Unlike those mentioned here, you actually could solve that one without audio. The hints in the dialog is all you need to know. 
And I agree. It was clever, and I liked it. I think almost anything in the Deponia series was great. The only puzzle I really found mean was the organ puzzle, but luckily, that one can be skipped.
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When I first played it, I just guessed it. There are not too many possibilities after all.
But actually, the system really is not hard to remember. It’s always the number he shows you first.
I remember stumbling about this too the first time playing it.
And then again on the second playthrough at a later point in time, including remembering I was stuck there before.
As mentioned before it’s really simple and from then on I never forgot it.
Ron literally wrote a seminal article in 1989 on why puzzles like that were the reason adventure games “sucked”. In 1989. You can’t say it was the time. Also, the screen wasn’t a “dead end”, either.
I just realized the “Red Herring” puzzle in MI1 is quite the same thing as the “Monkey wrench” puzzle in MI2.
But nobody seemed bothered by that one.
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Objection!
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Ok, nobody except @kaiman
I was. Contrary to the monkey wrench as detailed above.
Also, the screen wasn’t a “dead end”, either.
I can’t wait to hear why you think that the piping to use the monkey on was not a dead end. You had to walk across a jungle to a screen with a waterfall, up the screen to some pipe work and you could do nothing else.
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I don’t think so. The troll tells you, he wants something of no use. Sounds like a red herring to me. So it’s really obvious that you have to give him something, you couldn’t use anywhere else, even if you don’t know the term “red herring” (which I didn’t as a kid).
Seems much more straight forward than the monkey wrench puzzle to me.
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I guess it’s a bit more straight forward in that you are told that something is needed for the troll. However, giving him the fish just didn’t make sense, because there is no such thing as a figurative “red herring” in German. So the puzzle wasn’t really solvable without trying everything on the troll, and it wasn’t clear why the fish of all things worked.
When I played the English remaster, there was this really big aha moment for me, when all of a sudden this particular puzzle made sense. But by that point in time I already knew the solution, just not the reason why it was the solution.
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You’re just describing the same logic:
- You obtain the red herring. You obtain the monkey. Why? No reason, just because it’s there. Unless you know the idiom.
- You come upon a relevant puzzle. That monkey that looks like a wrench sure looks applicable to that pump/pipe thing. That red herring seems kind of useless, so it might be applicable here. Note how the latter is much weaker.
The red herring doesn’t seem particularly useless. You imagine it can be (ab)used to attract seagulls or other wildlife, for example. Or maybe you can cook it. It’s not inherently useless. It’s only useless in the context of having explored everything. Anything could be useless.
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I guess so. To me that waterfall was a pretty straightforward trope from comics, books, cartoons, TV & movies. At the time I didn’t necessarily know it was also a videogame trope, but within the wider cultural context that strikes me as irrelevant. (I suppose you could argue MI2 is a relatively early example of the trope in videogames.)
Not as a general phrase. But it is somewhat established when it comes to video game design. Then again, a casual gamer probably wouldn’t know this, as I didn’t back then.
Actually you can. Same with the hunk of meat. Cooking those serves no purpose at all, though.
Exploring is an essential part of adventure games, so seems fitting.
That would only be an issue, if the inventory gets overly cluttered, but Monkey Island did a good job to prevent this.
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Right, I already said I don’t consider this overly problematic and par for the course, although in part that’s speaking from the future where I can just decide to look up the solution.
But the red herring puzzle is an example of what the monkey wrench is not. Because the monkey looks like a wrench.
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It’s quite the same thing.
it’s really obvious that you have to use something with the pump, something you couldn’t use anywhere else, even if you don’t know the term “monkey wrench” (which I didn’t as a kid).
Look at the similarities:
- Both involve an animal
- In both puzzles you don’t just pick it up, you must strive to get the object you need (distract the gull / distract the monkey).
- you need to use the item not as itself, but in a figurative sense.
- You have a hint: the troll asks for a “red herring”, and you have a (no quotes) red herring. the pump need a monkey wrench, and you have a monkey in the shape of a wrench.
- The hint is a pun based on the english language.
They are all the same, to me.
The only difference that makes the red herring puzzle more acceptable, in my opinion, is that you’re at the beginnig of the game and you only have 3-4 objects to offer.
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It is, nowadays. Thanks to MI1. It wasn’t, back then. And videogames are made for the general user, first. For the hardcore video game design fan, after.
Nowadays even a “monkey wrench” is a well-defined entity in adventure games design. Thanks to MI2.
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The herring just lies there, ready to be picked up. So naturally, you would do that. Seems much more straight forward to me than the monkey, which is not ready to be picked up from the beginning. Also stepping on the plank to distract the gull seems much more believable than what you have to do with the monkey. Guybrush clearly identifies the gull as the problem here, while nothing he says would indicate that you need a banana on the metronome.
Although stepping on the plank in itself is somewhat bending the rules, as it has no visible hotspot and thus can not be interacted with in the conventional way of constructing a sentence. It sure has the potential of being overlooked.
In the end though, the herring is still a herring and simply serves as something to eat. The monkey on the other hand is not used for something one would easily come up with.
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The troll doesn’t ask for something to eat, though, but for a thing that would “attract attention, but of no real importance”, which in the German translation comes across as “something important, but useless” (ein Gegenstand der “wichtig aussieht, aber zu nichts nütze ist”). That’s anything but a fish!
At least speaking for non-English versions of the game: in the context of all the hilarity and silliness present in MI2, it appears more logical to use a rigid monkey on the pump than give a troll a fish in the context of what he actually asked for. One can at least imagine that the monkey’s paws are able to get a grip on the pump and the long tail gives Guybrush enough leverage to turn the vent, without ever having heard of the term monkey wrench.
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