Messages

1

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 15 Oct 2009, 13:01 »

That was me, who

had nightmares heh.

This should explain things for you:

I actually had a nightmare about being in the same cellar, I never said anything happens in the game, but I could see why you would think something would...
Anyways, The only reason I found it so disturbing was, taking a harder look at the scene and seeing the sheets looked as if they had people underneath them, I experienced a huge level of fear in that dream, a level which I have not experienced years before or since in a dream! I'm not sure why, but the art had a huge effect on me right there. I'm not upset about it, I actually think it's brilliant

That totally makes sense now!
I remember looking at that bit and going ARGHH then realizing it was nothing!  Hehe.
I too think that for a piece of artwork to have that much of a reaction and a lasting effect on a person, like you said, is brilliant!
I really adored the artwork in this game!

2

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / Re: The greatest Adventure Game of all time...

« on: 14 Oct 2009, 05:28 »

1  -  Beneath a Steel Sky
2  -  The Dig
3  -  Loom
4  -  Leisure Suit Larry 6 (though I loved them all)
5  -  Simon the Sorcerer

If companies would make more games like BASS and The Dig, I would be a HAPPY HAPPY GAMER.
Most serious adult oriented games please, preferably with cyberpunk-esque themes!!

3

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 13 Oct 2009, 12:59 »

As I promised I'd come back and write my thoughts once I'd finished the game, here I am!
I'm going to hide all of this as lots is spoiler!

All in all, I really enjoyed this game.
I do have some comments about it, but generally I feel it was totally worth the $10!

The biggest comment I have was just that it was way too short!
It was over in no time, and I felt really let down and disappointed when I suddenly found the climax upon me.
I'd have preferred a more supernatural reasoning or at least something that made you think more for the conclusion, but I still think it was a good conclusion and my preference for something else is simply my own personal taste!
HOWEVER, because of the overall shortness of the game, I felt that the story wasn't anywhere near as fleshed out as it could have been.
It was like this huge story was touched on, but nothing was ever fully developed.
I mean, SO much more could have been done with Agnes.  As it stands, she feels like she's there just to be a plot device rather than an actual character.
I had a loud groan when I realized the doctor was a neo nazi after a bad experience with a different very disappointing game, but thankfully that was just a plot device to justify Joe, and us as the player, feeling nothing about his death, as well as creating the puzzle with the mannequin.
The biggest flaw for me to be honest was that I thought the point where we realize Joe's crazy should have been the HALF WAY point of the game.
At that point I thought to myself "Ok, oooh.. getting into this now".  Then suddenly it was OVER!!
It really did feel like the story was completely cut short in the middle and had so much left to tell.
A great story, unfulfilled.

I LOVED the artwork.  It was truly beautiful and while many complain about the character animations, they didn't bother me in the slightest.
I prefer that over the blocky cartoon-esque graphics we see so often these days.

I also really liked the music, and didn't think it was porn music at all! ::laughs::
It's not my own personal taste and at first I was confused by it, but once I got into the world of the game, I found it fit perfectly.
It worked very much in the same way Silent Hill's more melodic track works, I felt.

Puzzles were overall pretty easy, but I don't mind that so much cause running around stuck for hours is not so much fun!
The only times I got stuck were opening the mirror with the necklace (trial and error opened it in the end) and gutting the cat to get the key out, simply because it NEVER IN A MILLION YEARS occurred to me to hack the cat open!! 
I'll admit that it took the walkthrough to tell me that was what I had to do! ::laughs::

Which leads me on to my next point.
The only gruesome part I thought the game had was killing the cat, perhaps cause I'm a cat lover!  (I have 2.. and 3 ferrets xD)
I was quite disturbed by that and expecting a LOT of gruesome scenes after it, but then nothing really came that bothered me from that point on.
To go against what is often said, I thought the level of violence was absolutely perfect for this type of game and not over the top gruesome at all.

Overall it wasn't a scary game, but had really great atmosphere that had me glued to it until I'd finished!
I was expecting it to be much scarier after reading this entire thread and a few reviews. 
Supposedly something really scary happens in the cellar that gave someone nightmares, but I'm not exactly sure what that was supposed to be cause nothing really scary happened down there? 
Some blood writing on the wall but I'd assumed that body was going to jump up and attack me or something so a bit of blood was, to be honest, a welcome relief!  ::laughs::

As I said at the beginning, this game was definitely worth the $10!
Full of bugs (like characters standing on the ceiling, vanishing and reappearing and so on) and many spelling errors, but they didn't really bother me as the game still ran smoothly from beginning to end.
I'm looking forward to seeing more and will definitely buy the next game!

That was incredibly long, but I felt the game deserved a thorough review! xD

4

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 12:47 »

Haha sorry about that!
No matter where I go, I always have this habit of going offtopic!  I talk too much xD

Just a final post to say I bought the game and it just finished downloading!
Will be sure to post my thoughts when it's over - if I survive! xD

5

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 12:18 »

Yeah instead I have 3 ferrets and 2 cats to keep me company/scare me with sudden noises! xDD

Anyway demo is over!
Can I just say!!!

I hate being chased I hate being chased I hate being chased!!!!!!!!!!!!! ::laughs::

The only negative comment I have, and it's something that has been mentioned before, is those save/load icons permanently stuck to the side of the screen.  I understand the full version is like this too?
They just ruin the beautiful artwork and would be better if they popped in and out like the inventory does.

Apart from this minor gripe, the rest looks fabulous!  Except for what I said above!!! xD
This is the main reason I've always failed at games like Silent Hill.  I loved the storyline but hated having to fight (you can tell I've grown up with point and clicks xD) and of course

being chased!!!!

Seems like I'll have to give this game a try though!
I'm always complaining (to myself as I have no friends into ags) that there aren't nearly enough mature games made.
Not that I didn't really enjoy games like Monkey Island and stuff when I was young, but my favourite games were always the more mature themed ones (often cyberpunk!) with dry humour (Beneath a Steal Sky = my favourite game of all time) and now I'm older (MUCH older x_x), my craving for these types of games is even stronger!
If I don't support the few games that actually are my style, then I really have no right to complain when casual funny games keep being made!  ::laughs::

6

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 11:56 »

Yeah, that could have been the problem on my desktop for sure!
The game keeps forcing Vista to change it's colour scheme, which I've never seen it do before (Vista hurts my brain on the best of days), but it seems to be working fine now!

Still no idea what was wrong with my laptop, but that thing is half dead and I'm sure the game will look SO much nicer on this system, so I'm going to leave my beautiful comfy bed and play this one at my desk (with my 3 ferrets running around in the background scaring the crap out of me!  At least my bedroom there's just the 2 cats to worry about!).  Not going to bother trying to get it to work on the laptop as it's working so nicely here!

Well, I have enough in my paypal account right now to buy it (it was meant to be going towards something else but well, it's a Friday night and I could do with a good game!) so if this demo impresses me, I'll be buying it immediately!
Will be sure to post back and let you know if I do!!

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 11:44 »

Ok that worked!
windowed, 1280x960, 2x nearest-neighbour filter
Going to go try it now on my laptop just out of curiosity!

After all this, let's hope I love the demo enough to buy the game!  ::laughs::

I'm 1680 by 1050 pixels on the desktop by the way.

Thankyou so much for all your help!

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 11:38 »

Ok got the standard codec pack, installed (this is on my much nicer desktop).
The demo will now open in fullscreen and give me the menu.
I click NEW GAME, and get music and a screen of black, which was what was happening on my laptop.
If I move the mouse to the top of the screen, I can see little red arrows (the inventory arrows) but everything else is black.
Having seen the demo work fine in a tiny window, I know that's not normal!

Will go try all this on my laptop now too just in case, but I suspect the game will run much better on my desktop.


Edit :: Oh and if I click the arrows, it tells me where are no more items to the left/right.. so clearly the inventory is working fine, just nothing else is!

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 11:26 »

Will go take a look and let you know!  Thanks!

So, is it common for this game to refuse to run in fullscreen then?  It's not just me? xD
Right now it runs fine windowed, just the window is TINY!

10

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Downfall

« on: 09 Oct 2009, 10:20 »

I think I must be the only person having this problem as I haven't seen it mentioned, but thought I'd ask anyway!
Maybe I'm missing something that's easy to fix!

I downloaded the demo (the 1st one I think) for Downfall a while ago and it didn't work on my laptop (Windows XP, a few years old and crappy to say the least!) so I just gave up.  I'd totally forgotten about the game until I re-discovered it today, I'm sure with infinitely more screenshot and such up now since when I found it the first time as suddenly I was VERY EXCITED ABOUT IT! 
I didn't even realize I'd downloaded the demo before until the menu screen popped up!

Anyway, on my laptop, (Windows XP, not so great) the menu screen will load but as soon as I press NEW GAME I just get a black screen with the music playing.  This happens with BOTH demos.
Now, I assumed this was the fault of my crappy laptop so moved to my desktop (which I hate to do as my desktop is well, on a desk, whereas my laptop is IN BED WITH ME! xD) and downloaded both demos again.  Desktop was bought in the last year, is a super fast gaming system, running Vista Ultimate.
Tried one of them, not sure which (the one called downfall-demo) and this time I didn't even get the menu screen.  I just got BLACK.
After clicking the mouse button I got music, but still black.
So I figured I'd try it again, this time in a window so I didn't have to both with getting out of it fullscreen if it crashed, and this time the demo worked fine (albeit VERY TINY).

So, I wonder, why can I only get this demo to work in a window not fullscreen?  It's ridiculously tiny in a window, especially on my huge desktop monitor, so really needs to be fullscreen!
I was honestly considering buying this game if the demo appealed to me (which is a big deal for me as I'm a poor student, have no credit card, and have to use the measly funds I can cram into my paypal account through selling things overseas - I live in Japan) but now I can't even test it out, and even if I DO buy it, I assume I'll have the same problems!
This has to be an easy fix I'm sure, and as it's happening on 2 completely different computers, seems like something I'm doing wrong!

Thanks!!

11

Completed Game Announcements / Re: The Treasured Medallion

« on: 22 Mar 2009, 22:46 »

"The archive is either in unknown format or damaged"

whenever I try to unzip the file.

How big is the file?
Maybe the download is to big, I can make rar the game in several rar files so each file will be smaller..

I managed to get it working in the end!  Thanks so much though!

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: The Treasured Medallion

« on: 19 Mar 2009, 16:56 »

Like I said, I've tried it on 2 separate systems (with 2 different operating systems)
I've also tried it with both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I also know that there are no problems with my system as I'm pretty anal about keeping everything under control there!  *laughs*  Plus it's unlike that BOTH my systems which aren't connected to one another have the same issue!

Still, I'm wondering if it's a problem with my connection?  I live in a very large apartment building and the connection just comes with it.  Usually I have no issues, but perhaps things aren't great today?
Either way, I've never had this kind of error with an AGS game before and that's why I thought I'd come check it out.  When I found that loads of others were having issues, I just assumed I was having the same one!  *laughs*

Will try and download it again tomorrow and see if that helps!  Thanks for your advice!

13

Completed Game Announcements / Re: The Treasured Medallion

« on: 19 Mar 2009, 15:57 »

Sorry to be yet another bringer of bad news, but I can't get this to download either no matter which of the download links I try.

I've tried it on 2 separate computers and always get,

"The archive is either in unknown format or damaged"

whenever I try to unzip the file.


I've tried multiple downloads of each of the files offered, and each and every one gives me the same error message.
Even the recent link by Peder Johnsen causes the exact same error.


I hope you manage to work out what's wrong with it soon as I, and I'm sure many others, are looking forward to playing this!

14

Adventure Related Talk & Chat / Re: What are your favorite/most hated Adventure Game Puzzles

« on: 08 Jan 2009, 03:17 »

I think ANY puzzle that you can't complete because you didn't pick up some object earlier in the game from a location that you can no longer go back to drives me COMPLETELY INSANE!!!!!!!!!!!
The first time I think I ever really encountered this, and the one that sticks with me the most is Leisure Suit Larry II when you're on the airplane going "WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?!  I'VE USED EVERYTHING WITH EVERYTHING AND NOTHING WORKS?!".. Then you realized you missed an item in the previous location and are completely screwed - the first time I played it I think I was only working with one save game and saved when I GOT ON THE PLANE..so I had to start the game from the very beginning!  WOW I WAS MAD!

And wow this was all such a long time ago xDD

15

Hints & Tips / Re: Empty mind blank fate

« on: 05 Jan 2009, 09:19 »

I am completely stuck!  Wondering it's actually a bug or whether I'm just being an idiot?

I've just gotten the laptop working, and when I click on it, I'm taking to a different screen but there's nothing to do there.  It's just gray with nothing to interact with.  I've tried clicking frantically all over the place with all interaction types but nothing it happening!  I'm told it looks like someone was searching for something, but that's all.

Eventually I resorted to a walkthrough on the net as I was just SO frustrated.. it tells me to click on a green button but there IS no green button!

My theory is that, as a lot of the graphics are being cut off by the icon bar right now (like the giant's head), is the thing I need to click on hidden behind it too?  Is there a button which magically minimizes the icon bar so you can see what's behind it?  I've tried a bunch of random keys but nothing has happened.
Checked the manual too but there was nothing there.

Am I missing something here? 

16

Completed Game Announcements / Re: Lost in the Nightmare: 'Save Our Souls' News: 29th of January

« on: 22 Feb 2008, 11:35 »

Ah!  So basically I've already done the extra parts without realizing it?
I hadn't played the original of your game so I didn't realize that the ending was longer in this version!

Anyway, even with the bugs, I really enjoyed this game!  It was so like games such as Silent Hill but without the fighting (I personally am not a fan of fighting in games).. and since I love the Silent Hill atmosphere, I wasn't disappointed. 

I'm really busy with university and my band right now but, I'm actually a music university graduate and focused mainly in composition, so if you ever want help with music on  further releases, just let me know!  I'm a big fan of Yamaoka Akira (Silent Hill) and Uematsu Nobuo (Final Fantasy) so I'd say a lot of my work is influenced by them.

Looking forward to playing your next game!   

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Completed Game Announcements / Re: Lost in the Nightmare: 'Save Our Souls' News: 29th of January

« on: 21 Feb 2008, 17:04 »

I was really enjoying this game but it's still SO bug filled 
The game has crashed on me for no apparent reason 3 times now, the most recent being after the cut scene telling the story of Lost One.  Another was on the about screen from the main menu and I've forgotten where the 3rd one was.  I just get an error noise and then black screen.  VERY annoying.
 
I hadn't saved for a little while so am really grumpy at the idea of having to go back and do it ALL again.
A shame cause I really was enjoying it, even with the shaky control system and occasionally icky English.  :'(


Edit : Well I'm VERY thankful for the autosaves I didn't realize existed!  That saved some time.. and I managed to overcome the bug by just skipping the entire cutscene..  hope I didn't miss anything! 


Edit 2 : Managed to finish the game!  Best ending too but I'm sort of confused.. where is the extra replayable level that's supposedly part of this new version?  As I said, got the best ending.. campers nicely saved.. just can't seem to find the extra part.. maybe I'm being dumb?