also on other puzzles where it also did not make sense.
I’m pretty sure that I will never finish that game. I have even purchased the remastered version hoping that the new graphics could motivate me to play those awful action sequences but I was wrong, I got bored again and it’s one of the few recent adventure games that I have ignored for the past few months. I’m thinking of uninstalling it from the PC. A part of me wants to complete it because I like the story, the settings, the graphics, the music… I just hate those action sections.
I played Gabriel Knight only recently, when the remastered edition came out and I did it mainly because of its historical importance as an adventure game and because I liked very much another more recent Jane Sense game (“Gray Matter”) and I was curious to see if I would have liked also her most famous game.
While the kind of story is not my cup of tea, I have to admit that overall I liked it. There is a good chance that I might even play its sequel.
Zak is, intentionally, my “background” adventure game, meaning that I will play it a bit now and then (taking notes) while I invest more time to play and finish other games that are more interesting to me.
The issue with Zak is that I want to play it just because it’s an important Lucas game and because I like the story, but I will never like that kind of mechanics or gameplay in an adventure game. Playing Zak is to me mainly an exercise in willpower and I will finish it sooner or later, but I’m OK with “later”.
This habit is killing me, especially since when I added to the mix a few games that have a high replayability or that are divided in chapters. For example I have played only the first two chapters of “Stories Untold” and I will for sure finish it, but other cool stuff is distracting me.
Another question came to my mind: when you get bored or uninterested about the adventure game that you are playing, does it happen to you to quit it and watch a video playthrough just to see how the story goes on?
It never happened to me (in those cases I might use a walkthrough or hints) but I know that some people do it.
Oh I played that! Remember absolutly nothing about it, though. Why was it called Blackface anyway?
I watched the rest of Chronicls Of Innsmouth because I was physically unable to finish that one part. But that game´s look and story still interested me enough. I don´t know if I would do that if the games story or setting itself would start to bore me. Probably not.
I finished all of the earlier Lucasarts adventure games right through Monkey Island, and even the sequels that came about near the end. About the only Tim Shafer adventure game I ever finished was Day of the Tentacle (and more recently Broken Age). I tried Full Throttle and Grim Fandango, but neither the puzzles nor the story seemed all that great and I lost interest. Ditto for Psychonauts if you want to call that an adventure game. I find these three games interesting because seemingly the rest of the world loved these games. Also, Sam & Max was a non-starter but this was more obviously hyped up by Lucasarts.
Another notable game that didn’t capture my interest enough to finish was Beneath a Steel Sky. Lots of praise heaped on it but I grew bored pretty quickly, despite being a big sci-fi fan at the time. With all of these games there seemed like a big disparity between what the magazines were writing about them and the actual experience of playing them.
Almost forgot about Zork! Every 5 years or so I’ll give it another try. Mapping is quite fun but eventually the frustrations of a small inventory, dropping objects and noting where you left them, and having the thief randomly pick up objects makes it such a random crap shoot every time. This is a game that actively tries to prevent you from finishing the game, which is a weird marketing decision because you would think they would encourage players to finish the game so they would buy the sequels.
I wanted to like this game so much! I’m a metalhead so I kept playing to enjoy all those great metal personalities. I gave up though, I really couldn’t justify spending so much time on gameplay that became dull quickly. I don’t mind action games but I didn’t care for this one.
Probably the game that I most regret abandoning was “Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis”.
I have already written elsewhere why I rage-quit it two freaking times (hint: I repeatedly forget that the player can die) but I find it shameful that I never completed it because I’m absolutely sure that, storywise, it could become one of my favorite classic adventure games.
If somebody can tell me how to always win those boxing action sequences (I know that there is a trick for it) I could give it another try.
I love that style too. Can you suggest other PnC adventure games having a noir mood?
There is a hotkey for abandoning he boxing sequcenes. However, why not choose either the team or the puzzle path instead of the action path because there they´re reduced to a minimum anyway?
First: You know that there are three different story lines? Only in one of them you have to fight. You can solve Indiana Jones without fighting. This should be possible in Indy 3 too, but I never managed that.
If you have chosen the “fight” path in Indy, you can win with pressing “ins” or 0 on the numeric keypad/block of your keyboard. But this cheat works only if you can’t bypass the fight with a puzzle.
@milanfahrnholz , @Someone : dear fellow forumists, in this very moment I’m simulating calm, because I’m aware of your kind and well-meaning intentions of helping a poor inept, but I can’t just reply to you without revealing that this topic and your questions/comments inevitably make me go F****NG THERMONUCLEAR, and it happens every single time people tell me these things. So…
Yes, I’m aware that there is the “wits” path. That’s the path that I have chosen every time I played the game.
Yes, I’m aware that choosing that path minimizes the fights and I hope that you are aware that it doesn’t completely remove them from the game.
What has happened both times to me is that I just arrive at the labyrinth chapter, I meet a guard, I choose a dialogue option without suspecting that it would start a fight, a fight starts, the guard beats me and the game ends.
So, since it’s clear that I like to select any dialogue option I want without worrying that the game could suddenly end, my new tactic for the next playthrough is to take note of the keyboard shortcut that makes the player win any fight and use it in case I will choose again that freakin’ dialogue option.
You have no idea of the superhuman psychological strength I have put to write this post without nuking the whole solar system, including Pluto and up to the hypothesized Oort Cloud.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. I appreciate the time you are investing to reply to me.
In Atlantis you can just avoid a confrontation with a guard (you can walk around him, run away from him or wait until he has passed your position). Another tip: If you walk enough times “back” in a fight, Indy escapes. And you can escape into a room nearby; the guards won’t follow you.
But I don’t like(d) these fights either, they are annoying, yes.
I seem to remember the fights in Indy4 are just a formality, I mean rather easy, except for one with a big guy that you will recognize by the body size and the very long life bar. That one must be defeated with a trick. I think you can also run away with the right dialog choice, avoiding entering the fight.
In general, when Indy talks to a guard before fighting, observe the background location well, because it can give you clues how to avoid the fight or defeat the guy in another way.
