- without the use of gamefaqs and/or other help related articles?
If not, post your longest running achievement before you sulkily hit up gamefaqs to point you towards the tiny fork pixel that camouflaged itself with the Silver lining of the low resolution Brick Wall.
Personally, I managed to progress halfway through Monkey Island 1 before I got stuck in Guybrush's first ship, because I failed to notice the camouflaged cellar that someone would need telescopic x-ray vision to track.
I solved a number of commercial games w/o a walkthrough, and I think Simon1 was the longest of them. Other names- Return to Zork, Kyrandia 2 and 3 (3 was a bugger to figure out though), King's Quest 6 and 7. The longest run before I gave up must've been Simon2's nefarious "hush puppies" puzzle. Before that, it was rather smooth sailing.
I admit that I have solved hardly any AGS game without the occasional hint; that's the trouble of having the forum's Hint And Tips just *so* close to the download site ::)
I completed Ben Jordan 4 with out any hints. I didn't know about any hints and tips or walkthoughs on the forums back then.
I'm sure I must have completed some classics without any help but as I was very young I can't remember their names.
I completed quite a few LucasArts and Sierra classics without any walkthrough, but I used to play them with my sister or father (or got their help when I got stuck). Does that count?
Heh. Believe it or not, a time did exist when you couldn't just do a quick internet search for walkthroughs, leaving you with 3 alternatives if you were stuck:
1. Find a friend who played the game and ask them for help
2. Call a hint line if possible
3. Solve it yourself
I'm leaving out early connection methods like BBS's and Prodigy because they weren't terribly useful for anything other than online games (and in the case of BBS's, getting warez).
I almost always chose option 3 because my best friend and I typically played through games at the same time so he wasn't very helpful, and hint lines were INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE (the lucasarts hintline was 5 bucks a minute, including all the stupid delays in the menu and waiting!). I know this because I was stupid enough to call them once when I got stuck in The Secret of Monkey Island II, and what could have been a simple answer to my problem turned out to be a long string of really horrible hints that I had to step through, one at a time, until I finally found a 'hint' that fit my situation. Nevermind that by that point the phone call was probably 30 bucks. Hint lines were quite a scam back then, and they didn't even give me a direct answer!
Yeah, back when I originally played adventure games in the early '90s the only options were as Progz said. Since the hint lines tended to be based in the US, thus incurring international call charges, that wasn't really an option -- so you just had to play it until you figured it out, or gave up.
These days it's far too easy to just look up a walkthrough or ask on the forums if you're stuck in a game... there's just not the dedication any more that you used to have to commit to finishing an adventure game!
I completed the first two Monkey Island games without the use of a walkthrough, I completed Day of the Tentacle without the use of a walkthrough. The first time I ever really needed to get some serious help in an adventure game was Broken Sword and Broken Sword II but it wasn't the internet that I went to. Lucky for me I had a magazine which had a HINTS SECTION and after the release of Broken Sword they did a hint spot on the three hardest puzzles so that's what I ran to for help.
Like they said...
I beat 90% of all adventures games I'd play before 2001 when I went online and was easily tempted to cheat. The other 10% were left unfinished on the shelf. (Zak Mckraken for example, bloody remote control puzzle)
I try to beat every worthy adventure game without a solution but it doesn't go as well as I wish.
But fortunately I succeeded with for example Eric the Unready, Fable, Simon the Sorcerer 1.
Well, the exactly one puzzle I stuck on for a long time in Eric was accidentaly spoilered to me by some fanfic based on the game. But everything else I honestly solved myself dedicating this game a lot of months to finish so I like to think that I beat the game pretty much myself. Whatever.
I beat Monkey Island 1 and 2 without a walkthrough, and Day of the Tentacle. (I think).
I'm a bit of a walkthrough whore now though. :(
I'm actually not sure I ever have.
But only a few times has it made me go "Oh! I could have worked that out if I'd stayed at it a bit longer", usually I think "I wouldn't ever have got that except by accident, this is a terrible puzzle and I'm glad I didn't waste any more time on it"
Most games do have at least one terrible puzzle at some point. If walkthrough's didn't exist I might never have got to see the good stuff that came after them.
I believe this is the reason why Adventure games died (industry wise). How many FPS have you heard of that needed a walk-through?
I have more fun playing an easier puzzled game than one with puzzles so dumbfounded that you'd never expect the combination to ever amount to anything. It's worse that once you do read the walk-through and still think the puzzle was too bizarre and random.
I think Monkey Island 1 is the only commercial adventure game I've actually beaten without a walk-through.
I beat DOTT, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Beneath A Steel Sky, and Wayne's World all without walkthroughs or hints.
But anytime I do have to look at a walkthrough or use a hint system I always justify it by saying either "I would have figured that out eventually" or "How the hell was I suppose to figure that out?!".
One game I can't beat without or even WITH a walkthrough though is Feeble Files, because it's a damn hard game that was designed to be damn hard.
Quote from: Ryan Timothy on Fri 02/01/2009 04:30:53
[...] Adventure games died. [...]
Take the infidel and BURN HIM!
(Being someone who's only been a gamer since 2003, I haven't played many golden age commercial titles.)
Well, I beat Cirque De Zale without a walkthrough, and Ben Jordan Case 1 (probably because it was so short). A few others, too.
I always try not to use walkthroughs, but usually end up doing so somewhere along the line. I used a walkthrough for many of the final puzzles in the new Same & Max episodes, the final puzzle of 5 Days A Stranger, too much of the rest of Chzo Mythos, a bit in the middle of Jessica Plunkenstein, practically all of Beneath A Steel Sky and Flight Of The Amazon Queen (I was a kid back then, with no sense of honour).
The problem is patience, really. Usually I'm too excited to find out what happens next to sit and figure out a puzzle, or, God forbid, come back to the game two weeks later (not a bad technique, actually). But I always try my hardest not to use a walkthrough, and I'm getting better in that regard. Slowly.
It's a good idea to play a game just as it's released if you want to stop yourself from cheating, seeing as no-one will have written a walkthrough yet. This is what I did for Ben Jordan Case 7 (but I still ended up looking for the solution to the FIRST puzzle).
I'd like to third the statement of the other Old Boys. Back in the day, GameFaqs and the AGS forums weren't around to give you any hints on how to play your game and get to the end. Fortunately, I have the patience to try every ridiculous object on every other ridiculous object, and pick up everything that isn't nailed down mentality so far ingrained in my mind that in my youth, I would actually collect random knick-knacks that looked like they might be useful someday that I found that wasn't obviously kleptomaniac urges. Keys found on the street, rubber chickens with pulleys in the middle, etc.
That said, as far as successful completion of games, I completed Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory) 1, 2 and 3 - 4 glitched out and I still haven't made it to the end, 5 I gave up on pretty early in. Of the more 'puzzle based' ones: Secret of, Return to and Curse of Monkey Islands, King's quest 6 (Heir today, Gone Tomorrow), Space Quest 3, 4, 5 and the VGA remix of 1, Sam & Max hit the Road, The Longest Journey & Dreamfall, and a handful of others. Most of these took months of frustration and on & off playing. Fortunately, most of my close friends, including my brother, were Adventure Gaming geeks like me, so we could usually throw ideas off of one another if one of us got stuck. A lot of the games were also 'multiplayer' experiences insofar as my brother, friends and I would sit crowded around a computer brainstorming on puzzles.
I have had to resort to walkthroughs on a lot of the 'one wrong move gets you killed' Sierra titles, like the Police Quest series, but it makes me feel unclean after I'm done looking at the solution to a puzzle I've worked so hard on and eventually gave up. I guess the draw of Adventure games is how hard it is to solve, and the sense of vindication on solving a puzzle. Sometimes the lateral thinking is a little tough on the ol' noggin, though.
Most of the old lucasarts games were, for the most part, solvable with a little thought, and apart from the one place I got stuck on in Monkey Island 2 I never used a hintline again or a walkthrough for any of the old titles. I will admit that I'm not a fan of Sierra's sadism, so games like most of the early space quests/king's quests greatly annoyed me as a child. I'm glad I gave the Quest for Glory series a chance, though, because it remains my single most favorite series of adventure games (up until part 5) today. The mix of rpg and adventure was right up my alley, and I honestly think that if more adventure games had gone the route of the Quests or Fate of Atlantis (allowing forceful or logical solutions depending on your play style) the genre would have done better. As it is, the term 'adventure' has become more and more loosely applied to games that are clearly spiritual successors to games like Quest for Glory, and many of those games became classified as action adventures (like Legend of Zelda). The roots of the adventure game are clearly seen in games like that, even though the dialog might be simplified and the puzzles a bit easy. That's one reason why adventure games aren't dead and probably never will be, they just changed to suit changing interests.
Interesting replies, interesting subject, cos I haven't finished many without help :O Like the other guys have said though when I was introduced to the games it was all about the phone-in hint lines! I rang the LucasArts one for help with Sam n Max, I believe they had a UK office at the time. My main source for walkthroughs was this hints book I got in France. It was in French though, so that added to the puzzle. But that was like a bible to me in the early 90s! It had a walkthrough for the Dig and a graphic explaining that bloody animal bones puzzle so I think it was THAT that made me buy it in the first place! I wrote to EA when I was about 15 and played LBA2, I was stuck on a very early puzzle, no internet at that point (in fact playing LBA2 was one of the last things I ever did before I got the net!) and no phone hint systems available. I got a reply about a fortnight after and continued from then on (I couldnt get the lighthouse keeper out of the monsters cell :P all I had to do was throw the magic ball a particular way!!!! ::) )
But thinking back just about every adventure I've played I've used a walkthrough at some point. I didn't really get the logic when I was a kid, if there was any. There wasn't when I played Escape from Delirium ;p I think I even used a walkthrough for Dare 2 Dream! oh dear.
Noctropolis is one of the only games I haven't used one for, and subsequently haven't gotten past whatever the puzzle surrounding the observatory is. It took me 2 years to get that succubus woman to finally have sex with me! That sounds wrong... But still, I don't know whether the game is massive or what but I'm pretty sure I was only half way through or so. None of it made any sense yet anyway lol! I haven't replayed it yet either. I didn't use a walktrough for Toonstruck, but thats because I got bored after room 4.
Fate of Atlantis puzzles me...I remember going crazy. There's a puzzle where you have to align the surveyors equipment with the horns on the statues and stuff, and when I was a kid - years before I had the net, this puzzle drove me insane. I really want to remember how I figured it out, maybe it was the LucasArt phone line again. I didn't use a walkthrough for Flight of Amazon Queen either, so maybe I figured that one out by myself .^^
Ahh, those are bygone days :) It almost takes the fun out of it, being able to get a walkthrough instantly nowadays.
But yeah in conclusion no, I've only beaten a couple, laaaame! :P
Quote from: Mods on Fri 02/01/2009 15:27:04
Fate of Atlantis puzzles me...I remember going crazy. There's a puzzle where you have to align the surveyors equipment with the horns on the statues and stuff, and when I was a kid - years before I had the net, this puzzle drove me insane. I really want to remember how I figured it out, maybe it was the LucasArt phone line again.
Hahah...I remember not being able to solve that either, ages ago! I had the game for a long time, before a cousin who was visiting from...somewhere saw it on the shelf and commented on it. The conversation even reminded me of Indiana Jones "I tried to go between em! Don't go between em? Ohhhhh, now I get it!" (referring to those two horns :D). Another puzzle that got me stuck for the a while near the end(although I did solve it myself eventually) involved actually having to pick up a ladder and use it elsewhere. That didn't even occur to me to pick up the ladder!
I've forgotten to pick up that goddamn ladder so many times.
Hahahaha! Then it's safe to say,
always take the ladder!!! :)
I have finished Kings Quest 1,2,3,4 & 5. KQ6 & 7 are the only ones I have not completed, and I would never attempt KQ8, because is it really an adventure game and I have never played it. :)
Monkey Island 1, never beat. Monkey Island 2 I just started playing last night and am still at the beginning. The Curse of Monkey Island I did complete, but I had to check the internet every time I got stuck in a puzzle. I pretty much cheated my whole way through the game. Escape from Monkey Island, well, I couldn't force myself to even try to finish it, even though I did kind of like the game, but to me the puzzles did not make any sense imo.
Gold Rush, was one game that I do recall calling the Sierra Hint Lines to finish. That game was incredible, yet tough.
I try to complete all games hint-free. Once I get a "quick glance" at a walkthrough, I usually end up looking in it more often after that. It's dangerously close. And takes out the challenge and a big part of story, IMHO. I would be glad with no walkthroughs around, to be honest.
I almost always use a walkthrough or hints and I'm not ashamed of it. It's just not fun walking around clicking and reading everything hoping the awnser just pops up by chance or preseverence (though admittingly that can also be euphorious sometimes).
On the topic of hints. I just hate the universal hint system and the people that think them up. If I dont see the awnser and take the effort to browse through the hints and tips forum then I don't want some tease giving abstract clues that I most likely already thought about myself. Just give a clear awnser damn it! Oh and i hate it when somebody is stuck asks for help and then posts that they found it without telling how (I never post in the hints and tips forum so I see it more as an archive with awnsers than a way of communicating problems).
But yeah, I know that using a walkthrough takes out a lot of the magic. Spmetimes I see a puzzle that I want to solve so I look at the walkthrough how and once the puzzle is solved and gained an item or something I have no idea what to do next. So I have to look at the walkthrough again.
Several adventures I finished without walkthrough. Having played so many I really couldn't tell which ones. But for a fair few I've had to resort to walkthroughs as well.
Nowadays, if I get stuck somewhere for more than a couple of hours I'll probably have a glimpse at a walkthrough to get me unstuck, other than that usually not. Playing adventure games is something I do to enjoy myself, not torture myself. ;D
Quote from: ProgZmax on Thu 01/01/2009 15:24:49
1. Find a friend who played the game and ask them for help
2. Call a hint line if possible
3. Solve it yourself
4. Go through the whole press stand looking for a computer magazine with a walkthrough. ;)
I did Day Of The Tentacle, Toonstruck and Loom without any hints, but I played DOTT and Toonstruck at the same time as my brother so we did a lot of working together. I try not to read walkthroughs for games I've paid for, but I think everything else I've played I've had to look up one or two clues. When it comes to free games I have much less patience.
Quote from: BOYD1981 on Fri 02/01/2009 04:41:17
One game I can't beat without or even WITH a walkthrough though is Feeble Files, because it's a damn hard game that was designed to be damn hard.
As far as I remember my brother and I did that with maybe one or two hints - I think there's a bit where you have to put the current date on a passcard and you're supposed to work out the date from a star map, a view of the night sky and some vauge hints about how time is calculated. It translates into some insanely complicated sum that made no sense at all. Then there was a bit where you have to mix up some chemicals to put in the water supply of this planet to make all the natives rebel. After hours of trying to figure out the sequence we hit on the answer by trying random combinations. You know its bad puzzle design when you have to work back from the answer to try and figure out what you were supposed to be doing. Yeah, that was a tough game.
Alone in The Dark 3( it was actually damn fun to spend half an hour figuring out what to do with the guy in the cell), DOTT, Sam n Max Hit the Road,Police Quest 3(Driving around that maze cluelessly every time you had to leave a location was a pain in the butt but I managed to map the area after a while.)
Thats all I think. I hate using walk-thrus but I always catch myself doing so anyway.
I really didn't wanted use walkthroughs for grim fandango then after reaching the forest, I kept alt+tabing for help on gamefaqs..
(also sometimes I use walk-thrus for FPSs i. e.: Boss battle.)
Quote from: Shampoopsii on Thu 01/01/2009 02:56:23
- without the use of gamefaqs and/or other help related articles?
Certainly.
Let's see, off the top of my head, KQ2,4,6; SQ1,3,4,5; PQ1,2; QFG1,2,3,4,5; LSL2,5; TSOMI; LOOM; IndyFOA; DOTT; Sorcery101,201; Sorcerer; Enchanter; probably a bunch of others, too.
Another Sierra Classic which I never completed was The Colonel's Bequest.
I remember having the hardest time playing that game and eventually gave up. I was keeping notes in the little notepad that came with the game (Did It come with one? I am sure it did), but still gave up.
I have the Kings Quest Collection, so I should go back and play it again. Now I can look online if I get stuck. :)
If a game is well written then cheating, or using a walkthrough is not needed. Though I have to admit that for Spellcasting 101 I took a peak at the files with a hex editor. Zork 3 I managed to finish without cheating, but other Infocom games I have resorted to editing save files. Space Quest 2, and King's Quest 3 were also finished without cheating. Quest for glory 4 I actually managed to get a perfect score on without cheating!
Quote from: OneDollar on Sat 03/01/2009 14:07:27
I did Day Of The Tentacle [...] without any hints
In that game, there were two puzzles that had me totally stumbled:
Spoiler
Hoagie, Colonial Times, Attic: Swapping the two matresses to distract the cat- I blame the "unique" approach of using stuff without seeing what was selected
Spoiler
Bernhard, Present, also Attic: Unwrap the red-take-wrapped Dr. Ed. Again, a unique mechanic to have something as a cursor, but this one I eventually solved by panic.clicking everything.
Moral of the story: The most difficult puzzles always take place in attics ;D
i try never to use walkthroughs and hints, because my problem is that once i start using one, even just for one puzzle, its just too tepting to use it again... but, ofcourse, i do use them. quite a lot. oh well
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, although that was kind of a family effort. We were stuck for ages about how to get the lamp off the exploerer chappy.
Quote from: Ghost on Thu 01/01/2009 05:22:58
I solved a number of commercial games w/o a walkthrough, and I think Simon1 was the longest of them -SNIP- . The longest run before I gave up must've been Simon2's nefarious "hush puppies" puzzle
Huh? Wasn't it Simon 1 that had the hush puppies puzzle? Probably the stupidest puzzle in gaming.
It was Simon the Sorcerer 2 that had the hush puppies puzzle. It was in Sordid's lair, just before the whole time-stick thing and Sordid stealing Simon's body.
Quote from: Dataflashsabot on Wed 07/01/2009 10:21:49
i try never to use walkthroughs and hints, because my problem is that once i start using one, even just for one puzzle, its just too tepting to use it again... but, ofcourse, i do use them. quite a lot. oh well
I'm cringing right now because I know exactly how that feels...That urge afflicted me all the way through Grim Fandango...and Monkey Island...and Day of the Tentacle..god I'm such a quitter.
I think the only adventure game that I solved without hints or solutions of any kind was Inherit the Earth. I was nearing the end of my rope near the end, but it turned out that I had forgotten to click on a 5X5 pixel area. I also solved a fair chunk of Sam & Max: Season 1 without any hints.
Of course, both of these games are pretty easy, adventure game-wise.
Hi guys, if Shenmue counts as an adventure game then yes, I've beaten a game without any help.
I have also beaten Still Life but found out too easy, and some AGS games as well.
Monkeys III and IV were beaten without any help as well.
I THINK I've completed Discworld Noir without a walkthrough...
No, wait. There was that bit in Act 3... :-[
- Huw
I've only just started playing DoTT this week and I'm determined to do it without any hints. I've had it for two years now and I've decided to finally start playing it during revision week at uni... I'm glad I have my priorities sorted. ;D But unfortunately I'm quite stuck at the moment... Theres loads of stuff I know I need to do but I can't work out how to do them. I won't say here what I'm stuck on coz someone might inadvertantly give me a clue.
I will do this alone. :P
I never used a hint-book or website until fairly recently (originally so I could find more ways to beat Maniac Mansion). I figured if I couldnt beat a game, I didn't deserve to see the end. Several games I used to play have never been beaten.
'Eric the Unready' took my YEARS to beat, because I gave up, and would occasionally come back to it. A puzzle about reading a girl the newspaper so she would cry had me stuck for well over a year. Finally I solved it by accident.
only beat all the trilby games by Yahtzee (trilby the art of theft, 5 days a stranger, 6 days a sacrifice, 7 days a skeptic, trilby's notes)
Nice thread for me, this - as I have to say I'm completely ashamed by my status as a walkthrough junkie. Even so... I completed Broken Sword 2, Discworld 2, Sam 'n Max Hit the Road, Discworld Noir and Day of the Tentacle without a walkthrough. I came very close to completing COMI without one, though, and I am quite proud of completing Runaway 2 by only using the walkthrough in Chapter 5 given how atrociously designed the game was. All the other games, though, ground me down until I just read the walkthrough through. Curse Discworld 1!
Since the age of 15 (22 now) I have never used a guide, no matter how stuck I have got. This included all the Myst Games (didn't even use the in game hints...)
I think one of the last games I used a guide on was The Dig, and it was a crap Japanese translated pile of mumbo jumbo... I remember one section in the guide:
Spoiler
"Touch the 'it' and it will disappear" meaning Touch the 'Statue' and it will disappear.
lol.. good times... Soo, too many games to count... Erm I would include Monkey Island 1 and 3 (Never played 2 or 4), and Space Quest 1,2,3,4 (still have to do 5 and 6) and of course all the Myst games (not any of that online rubbish tho). And probably lots of other Adventure Games...
i remember when i was a kid and i got stuck on grim fandango (this was before i had internet). i was seriously stuck on the part in the forest, before rubacava, you know, when you've got to drive the truck over the electric lines to get the pumps moving simultaneously...anyway, it was driving me loco so i walked half a mile away to the nearest phone box (mom wouldn't let me use the house phone) and wasted £3 phoning the lucasarts helpline. unfortunately, the phone wasn't a touch tone one, so all my pocket money was wasted sticking coins in as i was kept waiting to be directed to talk to somebody else on the other line.
i ended up with all my pocket money gone and no nearer to escaping that damn forest. :(