I have always wondered, which Adventure Game puzzle did you like, or hate, the most?
By this question I mean, which puzzle in any Adventure Game do you think is the most logical, or best fits the story, or best implemented, or whatever. Any game. Commercial, underground, you name it. Or it can be the least logical, and most annoying.
My favorite is in the SLUDGE game, "Out of Order."
Spoiler
When you have to hack into the admin computer using the code you found in the newspaper. That was ingenious.
What are yours?
I liked the final puzzle of "5 days a stranger". It took me a while to figure it out, but I think it was really smart and, more importantely, atmospheric.
My favorite, I think, was in KQ6, my first adventure. 'Three roses lay on the bower, a scythe to he who cuts the flower. A crown, a dove, a noble race. A scull and bones marks this dread place.' I think that was it.
My most un-favorite was looking at all the books in the library in 5DaS, I didn't realize I would have to until I read a walkthrough. It should have been more clear.
Quote from: Hollister Man on Sun 25/07/2004 04:11:18
My most un-favorite was looking at all the books in the library in 5DaS, I didn't realize I would have to until I read a walkthrough.Ã, It should have been more clear.
agreed
My favorite puzzle was in space quest five
Hole punching the keycard by finding the order as a fly
Oh, that was close behind, but not as memorable. I liked 'deactivating' the android with the banana. :)
WD-40 lol
Space Quest was a good series. Remember the energizer bunny puzzle in SQ4?
Le Serpent Rogue in Gabriel Knight III: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
The Ends of the Earth in Kyrandia III: Malcolm's Revenge
Monkey Wrench puzzle, Monkey Island 2
Gobliiins 1, old guy casts magic on the mole to divert the wizards attention
Space Quest 6, the end puzzle with the fish. It's clever because of the premise behind it and because you finally get rid of the smelly old fish.
Also, I love in the same game the "anti-piracy" puzzle (I use that loosely) where you have to spell out the word using the periodic table. That was actually well done.
I remember the fish puzzle, I hated making the homing beacon in 6 tho
The drinking, spitting, gambling puzzles in MI2.
They just helped the game feel so much more lively when you competed with NPCs and timing was a factor.
Shooting The Barber Pirate's Banjo then blaming it on the grassy knoll in Monkey Island 3.
Didn't Like the Bone Maze in Monkey 2, solely because I spent so damn long randomly picking doors.
I thought that the sending-the-floating-crystal-to-fetch-the-lense-down-the-hole puzzle in The Dig was totally and utterly inspired. When you spotted what it was you were doing, it all seemed so obvious! EXACTLY how a puzzle should be done!
shouldnt that be 'hole'?
:D
The time loop puzzle in Sorceror.
The magic duels in Quest for Glory II and III.
Getting Elaine's map in Monkey Island II, hard version.
Oh and what I hate is any kind of pixel hunt.
Oh, if we are also going to mention puzzles we hated, then (this technically counts) the Anti-Gravity skating puzzle in Space Quest 4, when the Sequel Police are chasing you. Man, I hated that puzzle.
But, that's a bit off topic, I guess.
Quote from: Sutebi on Mon 26/07/2004 21:51:09
the Anti-Gravity skating puzzle in Space Quest 4, when the Sequel Police are chasing you. Man, I hated that puzzle.
That wasn't really a puzzle. More of an ingame action sequence. I actually liked that part alot, until I got a faster PC and it became nearly impossible for me.
Quote from: Hollister Man on Sun 25/07/2004 05:18:12
Oh, that was close behind, but not as memorable.Ã, I liked 'deactivating' the android with the banana. :)
Seconded.
Great, now I want to play SQ5 again. After the team competition ends, I will.
Insult swordfighting with Carla in MI1.
The crystal maze in Sorceror (or was that Spellbreaker?). So many good puzzles in that series!
That was Sorcerer. I haven't gotten through Spellbreaker yet but Sorcerer was amazing.
('what happened to my plant!!!')
Oh, and I liked the description for the 'menace to society' ending a lot.
Oh, and there's the 'nameless terror' puzzle in Enchanter, too :)
DOTT: The right handed statue that becomes left handed in the past, so that nurse Edna cannot hang on to it in the present.
MI: Insult sword fighting.
MI2: The spitting contest.
I aboslutely HATED the demolition derby puzzle FT it took soooo long and didn;t even make sense. I also hated the communicator puzzle in SQ6
Quote from: aussie on Wed 28/07/2004 15:10:10
DOTT: The right handed statue that becomes left handed in the past, so that nurse Edna cannot hang on to it in the present.
I don't really like that puzzle. It is very clever, but I solved it by accident instead of lateral thinking. Perhaps people more observant than me would have figured out that the left handed brother would hold the sword with the other hand when posing, or even that exchanging the hammer would cause them to switch being models.
Monkey Combat!!11
j/k
My fav has to be the whole hamster puzzle in DOTT.
I feel so sorry for the little guyÃ, ;)
Worst puzzle: the monkey wrench in MI2
I liked the part with the frog in simon the sorcerer the best (move out of the way or the little fella gets it)
Grim Fandango, following Lola's clues to find the photo, so that you can blackmail Nick. Several logical stages to the puzzle and the final payoff for working out the date you need to request a photo-finish for, from all the clues, is just satisfying.
Also most of the stuff in Monkey Island 2, which is near-perfection in puzzles I think. You can't beat Part II: Four Map Pieces for tight, clear puzzle structures, blended with the all-important freedom to move between islands/puzzles.
Can some of you who posted in this topic explain WHY you liked or hated the puzzle(s) you mentioned? I'm creating a game and such info would be very valuable to me. Thank you all very much!
Jonathan Grant
I hated the homing beacon puzzle in SQ6 because there was no clues except for in the paper that came with it that I lost
The "Lost Souls Island Puzzle" in Steve Meretzky's "Spellcasting 201: The Sorcerer's Appliance" ! from 1991 - this one I will tell my grandkids about - for sure!
Worst puzzle ever:
the "Piano Puzzle" in Cocktail's "Fascination"
(Any of the yournger folks happen to know these?)
I remember the Spellcasting 101/201/301 series. Insanely hard games, but they were fun. Also using the same engine was Time Quest, which I still have my original box for, ;D
As for best puzzle... That's tough... I kinda like the "Getting past the Gate" puzzle in Two of a Kind... oh wait... That's not out yet...
Ummmm... I'll have to get back to you on that one...
The whole Part 2 of Monkey Island 2. I thought the way all four series of puzzles could just blend together was extremly well done.
As for worst puzzles, pretty much all of the ones from Leisure Suit Larry 2. Particularly the ones that depended on you having items from waaaaaaay back, or at times NOT having items otherwise you would use and die from. Death and getting stuck would generally result unless you use a walkthrough or try and retry for the 30th or so time.
worst.... worst... worst..
oh yeah, using the head in Monkey Island 1, i never knew it, and picking random places, i checked walkthrough and all it says was: "use the head" i thought that you should think your way in this, it wasn't until i checked what i should do befour,
oh and:
i never understood the treasure puzzle, in the beggining in monkey 1, i just picked random places and finally got there
and the best puzzle was "poising" the dogs in monkey 1
I don't have a specific one ... Well, yes I do ... but ... That one Grim Fandnago, were you had to grab that dude's light from his head? And later on when you had to deactivate the lock with your scythe? And the forklift, which I never got right till I figured out I had to download a patch because GF ran too fast on my pc?
Well, now for general hates:
Escape puzzles: "You are stuck in room. Escape."
Distract puzzles: "I not let you pass. Bribe/Distract me."
Grappling puzzles: "Anything to do with a grappling hook."
And anything incorporating all 3, I just throw out my window; they're so terribly cliche.
Yep.
Quote from: Zoraphus on Fri 10/09/2004 05:26:45
Well, now for general hates:
Escape puzzles: "You are stuck in room. Escape."
Distract puzzles: "I not let you pass. Bribe/Distract me."
Grappling puzzles: "Anything to do with a grappling hook."
And anything incorporating all 3, I just throw out my window; they're so terribly cliche.
Yep.
You must of hated 5DaS
It seems like noone on these forums have ever played the Quest for Glory series, but in one of them, there was a cliff that you had to climb up these individual stone steps then after so many there would be a puzzle, which you would have to refer to the owner's manual to pass(it required symbol translating, and whatnot). There were like 4-6 puzzles, and like 10-15 steps between each one,(the steps individually appeared after solving the puzzle) if you didn't click them right on, you'd fall to the ground....if you were high enough, you'd die, and have to re-do the puzzles and wait for the steps to come back out......GRRRR it was irritating.... >:(
((It might have been one of the King's Quest games, because I was talking to someguy at my work the otherday about QfG and he had no idea what I was talkin' about......but I think he was just hittin' the crackpipe a bit much))
My favorite puzzle would have to be getting the KKK away from your friend in Frank the Farmhand...yeah, a bit corny, but I still laugh at them running away from a "ghost".
2 puzzles that I hated:
The Pipe Maze in Garfield, sorry Zooty, but i didn't finish the game due to that. It gave me too much trouble! and...
Getting your car keys everytime you wanted to go somewhere in Pleurgburg (sp?).
Quote from: Cpt_Jigglypuff on Sat 11/09/2004 08:25:19
It seems like noone on these forums have ever played the Quest for Glory series, but in one of them, there was a cliff that you had to climb up these individual stone steps then after so many there would be a puzzle, which you would have to refer to the owner's manual to pass(it required symbol translating, and whatnot).Ã, There were like 4-6 puzzles, and like 10-15 steps between each one,(the steps individually appeared after solving the puzzle) if you didn't click them right on, you'd fall to the ground....if you were high enough, you'd die, and have to re-do the puzzles and wait for the steps to come back out......GRRRR it was irritating.... >:(
((It might have been one of the King's Quest games, because I was talking to someguy at my work the otherday about QfG and he had no idea what I was talkin' about......but I think he was just hittin' the crackpipe a bit much))
That was in King's Quest 6, not Quest for Glory, and yeah, I didn't really like that puzzle because I lost the manual around 10 years ago, so I've got to go by memory now.Ã, :-\
aha! so it WAS Kings Quest..... stupid piece of **** memory...grrrr
owell
Most hated: Any puzzles in Schizm. ;)
Though particularly the one involving memorising the sounds, and working out the symbols they were associated with for a code of some sort. I mean, its an interesting idea, using sound as a puzzle, but the darn thing just drove me barmy.
Favourite: Insult sword fighting (MI1&3) :)
Myst must have been a nightmare for ye then.
Guard puzzles I dont really mind, but I think it would be a good idea if they were done in a new way. Instead of bribing or distracting these annoying people, how about cunningly blowing them up with an extremly volatile lighter? Maybe cliched, but its damn amusing.
Opinions?
I liked the puzzle in fallout2 of finding the pieces needed to activate the car, not so much that it was a great puzzle, but it was difficult, and the best part was the reward. a nice set of wheels.
I don't know if this is counted as a puzzle, maybe not… but I HATE parts of a game where you have walking deads lurching around while you have to solve a variety of puzzles… and this is what almost put me off SP4 and 7days…
Because, take SP4 for example, I was walking around taking stabs in the dark, and just as I was about to leave the screen, that zombie thing rocked up… but at least it had a realistic progress system (while in 7days, the guys just pop up randomly).
The reason I hate this is because I feel puzzles take time, and patience, and I don't need to feel that something is probably going to get me if I don't hurry, or feel under constant pressure, specially if it's a really obscure puzzle.
Anyone else feel this way?
I can see where you're getting at... But if its the kind of atmosphere the game is trying to create, such as in 7 Days, then it can be done very well.
If its just there for the hell of it, then its pointless and bad storytelling.
Another good example is MI2. It worked really well, generally because it was the kind of deneumont that was kinda expected. Same as 7 Days.
My most favourite puzzle is in under a killing moon.
Where you have to get ,a cup fill up cup in swimming pool
pour water into jug, continue this until jug is full.So you
can retrieve item in jug cause the neck of jug is too small
to put hand in to retrieve item
Every puzzle in Schism sucked my hairy ass. I still can't believe I squandered all those hours trying to figure out what to do just out of spite. :P
Best puzzle ever... probably using the used stoggie in SQ4 to see the laser beams. I still giggle at the thought of Roger taking those big hauls...
I hate anything with a maze... for example the dungeons in KQ5 or the desert. UGH. I always hated stair climbing in the early KQ games... I ALWAYS fell off. OH... and climbing the whale tongue in KQ4. OH... and HATED the part with ogre in KQ4, where you had to sit in that stupid closet and wait for him to get the hen and go to sleep.
Favorites... 5 guards on Isle of Wonder in Kq5. They were funny. QFG... doing anything with magic... especially the wizard duels.
I don't like any of the puzzles that go:
Try
Die
Try
Die
I'm afraid the Space Quest games are particlaurly gulty of that. My least favourite was the hover-rink-race-escape-thing in SQ4. Particularly challenging （i.e. impossible) on Windows XP.
To make myself even more unpopular, I love any Myst-esque puzzles where you have to decode an alphabet or number system or memorize symbols or noises or make a chart...
*Ali meanders off into nerdish ramblings*
I loved the hamster puzzle in DOTT.
I hate maze puzzles, like the bone walls in MI2, the jungle in BS2 and so on. I always hate small games in the game, like monkey kombat and the rock thing from MI4, or the car crash derby in FT.
Hated - Those timed games where the bad guy is headed for you and you have to shoot him/pull the rug out from under him/hit him in the head. I _always_ die several times...
Probably because I turn the game speed up so high.
But I'm going to pretend it's not my fault.
I loved the tomb/code/bug/maze puzzle in Gabriel Knight, every "puzzle designer" should take it as example... it "starts" at the beginning of the game (you write down the symbols on the tomb) and you finish it way later (where you write your own message in order to find the cult) .
It's great because it's complex enough without seeming artificial, it's perfectly integrated with the story and require logic and ingenuity from the player.
Hm...
The "weapon" making puzzles in Fascination, where you have to save a female photographer... And another one, where you have to "disable" a police inspector.
Most hated: The one I'm stuck on right at the moment.
Favourite: Can't remember, but I like driving off the seagull (to get the herring) in MI1 and anything that involves PUSHing people in Indy 4 or DOTT.
Indy 4? Is that a 3D one?
Uh, no, I was referring to Fate of Atlantis, even though it isn't LucasArts' fourth Indiana Jones game. Last Crusade was the third movie, so the game to that is Indy 3 (for me at least) and the game after it (FoA) becomes Indy 4.
Right, the evil movie-game connection. Gotcha! I was afraid I've missed two games.
FoA was the fourth Indy game, actually. Look:
Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis 1992
Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis: The Action Game 1992
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Graphic Adventure 1989
Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade: The Action Game 1989
Indiana Jones in Revenge of the Ancients 1987
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom 1985
So assuming you count both Last Crusade games as one game rather than two, there you have it, FoA was the fourth Indy game created...
holy cow!
Favorite:
Has to be out of DOTT or the MI series, Possibly The Ryming insult sword fighting in MI3, not only was it puzzle solving but great fun!
And in DOTT, possibly the hamster too, Time Puzzles in that game were very clever. But some like the hammer thing were purley luck for me, though
The Worst:
Ah the worst were probably the ones SO BLOODY STUPID i probably cheated on them. Lets see what would be the perfect candidate...
Full throttle, that part where you got to hit the right bit of the wall at the right time, OH MAN That got on my nerves, a case of you know what to do and how and when but takes you lots of times just to get the right set of pixels.
Quote from: AGA on Fri 07/01/2005 05:24:28
FoA was the fourth Indy game, actually. Look:
So assuming you count both Last Crusade games as one game rather than two, there you have it, FoA was the fourth Indy game created...
<grin> of course the Alabama Smith games don't count as they're nowhere near official.
However, I do seem to recall an old console game called Raiders of the Lost Ark, (out of the age of the colecovision and stuff) which would qualify.
Oh yeah. Fave puzzle? The gnomes in KQVI, and/or the time loop puzzle from Sorceror.
Worst puzzle ever? I dunno, several I suppose; the one that comes to mind right now is the Hell Gate from QfG5, since I figured I should stab myself to get blood (just like you do for the Ring of Truth) and that doesn't even give you a response.
How about that puzzle in "Apprentice II" where you had to use the potion on yourself to make yourself inanimate and get into the book? Who comes up with this stuff?!?!
Alright, the greatest puzzles that I have experiences had to definatly be!!!!
1. Space Quest 5's The banana in the tailpipe, which always reminded me of Beverly Hills Cop
2.Full Throttle- Tackling the cave fish puzzle in order to get the ramp....It required you to remember and be observant, as well as not being completely obscure
3.Gabriel Knight 3-All of the research puzzles done by Grace....they have the most in depth information that was well researched and very informative (and very accurate).
The worst experiences I have had in puzzles were
1.Full throttle-the first being the hitting the wall near the end...I never understood it
2.Full Throttle-the annoying plot hole where the reporter was beaten at a gas stop...emerged in a dumpster far from that stop....had the film she carried that was undeveloped...now developed and asked you to bring them to her editor...which you never had to do! I spent hours searching for that editor...but there never was one!
3.Longest Journey-Getting that stupid enflatable Duck from outside your window..it wasn't hard...but man was it obscure!
and finally 4. The Endless hours spent in MI4 with the prosthetic shop puzzle. Call me daft but I found no specific corralation within that conundrum
Best puzzle: in "amozon qeen" when you make the monkey disapear by telling him that he doesen't exist. It really made me laugh ;D
Whorst puzzle: "Nine men's morris" game in "conquest of the longbow". It's not really the whorst puzzle, but at least the most enoying!
Hey, I loved playing Nine Men's Morris in Longbow!
I don't like:
I don't know if you would call it a puzzle, but in King's Quest IV where you are going through the cave and fall in the hole.Ã, You can't see anything, so if it wasn't for a cheat I would not have made it.Ã, Stair climbing and cliff climbing in any game.Ã, I would always fall.Ã, Save early and save often!!!>:(
I like:
Monkey Island 1 and the insult contest.Ã, Probably the best game I've played.
Monkey Island 2 and the spitting contest.
Most of the puzzles in the 7th Guest. ;D
Quote from: Floskfinger on Thu 27/01/2005 05:38:49
Whorst puzzle: "Nine men's morris" game in "conquest of the longbow". It's not really the whorst puzzle, but at least the most enoying!
not only is it a bad puzzle, but it sells sex as well.
My favorite puzzle:
aligning the chess pieces in Broken Sword 1
Most hated puzzle:
It's hard to have a single most hated puzzle...but I really didn't like all the jumping onto stones puzzles in KQ: Mask of Eternity, because there werent any clues...so you just have to die thousands of times trying to figure out what pattern they are looking for. I mean any puzzle that is impossible to solve without dying at least a few times is just not a well designed puzzle.
Quote from: Zor on Fri 10/09/2004 05:26:45
Well, now for general hates:
Escape puzzles: "You are stuck in room. Escape."
Oh my word Zor... I never knew!
Hang on... I've just thought of something...
Annoying / Frustrating / Hated type of puzzles that stick out in my Adventure Gaming memory:
The Legend of Kyrandia - The Dark Caves "maze" with the occasional "FireBerries" you needed to collect for light and which would only give off light (when carrying) for up to something like 3 screens away from where you picked them before the light burned-out and then you get eaten by the "eyes" in the darkness.Ã, Ã, Most times, in order to try and progress at all through this dark-cave-maze puzzle, you had to just take a chance, walk through a dark hole in hopes that it might lead to another cave with some fireberries, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed that you ended up dieing yet again, and agian, and again... And, the "death scene", perhaps "cute" the first dozen times or so, after a while gets extremely frustrating, and with no apperant way to skip-over the "death scene" as well, so had to just sit through it.. again, and yet again... In fact, in my experience, most "lost in a maze" puzzles in Adventure Games tend to be completely annoying and most likely unneccesary to the actual plot of the game, rather they tend to be thrown in seemingly as a way to "lengthen the play time".Ã, If a "maze" is done in a way as to make it interesting, not "impossible" to solve, or as an important part of the plot, then sure it can be somewhat fun, but usually most times "lost in a maze" puzzles are usually an exercise in frustration.Ã, :P
Fate of Atlantis: Overall, I loved the game and it's one of my favorite Advenure Games of all time.. but, my big gripe was with the "Sunstones" (?) disks things you had to collect and line up in a specific way to continue farthur into the game. Man, I must have tried every possible combination for hours on end, and even with reading various "hints" the game gives you. and even in frustration resorting to a walkthrough, I still was not able to ever get those disks to line up the right way.. I needed to end up resorting to getting a saved-game point from another source that was past that point in order to complete the game.
Also, Adventure Games in general in which the "cutscenes" in the game, the player probably is forced to watch time and again, and in which there is no appearant way to "skip" over the cut-scene, I find that extremely frustrating (such as the "death scene" in the dark-caves-maze as I described above for the Kyrandia game).Ã,Â
I have lots more gripes about adventure games too, but I'll leave it at that for now.. heheh...
Despite some frustration caused by some poorly designed parts in some games,Ã, Adventure Games still tend to be amoung my most favorite type of games to play.
Quote from: Barbarian on Fri 01/04/2005 05:02:28
Fate of Atlantis: "Sunstones"
AMEN!!! I agree!!! Damn Suntones!!!
Hi!
Mazes are the most senseless parts of any adventure. I mean: What for? Is it cool, or what?, to randomly click your way through tunnels you can't even see (The Last Crusade) and going here and there just to activate some machines? And The Perils of Rosella, especially those, on which you had to walk on pixels not to die, bear my grudge.
The bonedoor puzzle in Monkey Island 2 may be ignored; for years I had to guess the right combination, indeed, and I just wanted to jump out of my window, when I noticed these silly verses from the Bone Dance (which besides is a great joker on children's parties).
Great, storywoven puzzles are the ones in the Monkey Island series. I really appreciate them.
Oh, and I don't like puzzle puzzles as well. Don't know, how often I sat in front of Black Mirror and tried to reassemble photographs.
cheers
nihilyst
I hate this puzzle in "The Moment of Silence" when you have to pull your tooth.
How can you guess this without a walkthrough?
Worst puzzle I've ever encountered:
Simon the Sorcerer 2: 'Wear dog'
The most fiendish and difficult puzzle EVER in an adventure game is the cyphered maths equations from Nightlong : Union City Conspiracy.
For the uninitiated, there was a keypad that opened a door, but the sequence that you were given was a set of coded shapes.
They key to solving this was a blackboard covered in shapes set out into a sum.
You weren't given ANY hints as to which shape meant which number and there was no logical connection between them.
I checked out a walkthrough for this puzzle and it showed me how to work it out. About five pages of solution dedicated to this one puzzle.
Madness.
One thing you should never do is such as in Heimdall II, where the character was supposed to keep on walking against a wall which drains you r energy. NOw who would have thought that was the only way to get forward in the game. I mean, come on! You're not supposed to think of getting yourself killed!!!!! I got through it only by frustration. After a week in the same spot I ended up quitting myself with harmful aggression.
The best one I know is the legendary puzzle in Monkey Island I where Guybrush is thrown into the water with (was it an anchor ) tied onto him:D
Favourite? The ones that trigger funny cutscenes, there's too many of them to name. Well, wearing a bigfoot costume in Sam&Max was one of the most funny ones.
Hated? All mazes. If they can be named as "puzzles". Also, all puzzles which can't be explained in walkthrough.
To name some, the chemistry puzzle in Shadow Of The Comet was really painful.
...And I also mention these effin' stone rings in Indy... >:(
its a puzzle in the black mirror game i think its in act 2 or 3 when you are visiting a relative or cousin. it involves moving tiles so its in the correct order i havent finished yet i hate tile moving puzzles.
Quote from: Barbarian on Fri 01/04/2005 05:02:28
Annoying / Frustrating / Hated type of puzzles that stick out in my Adventure Gaming memory:
The Legend of Kyrandia - The Dark Caves "maze" with the occasional "FireBerries" you needed to collect for light and which would only give off light (when carrying) for up to something like 3 screens away from where you picked them before the light burned-out and then you get eaten by the "eyes" in the darkness.Ã, Ã, Most times, in order to try and progress at all through this dark-cave-maze puzzle, you had to just take a chance, walk through a dark hole in hopes that it might lead to another cave with some fireberries, but 9 times out of 10 it seemed that you ended up dieing yet again, and agian, and again... And, the "death scene", perhaps "cute" the first dozen times or so, after a while gets extremely frustrating, and with no apperant way to skip-over the "death scene" as well, so had to just sit through it.. again, and yet again...
Didn't we discuss this not so long ago? Or was that a different forum? You never need to risk dying in the Kyrandia I maze. You always have enough fireberries to last you to the next bush. The only times you'll need to walk into a room without any fireberries, there's always a bush in that room. If you are careful and methodical, you shouldn't ever see the death scene.
If you kept dying, it just means you didn't work out the puzzle (how to get through the maze safely). The game kept punishing you for that. It's the same way you shouldn't have to try every possible combination of the sun stones in Indy:FOA, you should be able to reason out what the correct combination is, and use that.
You can complain that the puzzles were difficult because you couldn't figure them out, but it doesn't make much sense to complain that playing the games without solving the puzzles (just by trial and error or exhausting every possible combination) was tedious. Of course playing the game without solving the puzzles is going to be tedious!
but snarky... you DID die many times in the maze in Kyrandia. There wasn't a firebush EVERY 5 screens. You could start at a bush, move 5 screens in a completely new direction, dropping 'em on the way, and the last screen would be without a bush. I still have the map I made out of it.
Not to say that I thought it was a bad puzzle. Solving mazes in adventure games is also fun and challenging for me. A chance to pull out a paper and pencil and start mapping. It gives a sense of accomplishment. For example King's Quest 6 had a maze, with no-sense "move to a new screen and die with no warning" screens, but it was still fun- you just have to develop a system to pass through them, looking for patterns
The entrance to atlantis stone disks puzzle in Indiana Jones were not random! You had to follow the instructions, and it worked.
For favourite puzzles, Simon the Sorcerer 3D had a truly diabolical puzzle right at the end. There's a computer you have to insert a CD into, but there seems to be absolutely no way of getting the CD drive open in the game. The game was programmed so it would recognize when you opened the CD drive containing the game CD-ROM and the CD drive in the game would open!
Heh, that'll work well with an emulator...
Quote from: Crowley on Tue 19/04/2005 23:42:26
For favourite puzzles, Simon the Sorcerer 3D had a truly diabolical puzzle right at the end. There's a computer you have to insert a CD into, but there seems to be absolutely no way of getting the CD drive open in the game. The game was programmed so it would recognize when you opened the CD drive containing the game CD-ROM and the CD drive in the game would open!
That was a good one! :D
I know it's not made using AGS, but Enter The Matrix, when you're in the Hacking Section, and to get into a folder, you have to solve a Chinese Puzzle.
That was really cool.
Favorite: Monkey combat
Why?
Because I solved it without a walktrough(Never used a walktrough in the whole game). And I was stuck on monkey combat for a whole three days but I just refused to get a walktrough. So I really fels like I was the best, when I finally solved it.
My most hated is a stupid puzzle in Kings Quest mask of eternity--you had 30 different skulls to choose from, only one was correct. They were "Copper Skulls" as compared to "Bronze." Stupidest riddle ever, with no way to dignify which skull was which. (Wouldnt be so bad if you didnt have to take a skull, run it to a statue, try it on, run back, and try to remember that your skull was incorrect).
My favorite puzzles are
1-Le Serpent Rouge: Gabriel Knight 3
2-The triangular prisms (underwater): The Longest Journey
3-Get the bike: Gabriel Knight 3
Don't know if anyone here has played Torin's Passage, but OH! that one has a perfectly horrid maze puzzle on one of the world-layers, and once you get to the end of it you discover you need a tool that's at the opposite end of the maze.... which was only visible via pixel hunt....
But, that game also has some very clever puzzles that were fun to do. Goofy game... I miss it.
QuoteFor favourite puzzles, Simon the Sorcerer 3D had a truly diabolical puzzle right at the end. There's a computer you have to insert a CD into, but there seems to be absolutely no way of getting the CD drive open in the game. The game was programmed so it would recognize when you opened the CD drive containing the game CD-ROM and the CD drive in the game would open!
Reminds me of X-Men for the Sega Genesis (Mega-Drive), where you had to actual reset the system near the end of the game to continue.
I don't understand why people are angry at the skeleton doors in MI2....It was really obvious that the "bone" song was a set of instructions.....
Then again, "obvious" is different for each person.
FAVORITE PUZZLES:
1) I'm not sure why, but I really enjoyed spying on all the conversations in Colonel's Bequest...
2) Pretty much all of the puzzle design in KQ6, my absolute favorite game in that series.
LEAST FAVORITE PUZZLES:
1) ANY ANY ANY ANY puzzle that you have to have the user's manual to solve....
2) It's been mentioned, but trying to solve all the danged puzzles in 7days while the welder kept showing up around every corner.
-DD
least fave puzzle...lets see... Oh I know!
Going to the Selenic Age in Myst, were you have to get the sequence of organ sounds to match EXACTLY!! I love myst, but that puzzle had me stumped for a year, finelly buckled down and got a solution off internet.
fave? Solving Grim fendango, now that was a satisfying game. wish it went longer but it couldn't, so it don't, so its not. too bad. glad it ended though when compared to the heiniesly open ended mi cycle
Quote from: DinghyDog on Mon 16/05/2005 06:20:17
ILEAST FAVORITE PUZZLES:
1) ANY ANY ANY ANY puzzle that you have to have the user's manual to solve....
Actually I quite liked those puzzles in the Ben Jordan games that required you to read the manual (yes, I'm sad, I read the manual...). I mean, it should break the suspension of disbelief, but as its presented as a paranormal investigator's handbook, it fits in with the world. I felt rewarded for being anal enough to read the manual. :P
Talking about puzzles requiring manuals (sometimes called copy protections) my favourite for those is the spell formulas in King's Quest 3. I realized only years after I had first played the game that was actually a copy protection! Granted I was aroud nine years old at the time...
I hate ANY timed puzzles that involve death because they make me so nervous that I just freeze and get killed... this includes such games as 5daS and Pleughburg where you die too many times at the hands of others in a timed fashion...
Favorite? hmmm... In Monkey Island 3, I absolutely loved the series when Guybrush gets swallowed by the snake and everything has a snake battering name like a golf club is "snake club" Then the quicksand after that mae me nervious thinking I'd die but reassuringly I never did... I loved part II of grim fandango but there was entirely too much running around the port but the puzzles were excellently set up, I over all loathed night of the roasted moths, insanely stupid in my opinion...
But adventure games over all are amazing, too bad they're an endangered species...
I loved the secret lab puzzle in "Ripley's Believe it or Not." You had to use the same set of inventory items to solve three totally different puzzles. You were trapped once you got into the room and it was unbelievably frustrating, but once it all came together you realize how ingenious the whole thing was. You use the periodic table twice in that puzzle, and never for its intended purpose.
The least enjoyable puzzle I can think of were the cliffs of logic in KQ6. I managed to get past the first one, which was a word game, and thought myself pretty clever. Then I discover the cliffs go higher, and the next puzzle consists of 26 arbitrary symbols, of which you must press 4 in the right order. Finishing that game was put on hold for 8 YEARS before I figured out the "Guide to the Green Isles" could be found in the README.
But really, the rest of the game was worth it. :)
There was a readme? I got it all out of the manual....
Quote from: Hollister Man on Sun 25/07/2004 04:11:18
My favorite, I think, was in KQ6, my first adventure.Ã, 'Three roses lay on the bower, a scythe to he who cuts the flower. A crown, a dove, a noble race.Ã, A scull and bones marks this dread place.'Ã, I think that was it.
My most un-favorite was looking at all the books in the library in 5DaS, I didn't realize I would have to until I read a walkthrough.Ã, It should have been more clear.
Actually I am pretty sure it was: Three Roses laid upon a bower, A scythe fore thee who cuts the flower. A crown, a dove; most noble race. Thy bones make sacred this dread place.
Quote from: Radiant on Fri 07/01/2005 16:15:51
Quote from: AGA on Fri 07/01/2005 05:24:28
FoA was the fourth Indy game, actually. Look:
So assuming you count both Last Crusade games as one game rather than two, there you have it, FoA was the fourth Indy game created...
<grin> of course the Alabama Smith games don't count as they're nowhere near official.
However, I do seem to recall an old console game called Raiders of the Lost Ark, (out of the age of the colecovision and stuff) which would qualify.
Oh yeah. Fave puzzle? The gnomes in KQVI, and/or the time loop puzzle from Sorceror.
Worst puzzle ever? I dunno, several I suppose; the one that comes to mind right now is the Hell Gate from QfG5, since I figured I should stab myself to get blood (just like you do for the Ring of Truth) and that doesn't even give you a response.
No, just keep walking/running while wearing the ring. eventually you will run out of staminabut don't take a pill/potion justrun once more and you will get a message that you have created a ring of truth. If you don't get that message add styx weater and dragons blood if you haven't already done so.
Quote from: Babar on Tue 21/06/2005 10:57:16
There was a readme? I got it all out of the manual....
Well, yes, but I only had a burned copy of the game, and the person who gave it to me neglected to mention there was such a thing. :P All attempts to buy "The Guidebook to the Green Isles" online failed piteously.
Do you know the game "Inherit the Earth" ?
Well, that one is quite annoying, since it's basically just a bunch of back-to-back mazes.
In other words: The whole game is a huge terrible puzzle!
My favorite adventure game puzzle was in Quest for Glory 1, when you had to knock over the candelabra, swing on the chandelier and slam the door shut when the bandits brigands came. It required percise timing, nimble fingers, and it was one of the few things the hero did without looking like a moron or falling on his head. ::)
The worst puzzle ever is in The Serpent's Shadow or whatever it's called. A bit before the end when the cannibals are coming and you have the bow. You're supposed to shoot the guy on the right, but (a bug?) you shoot him again and again and it won't work. I've mailed walkthrough authors and they don't know how to solve it either, one of them accidently did it once but doesn't know how (so did I, after all those times I tried). I also did it once after a lot of trying, but I wasn't doing anything different than before.
Quote from: King_Nipper on Mon 22/08/2005 05:03:58
My favorite adventure game puzzle was in Quest for Glory 1, when you had to knock over the candelabra, swing on the chandelier and slam the door shut when the bandits brigands came. It required percise timing, nimble fingers, and it was one of the few things the hero did without looking like a moron or falling on his head. ::)
I've never been a fan of adventure games requiring timing, or nimble fingers. Mainly for the fact, I like my adventure games to be very laid back and play through at my own pace working thing's out as I go along. I do admit I do like the occasional action scene, and I do like them even more when it is puzzle oriented, but I can't say that I'd make any of them my favourites, perhaps my least favourite maybe.
Things like the new Yahtzee game where you have to be real quick on the dance machine to progress, I hated. I managed to do Easy and Medium, but Hard mode was just a joke. This would not allow me to progress without having a fast enough reaction time (although this was only a side-quest). I can't think of any puzzle in particular that I did not find satisfying in some way, but I always found some of the ones in Kings Quest to be very nice, such as using the red cloth with the Minatour to destroy the wall etc...
Any puzzle that has walking deads I HATE!!!!! More than anything and it is because of this I strayed away from playing any other Kings Quest (I've only played 1 and 5). Not only that is excessive death scene's like in Leisure Suit Larry really put me off, where even the slightest mistake would kill you, rather than a more logical conclusion.
I've rambled on about puzzle's and puzzle types I dislike, but haven't really mentioned ones I do like. I've always been a fan of the Monkey Island spit contest (don't consider me a hypocrit because I said I don't like precise timing and nimble fingers), but all you had to do was to spit at the right time, and if you failed... no death, no imprisonment and best of all you could re-try. Also I very much liked how the end puzzle worked out in Monkey Island 2 (making the voodoo doll). This was nicely done and took you back to the first real puzzle and had to remember how to make a voodoo doll, and gather items close enough to make the mix work.
I'll leave you all now as I'm rushing out the door.
My most favorit puzzle is if you have to search something and you have to talk to many people to collect clue of where the object could be.
my most hated puzzle is a puzzle that is totally not logic, like you have to catch flys with a fork (or something like that) ;D
My least favorite puzzle is one of those things where the answer to your problem is staring at you in the face, yet the only thing you can do is click in random spots and hope you land on the right thing eventually. There really is no thinking or anything involved aside from dumb luck.
One of the worst "puzzles" (if you can call it one) must be the one in LSL2, involving a boat and a spinach dip. It was useless, senseless and could get you killed. But if you don't do it, you'll be missing some 30 points or so. WTF!?
As for the best, getting the navigator's head in MI was pretty brilliant. I rarely encountered such a well thought wordplay in an adventure.
Quote from: Floskfinger on Thu 27/01/2005 05:38:49
Best puzzle: in "amozon qeen" when you make the monkey disapear by telling him that he doesen't exist. It really made me laugh ;D
Whorst puzzle: "Nine men's morris" game in "conquest of the longbow". It's not really the whorst puzzle, but at least the most enoying!
I quoted my own post becouse I changed my mind. The whorst puzzle is not "Nine men's morris", it the "Getting Across the Ice" puzzle in conquest of Camelot. It's a shame because I'd love the game otherwise but I can't get across that damn ice!
Floskfinger: There are two items that can show you the way across the ice with relative ease. One requires that you have the Liber Ex Doctrina that came in the game box (copy protection), and that you listened to somebody carefully earlier, and put two and two together. The other requires that you visit Glastonbury Tor before the ice scene.
Worst puzzle:
Hands down, it's the gems and the bowls in The Legend of Kyrandia. There is no logic at all. None. None. Half of the puzzle is RANDOMIZED, for crying out loud, which basically proves that the designers were going out of their way to make me suffer for no good reason. Just horrible trial and error. And you have to collect objects with an inventory limit, and traipse back and forth over the game map, and use save-and-restore if you want to solve it without wasting hours of your life, and there's no obvious REASON to be doing any of this except that you CAN, and... argh.
I've seen puzzles that have frustrated me, have made me say "What on earth were the designers smoking?", and have wasted my time. But this was the worst. That game was a waste of thirty dollars.
Best puzzle:
Trinity is a brilliant text adventure with a few truly unfair and nasty puzzles, and a few really incredible ones. The Klein bottle puzzle falls into the second category. You walk through this strange topological space, and then the entire game map is mirror-reversed. Or are you mirror-reversed? In any case, the result is the same, and you need to exploit it to solve that puzzle and set up ANOTHER really cool puzzle involving a strange sundial...
My least favorite kinds of puzzles: Mazes or big empty areas.
Think of the desert in King's Quest 5, where not only is it a big empty wasteland, but unless you can find the oasis, you DIE of dehydration after walkign a few screens, but it's absolutely vital that you traverse several locations in this desert. GRAAAGH! I hate that.
Legend of Kyrandia 1 did the same thing, sort of, with these fire berries or something that could light up caverns but which burned out after you walked a few screens, though they somehow stayed lit if you dropped them... So you spend HOURS trying to put a fireberry in every cavern just so you can walk around without getting eaten...
That's not fun, that's frustrating busy-work!
And then there's that stupid in-the-dark ladder-and-cavern maze in SpaceQuest 2...
Or the labyrinth in King's Quest 6.
Or--and this is going back a ways--the maze of little twisty passages, all alike, in Adventure and Zork and all those others.
See, okay, I could enjoy a maze if it wasn't simply the same room over and over with no distinguishing features to help figure out whereintheheck you ARE, but geez!
In fact, I guess ANY puzzle that's there just to artificially make a game longer without actually adding more content bugs the holy drek out of me. Like the slot machine in Space Quest 1 (the original; in the VGA version you could bypass it with a widget). One can spend endless HOURS trying to get past something like that without ever encountering another puzzle of any kind. I really hate that.
It's a shame that the annoying puzzles stick in my mind, but..
in Broken Sword 3, i was stuck for ages on the bottle wine puzzle in a cellar. The bottles would make a different noise every time you pulled one out, so I spent ages writing down different combinations to get the same sound for each bottle pulled. It drove me mad because there didn't seem to be a combination. And there wasn't. It was just revolution's attention to detail, by having different bottle pulling sound effects. (and yes, I had to use a walkthrough there)
Using the skin on the manhole in monkey island 4. never occured to me until i tried every item on every object in the level!
"Simon the Sorcerer 2: 'Wear dog' "
Oh right. I just got that game recently! You've probably spared me from a frustrating puzzle, right?
My least favourite was in Indy 4': FoA, (in one of the paths) where you had to find the stone (don't wemember wich stone) from the streets of Monte Carlo. You had to remember twoFrench street names, in the corner of these streets was the stone.
And my favourite was in InCreator's Henri 3, where you had to give dog some beer, connect his chain with the car, then talk to the guys in the jail, make them really angry, then go to the police-office room, the guys will get the cop's attention, you can take the car key, and then rescue the guys!
Quote from: ManicMatt on Wed 07/12/2005 10:55:31In Broken Sword 3, i was stuck for ages on the bottle wine puzzle in a cellar. The bottles would make a different noise every time you pulled one out, so I spent ages writing down different combinations to get the same sound for each bottle pulled. It drove me mad because there didn't seem to be a combination. And there wasn't. It was just revolution's attention to detail, by having different bottle pulling sound effects. (and yes, I had to use a walkthrough there)
Spoiler
Actually there's a much easier solution, which took me about two minutes to figure out. The wine bottles come from different countries, and you just pull them in the order of the countries that the templars came through or something (I believe it's entered in the diary/log thing). I think what gives it away is that there's a bottle of Israeli wine, which doesn't seem like the obvious thing to have in an old French wine cellar.
Edit:
Quoteyeah I know from seeing the walkthrough, I was just trying not to ruin the puzzle for others, it being not as old as most of the games we talk about!
I misread this: "It drove me mad because there didn't seem to be a combination. And there wasn't." As meaning that there wasn't a proper solution to the puzzle. I realize now that you meant there wasn't a pattern to the sounds.
yeah I know from seeing the walkthrough, I was just trying not to ruin the puzzle for others, it being not as old as most of the games we talk about!
I'm sure if I hadn't concentrated on different bottle sound effects I would have sussed it out. I guess I did that because of the many games before where you have to get a combination right.
Quote from: gameboy on Fri 09/12/2005 09:22:05
My least favourite was in Indy 4': FoA, (in one of the paths) where you had to find the stone (don't wemember wich stone) from the streets of Monte Carlo. You had to remember twoFrench street names, in the corner of these streets was the stone.
See, if we're talking Fate of Atlantis, my least favorite was fumbling about in the dark trying to find/remember various hotspots trying to get a generator working to turn on the lights. The only thing that saved this from being a game-breaker was the LucasArts system that displayed the name of the hotspot your mouse was over, so at least you weren't just clicking on a black screen.
Still obnoxious, tho.
Quote from: RocketGirl on Sat 10/12/2005 17:42:17
Quote from: gameboy on Fri 09/12/2005 09:22:05
My least favourite was in Indy 4': FoA, (in one of the paths) where you had to find the stone (don't wemember wich stone) from the streets of Monte Carlo. You had to remember twoFrench street names, in the corner of these streets was the stone.
See, if we're talking Fate of Atlantis, my least favorite was fumbling about in the dark trying to find/remember various hotspots trying to get a generator working to turn on the lights. The only thing that saved this from being a game-breaker was the LucasArts system that displayed the name of the hotspot your mouse was over, so at least you weren't just clicking on a black screen.
Still obnoxious, tho.
that room wasnt pitch black! i could see the generator quite clearly. just turn your brightness up next time you play :P
Sorry Dan, but it was almost pitch black and the creators intended it to be like that. If you have to change the brightness of the monitor everytime you change rooms in a game, well that sucks...
But anyway I like Indy4 a lot! Nice game, logical puzzles, Sophia and her animation while waiting (with that hair...)
My most hated Adventure Game puzzle of all time is:
:-XÃ, The first puzzle in Space Quest 4, where you need to take the batteries from the bunny.Ã, First of all, I couldn't even get the bunny with the rope without that stupid thing killing me.Ã, Second, there was a bug. Everytime I would go to the top screen, I couldn't go back.Ã, Ã, If IÃ, tried, I would see the screen fading and bringing me back to the top screen.
My fravorite puzzle:
8)Ã, Any other puzzle.Ã, Ã,Â
Broken Sword 3, near the end you have to pull out coloured wine bottles in a certain order for a door to open. Me and a friend where playing it (refuse to use any type of guides by the way) and in the end I ended up writing down every posibble order that the bottles could go in (ennded up being about 500) and we started.... guess what, it was the second to last one possible!!!! damn puzzles that doesnt make sence to me... (Still don't know how your ment to know what to do unless you try every one!)
The most hated puzzle is MI2 monkey wrench.-i tried monkey on these pipes -nothing, and i rode walktrough over and over and tried and tried and finaly after like 3 days i figured it out?(WTF?!)
and the most favourite puzzle?
FoA-finding moonstone in arheologist site probably(and desert action, with generator and car was such a pixel hunt >:()also that (still unfinished)how doi go away from shop without paying for sword in MI1?
Quote from: Nikolas on Sun 11/12/2005 11:50:19
Sorry Dan, but it was almost pitch black and the creators intended it to be like that. If you have to change the brightness of the monitor everytime you change rooms in a game, well that sucks...
Actually, that puzzle had a really nice system where the room started out almost pitch black, but slowly got brighter and brighter. This meant that for people who couldn't solve it straight away, the game made it easier and easier. Also, it was realistic, see, because Indy's eyes were adjusting to the dark.
Quote from: Revan on Fri 27/01/2006 16:45:00Broken Sword 3, near the end you have to pull out coloured wine bottles in a certain order for a door to open. Me and a friend where playing it (refuse to use any type of guides by the way) and in the end I ended up writing down every posibble order that the bottles could go in (ennded up being about 500) and we started.... guess what, it was the second to last one possible!!!! damn puzzles that doesnt make sence to me... (Still don't know how your ment to know what to do unless you try every one!)
Um, see my post further up on this very page.
Edit: ok, on the previous page actually.
Best Puzzle ever? I'd have to say that would be figuring out the numerical system in Riven. Every time I saw that I needed to know the riven number for above 15 I felt I must have missed a clue because I only knew how to count to ten.
Then, when there was no where else to turn I finally sat down and told myself, "I have every thing I need, now let's solve this thing". Once I was in this frame of mind it didn't take long to realise it was all in base five. BASE FIVE !!!! Brilliant.
The Worst puzzle? Sitting in a jail cell in Darkseed knowing that there was a bobby pin somewhere in the game that you'd missed. Finally we found it. On the PC version it's , like, two black pixels on the floor of the Library. In full view, but too small to be noticed.
From that day forth, whenever a puzzle was hard just because an item was too small and in a place where it wasn't supposed to be for no adaquitely explained reason we've called it "a bobby pin puzzle".
My favorite -- and most hated -- adventure game puzzle is still the Babel Fish from "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" text adventure. Another hated -- and not as favorite -- puzzle is the gold tooth puzzle from MI3.
On a more general note, I can't stand puzzles that do one or more of the following:
1. Assume that the player isn't color-blind and can readily tell red from green
2. Require the player to have out-of-game (read: manual) knowledge that the story's character would have no way (or reason) of knowing.
3. Make the player randomly choose a door, flip a lever, pick up an item, etc., with no in-game clues as to what the "right" choice is. (Especially if the wrong answer results in death.)
4. Forbidding the player from acquiring inventory items until certain information is gained. (i.e., an item on a table that the character refuses to take until s/he knows it's needed, despite having already taken everything else not nailed down.) [ESPECIALLY if it involves traipsing across numerous screens.]
5. Rely heavily on mazes, arcade sequences, or mini-games. (Unless they have variable degrees of difficulty.)
But my all-time favorite (not-hated) adventure game "puzzle" is the non-interactive one in Governor Marley's mansion from the first Monkey Island game. :)
USE GOPHER REPELLANT WITH GOPHER HORDE
I hate mazes, doesn't matter if they're "good" or not, I just dislike those types of problems ::) (just to be clear I'm talking about those things where you have to chart your positions etc. it's like trying every ithem in your inventory on something - equally pointless and annoying).
besides that they're just not that good at being integrated in the game, there wasn't one game where I passed the maze and went - woah, was I in a maze? (usually it's more of "oh, no, not anothoer f***ing maze")
...and of course all those sensless puzzles that pop-up even in the bestest games :P
Just my opinion...
I love "logical" puzzles, where you may go with your brain..
And on the other side I hate if you choose the wrong option"...and you have to die...
I do not like dying in an adevnture game, as I would like to relax and try all possibilities..
Quote from: simply guest on Wed 08/03/2006 17:52:16
Just my opinion...
I love "logical" puzzles, where you may go with your brain..
And on the other side I hate if you choose the wrong option"...and you have to die...
I do not like dying in an adevnture game, as I would like to relax and try all possibilities..
These could have been my words!!
But furthermore..I really hate mathematical puzzles ( i'm female, lol)
But to add 3 and 5 in order to get the sum of 4635 and at the same time looking of how the puzzle at the wall reacts..or something like that...
I'll never get the solution without a walkthrough...
One of my favourite puzzles has to be the one in "Enchanter" where you had to get the turtle to help you. It was a tricky puzzle which required a lot of typing but it was wery clever and finally solving it (with a bit of cheating...cough :-[) was very rewarding.
As for a puzzle i did not like (If it even deserves to be called a "puzzle") it has to be in King,s Quest 5, near the end, where you had to hang around in the library for a long time, doing nothing, untill Mordack would go to bed. Now how the heck where you supposed to figure that one out ???. This is the only puzzle i know of which you actually had to solve by being inactive.
Quote from: Uku on Sat 28/01/2006 18:24:46
also that (still unfinished)how doi go away from shop without paying for sword in MI1?
Uku, hint 1:
Spoiler
You have to pay for the sword. Get some money.
Hint 2:
Spoiler
You can get a job in the forest. Explore the map, wander through the forest.
Hint3:
Spoiler
Work for the circus. You'll need to solve some more puzzles but this earns you money to buy the sword.
My least fav puzzles are when you die if you slip up (like the vine/cloud land in KQ1VGA), unlogical ones and when you have to go back in the game to solve a puzzle. In SQ4 maybe I messed up, but I could get away from the SQ12 derelict city without some necessary items; in the mall you could buy one adapter out of many, but you would only know which one you needed if you were near the end of the game.
I absolutely loved the almost-last puzzles in SQ4 on the computer console in the maze, though:
Spoiler
Drag robots into recycling and robots are gone.
Drag brain into recycling bin and you die.
Drag disk into recycling bin and the game quits to DOS so fast you can't even blink your eyes!
Annoying if you didn't save, but very funny nonetheless!
Oh and the FOA darkroom puzzle as funny, I didn't find it a hindrance because of the @overhotspot@ feature of their GUI. Damn I miss FOA, I have the disks but I've lost one! Me wanna play again!
Quote from: Krudmonger on Sun 12/02/2006 06:39:30
My favorite -- and most hated -- adventure game puzzle is still the Babel Fish from "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" text adventure. Another hated -- and not as favorite -- puzzle is the gold tooth puzzle from MI3.
God, I loved and hated that puzzle, too.
To this day my most favorite puzzle is another Infocom game, The Leather Goddesses of Phobos.
You find the machine at the mad scientist's house that takes away the letter t from anything you put in it, then you meet the king who is so sad because anything he touches turns into a 45 degree angle and he's turned his daughter into one. You put a jar of untangling hair cream into the machine and voila! Un-angling cream! Brilliant!
(You can also put the poor helpless rabbit into the machine and get a rabbi, but then you're walking dead without the rabbit, I think.Ã, :=)
My second favorite puzzle is probably the rubber chicken puzzle from MI1. As soon as I saw that clothes line between the islands I immediately knew how to get there and when it worked I was ecstatic.Ã, :D
I hate pixel hunts, and I really hate walking deads (don't see those too much these days, thank god). I feel that if I have destroyed any chance of finishing the game I should at least be warned. :0
I also hate puzzles that just feel like puzzles unless there's some reason in the plot for my PC to be solving puzzles. This is why I don't like Myst-type games... I just don't buy any rationalization for that many levers, switches, buttons and twirly doo-dads all in one place. In terms of forgetting you're solving puzzles, Gabriel Knight 1 is my favorite for that. There are mysteries, but you always feel like you're a writer investigating them, not a writer who has been sucked through a vortex into a land of buttons and levers.
Voice recorder puzzle in The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery
King's Quest 6, despite being such a beautiful game had lots of pretty scary puzzles, which had the effect of keeping you glued to the screen in case you missed something. One instance that particularly infuriated me was when you had to note the type of lamp the vizier had for the Genie in a "MEANWHILE" cutscene that the player took absolutely no part in to be able to buy a copy of the same lamp later on in the game.
Regarding types of puzzles:
It's dangerous to declare, on the outset, that one kind of puzzle is automatically bad.
I think that, in the text adventure community, a few people have a perverse desire to take the most hated puzzle types, and then try to make something entertaining out of them - just to see if they can pull it off.
So I've seen some of the following:
1.
A clever maze variant that not only requires no really tedious stuff from the player, but also makes perfect sense for the story and setting - and might even be considered essential.
2.
Several games that turn die-and-restart into an addictive process by being short and engaging, turning the whole game into a puzzle of planning. "Lock and Key" and "Varicella," both by Adam Cadre, are pretty much at the top of this form.
The first is a great comedy in which you are a villian's dungeon architect, facing an adventurer who, in spite of being at an apparent disadvantage, just happens to have all the items on hand he needs to escape his cell and kill you. Repeatedly. Eventually, though, you can, with care, set up the traps you need to counter his capacious inventory and kill him.
The second is more darkly comic (yes, darker than the game where you play the murderous mastermind), but requires replaying to win, and is, by the standards of this thread, incredibly unfair. It lets you get all the way to the ending before killing you. As one character remarks, ironically, it's SUCH a shame that life doesn't give second chances...
3.
Two games that integrated die-and-restore into the plot.
I can't give their names, because this is an automatic spoiler. But in one, you have to ask somebody questions in the first act based on what you see in the second. Of course, it helps that you're a psychic with the power of RESTART...
In the other, you can exert conscious control over time itself, and pick the timelines that give the best outcomes. Taking full advantage of this is necessary to get one utterly brilliant ending, but not to get others.
4.
Brilliant math puzzles.
Come on. They exist. Especially when they hinge not on arithmetic, but on deduction, or give some sort of insight into the gameworld. The slightly tedious number system puzzles in the graphic adventure RAMA are good examples of a case where these contribute immensely to the game's atmosphere.
The buying a ship/credit puzzle in Monkey Island 1. It was the hardest and most incoherent puzzle, but it was also the best puzzle.
btw, whats the least anyones paid for a ship in MI1?
I think I paid 3000 pieces o' eight, anyone go lower?
QuoteKing's Quest 6, despite being such a beautiful game had lots of pretty scary puzzles...
I second that, This was my first adventure game and with the hardest puzzles for my first time, but I can assure you guys that the puzzle that I hate most is the riddle of the Door in the Death Dimension, I coud not imagine there would be a simple answer.
My favorite puzzle was the final puzzle for the end sequence of Phantasmagoria, but I didn't like to Kill Don.
Nothing beats the spiderdroid from Space Quest 1 (VGA Version)
Carla in Monkey Island 1 was the most annoying :)
No contest.
For me, it was the 'hush puppies' puzzle in "Simon the Sorceror 2: The Lion, the Wizard and the Wardrobe".
That's where, in order to sneak past a giant spherical demon thingie without being heard, you had to use your wizard's hat on a small dog in order to transform it into a pair of hush puppies.
I hated that puzzle because I spent weeks trying out several increasingly arbitrary and illogical solutions to it before I finally caved in and consulted the readthrough.Ã, And every single arbitrary and illogical solution I came up with made more sense than the actual solution.
I mean, seriously.Ã, Using a magic hat on a dog?Ã, Anything could happen!Ã, Anything!Ã, Why would I ever assume it would turn him into a pair of slippers?!Ã, As I recall, there was one extremely tenuous and obscure clue offered when you examined the dog and Simon remarked that he was "rather quiet", or something, but unless you knew the solution, you wouldn't notice it.Ã, And what if you'd never heard of hush puppies?Ã, Hadn't the designers ever heard of beta-testing?
Phew.Ã, Okay.Ã, I'm done.Ã, As you can see, this puzzle made me very angry, which is why it's my most hated puzzle in an adventure game ever.Ã, Frankly, I hate any puzzle where I have to look up the solution and it still doesn't make sense, or I'd never have guessed it unless I was the guy who designed it in the first place.
[/rant]Ã, ;D
Worst:
1.5 Days a stranger, using the weird doll on a string to find something in the basement. I think I had a glitch or something because it kept telling me I was in the wrong place! (And I had searched every inch.)
2.Nancy Drew: Danger on Deception Island, I mean, come on. Checking every single bulb with the light at the top to find a working one?
3.Myst 4, family names in order? The books were practically unreadible.
4.KQ5, getting turned into a frog repeadiatly, and having to restart because you get stuck.
WORST OF ALL: "That's a dumb idea." "I don't get it." "That doesn't work." And no further explanation. WHY CAN'T I USE THE GUN ON THE LOCK!? (<Example)
OR:
Random Death
BEST:
1.Myst 1, the maze. I loved mapping the place out. The N, E, S, W really helps.
2.DOTT, a right handed hammer? And: "When you're saving the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs." It made sense.
3.Curse of MI, the lighting. Genius!
4.Teen Agent, infiltrating the evi dude's base.
BEST OF ALL: Human contest in DOTT, spaghettit for hair? "It looks so... meaty-" "-and juicy!"
In Zork Grand Inquisitor when
Spoiler
You had to cast the weather spell on the umbrella tree to get the scroll,
and when you had to cast the purple invisibility on the word 'infinite'.
The puzzle in apprentice 1 when you have to make cheese by putting something in the donkeys pack or something, it was like impossible.
i hated the puzzle in Sam and Max when your in the tunnel of love. it took me ages to figure out what i had to do. Great game though, cant wait for the sequel :P if they actually finish it this time >:(
MI2 Bone Tunnels
Broken Sword 2 Myan wheels is the worst for me, 3 days to do!
BS2 Boar - It was 3 years until I figured out that part...
MI1 Toll Troll (I have my reasons)
MI1 Buying a ship off Stan
BS1 Montfaucon
BS1 Revist to villa de Vasconcellos
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I hated that one puzzle in Full Throttle:
Spoiler
Where you had to break off the little pips from the road to get those mole people to ride off the cliff. God that took me a while to figure out.
Also, I hated then I loved the spit thing in MI2
I'll agree that the most annoying puzzles are the arbitrary ones, where there's no good reason even to try whatever it is they want you to do.
I only played the demo version of "Gobliiins", but nearly threw the disk across the room at one point. There's a ferocious guard dog you have to get past, and you have a sausage. Give the sausage to the dog? No, that's too easy. You have to find a hole in the ground, stick the sausage in the hole, and then the dog goes over and eats it.
A similar sort of annoyance is when you could logically do something several different ways, but only one way is allowed. Especially if it's not the most obvious way. (For instance, you can't cut string with scissors, only with a knife.) Or games in which you can do something in one place but not in another, for no logical reason.
The most satisfying puzzles for me are the ones that are SO obvious in retrospect, because everything was there in front of your face but you couldn't see it. When it all clicks, that's a great feeling!
I still remember fondly some of the very old Scott Adams text adventures, which I played on the TI 99. One puzzle that has stuck with me:
PUSH DOOR... "The door won't open. There seems to be something blocking it on the other side." Solution? PUSH HARD.
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Quote from: TheVintageDemon on Tue 30/01/2007 16:53:57
My favourite puzzle game/s is the John Defoe quadriligy...because the puzzles in there are so foodling awesome...But anyway, there are awesome!!
Quote from: TheVintageDemon on Wed 14/02/2007 16:33:45
Hmm, probably in 5DAS where you have to wave a salt-covered teddy around the place like a fairy. That was pretty dumb.
??? MPD? ???
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My favorite games are those made by the famous Wretched.
But alas, he no longer makes anymore for ags and has gone on to other areas in the hi-tech world.
What better games than Bogs, Crave, Slug Princess, Where's my Hat Ma? ETC, ETC
Now there was a time when I got excited to sign on to AGS and see what he had to offer. Those days are gone...... I have not played a good game in so long a time that AGS has become a secondary place to go unfortunately.
I miss the community of the hints and tips and all working together to solve those hard puzzles.
We do need more challenging sophisticated games here.
The puzzle I hate much... well, it's in one of my very own games. KoffeeKrisis, the one in the library. You have to enter a sequence of 18 runes, with three runes being available. You get a total of four hints, where 1.5 of them are red herrings.
No-one figured it out until I was able to extract the solution from the source code... :=
King's Quest 2: PUT BRIDLE ON SNAKE
How the heck were you supposed to know to do this?
I only tried it because I thought it may lead to a funny death.
Seriously, were there any hints to this?
The worst adventure game puzzle for me was in Police Quest 2. You had to sight in your gun before you went off to find the bad guy, or else you would be up shit creek when the time came to blow him away.
But what really made me angry was that about halfway through the game your gun magically becomes unsighted again behind your back, but the game doesn't tell you that. So you end up getting on a jet to fly to some other city and when the stereotypical Arab terrorists show up to ruin everyone's day, you end up getting killed because your gun will miss and there's no way to go back and sight it in correctly.
I'll never forgive Sierra for that one.
Favs:
"Take Fork" when presented with a 'fork in the road' in the text-only "Madventure"
The babel-fish puzzle in HHGTTG
Most hated puzzle in the history of adventure gaming is strip liar's dice from larry 7...hate it hate it hate it!!
Most difficult puzzle for me was arresting the drunk driver in pq1...maybe it's just because I was young, but it took me forever to realize that I had to administer the field sobriety test ;)
That old favourite from BS2 - The Mayan wheels
7 Days A Skeptic - Incapacitating the possessed captain
These are both my least and most favourite puzzles, due to the sheer frustration they caused in trying to solving them, and the sheer joy caused by actually working out the damned things.
Incidentally, My favourite adventure games are the BS series (although I'm yet to play 4) and the Trilby series. Oh, and MI3.
I love logical puzzles with appropriate hints, see Myst for a lot of examples. They don't need to be so complicated I just played Reactor 09 and found most of the puzzles quite easy but interesting too.
I don't like:
- Highly time depending puzzles in the middle of an not time depending game, the worst thing is that usually controls of the game are not suitable for a time depending action. One example: When the bad guy is chasing you in 7 days a stranger, without this the game would be much better in my opinion. When I want fast action I play shooters.
- Absurdities unless they are funny. I liked Monkey Island's sick puzzles, but insulted the authors of Kyrandia 2 when I read in the walkthrough that the only way to win to the Octopus was dropping the lucky thing to the floor. It gives me luck if it's on the floor but not if I have it in my pocket? Absurd.
- When it's obvious that you have solved the puzzle but you still need to keep with a repetitive task. One example: Kyrandia 2, when you need to "repair" the rainbow. (In fact I abandoned this game there, my patience has limits)
Quote from: Amby on Mon 26/02/2007 02:46:45
Favs:
"Take Fork" when presented with a 'fork in the road' in the text-only "Madventure"
The babel-fish puzzle in HHGTTG
Wait, there's a game for Hitchhiker? Is it an AGS game or a real game... I need to find it.
Anyway, I hate games that require a pixel hunt... Sorry Kinanev... Cosmos Quest looks great, but all the pixel hunts drove me nuts. A puzzle should be about thinking how to make things happen, not moving the mouse around until you find a knob or lever.
I loved Space Quest five when you had to bust the engineer out of jail with that little creature and cause a distraction with the sea monkey thingies.
My absolute hated puzzles were almost all of them in Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Mummy. I mean, even with help from my dad who's a teacher, and my brother who's basically smarter than me, I needed a walkthrough. They should say that you cant beat it yourself without at least some knowledge of Egypt. And I hate using a walkthrough, it just kills the fun for me. However, my favorite puzzles are in the Nancy Drew games (I count that as adventure) I don't remember a particular one because I have almost all the games but they're pretty easy and just challenging enough to make the game time lengthier yet I don't have to use a walkthrough. Oh, and how can I forget the Insult Swordfighting "puzzles" from Monkey Island, gotta love those. ;D
I don't know if I have any favorite puzzles, I always somehow remember the bad ones...
Anyway, almost all the puzzles from "Sherlock Holmes: Mystery of the Mummy" were so difficult I had to complete the whole game using FAQ. Lots of pixel hunting and number matching - odd maths that actually is a bit illogical according to the story. But then again, it was a hardcore detective game, so I better not be too harsh.
Lol, larino87, what a coincidence, I just red your post after I posted mine ;D
I can't think of a favorite puzzle at the moment.
A puzzle that I absolutely hate, though, is the maze in King's Quest V. It's terrible for at least three reasons:
1) It's, well, a maze. With a few exceptions, placing mazes in adventure games is just a lazy way of making them longer.
2) No matter which way you exit a room, you always enter the next room from the bottom. This happens nowhere else in KQ5, so it'll take you a while to figure out what you're doing. Simple navigation should not be that difficult.
3) You have to wander around in search of items that you wouldn't expect to find in an underground dungeon. (A monster that drops a hairpin when he dances? C'mon.)
My all time favorite was getting the rasp on Sam n Max. It was just funny to me cause it happened like 10 times and I didn't get what I was doing, then I got tired and left after sending Max to the crapper one last time. Just foung it funny I had to give up and the game gave it to me.
Worst ever...The final machine you have to fix in The Dig. If there was a system or pattern, I still don't see it. Five days of trial and error.
Close second...Having to inflate the gloves and balloon to use the elevator at the end of MI2. I keep sucking the air in thinking it'd make ME lighter. Oops.
There's one puzzle in my game that I love because it is so hard and so easy at the same time.
There's a character that seems to have no purpose in the game and virtually nothing you can do with "it." Every time I go back to test after a long absence I'm completely lost. I think there must be an error because I can't find this one key item. Then, at random I use the one item in the game this one character might want, and instantly the problem is solved.
It's like I can't figure out the solution if I think about it. If I turn off my brain and just do the most obvious thing in the world though, the puzzle is solved. I can't even complain that the thing to do is too obscure because it's so obvious from the get-go.
The thing I hate most in puzzles are items you must arbitrarily pick up. In Teen Agent there's a stone that you must pick up, but you can't pick up any other stone. There isn't even a clue that this one stone is useful. Similarly, Wizard and the Princess has the stones and scorpions puzzle--the only way to find a safe stone is to go through a desert maze. Also, Grim Fandango had 2 or three "randomly use x on y" puzzles that were virtually impossible to solve. All puzzles should have an underlying motivation.
The hedge maze in Hugo 2...
I think it's 2...
OH, and the Roller Coaster maze in Myst sucked as well.... quite possibly more than the Huge maze, because it was more difficult to figure out.
Quote from: MoodyBlues on Mon 21/05/2007 04:06:54
A puzzle that I absolutely hate, though, is the maze in King's Quest V. It's terrible for at least three reasons:
...
2) No matter which way you exit a room, you always enter the next room from the bottom. This happens nowhere else in KQ5, so it'll take you a while to figure out what you're doing. Simple navigation should not be that difficult.
You're
supposed to figure out that the room turns in the direction that you're facing. I couldn't figure it out, but after reading about it, I thought it was genius...it broke the rules of rooms always following the same direction every time you enter it. :)
Best puzzle: Registering for this forum :)
Worst: Stan in Monkey Island goood I hated it :) AND Police Quest 3 - I never found the damn car crash.. :)
Ok, today, while playing "Duty and Beyond" (By Mordalles), I got completely stuck. Had to open a safe, but one number was missing. I logically thought (according to in-game leads) that I have to count the number of some books. But heck, books are so small and colours are messed up (you know one bright colour near other colour messes it up). So counting the certain colour of books was a definite pain in the ass which should not be! Eventually I opened up a walkthrough just now when I got my Internet connection back...
Not sure about my favourite - Maybe the Insult Swordfighting in COMI or the whole Four Map Pieces episode in MI2.
As for the worst... How has nobody mentioned Discworld? A lot of those puzzles were ridiculous. There were some that you didn't even know were puzzles, and the ones that were gave you minimal help. Woe betide you if you left the game behind and forgot an ambiguous piece of throwaway dialogue.
It's also responsible for one of the crimes mentioned above - "That doesn't work!" But why not? Would would help?
Oh, and the Boar puzzle in Broken Sword 2. How many people saved after doing that puzzle the wrong way and were stuck being unable to finish the game?
Anything that requires you to repeatedly interact with something or someone. It makes me feel violated.
Bit of a problem here. Both my most hated puzzle, and my favourite are the same puzzle, basically encompassing the whole of MI2, but mostly the ending with LeChuck in the pipes. It was so frustrating, but I think that's why It's my favourite aswell. Puzzles that encompass pixel hunting and mazes just annoy the hell out of me.
Attempting to get Toonstruck to run fullscreen with playable graphical quality. I never did find the solution.
Quote from: Crazy on Mon 07/01/2008 07:11:36
Attempting to get Toonstruck to run fullscreen with playable graphical quality. I never did find the solution.
Download Virtual PC and get a copy of Windows 95. That's what I did ;)
If I hadn't sold it years ago (it was newish when I got it, the PC must not have been good enough to run it properly in 800x600).
Shame, its a brilliant game
can't think of any favorite. But my most hated is the one at the end of META. Those questions are just hard and anoing. Especially the 2nd one.
Hated puzzles:
In The Longest Journey - The weird 'fishing rod' you're expected to know how to make out of a rope, an inflatable rubber ducky, and a magnet, or something like that. I still don't get it...
The Dig - the part where you have to reconstruct a turtle's skeleton (took me AGES), and bring it back to life, only to have it chewed up and mangled AGAIN. (Damn you giant sea monster...)
Myst... so many puzzles in Myst pissed me off. I just don't think like that...
The end of Trilby's Notes, where you have to
Spoiler
let yourself die
, but only after a very specific point... (it seemed like an odd thing to do anyway, regardless I tried plenty of times
before I was supposed to, and gave up by then)
Favorite : insult sword fightin in MI1
Most hated: hiding behind a pillar in FT, just before climbing up a water tower. Whatever I clicked, I couldn't go forward, until a friend came and said: "Hide behind a Super Dickmans". And voila, it worked.
Most memorable: age test in LSL - "Where can you find virgins?" To a 10 year old which knew, like - 10 english words, it was the worst puzzle of them all.
My most hated puzzle is the alien turtle of "The Dig" ;D (DOH!)
I don't have a favorite puzzle 8)
Not a puzzle per say, but I hate how you have to get down the mountain in the original KQIII in very limited time. I kept falling off the damn edge.
In general, any adventure game you have to type in a command, but can't figure out what the game wants. I.e. I think it was KQII, but you had to jump onto these mounds of grass in a swamp to get to a super critical item (there was a snake too I think). But what the hell were those mounds called. I finally got it, but just because my vocabulary is minimal, doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to traverse through a puzzle.
I also hated getting into the temple in the desert in KQV. It was the key thing preventing me from going into the mountains. It wasn't till a friend of mine told me what I need to do, that the rest of the game fell into place.
Other than the maze, I like all of the puzzles on the last island in KQV.
I LOVED the "....Days A...." series! (including Tribly Notes) Each game has made me jump at least once. (I jumped most at Tribly notes and 6 days a Sacrifice)
Most Hated: I just played Neverhood again, and don't know if anyone else already said this one. But I HATE that freaking 38-screen-long walk back and forth down the Hall of Records. How pointless is that? And that puzzle where you have to enter 12 symbols and replace the "wonky" sounding one, but you can't just change them, you have to wait for them to cycle through. Urrrrrgh!
Even though the game is unpopular as hell, I loved a lot of the puzzles in Simon the Sorcerer 3D. The pizza puzzle, in particular, has a fond place in my memory.
My least favourite are in Discworld (good to see Cunny brought it up) and specifically... something (can't remember what) has fallen of the Disc and is juuust out of reach. How do you get it? Well, obviously you'll need a broom (?) and apparently the ONLY broom on the entire PLANET (because you travel across the whole world map in this game..) is one you swapped for a wizard's staff three acts ago. So you need a snake (??) which you get from inside an egg (???), to feed compost (which makes it grow long) and starch (which makes it go stiff) to swap for the broom.
This is the only game in which I have felt no guilt at all in using a walkthrough.
Neverhood oh, one of the freakist adventures game I totaly in love!
Yes, the hundred-thousand hall of history hallway is really Kicking, as well the story wrote on the walls are very good to make in the story, very interesting yeah. (but obiously, i din't read whole xD)
I HATE the cretians laberynths in Indiana Jones and the Fate of atlantis (I fell i never do the action way-laberynth withouth a walktrougth.
The cretian laberynth in adventure way made me left the game a lot of months xD
And was claustrophovic xD
I LOVE Kiz Urazgubi puzzle to kill the assasinatrix, in Space Quest V. This game was epic for me ^^
Favorite:
Tunguska: the puzzle with the cat, pizza, salt and cellphone
Tunguska: slowing down the music tempo puzzle
SQ1: Spiderdroid killing: when you enter the Orat cave and then go and climb on the rocks. Then Orat and spider droid are killing each-other
SQ1: Sector HH :)
SQ1: use glass on barrier
Syberia: Mammoth drawing for the kid
Larry 1: When you get the pills from the window
SQ2: When you push the tree to make a bridge
Dark Earth: Playing Yonk game/othello with the old man
Favorite Puzzles:
Killing the evil android in BASS.
Destroying Morkus Rex in Lost Eden. I know it was a very simple puzzle, but it was just so funny seeing him turn into a mouse.
Least Favorites:
Anything from Schizm. Seriously, almost none of the puzzles made sense, even after reading a walkthrough. Every time you finish some stupid puzzle or break some stupid code (especially the prayer grinder one), you get rewarded by being forced to solve another one! Why? Who knows? The story makes no freaking sense!
Favourite/best puzzle ever- the serpent rouge- Gabriel Knight 3.
The worst and (or) most dazzlingly stupid puzzle in any adventure game ever has to be Still Life "baking cookies" puzzle. Ask yourself...what would you do if you were tasked with tracking down serial killer? That's right...you'd stop investigating, run to the kitchen and bake some gingerbread.
I can't even begin to explain how pointless and stupid that game is. ::)
S
x
I honestly think the first two Broken Sword games tick all the boxes for what makes awesome puzzles. From start to finish. Also the worst "puzzle ever" was the general Library/Sewers area at the beginning of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I never even made it past that area, even with a walkthrough.
Maze puzzles can be good as long as there is a hint to how one solves it and the hint is somewhat intelligent done. I remember a maze I found in a MUD a few years back, where every room was identical and there was no way of figuring out where in the maze you were, and you couldn't even map it, as it was inside a cave and dropping a coin to recognize the room later (a common mapping technique in MUDs) made the coin roll away and get lost. Oh, and it was three-dimensional, so you didn't have FOUR directions to choose from at any time, but SIX. Trial and error made no reason whatsoever.
I finally found the correct hint in the room outside the maze: A postcard written by the maze creator, signed "SEND NEWS". I think I read the card five times before the message struck me... South, East, North, Down, North, East, West, South. Brilliant. Probably my favorite maze.
Not sure if I remember any clear favorite puzzles or most hated puzzles right now, but one example of a puzzle genre I really hate from the bottom of my liver is puzzles that requires knowledge of outside information (pop culture), and especially if they at the same time are somewhat hard to recognize and require you to think in the exact same way as the game creator. I can't remember any good examples from adventure games, so I'll use an example from a MUD here as well... I tried to get somewhere, and a strong black knight was blocking the way and of course wouldn't let me pass. And he's very violent, so it seems the only way to get past him is to kill him, but he's extremely tough, and I have no idea how to beat him. In the normal way it seems near-impossible, and there's not really any clues around here telling me if this guy has some special weakness either. If I had paid close attention I may have noticed that his lines had a some kind of montypythonesque ring to them, but for some reason I didn't. However, turned out the only way to beat this guy was to go back to the village and buy an axe (there couldn't be an axe available nearby, that would have been way to easy, of course), come back and chop all the knight's arms and legs off until he stopped fighting. And the only way to know this was to recognize the character from Monty Python's Holy Grail, there was no clues whatsoever that this was the way to kill him.
Ooh, and I also get annoyed when there's a code or riddle you have to solve, and you manage to solve it off-screen but can't move on in the game because you can't inform the game you have found the solution. There's an example of this near the end of "Hotel Dusk: Room 215":
Spoiler
You are trapped in an airtight room and must find a way out. Or, not really, as there IS no way out, you have to wait for a friend to open the door from the outside, but he won't do that before you have cracked a completely unrelated code hidden somewhere in the room (don't you just love it when what you have to do to move on is the exact opposite of what your life actually depends on? I don't). Anyhow, I found the code, figured it had to be a code, and assumed I had to solve it. I recognized it as a possible Caesar sipher, and through a lucky guess (guessing that a two letter word was "is") I solved the code. But, of course, the game didn't know I had, and there was no way to tell it, so my character hadn't solved the code yet. So in order to proceed with the game I had to repair a defect code solving machine, figure out how to use it, and let the machine solve the code for me!
I love the game, but that puzzle almost made me tear my hair out. It's great that the machine is there, but why not make a way around it for those of us who don't NEED it?
Quote from: olafmoriarty on Wed 23/07/2008 23:03:37
I love the game, but that puzzle almost made me tear my hair out. It's great that the machine is there, but why not make a way around it for those of us who don't NEED it?
Reminds me of Inherit The Earth, where your furry character has to repair the lens of a telescope (which in this after-human-world is just called light-catcher). You have to seek advice of an old human relic called Unit, but you have to tell him the precise name of the object you want to repair. So what do you do? You walk through a tedious maze (the THIRD time!1!) to visit the leader of the clan of Rats to ask him about it. Is this necessary? Couldn't that be shortened? It's not even a puzzle, because you are told: Go to Sist, the leader of the clan of Rats! Geeze!
Speaking of which, ITE really got on my nerves with it's silly mazes and top-view-locations. Unfortunately, though, because the graphics are good, the voices (at least the German ones, as I don't know the others) were brilliant and the story was quite interesting.
Unlike some people, I liked the last puzzle of Trilby's Notes. :)
Spoiler
The very first thing I tried was kick idol, as I thought that that was an obvious way to mess up the ritual. (The game counted it as trying to move, so the timer that makes Trilby weaker started ticking.) I tried doing other stuff and at one point tried talking to Lenkmann. I noticed that Trilby was too weak to talk for some reason. Then I had something else to do, and finally, when playing it again, I instead started by asking Lenkmann about everything I could think of.
This time Trilby was able to speak for a much longer time. I pondered what could have caused this, and next time tried kicking the idol till Trilby woud be dead from exhaustion. Sadly, during the latest try my sister, who had already played the game, started giving hints without asking for permission. :( part of the fun of solving the puzzle was lost.
On the other hand, I always got hopelessly stuck when I had to
Spoiler
touch something :P
But my favourite computer game puzzle EVER (not necessarily from adventure games) is how to beat your mirror image in Prince of Persia. After figuring it out, it feels so obvious!
Spoiler
Killing him in any way(swordfight, pushing off a cliff) results instantly in your death, because you and the mirror image are the same person. You have to figure out that killing him is not the key.
I absolutely hate puzzles that require you to be a native english speaker. From Monkey Island 1&2,
Spoiler
red herring: to me, that was just a normal fish. It was a complete mystery to me why would the troll want THAT, until recently.
monkey wrench: no comment :P
EDIT: I have a new most hated puzzle, from Ben Jordan 7:
Spoiler
The wooden box. Yes, I knew that you had to press buttons related to lost items, but I never thought about the galleon because (1)It's not a lost item in everyday sense (2)BJ had FOUND it, after all, so it was not lost anymore (3)There was no reason to try symmetric patterns.
I hated some of the Puzzles in Black Dhalia. Especially the diamond one, with all the runes. And that safe lock!!!!!!!
I always liked the maze in Mordack's fortress in King's Quest V, although probably only because I always had fun doing it, and the fact that I had no trouble beating it while other people seemed to have so much trouble.
I loved killing the "arnoid" droid in Space Quest III, and I didn't discover for a long time that there was two ways to kill him!
I enjoy the timing puzzles in Space Quest IV at the end and in the mall, again probably because they are hard (even after you know exactly what to do) and yet I do well with them.
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
Favorite Puzzle: The chase sequence from Phantasmagoria. I know this game wasn't that good, but the chase scene was the most fun I've had in a pc game in a long time.
Worst Puzzle: Connections: It's a Mind Game is an excellent game except for this one puzzle. Those genius developers didn't just decide to put both a slider puzzle and a maze in the game, they put the slider puzzle INSIDE the maze! Genius! (It remains unknown why they bothered since they offered a 'magic button' that lets you skip them both. Strange...)
My favourite type of puzzles are those that make you think and in which you got to have a pencil and a piece of paper somewhere near you to write down all the clues and then thought them out on the paper.
I really enjoyed playing Myst (Exile for instance) where you have all those clever puzzles which you are able to solve only if you examine the island thoroughly and find the way the machines operate and are related to one another without lucky guesses.
I also loved Gabriel Knight 3, when Grace is trying to locate the entrance of I forgot what with a computer program and that part when she has to enter Jacques's mansion by clmbing walls and ivy only because that was my first adventure game puzzle I ever solved (it was a demo) and got me into playing some more.
I cannot recall the puzzles I really hated, it's just that I used to play a bit more when I was younger and also more foolish :P So I just combined every item with another instead of reconsidering the situation. I'd have to play such games once more to see whether the puzzles were really stupid or it was just me.
The Water Temple in Zelda Ocarina of Time. It was just so freakinly long !!!
Also the mayan puzzle in Broken Sword II- the spinning disc thing, it took so long to work that out (Nicole)
I hated the hourglasses puzzle in Nancy Drew Ransom of Seven Ships. There were several of them, each with a different amount of sand, and you had to click on all of them in a particular sequence so that when all of the sand ran to the other halves of the hourglasses, they all emptied themselves at the same time. It was so frustrating and how this related to opening the cave door made no sense!
Probably a puzzle I encountered in Sam and Max season one episode 1 (culture shock)
Although its not my favorite adventure games it probably has my favorite solution to a puzzle ever. Im talking about curing whathisfaces hypnosis.... by dropping a bowling ball from your window... onto his head.
I love the recent Sam and Max games, I've got them all :P
Quote from: cuiki on Sat 05/09/2009 00:09:15
My favourite type of puzzles are those that make you think and in which you got to have a pencil and a piece of paper somewhere near you to write down all the clues and then thought them out on the paper. I really enjoyed playing Myst (...)
Oh yes, those Myst puzzles, where you NEVER guess, ALWAYS (kind of) suffer to find the solution, and ALWAYS realize how much sense it actually made.
I played Myst I, II, III, IV, and the only puzzle I guessed was in Myst II or III: the giant rotative silo where you have to line up the upper, middle and lower cylinder in order to make the circuits drawn on the wall connect or something. I followed my intuition and eventually solved it, but never really understood what I was doing.
Also, I thought that the puzzle in Myst III where you have to rotate individually all 9 parts of the giant looping ramps to create a consistent circuit for the ball was incredibly cruel. From the beginning I thought: "OK, I feel like I should make something out of it", but at the same time I couldn't believe the programers would have inflicted that to the player, since you can't really have a clear view of the circuit below you. Well, it turns out they did!
Finally, my personal feeling was that the puzzle in Myst III where you must find-the-proper-balance-for-the-lever-ramps-positionning-the-ball-on-the-catapult was flawed. Did anyone else feel like the balance was incorrect, and was contradicting the small example model that you could find in Atrus' lab?
Quote from: Ali on Sat 06/11/2004 01:28:24
I love any Myst-esque puzzles where you have to decode an alphabet or number system or memorize symbols or noises or make a chart...
Well, to be honest, for some time I tried to understand the alphabet based on the letters drawn on the wall all around the class room in Myst III. I listed all of them, and then tried to understand their meaning by using the text on the blackboard.
Luckily, I eventually remembered how strict and consistent Myst's creators are, and they wouldn't have used the cheap trick of transcripting the Latin alphabet (26 letters) into the same alphabet, but with different symbols. It wouldn't make sense in that imaginary universe. Especially after you decipher the numeric alphabet, which is not 10-based.
So I could continue playing, being absolutely sure that I had been following a wrong trail (it's always so good when you KNOW that something is not the right solution, instead of those random puzzles where you're never sure if it *might* work).