I've been playing The Neverhood, mostly a great game, but I came across the most infuriating puzzle, and want to vent :)
So there is this sequence of weird symbols you have to enter. The answer is on some other part of the world, to get there from the place where you actually use them you have to go through a million hoops, but that's besides the point.
The symbols you enter come one by one, and cycle slowly. Very slowly. You have to click when the right one shows up, and wait an eternity for the next one to come up. There are 12 symbols to enter - each attempt at entering the sequence takes 3-4 minutes. There is no way to speed it up. You can't make a mistake, or you start over from the first symbol. You can't save mid-sequence. And to top it off the sequence to enter is not straightforward, even with hints it took me 3-4 tries... ARGH!!!
Ok I've calmed down now. Does anyone else want to share their least favorite game puzzle?
>PULL ROCK
when standing on the left of it.
I've mentioned it before, but the outrageously stupid safe puzzle in Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Pearl Earring. Or, indeed, any lock puzzle who's solution is coded into the lock's surroundings.
No one who knows what locks are for would do that!
Use stretchy skin on manhole.
Not the worse puzzle ever, but it's all that came to mind.
Probably any puzzle from Discworld 2, although I never finished it.. for puzzle related reasons...
That puzzle where you turn a boy into a puppy and then into hush puppies to sneak past a monster, taken from Simon 2, that got me riled.
Oh, and "smell darkness", from Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. That was tough, and seemed so illogical, even though it was perfectly sensible.
Two words that I'm suprised haven't come up yet (from Monkey Island II):
Monkey. Wrench.
Quote from: veryweirdguy on Sun 19/11/2006 12:04:31
Two words that I'm suprised haven't come up yet (from Monkey Island II):
Monkey. Wrench.
That's the first thing I did when I saw that water pump...
I agree with Ghost. Totally.
Although, there is a puzzle in Crave that I hate. The whole "put-banana-peel-on-floor-then-go-up-the-stairs-and-slide-down-the-banister-in-order-to-make-yourself-slip-and-fall-into-the-laundry-chute-to-get-the-lost-item".
For heaven's sake, just BEND IN AND GRAB THE BLOODY LOST ITEM!
I also find the above puzzle is hideous because it relies on the player character setting up a way so he could trip himself up. I mean, what's the logic in that? "Oh, I think I shall come up with a situation that'll trap me into doing something I could very well do right now".
Temujin had a similar puzzle, where you had to build a whole friggin' machine just to pour yourself some tea... but heck, THAT puzzle was actually fun.
surely the worst ever puzzle in Flight of the Amazon Queen, you get passed a talking gorilla just by telling it he doesn't exist. TWICE.
Quote from: BOYD1981 on Sun 19/11/2006 13:39:31
surely the worst ever puzzle in Flight of the Amazon Queen, you get passed a talking gorilla just by telling it he doesn't exist. TWICE.
That's not as bad as spending ages getting your jet-pack working and flying to the misty valley, just to learn that your mechanic friend made the same journey by inexplicably hitching a ride on the villain's blimp. If he can go on the blimp, why can't I?
Fascination. That idiotic game!
The final(?) Puzzle.
Where you have to turn some stupid wheel into position of birth sign symbol of an inspector according to his birthdate which you got from a flashlight(?) and then play notes on organ that are marked onto flashlight while using microscope to read them. There's also 3 cats with notes drawn on them. I don't even remember why or where did you have to play THESE notes...
omfg.
So, you have to know all astrological symbols, what they represent, the dates signs are assigned, the CDEFGAB notation, you have to guess which organ key represents what note (there's no way but to experiment)... argh.
I never got that done. Even though I'm 101% sure I did it right... just nothing happened.
THIS is the worst. puzzle. ever.
And of course, worldstones in Indiana jones: FOA sucked aswell. And finding one with topographic instruments.
The astrology puzzle in Keepsake, which depends upon the player guessing that a constellation of a mermaid represents fertility on the grounds that mermaids are female. I can't see how a mermaid would give birth, so it doesn't work for me.
Quote from: InCreator on Sun 19/11/2006 13:45:06
And of course, worldstones in Indiana jones: FOA sucked aswell.
Apart from constantly having to ask my brother which moon was waxing and which was waning, I liked the worldstones.
Can't think of a worst puzzle per se... possibly
Simon the Sorceror somewhere?
Edit: No, not StS. I'll come back when I think of one.
Ayuh, I actually enjoyed the worldstones. Same deal with waxing and waning, and sometimes figuring something else out, but overall I quite enjoyed it. What didn't you like about it? Were the clues too cryptic?
Heh, talk about cryptic clues, what about the cookie-baking puzzle in Still Life? Not the worst, but really unnecessary. I hated every minute of it.
Two puzzles in Midnight Nowhere that totally put me off the game:
1 - Use magnet on wall poster to get key.
I still don't know why this has worked. No bulge in poster, it's not been ripped, there wasn't even any hint to it. Senseless.
2 - Find the password to a computer - "Ariel", the name of the little mermaid.
Look, this is actually fine, since the room had plenty of mermaid items, posters and memorabilia, but come on, a game that's all about gore and darkness and where the hero swears in every other sentence and where the siren posters are downright sinister and bare-breasted... Disney isn't the first thing that comes to mind.
Quote from: veryweirdguy on Sun 19/11/2006 12:04:31
Monkey. Wrench.
That one made me laugh out loud when I finally got it. It's so obvious in retrospect :)
Quote from: BOYD1981 on Sun 19/11/2006 13:39:31
passed a talking gorilla just by telling it he doesn't exist. TWICE.
Yep. That's about when I wiped the game from my hard drive.
The birthstones puzzle in Kyrandia I, since it's entirely random and stupid.
The naughts-and-crosses in Kyrandia 3; it's a good puzzle but made annoying by the fact that you have to do it over, and over, and over again. Come to think of it, several other puzzles in that game have the same problem - great idea, poor execution.
Just about anything in KQV (sorry, can't help myself) including the yeti, the servant girl, the library wait and the desert pseudo-maze. Likewise, just about anything in Codename Iceman.
The library staircase in Maniac Mansion :)
The entry to hell in Quest for Glory V (there are two puzzles that require blood; for the paladin ring, you have to get hurt a bit and click it on yourself since you're bleeding. For hell, that indescribably doesn't work, and you have to click on some dead soldier hidden elsewhere in the screen, in pixel-perfect fashion).
Speaking of pixel-perfectness, Ultima VIII.
Ok, I'll shut up now :P
Anyone played 'Stupid Invaders'? It's supposed to be funny, but is quite the opposite of it. Really, the puzzles are so incredibly bad... for example: In one case, you are in a cellar. Being exactly one room big. There stands a giant mouse trap in the edge. Your objective: get out. If you just open the door, someone steps in and kills you. If you turn off the light, someone steps in and kills you. You have to place the mouse trap on the right place, then walk over pixel-exactly, and *then* turn off the light.
Really, it's 100% impossible solving this without dying at least once!
Quote from: Akatosh on Mon 20/11/2006 17:45:51
Really, it's 100% impossible solving this without dying at least once!
When you inevitably died, did you have to load your last save game up or did it plonk you right back before you died? I don't mind it if one is taken back. Although I DO hate pixel-perfect puzzles!
Curses! Your message has reminded me of that atrocity known as Rick Dangerous! Not an adventure game sure, but you had to be psychic to play that. Read the programmers minds! It became a memory test, remember where that spike will come out of nowhere and kill you, remember where that bomb goes off etc etc
Quote from: ManicMatt on Mon 20/11/2006 20:16:30
Quote from: Akatosh on Mon 20/11/2006 17:45:51
Really, it's 100% impossible solving this without dying at least once!
It became a memory test, remember where that spike will come out of nowhere and kill you, remember where that bomb goes off etc etc
Ah, but you got rewarded by that hilarious "Aaayyrrghh!" sound ;D
Another game that raises its ugly head: The first chapter of Runaway, though it's more an attempt at puzzle design I dislike very much: You have to get the girl out of the hospital and, as you start to assemble a decoy, have to search Gina's handbag for useful stuff. Your heroic nerdy guy then takes out something and says there's nothing more, ONLY to produce, after solving another sub-puzzle, a wig (I mean, they're big, and hard to overlook) from the same bag.
I hate such trigger sequences that make me discard an item as "used, done for" and then telling me I was stupid to think so, and the designers were so clever. Jaded player that I am.
6 Day Assassin is basically one terrible puzzle after the next. But that's ok, I forgive myself, it was a long time ago.
I would like to add... everything from Grim Fandango. I know that majority of AGSers love this game, but I absolutely hated it. None of puzzles in first part of game made any of sense to me. And I never wanted to play further. I'd rather play Larry Vales or random other adventure game.
Lure of Temptress had some quite awful/difficult puzzles too.
Grim? Whoa. Could you give us an example on what made it so bad? I'd sure like to hear, I love Grim's puzzles...
Quote from: MrColossal on Mon 20/11/2006 21:15:19
6 Day Assassin is basically one terrible puzzle after the next. But that's ok, I forgive myself, it was a long time ago.
Well,
I liked it :)
Quote from: InCreator on Mon 20/11/2006 21:35:31
I would like to add... everything from Grim Fandango. I know that majority of AGSers love this game, but I absolutely hated it. None of puzzles in first part of game made any of sense to me. And I never wanted to play further.
I second Rui's response about Grim Fandango - it's been a while so no puzzle comes back to me, but I don't remember Grim's puzzles as being particuarly good or bad, sort of average. Everything else is amazing though, you really should give it a chance.
Only one puzzle comes to mind that I thought was particularly illogical right now. In Apprentice 2, when you have to click on the armor twice just to put it on. Of course it was easy with the walkthrough, but without it, it makes no sense to "Use Uniform with Uniform" to put it on. It would have made more sense to "Use Uniform with Pib". But oh well.
Quote from: ManicMatt on Mon 20/11/2006 20:16:30
Curses! Your message has reminded me of that atrocity known as Rick Dangerous!
I found it quite enjoyable after invoking a cheat mode for infinite lives. Several of the traps in Rick are quite ingenious; it's the starting over again that makes it annoying. RD and its sequel are two of those games that I seriously doubt anyone has
ever completed without cheating.
Quote from: MrColossal on Mon 20/11/2006 21:15:19
6 Day Assassin is basically one terrible puzzle after the next. But that's ok, I forgive myself, it was a long time ago.
*Eric refreshes page every third second to see when someone writes a consolidating post stating the opposite*
Quote from: Radiant on Tue 21/11/2006 08:01:19
RD and its sequel are two of those games that I seriously doubt anyone has ever completed without cheating.
Except the designers of those games, haha!
Oh MrColossal! I liked your short game, except I was stuck for ages on the crosshair bit.
And Grim Fandango was alright puzzle wise, it was the controls I hated, that put me off even playing it a second time through.
Quote from: Grapefruitologist on Tue 21/11/2006 06:20:43
Only one puzzle comes to mind that I thought was particularly illogical right now. In Apprentice 2, when you have to click on the armor twice just to put it on. Of course it was easy with the walkthrough, but without it, it makes no sense to "Use Uniform with Uniform" to put it on. It would have made more sense to "Use Uniform with Pib". But oh well.
We ran into some trouble with the scripting (and we didn't want Pib to be an object, as the player character tends to get in the way of other hotspots). If you'll look at the HTML help (that we spent too much time making) included with the game, it describes the "use item with itself" interaction. So I would call it awkward, but not totally unfair. Hopefully, it isn't the worst puzzle ever.
Mmm the puzzle I hate the most... is... that one from RON Sixteen, where you have to stick pencil in the rock... Absolutely no sence. And the fact I made it truly turns me into the depths of hell.
Well, I have a (weak) excuse that I was short on time... But anyway I could invent something more interesting or at least patch rock's description.
Quote from: big brother on Tue 21/11/2006 15:00:23
We ran into some trouble with the scripting (and we didn't want Pib to be an object, as the player character tends to get in the way of other hotspots).
I'm grateful then, as I hate it when the main character is solid like that!
What if Pib had been an inventory item himself? A picture of his head, say. "Use armour on Pib"
What, for just that instance? Make a whole new inventory that'd get in the way of the player for a single instance?
I never had any trouble with "use uniform on uniform". Dunno, maybe the manual hinted all I needed to know... it seemed a bit obvious.
Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Tue 21/11/2006 20:58:29
What, for just that instance? Make a whole new inventory that'd get in the way of the player for a single instance?
Did Simon's (Sorcerer) or Joe's (Flight of the Amazon queen) save book get in the way, by the way? Didn't Sam n Max have the little un' as an inventory item?
I said inventory item as it's minimal scripting. If the game had onscreen verbs you can just have a "wear" option.
The point is that it would have only been used in that single instance, which disqualifies all of your examples.
There is this one puzzle in Tony Tough 2 in wich you have to try to smash a window with a brick to get yourself arrested.
But there is absolutely no reason, to try to smash the window or to get yourself arrested.
This whole thing serves the mere purpose to make the plot progress and to have to break out again afterwards.
Oh, and what was the thing in Simon the Sorcerer 3D, when you have to bring this Gewe-San-guy back to life, despite he is of absolutely no help at all.
I mean, he eventually just vanishes from the plot without explanation.
This guy is the most useless adventure character I have ever seen.
But talking about StS3D, I know it's not quite on-topic, but there is a puzzle I especially like:
The passing-the-one-way-bridge-puzzle!
It took me a while to figure it out, but I thought this puzzle was quite clever and neat!
EDIT: Oh, I wanted to say something about Stupid Invaders!
It's not true, that you have walk over pixel-perfectly.
But it's true that you have to load a game after having died.
I, too, don't like puzzles you have to die for at least once.
The guys at Sierra made those puzzle on purpose!!!
Quote from: Thomas Voà Ÿ on Wed 22/11/2006 01:41:30
Oh, and what was the thing in Simon the Sorcerer 3D, when you have to bring this Gewe-San-guy back to life, despite he is of absolutely no help at all.
This guy is the most useless adventure character I have ever seen.
How about Cedric? :)
Well, I actually had sympathy with Cedric before playing the voice-enabled CD version, after I got the CD version, he's better dead than alive...
Quote from: ManicMatt on Tue 21/11/2006 15:11:32
What if Pib had been an inventory item himself? A picture of his head, say. "Use armour on Pib"
It's a valid suggestion. We may have limited ourselves by justifying the magic of the inventory book. Instead of dealing having Pib lug around lots of objects on his person, we made everything transfer onto pages in the item book. We also established rules why he wouldn't be able to "pick up" very huge items or animate objects. But having a Pib hotspot on the HUD outside of the book might've worked. It would seem a bit strange for something so underused to command that kind of visual real estate.
You are right, I'm sure there's a better way of doing it.
Quote from: Janik on Sun 19/11/2006 06:36:42
I've been playing The Neverhood, mostly a great game, but I came across the most infuriating puzzle, and want to vent :)
So there is this sequence of weird symbols you have to enter. The answer is on some other part of the world, to get there from the place where you actually use them you have to go through a million hoops, but that's besides the point.
The symbols you enter come one by one, and cycle slowly. Very slowly. You have to click when the right one shows up, and wait an eternity for the next one to come up. There are 12 symbols to enter - each attempt at entering the sequence takes 3-4 minutes. There is no way to speed it up. You can't make a mistake, or you start over from the first symbol. You can't save mid-sequence. And to top it off the sequence to enter is not straightforward, even with hints it took me 3-4 tries... ARGH!!!
Ok I've calmed down now. Does anyone else want to share their least favorite game puzzle?
I've played the Neverhood. For me, I hated the bit in the Hall of Records where you had to walk to the end of the hallway to pick up the one object that you cannot complete the game without. So you walk. And walk. And walk and walk and walkandwalkandwalk for forever and a day. Oh, and the walls have a load of writing on for you to read as well.
The code sequence doesn't make much sense either :(.
Quote from: big brother on Wed 22/11/2006 15:51:04You are right, I'm sure there's a better way of doing it.
I don't remember if the armor had any other functions, but an easy solution would be to let it work slightly different from the other inventory items. Instead of getting a "Use armor on" interaction, clicking on it could just make Pib wear the armor if in the correct location or say "I don't need to wear it here" anywhere else.
That wall bit in Neverhood actually made me turn off the game. I haven't been back since. :(
Worst puzzle ever: the lock in "Heartland Deluxe." :=
[EDIT] Not any more. Yay!
Quote from: LimpingFish on Wed 22/11/2006 23:45:05
That wall bit in Neverhood actually made me turn of the game. I haven't been back since. :(
Mmm. But then I remember the cutscene with the music box and I'm inclined to forgive. ;D
I guess these aren't very original examples, but:
The mazes in Zak McKraken. A great game otherwise, but come on ... what was it, 3 of them?
Also, in The Last Crusade, you had to find like two or three books in the library. Basically a pixel hunt on acid x3. :P
I dunno if this counts but in Tomb Raider 1 some where in the middle of the game there is a button puzzle. It has 6 different combination that you have to get right and you can't know if you did it right. And now clues what so ever.
Quote from: EagerMind on Sat 25/11/2006 03:27:35
The mazes in Zak McKraken. A great game otherwise, but come on ... what was it, 3 of them?
Come to think of it, the Neverhood had a couple of mazes too :( - they weren't very complex, but they
were needlessly long.
Sometimes it seems that game designers want increase the length of the game without increasing the content - not a good thing! Even Half-Life 2, amazing though it is, had that really long bit with the fanboat.
Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Tue 21/11/2006 20:58:29
What, for just that instance? Make a whole new inventory that'd get in the way of the player for a single instance?
This is what we did in 'The Netherworld":
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v424/zor/inventory.gif)
To use an item you just select it and use it on the head symbol.
It's better than an inventory item, sure.
Quote from: Thomas Voà Ÿ on Wed 22/11/2006 01:41:30
It's not true, that you have walk over pixel-perfectly.
Not? I was pretty sure you had to because I remember failing it once or twice... but then again, that was even before my CounterStrike-phase, so you can probably imagine I wasn't too old back then...
But nice to see I wasn't the only one who fell for this f :P :P :P ing bad adventure!
Anyone besides me ever play a game called Dream Zone? I remember a really, really annoying puzzle where you walk around in an office building full of pigs, collecting one form after another in order to get some final form that you know you need. Well, the last pig randomly decides he won't give you the last form, so after all that work, you end up just plugging him and grabbing the form anyway. Yuck.
As an aside, I played this game on an Amiga, and it's just amazing to compare the Amiga screenshot of your room (which you can see at Underdogs (http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=341)) with the DOS screenshot (which you can see at Moby (http://www.mobygames.com/game/dream-zone)).
I say, some of the worst puzzles ever were--
1) Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, both of the Nazi mazes. I died SO MUCH during them. The one in Castle Brunwald was nothing compared to the second one but they both made me want to rip my hair out!
2) Night of the Hermit, whole game. I'm not dissing the game, don't get the wrong message, because it just looks so cool-- but it's just that nearly all the puzzles really made no sense and left me clueless. I like a challenge and difficult games but it truly was a bit much-- the endless combination of inventory items and not knowing what to do with them, what was expected and unexpected...never really got anywhere in the game as a result :(
3) That whole "Avvooozzlll" bug in Quest For Glory IV! Argh! Oh yeah, it's also really fun having to run it in both VDMS and DosBox and quitting out and starting up in them respectively to run certain puzzles because the processor speed warps it so badly that certain puzzles didn't work (I never played the whole game through because of this), or like when fighting the Wraiths, it'd drain my health in VDMS to 0 in half a second but ran fine in DosBox. But the processor speeds definitely screw up the whole "Avoozl" thing when you have to enter it in the pillar.
I wish I could just play it ALL through continuosly and get all the different endings!! :(
4) The Sequel Police in Space Quest IV, in the mall after you fry the Astro Chicken machine. I preciously covet that saved game of when I finally them beat them to the punch, because otherwise I only beat them maybe 3 times of the 240982490 times that I played SQ4.
I know this is slightly off-topic but just the perfect place to vent: Reading over this made me realize how much I really truly miss the games of yesteryear. And so glad that I found the AGS community who pretty much feels the same way. :) I mean, do modern gaming executives even THINK of things like storylines and memorable characters, or in this case, excruciating puzzles?
1) I agree that the first puzzle could have used some sort of, maybe, visual hints that'd alow you to understand what kind of approach would work with any given soldier, but it wasn't that bad, and the second one - though indeed a pain to navigate - was entirely optional.
3) You do know there are patches out there that'll fix it? No fair talking that way about the puzzle itself when the problem is that technology has moved on. I mean, the gym puzzle in LSL3 is nice. Having to exercise 1000+ times on each machine is not, but that's a new-tech problem that patches can fix anyway.
Quote from: FamousAdventurer77 on Mon 04/12/2006 05:24:44
3) That whole "Avvooozzlll" bug in Quest For Glory IV! Argh! Oh yeah, it's also really fun
That's not a bad puzzle, that's just sloppy QA.
Last Few Posters: I tried looking for a few patches, the only working one I found was the Katrina note patch (which I never had trouble with)...mine always crashed with the Chernozy (sp?)wizards when running VDMS (75% success rate using DosBox), the infamous Avoozl bug, the fairies, and quite a few other points. I tried tweaking the living crap out of both VDMS and DosBox but to no avail.
But I agree, its more or less just poor QA rather than an impassable puzzle. Otherwise, the puzzles (at least from the point I was able to play up to) were of typical QFG caliber...some serious, some funny, the only other technical thing was that it took me a while before I realized you had to use the Talk icon on yourself, not the other characters, to get certain dialogue options.
But as for non-technical difficulties that make players' brains tear up:
Still though, the Last Crusade Nazi mazes always tore my brain up.
Come to think of it, that part in Gobliins 2 where you had to make Fingus and Winkle work together in Vivalzart's hut to get the Vulture's meat was really tough-- you had to get the timing *just right* and if you missed by 0.5 a second you had to keep doing it over again. That one was really frustrating!
And...I haven't met/talked to a single a soul who's heard of this game: Curse of Dragor, an adventure-based old-school RPG type of game I had in the Mac days of my childhood (I don't think it was ever made for DOS. But I could be wrong. I quit using Macs upon the advent of OS X.)
I found my old copy and played it on my dad's OS X machine finding that it ran perfect so I wanted to see if I could solve what I couldn't figure out 12 years ago. Turns out...I could only get to a certain point simply because there was impassable puzzles of unlocking the doors and then finding one key that didn't unlock ANYTHING. The nice puzzles in CoD were mapping the area and then piecing the diary entries together, but just when you thought that finding the one secret area would help...nope!
I will be impressed if anyone's ever heard of/played CoD, and triply impressed if they know how to get past any of the doors or tell me if I did indeed miss something. Otherwise the game probably still ends on the first floor.
I kinda agree for TLC's second maze. The maze wasn't really complicated, nor the fights insanely difficult, but it had too much fights, making it difficult to concentrate on the maze when you were constantly interupted by countless fights. Plus, not being able to save at any point during the maze didn't really help. But the Castle Brunwald is in my opinion one of the coolest thing ever implemented in an adventure game but I recognize it had flaws. For one, you were not told anywhere that guards would become more suspicious and alerted as the body count increased, leaving you to wonder how they could smell you in a mile radius.
For two, fooling the guards was fun and interesting but tedious, you had absolutly no hints for the conversations that could have removed 1 or 2 dialogue trees. It's roughly 27 possibilities for a single disguise for a single guard if you exclude bribing a guard. And if that wasn't enough, 2 guards couldn't be fooled unless if you collected informations from 3 previous guards, informations which would no longer be available if you fooled the guards in a different way or if they were gone to neverland. So, that's 2 guards which would most likely make you waste your time and alert everyone if you had already knocked 2 guards. And it was impossible to immediatly restore in case of failure, everytime you'd have to knock the guard and go to the nearest room, or voluntary die to access the save/load menu.
The first time I passed thru that part, I remember feeling as baddass as someone who finished an old adventure game back when there had no internet for hints or walkthru and when walking deads were waiting for you at every street corners. It was cool, fun, new and interesting but tedious and badly executed. If it could be well executed, I'd love to see this in more adventure games.
As for the Sequel Police in SQ4, that was a timer issue that only happen when your computer is too fast, it wasn't a badly designed puzzle, just a badly coded one.
If I had to add puzzles to that list, I'd say the ending puzzles of Mystery of the Druids, basically you had 8 stone slabs that needed to be placed in a precise order, but you were only given 2 vague hints and it wasn't your average padlock puzzle where it's easily possible try every possibility. Instead they decided it would be ways better off if every stone slabs needed to be placed in differents rooms. Bad. And if there's one thing that's more annoying than this it's having to look in a walkthru to solve the final puzzle of a game. The best way to spoil the experience and make you feel cheap. Really bad.
Next I'd add dealing with Herman Toothrot in Escape from Monkey Island.
And the cookie recipe puzzle of Still Life. It was an original way to integrate a padlock puzzle (If I can call it like that) and would have been fun if it wasn't for the fact there had no hints anywhere and the only way to solve the puzzle was to ask grandma for her cookie recipe and hope the recipe is similar (good luck) or check a walkthru, which is usually the best way to determine if a puzzle sucks.
Yeah, the cookie thing in Still Life is pretty bad, but the cocktail mixing one from Syberia is even worse.
And they're both basically the same puzzle!>:(
I'd say any puzzle involving math of some sort.
But math. puzzles are at least better than "DON'T PRESS THE RED BUTTON!1!" ones.
Quote from: BlueSkirt on Tue 05/12/2006 00:02:40
And the cookie recipe puzzle of Still Life. It was an original way to integrate a padlock puzzle (If I can call it like that) and would have been fun if it wasn't for the fact there had no hints anywhere and the only way to solve the puzzle was to ask grandma for her cookie recipe and hope the recipe is similar (good luck)
I wonder if I found that puzzle (as silly as it was) straightforward because I'm a girl ;). I bake a mean chocolate-chip cookie...
Anyway, in King's Quest 7 there is a time when you have to sneak into a witch's house, and if you didn't do it at the right time, her dog would catch you. Now, the theory was that you wait for the dog to stop barking before you try to enter (indicating that the dog wasn't around), but this wasn't the case... it seemed entirely random whether the dog was there or not. Each time I wanted to go into the house, it took me at least 10 deaths before getting in. I'm not sure if that's considered a bad puzzle, or just bad design.
Kings Quest 1: Guessing that stupid dwarf guy's name, when I read the solution I thought, "Who the hell thought that one up?" (It's Rumplestiltskin spelled in a reverse alphabet or something)
Quote from: Dmitri on Wed 06/12/2006 02:52:07
Kings Quest 1: Guessing that stupid dwarf guy's name, when I read the solution I thought, "Who the hell thought that one up?" (It's Rumplestiltskin spelled in a reverse alphabet or something)
Yeah that was insane! I think they saw that it was too hard, since in the remake Rumplestiltskin backwards would also work.
On the note King's Quest puzzles...I was a wee lass when I played KQ5. I felt real proud of myself when I made it Mordack's Castle and inside without getting caught and dying too much. But the one I just really didn't get was what to do with the wand machine: like, there were no clues about getting the cheese then putting the cheese in the machine. Or any leads...it wasn't as if you overhead the bandits saying things like "I hear Mordack's lab equipment is lactose intolerant" or something. Oh yeah, and it was a few times before I noticed then remembered to even get the fish hook from Harpy Island to get the aforementioned cheese.
Still, it's one of my favorite childhood games nevertheless. The cheese thing just kinda throws you off though, a fairly off color puzzle. 15 years later I still think so.
Quote from: FamousAdventurer77 on Mon 04/12/2006 05:24:44
I say, some of the worst puzzles ever were--
1) Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade, both of the Nazi mazes. I died SO MUCH during them. The one in Castle Brunwald was nothing compared to the second one but they both made me want to rip my hair out!
2) Night of the Hermit, whole game. I'm not dissing the game, don't get the wrong message, because it just looks so cool-- but it's just that nearly all the puzzles really made no sense and left me clueless. I like a challenge and difficult games but it truly was a bit much-- the endless combination of inventory items and not knowing what to do with them, what was expected and unexpected...never really got anywhere in the game as a result :(
I actually liked Night of the Hermit. I agree that there were some puzzles that made hardly any sense, but for the most part I thought it was straight-forward.
About the mazes in Last crusade, I wouldn't really consider Castle Brunwald a maze, more like a ... "Interactive Dungeon." :P The 2nd maze (The blimp right?) I didn't have too much trouble on, so I didn't hate it at all.
Speaking of KQ5... I really hated how there were so many wrong things you could do with each item, that would (I think) get you stuck. You could trade away your gold items to random people, even though you needed them for other purposes.
No, I'm not saying Night of the Hermit is a bad game at all-- I just think I'd like it better if some of the puzzles were just a TAD more straightforward. I couldn't really get much farther than just gathering a huge amount of inventory items then having no idea what to do with them all. It just really tore my brain up trying to figure out what to do with everything! I kinda gave up on that game as a result.
Yep, I remember like you could give the eagle the pie and then you'd have nothing to defend yourself against the yeti. Or, could end up eating the pie and/or the entire leg of lamb.
I think most early Sierra games had this though-- like in QFG1, if you drank the Dispel Potion you were totally screwed because you could find all the other ingredients all over again except for the magic acorn.
Still, that thing with the cheese really just didn't make sense...
If you think that's bad, in the original version of KQ1 you could drop any and all of your items, thus losing them irretrievably - and that included the Three Treasures. It's kind of funny that you can drop the treasures just before meeting King Edward again, thus ending up there empty handed. Since this also causes you to lose the points you got for finding the items, I spent some time completing KQ1 with the lowest possible score, which IIRC was about 40 points.
I wonder why no one has mentioned the amazingly annoying last "monkey-attack" puzzle in MI IV.
Once you figured it out (after 10 hours of constantly getting it wrong) you had to draw a huge coordinate system that you could only use once (because the puzzle changed for every new game).
Syberia had a few very illogical puzzles as well. It's been a while, but I remember getting very stuck at some horse-caroussel in a bar somewhere. Had to cheat big time to get through that one. Something that I usually not do!
/tom..
The monkey attack system took you 10 hours to get through? I guess it could be slightly more difficult if you've never played rock-paper-scissors before. But still, I think it took me less time to beat the whole game.
Quote from: big brother on Thu 07/12/2006 15:43:28
The monkey attack system took you 10 hours to get through? I guess it could be slightly more difficult if you've never played rock-paper-scissors before. But still, I think it took me less time to beat the whole game.
Well.. What can I say? It was extremely easy once you figured out how to do it. I don't know if it took 10 hours, but it sure felt like it! But there's no way that this could be done without writing it down in a system unless you got a photographic memory!
/tom..
QuoteBut there's no way that this could be done without writing it down in a system unless you got a photographic memory!
Put like that it reads like a fault. Well, while it's certainly not to everyone's taste and appeal (I certainly don't really care for them), several adventure games have this *characteristic* - you have to take notes, or you have to write stuff down, or you have to draw diagrams. Myst and Riven and etc are naturally champions at this stuff, and many games have nothing of the sort. It's just the way they are.
Unless you're criticizing the whole Monkey Kombat. It IS true that the original insult swordfight (quite a masterpiece, puzzle-wise) didn't rely on writing anything down, all you needed were your wits and an ability to cross-reference sentences.
Quote from: Rui "Trovatore" Pires on Thu 07/12/2006 16:24:39
QuoteBut there's no way that this could be done without writing it down in a system unless you got a photographic memory!
Put like that it reads like a fault. Well, while it's certainly not to everyone's taste and appeal (I certainly don't really care for them), several adventure games have this *characteristic* - you have to take notes, or you have to write stuff down, or you have to draw diagrams. Myst and Riven and etc are naturally champions at this stuff, and many games have nothing of the sort. It's just the way they are.
Unless you're criticizing the whole Monkey Kombat. It IS true that the original insult swordfight (quite a masterpiece, puzzle-wise) didn't rely on writing anything down, all you needed were your wits and an ability to cross-reference sentences.
I know exactly how adventure games work. I guess I played my first ones long before you were even born back on the Commodore 16, Vic20 and C64 where everything was text-based. No graphics at all. "Go west" "You have encountered a bit troll. What would you like to do?" :D
And I'm not at all arguing against writing anything down. I'm bashing the Monkey Kombat-concept because I found it very frustrating and illogic compared to the previous insult swordfights! It had no place in that game. Up until the Monkey Kombat everything had been pretty straight forward and then you are presented with something that makes absolutely no sense unless you spend a long, long time writing everything down.
In the "old days" you often had to write down phonenumbers, passwords and even family trees etc., but having to write down an entire coordinate system with "Uuh aah aah" and so on made little sense to me at the time!
If people found this puzzle easy and a nice feature of MI IV, then by all means I'm happy for them! I just found it very annoying! ;)
/tom.
I was stuck on the monkey kombat for ages, thinking I'd finally got it sussed before getting beaten again. I think I had to look up a guide for that one.
I think Monkey Kombat was really out of place in the world of monkey island. Except that slightly annoying safe puzzle in the first one. I hate "chore" puzzles, where it feels like work and not fun.
When in a game I come across a numbered password, I like it much more when the main character remembers it for me, so I'm not rushing back to the keypad saying out loud to myself: "6389375" over and over again when there isn't any pens or paper around.
(Thomas just posted before I did)
The "where to sail to" puzzle in Indiana Jones and The Fate Of Atlantis. It's a bit foggy in my mind, but you had to try something like 12 different combinations of directions and distances, completely at random and go through the same long sequence every time before you got to the right place.
And after you eventually got it, you weren't able to use the same solution again if you replayed the game. Uurgh...
And the nightstick in Police Quest 1 (the original, EGA version). How was I supposed to know it was in the car the whole time?
If I remember correctly, the directions were given in the Plato book. You just had to subtract 10 or something...
=X Never mind...
There are a lot of puzzles in Grim Fandango like the vault door and the tree pump which I don't understand. I got the solutions from friends and walkthroughs but I don't know WHY the solutions worked.
Personally though, my least favourite puzzle is how you get past the domino-rigged bomb to get to the bone wagon. It requires doing the completely unrelated action of giving a bottle of stuff to Glottis which then makes him run off and drink a whole barrel before running back to the same position he was before and then vomiting in the exact direction you needed creating handy walkable vomit.
How did Manny know this sequence of events would occur? Is he magic?
I remember being quite infuriated by the Human Show puzzle in Day of the Tentacle. Every time I thought I'd finally beaten it I found another thing I had to do to the goddamn mummy.
I rather liked the Human Show (and that entire game). The Show was judged by 3 categories (I believe), plus you had to get rid of the tutu-wearing douche.
~Trent
Opening puzzle in Phantasmagoria 2 - A Puzzle of Flesh.
Problem - Wallet is stuck behind the sofa.
Obvious solution - you move the sofa, get the wallet, celebrate with hookers and blow.
Right?
WRONG BITCH.
You see, the character speaks to his pet rat, and through dialogue implies the rat somehow got out of his cage, stole his wallet, and hid it beneath the sofa for lulz. So, you pick up the rat and send him beneath the sofa.
And if THAT isn't a leap of logic too far, the little sod stays UNDER the sofa. So now what? Well, you tempt him out of course. With a handy food bar. And somehow he's able to dash out, having smelt this bar, and presumably DRAGGED your wallet with him, which you can now retrieve.
If this was a LucasArts game, then I would be more forgiving. After all, in their worlds, monkeys make acceptable wrenches and dogs can be bundled into ones jacket. But no. This is an INTERACTIVE FMV ADVENTURE from Sierra, and as such the typical laws of rational logic should apply.
The puzzle serves no purpose, is in no way satisfying to solve, and doesn't even make a lick of sense. It's an arbitrary time lengthener, nothing more.
And it makes me RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE.
Another worst puzzle. The friggin' desert maze in KQ5.... argh!
broken sword 3. oh lord. ok first really boring pressure pads and symbols stuff, really crappy but got through it. but now, right after that, theres this incredibly complicated pile of levers and orbs and mirrors and i just couldent stand it any more. closed it down and havent played it again to this day. shame as it was pretty good up till then.
Trent: Oh, don't get me wrong, I absolutely adored the puzzle (I can't think of a single puzzle in DotT I didn't like), but it infuriated me no end when I kept realising there was still -one more thing- to do before I beat category X, though. :P
Right at the and of Broken Sword 4, George is walking along, and the floor randomly gives way underneath him. You then have to tell Anna-Maria to pull some levers in a certain order to bring the floor back up as if nothing had happened. It's all completely pointless as well as being the easiest puzzle in the entire game. Why chuck it there randomly right at the end? It would have been better as a kind of training puzzle at the beginning. Or better still, they shouldn't have bothered with it at all.
Quote from: Radiant on Tue 06/01/2009 19:07:05
Another worst puzzle. The friggin' desert maze in KQ5.... argh!
The only puzzle worse than that in KQ5 was the castle maze. DOUBLE ARGH.
The 'giving the plush snowman to hubby in order to revive some human feeling' - Phantasmagoria I
That's was so stupid. Why a snowman? Was that the best gift he gave her? And they bough a house together after that?!?
(Sorry Roberta)
purgatorio number pad. It's so obvious but it took me hours to figure it out. It's not the worst but probably one of the best.
One puzzle that ticked me off (a bit), was crssoing the Lava in Atlantis. So many times it proved easy, but one time, any tile Indy stood on would collapse. I could find no reason for that particular tile to go. And I could therefore not continue the game.
Well, let me share my delightful experience of recently discovered wonderful puzzles. Actually, the ones I collected here are quite hilarious so they're indeed more of a nice experience than of horrible annoying skullcrashing but they are still quite random and nonsensical and therefore probably belong to 'badly designed' kind anyway. So I hope you enjoy my bit.
There're spoilers ahead, lol.
In Touche: the adventures of the fifth musketeer the moment when you need to... uh, build a rope system in the cathedral to swap grave lids. Actually, it's not even a puzzle but a mock-up of a one. Because who possibly can think about doing that and consider it possible to pull out such trick? Well, obviously no one, no one even out of his mind will ever aim to do that. Not knowing he can, that is. Although I should say it worked just awesome as a joke: when you randomly use rope on a candle holding thingie and see THIS to happen all of a sudden it's just makes another happy "dude, what the hell?!" moment in your life.
The George's imprisonment episode in Broken Sword 4 (the one in the priests' club bath). Well, I'm not even trying to describe what the hell is going on in this episode because I didn't quite get it myself. Except for the very basic idea that George is tied up in a very strange room and by triggering some sort of chain of no less weird events he must free himself. This total randomness didn't stop to amaze me and make me laugh not to mention how unexpected it was in the middle of humorous and fantastic yet quite rational good old Broken Sword.
By the way in the fan-made Broken Sword 2.5 you're poisoning a innocent passenger on a plane just to get a few seats past him... I mean, George was acting cynical in the name of justice and saving of all that is good before but poisoning a man just to distract a stewartess who is blocking the way to the seats where're more people to chat with just because of boredom? Now that's the way of a real bastard. Well, coresponding puzzles to achieve that weren't hard but the whole idea is unlikely to come to one's even rather dark mind.
And finally the puzzle about using a cat for ovehearing some secret conversations in Secret Files: Tunguska... I don't know is it bad or good, but I won't forget it for a looong time for its unhealthy creativeness. When I was putting old rotting pizza in that dish I wasn't all that serious, when I was trying to add some salt to it while cat was eating it I was just downright kidding. But not the developers, it was not only possible but obligatory to proceed. So, once again, this puzzle (sequence of puzzles?) was just wonderful, charming and memorable in its craziness but will you really come up with such solution to the situation on your own? Anyway, it's so funny I would put this one in the golden book of adventure game puzzles or something.
Sorry for the long ramblings, I hope it wasn't too boring.
Those are indeed all gems in their own right but it's a fair point that no player in their right mind would -logically- consider trying most of these things.
I think an important part of puzzle design is that you should never rely on something that the player is never in a million years going to consider as a possibility in a puzzle that's vital to progressing in the game. They should always have some kind of logical progression, even if it's extremely lateral and obscure. Otherwise, all your puzzle really is is a "try using every inventory item you have on everything else that's clickable!" and those are never fun.
Fossilised turtle creature that you bring back to life after many painfilled tries only for it to be eaten by giant sea snake thingy puzzle - in the DIG.
Damn you Lucas!
I have to say also that the Pieroglyphics puzzle in Nelly Cootalot is possibly one of the greatest ever. :P from the concept to the sheer name of it to the head-slappingly simple solution that's disguised as something not even related to the puzzle.
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, The game by 7th level. Several noticeably stupid puzzles but especially that totem pole one. You got no help or advice, no indication of what you were supposed to do, apparently you were supposed to make it of a woman...... Everytime you failed you got zapped by lightning with non-skippable animation that lasted about 4 minuites! I think it took me several days and hours of vented anger to accomplish it by trial and error.
Did anyone figure that one out right away?
If you did, I think you can safetly say you're a genius.
Yeah, I have to agree with Frisby that The fossil puzzle was just damn ridiculous. Parts will lock into place that seem to fit, but you still don't get a finished puzzle out of it, and there's no guide in the game to show you what these things look like inside. It's all guesswork, and a few of the puzzles in the game are like this. It took me awhile to work through this game for that reason, and while I felt a sense of accomplishment I was also annoyed that I was expected to understand the logic of designers trying to create alien puzzles.
Can't remember what adventure it was but you had to MAKE A PITSTOP... in order to use a toilet! Who on earth is going to know that? Just USE THE damn TOILET!
Quote from: ProgZmax on Fri 09/01/2009 16:42:12
Yeah, I have to agree with Frisby that The fossil puzzle was just damn ridiculous. Parts will lock into place that seem to fit, but you still don't get a finished puzzle out of it, and there's no guide in the game to show you what these things look like inside. It's all guesswork, and a few of the puzzles in the game are like this. It took me awhile to work through this game for that reason, and while I felt a sense of accomplishment I was also annoyed that I was expected to understand the logic of designers trying to create alien puzzles.
As i can remember, there is a hotspot near by that shows you have the bones are correctly positioned.
Quote from: Nickydude on Fri 09/01/2009 20:31:17
Can't remember what adventure it was but you had to MAKE A PITSTOP... in order to use a toilet! Who on earth is going to know that? Just USE THE damn TOILET!
If I'm not mistaken, that was in the original Sam and Max.
I know the Myst games are anathema to a great deal of adventure gamers, but I love them. However, at the beginning of Myst IV, you have to turn a bunch of knobs to change the pitch and speed (I think) of a couple sine waves, and make them collectively tweak into an irregular wave that matches up exactly with a guide. I got distracted halfway through that game a couple times, so I had to do that puzzle at least 3 times, and each time I kept tweaking knobs, trying to follow the apparently worthless hints the NPC gave me ("There, perfect, now the other one...Great, perfect, now back to that first one I told you was perfect..."). The one good thing about the puzzle is that they give it to you after 10-15 minutes of helplessness. I think the last time I played it, I made a sandwich and came back and it had been done for me. ;D
Thought I'd posted in this but obviously not. I completely agree that the Fossil puzzle in The Dig is one of the suckiest. The surveyors equipment puzzle in FoA had me stumped for several months & LBA "use ball to rescue lighthouse keeper" made me send off a letter to EA for help.
Also there's a puzzle surrounding the observatory in Noctropolis, and the only walkthrough I had was really unclear about what I had to do there. This frustrated me, and even to this day it does too - because I replayed Noctrop so many frigging times and each time progressed a bit further, and then eventually just got stuck at this point. So if anyone has any clues, do let me know :P
I remember the very first puzzle in Operation Stealth sucking because it took me a year to find out how to exit the airport terminal. Never did finish that game though.
Interesting to read everyone elses most dissapointing puzzles ever part 2 with Sheriff John Bunnell :)
I finally got to play Grim Fandango for the first time a few days ago, and while I really enjoyed the story, setting and characters, I found a lot of the puzzles just frustrating and ended up using the UHS hints for most of it.
I don't think the problem was in the puzzles per se, though; rather, there just wasn't enough information in the dialogue and descriptions.
The worst puzzle in the game (IMHO) requires you to give two separate items to a carrier pigeon, but when you give the bird one item, the ONLY feedback that you get is that the bird takes it; Manny doesn't say anything and the bird doesn't do anything until the bird has both items.
Just a couple of extra lines, something like "It looks like he needs something to deliver" or "Looks like he needs to know who this is for", would have brought the puzzle down from bloody impossible to merely tricky.
True, additional hints would make the game easier, which probably isn't what the designers wanted, but withholding information seems like an artificial way to raise the difficulty.
Oh, I loved the fossil puzzle in The Dig, I had fun with it. The Dig went more in the Myst direction with the puzzles, they were more trial and error, but the experimentation added to the fun.
Otherwise, the planetarium puzzle had me totally stumped and I still don't understand where and how you recieve the neceassary clues to complete it.
Okay, the worst puzzle.....oh damn, there are many terrible ones, but I think you have to differentiate. Some puzzles are great as an idea but poor in execution.
For example, a friend of mine was really aggravated by some of the puzzles in The Feeble Files. Towards the end you had to give a guard a toy (or some kind of box with toys, I can't remember exactly) so you could pass. There wasn't any clue that he would want it and that he would love you so much for it or would be so distracted that he would let you go ahead.
Maybe if the game had suggested that the guard is rather childish and is mentally stuck at the stage of an 8 year old than it would have made sense.
There are probably better examples to make this clear but this just came to mind because I discussed it before.
I also read that Starship Titanic had some great puzzle ideas, but that they were all poorly executed.
I encountered many terrible puzzles, I spent much time of my adventure gaming time frustrated, annoyed and humiliated (I only exaggarate a little).
For me, the most aggravating design error is when I can't do something that I should be logically able to do and the game gives me reason to but that's not possible because my avatar didn't make the connection that this would be the right thing to do. Sometimes you have the feeling that you're not only playing through a character, but that you also need to connect his thoughts and push him towards certain conclusions.
Ooh, I just thought of another hair-puller -- In Myst, there's a point where you can't progress until you've found a certain door, which is HIDDEN IN THE DARK behind the ONLY DOOR IN THE GAME that doesn't automatically close behind you.
Myst and monkey-related puzzles collide in disaster in the fourth Myst game: there's a puzzle in which you have to decipher the cries of a bunch of monkeys and use a device to replicate their danger call, but you have to do it in the proper cadence -- and the controls just aren't that easy to use. I found out later that there's a patch to slow the damn thing down, but all the sites referring to it mention that you've still got to be ridiculously fast to get it right; I just couldn't be bothered. Never finished that game.
Oh, and as long as we're on the topic, how about roughly 87% of The 7th Guest?
QuoteMyst and monkey-related puzzles collide in disaster in the fourth Myst game: there's a puzzle in which you have to decipher the cries of a bunch of monkeys and use a device to replicate their danger call, but you have to do it in the proper cadence -- and the controls just aren't that easy to use.
That one had me stuck for 3 days before I finally got it. >:(
As for worst puzzle (and this may have been said), four words:
"Go find the key."
Most unoriginal idea ever. :P
Quote from: pick yer poison on Thu 28/05/2009 19:45:48
As for worst puzzle (and this may have been said), four words:
"Go find the key."
Most unoriginal idea ever. :P
I'd have thought that a puzzle just as bad (or perhaps even worse) would be "I wonder which door this key unlocks?" :P
Quote from: Jack Hare on Wed 04/02/2009 07:31:57
Oh, and as long as we're on the topic, how about roughly 87% of The 7th Guest?
7th Guest was not that bad, actually. Most puzzles were logical, and even based on known rulesets/newspaper puzzles.
There's just no exuse for the last "light-me-up" puzzle in the attic though. That was trial and error at its best.
11th Hour, now...
The worst puzzle I think I've completed is probably the key puzzle near the end of Still Life.
My worst puzzle recently has been trying to find a Demo of Still Life 2 that isn't corrupt!
in dragon sphere there's a "maze" you have to go though in order to talk to the fairy king where you need to talk to the right pixie as the right time. there's eight pixies flying around the area and all of them change colors, and are paired as couples who's names start with the same letter.
The puzzle works like a "find the truth" game where depending on their gender, and color, it determines if they're lying or not. The solution stems from talking to one pixie when she's a certain color (her "truth state"), who tells you to talk to her husband to remove the gardian, then when you talk to him when he's in his "truth state", he'll remove the obsticle. Kind of a straight forward logic puzzle... on paper.
the problem was that the pixies are just colored dots on screen that all flew and intermingled together (and pretty close to the guardian that kills you if you got to near). so actually FINDING which ones you need to talk to is pretty damned near impossible. It was trial and error that took more then an hour, and some random luck, to get though.
once upon a time, there was what was called "an action adventure rpg" based on the Vampire Hunter D movie, "Bloodlust".
it was bad.
it was ALL bad, even the "fetch the keycard from the room halfway across the castle past the 300 zombies to open the door in the first room on the OTHER side of the castle you were in a half hour ago" door puzzles were nothing compared to one thing...
the jump puzzle room.
NO game with a movement system THAT horrible should have a jump puzzle, especially when the camera changes automatically depending on where you are in the room, and when it does, magically the direction you were walking is a totally different direction! >_<!!
up becomes left, left becomes right, walking two pixels too far to the right triggers another camera angle change, and now you're walking backwards off the cliff instead of forwards onto the SAFE part of the ledge.
and if you fall off, ohh no, it's not simply start from the beginning, it's start from your last save outside the room, where you have to go find the smegging key to the puzzle room all over again BEFORE you can even try it again, unless you saved at noon on a full moon in may of 1983, or whenever the game randomly decided to save right, because it never did set the restore point right on the PS1 version, (and thank the creators that they never tried to make another version).
this was not merely a puzzle, this was a controller-throwing torture test that broke many a fantard back in the day, and continues to annoy anyone brave enough to attempt the game.
Wow. Even if the game is that horrible, I must play it if it is starring D.
What console? :)
~Trent
Quote from: Trent R on Sun 07/06/2009 04:34:03
Wow. Even if the game is that horrible, I must play it if it is starring D.
What console? :)
~Trent
it was made for the original playstation, so it's all kinds of old school horrible too. the game is pretty, and they did an amazing job on the backgrounds, but the gameplay sucks so bad it's painful.
First, Sorry for bringing back to life an old post, but I think this it is a great post.
Regarding to this quote.
Quote from: Tom S. Fox on Wed 22/11/2006 01:41:30
I, too, don't like puzzles you have to die for at least once.
The guys at Sierra made those puzzle on purpose!!!
In Broken Sword, when you have to get out of the Hotel with the pergamin, but the gangsters outside will kill you if you do it. The solution was pretty logic, but after you have being killed.
I remember a very disturbing puzzle that appeared in an old Maniac Mansion Mania episode. You had to cut off the ear of a dog with a knife, fill it with dust out of an airvent and then give it to a hungry guy guarding a door, so that he would let you pass. :-X
Quote from: Mati256 on Sun 04/07/2010 03:59:26
In Broken Sword, when you have to get out of the Hotel with the pergamin, but the gangsters outside will kill you if you do it. The solution was pretty logic, but after you have being killed.
Oh, there's worse examples, like the bobby pin in the meatloaf in Larry 2. You need the pin, and the only way to discover it's there is by eating the loaf, which kills you. And if you take the pin out, you get a remark like "you wonder if anyone was stupid enough to eat that"...
Quote from: Mati256 on Sun 04/07/2010 03:59:26
The solution was pretty logic, but after you have being killed.
That depends I guess on if you had left the hotel before you found the scroll, you'd notice that the thugs search you.
I immediately knew once I found the scroll, that this is what they were searching me for. So I saved it before leaving the hotel to see what kind of cut scene would take place. I also knew immediately what I had to do with the scroll to sneak it past the thugs.
Quote from: Radiant on Mon 05/07/2010 19:56:24
Quote from: Mati256 on Sun 04/07/2010 03:59:26
In Broken Sword, when you have to get out of the Hotel with the pergamin, but the gangsters outside will kill you if you do it. The solution was pretty logic, but after you have being killed.
Oh, there's worse examples, like the bobby pin in the meatloaf in Larry 2. You need the pin, and the only way to discover it's there is by eating the loaf, which kills you. And if you take the pin out, you get a remark like "you wonder if anyone was stupid enough to eat that"...
This reminds me Laura Bow 2 and a chest full of flesh-eating bugs. You had to put meat loaf (IIRC) there, but I don't see how you could guess that without first opening it and dying, then reloading.
On the same line (bad puzzles) is this article:
http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html