Anyone ever beat an Adventure game?

[Shampoopsii]

- without the use of gamefaqs and/or other help related articles?

If not, post your longest running achievement before you sulkily hit up gamefaqs to point you towards the tiny fork pixel that camouflaged itself with the Silver lining of the low resolution Brick Wall.

Personally, I managed to progress halfway through Monkey Island 1 before I got stuck in Guybrush's first ship, because I failed to notice the camouflaged cellar that someone would need telescopic x-ray vision to track.

[Ghost]

I solved a number of commercial games w/o a walkthrough, and I think Simon1 was the longest of them. Other names- Return to Zork, Kyrandia 2 and 3 (3 was a bugger to figure out though), King's Quest 6 and 7. The longest run before I gave up must've been Simon2's nefarious "hush puppies" puzzle. Before that, it was rather smooth sailing.

I admit that I have solved hardly any AGS game without the occasional hint; that's the trouble of having the forum's Hint And Tips just *so* close to the download site  :

[Buckethead]

I completed Ben Jordan 4 with out any hints. I didn't know about any hints and tips or walkthoughs on the forums back then.

I'm sure I must have completed some classics without any help but as I was very young I can't remember their names.

[Babar]

I completed quite a few LucasArts and Sierra classics without any walkthrough, but I used to play them with my sister or father (or got their help when I got stuck). Does that count?

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Heh.  Believe it or not, a time did exist when you couldn't just do a quick internet search for walkthroughs, leaving you with 3 alternatives if you were stuck:

1.  Find a friend who played the game and ask them for help

2.  Call a hint line if possible

3.  Solve it yourself


I'm leaving out early connection methods like BBS's and Prodigy because they weren't terribly useful for anything other than online games (and in the case of BBS's, getting warez).

I almost always chose option 3 because my best friend and I typically played through games at the same time so he wasn't very helpful, and hint lines were INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE (the lucasarts hintline was 5 bucks a minute, including all the stupid delays in the menu and waiting!).  I know this because I was stupid enough to call them once when I got stuck in The Secret of Monkey Island II, and what could have been a simple answer to my problem turned out to be a long string of really horrible hints that I had to step through, one at a time, until I finally found a 'hint' that fit my situation.  Nevermind that by that point the phone call was probably 30 bucks.  Hint lines were quite a scam back then, and they didn't even give me a direct answer!

[Pumaman]

Yeah, back when I originally played adventure games in the early '90s the only options were as Progz said. Since the hint lines tended to be based in the US, thus incurring international call charges, that wasn't really an option -- so you just had to play it until you figured it out, or gave up.

These days it's far too easy to just look up a walkthrough or ask on the forums if you're stuck in a game... there's just not the dedication any more that you used to have to commit to finishing an adventure game!

[i stole your car]

I completed the first two Monkey Island games without the use of a walkthrough, I completed Day of the Tentacle without the use of a walkthrough. The first time I ever really needed to get some serious help in an adventure game was Broken Sword and Broken Sword II but it wasn't the internet that I went to. Lucky for me I had a magazine which had a HINTS SECTION and after the release of Broken Sword they did a hint spot on the three hardest puzzles so that's what I ran to for help.

[ManicMatt]

Like they said...

I beat 90% of all adventures games I'd play before 2001 when I went online and was easily tempted to cheat. The other 10% were left unfinished on the shelf. (Zak Mckraken for example, bloody remote control puzzle)

[qptain Nemo]

I try to beat every worthy adventure game without a solution but it doesn't go as well as I wish.
But fortunately I succeeded with for example Eric the Unready, Fable, Simon the Sorcerer 1.
Well, the exactly one puzzle I stuck on for a long time in Eric was accidentaly spoilered to me by some fanfic based on the game. But everything else I honestly solved myself dedicating this game a lot of months to finish so I like to think that I beat the game pretty much myself. Whatever.

[Trihan]

I beat Monkey Island 1 and 2 without a walkthrough, and Day of the Tentacle. (I think).

I'm a bit of a walkthrough whore now though.

[Eggie]

I'm actually not sure I ever have.

But only a few times has it made me go "Oh! I could have worked that out if I'd stayed at it a bit longer", usually I think "I wouldn't ever have got that except by accident, this is a terrible puzzle and I'm glad I didn't waste any more time on it"

Most games do have at least one terrible puzzle at some point. If walkthrough's didn't exist I might never have got to see the good stuff that came after them.

[Ryan Timothy B]

I believe this is the reason why Adventure games died (industry wise).  How many FPS have you heard of that needed a walk-through?

I have more fun playing an easier puzzled game than one with puzzles so dumbfounded that you'd never expect the combination to ever amount to anything.  It's worse that once you do read the walk-through and still think the puzzle was too bizarre and random.

I think Monkey Island 1 is the only commercial adventure game I've actually beaten without a walk-through.

[BOYD1981]

I beat DOTT, Sam & Max Hit The Road, Beneath A Steel Sky, and Wayne's World all without walkthroughs or hints.
But anytime I do have to look at a walkthrough or use a hint system I always justify it by saying either "I would have figured that out eventually" or "How the hell was I suppose to figure that out?!".
One game I can't beat without or even WITH a walkthrough though is Feeble Files, because it's a damn hard game that was designed to be damn hard.

[bicilotti]

[...] Adventure games died. [...]

Take the infidel and BURN HIM!

[F1ak3r]

(Being someone who's only been a gamer since 2003, I haven't played many golden age commercial titles.)

Well, I beat Cirque De Zale without a walkthrough, and Ben Jordan Case 1 (probably because it was so short). A few others, too.

I always try not to use walkthroughs, but usually end up doing so somewhere along the line. I used a walkthrough for many of the final puzzles in the new Same & Max episodes, the final puzzle of 5 Days A Stranger, too much of the rest of Chzo Mythos, a bit in the middle of Jessica Plunkenstein, practically all of Beneath A Steel Sky and Flight Of The Amazon Queen (I was a kid back then, with no sense of honour).

The problem is patience, really. Usually I'm too excited to find out what happens next to sit and figure out a puzzle, or, God forbid, come back to the game two weeks later (not a bad technique, actually). But I always try my hardest not to use a walkthrough, and I'm getting better in that regard. Slowly.

It's a good idea to play a game just as it's released if you want to stop yourself from cheating, seeing as no-one will have written a walkthrough yet. This is what I did for Ben Jordan Case 7 (but I still ended up looking for the solution to the FIRST puzzle).

[SpacePirateCaine]

I'd like to third the statement of the other Old Boys. Back in the day, GameFaqs and the AGS forums weren't around to give you any hints on how to play your game and get to the end. Fortunately, I have the patience to try every ridiculous object on every other ridiculous object, and pick up everything that isn't nailed down mentality so far ingrained in my mind that in my youth, I would actually collect random knick-knacks that looked like they might be useful someday that I found that wasn't obviously kleptomaniac urges. Keys found on the street, rubber chickens with pulleys in the middle, etc.

That said, as far as successful completion of games, I completed Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory) 1, 2 and 3 - 4 glitched out and I still haven't made it to the end, 5 I gave up on pretty early in. Of the more 'puzzle based' ones: Secret of, Return to and Curse of Monkey Islands, King's quest 6 (Heir today, Gone Tomorrow), Space Quest 3, 4, 5 and the VGA remix of 1, Sam & Max hit the Road, The Longest Journey & Dreamfall, and a handful of others. Most of these took months of frustration and on & off playing. Fortunately, most of my close friends, including my brother, were Adventure Gaming geeks like me, so we could usually throw ideas off of one another if one of us got stuck. A lot of the games were also 'multiplayer' experiences insofar as my brother, friends and I would sit crowded around a computer brainstorming on puzzles.

I have had to resort to walkthroughs on a lot of the 'one wrong move gets you killed' Sierra titles, like the Police Quest series, but it makes me feel unclean after I'm done looking at the solution to a puzzle I've worked so hard on and eventually gave up. I guess the draw of Adventure games is how hard it is to solve, and the sense of vindication on solving a puzzle. Sometimes the lateral thinking is a little tough on the ol' noggin, though.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Most of the old lucasarts games were, for the most part, solvable with a little thought, and apart from the one place I got stuck on in Monkey Island 2 I never used a hintline again or a walkthrough for any of the old titles.  I will admit that I'm not a fan of Sierra's sadism, so games like most of the early space quests/king's quests greatly annoyed me as a child.  I'm glad I gave the Quest for Glory series a chance, though, because it remains my single most favorite series of adventure games (up until part 5) today.  The mix of rpg and adventure was right up my alley, and I honestly think that if more adventure games had gone the route of the Quests or Fate of Atlantis (allowing forceful or logical solutions depending on your play style) the genre would have done better.  As it is, the term 'adventure' has become more and more loosely applied to games that are clearly spiritual successors to games like Quest for Glory, and many of those games became classified as action adventures (like Legend of Zelda).  The roots of the adventure game are clearly seen in games like that, even though the dialog might be simplified and the puzzles a bit easy.  That's one reason why adventure games aren't dead and probably never will be, they just changed to suit changing interests.

[m0ds]

Interesting replies, interesting subject, cos I haven't finished many without help :O Like the other guys have said though when I was introduced to the games it was all about the phone-in hint lines! I rang the LucasArts one for help with Sam n Max, I believe they had a UK office at the time. My main source for walkthroughs was this hints book I got in France. It was in French though, so that added to the puzzle. But that was like a bible to me in the early 90s! It had a walkthrough for the Dig and a graphic explaining that bloody animal bones puzzle so I think it was THAT that made me buy it in the first place! I wrote to EA when I was about 15 and played LBA2, I was stuck on a very early puzzle, no internet at that point (in fact playing LBA2 was one of the last things I ever did before I got the net!) and no phone hint systems available. I got a reply about a fortnight after and continued from then on (I couldnt get the lighthouse keeper out of the monsters cell all I had to do was throw the magic ball a particular way!!!!  : )

But thinking back just about every adventure I've played I've used a walkthrough at some point. I didn't really get the logic when I was a kid, if there was any. There wasn't when I played Escape from Delirium ;p I think I even used a walkthrough for Dare 2 Dream! oh dear.

Noctropolis is one of the only games I haven't used one for, and subsequently haven't gotten past whatever the puzzle surrounding the observatory is. It took me 2 years to get that succubus woman to finally have sex with me! That sounds wrong... But still, I don't know whether the game is massive or what but I'm pretty sure I was only half way through or so. None of it made any sense yet anyway lol! I haven't replayed it yet either. I didn't use a walktrough for Toonstruck, but thats because I got bored after room 4.

Fate of Atlantis puzzles me...I remember going crazy. There's a puzzle where you have to align the surveyors equipment with the horns on the statues and stuff, and when I was a kid - years before I had the net, this puzzle drove me insane. I really want to remember how I figured it out, maybe it was the LucasArt phone line again. I didn't use a walkthrough for Flight of Amazon Queen either, so maybe I figured that one out by myself .^^

Ahh, those are bygone days It almost takes the fun out of it, being able to get a walkthrough instantly nowadays.

But yeah in conclusion no, I've only beaten a couple, laaaame!

[Babar]

Fate of Atlantis puzzles me...I remember going crazy. There's a puzzle where you have to align the surveyors equipment with the horns on the statues and stuff, and when I was a kid - years before I had the net, this puzzle drove me insane. I really want to remember how I figured it out, maybe it was the LucasArt phone line again.

Hahah...I remember not being able to solve that either, ages ago! I had the game for a long time, before a cousin who was visiting from...somewhere saw it on the shelf and commented on it. The conversation even reminded me of Indiana Jones "I tried to go between em! Don't go between em? Ohhhhh, now I get it!" (referring to those two horns ). Another puzzle that got me stuck for the a while near the end(although I did solve it myself eventually) involved actually having to pick up a ladder and use it elsewhere. That didn't even occur to me to pick up the ladder!

[Trihan]

I've forgotten to pick up that goddamn ladder so many times.