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[Big General Reply:]

Big General Reply:

Really interesting perspectives!

Not to mention researching for this dull class was finally made fun and interesting for once!

Indeed, adventure games are a lot like movies and books-- there is a story to be told and the events unfold as you go along. The major difference is that some games have more than one ending, some games are more like interactive movies than puzzle-solving series, but the key word here is interactivity. One gets immersed into an adventure game in a different manner than one would with a good film or a captivating book.

And while more intelligent people as a whole are drawn to adventure games to start with, a majority of the people I've asked IRL/who replied to this thread, seem to have felt that these games made them smarter. More resourceful, maybe. And a smaller percent who feel that the games have not had an aggregate effect.

Once again, everyone's entitled to their opinions and I'm not expecting everybody to have the same exact replies, or agree with each other and the researcher (me). If everybody felt the same way, well, then what's the point of interactive research eh? But also, like most research out there too-- some things are dependent on other variables that don't have to do with the research topic. Like, how old you were/what generation of gaming and computer innovation did you grow up in. For me it was the late 80's/early 90's which was quite volatile really, I seemed to see a lot of advances made in a fairly short amount of years so that by the time I was in junior high (middle or intermediate school to those not from eastern USA), my favorite games were not really being made anymore, or at least not in the way I liked them to be. There's so many other variables that tie in too-- my family was ahead of nearly every other family we knew and lived near when it came to computers and most electronic devices (we had CD burners and DVD players before they were put in nearly every household in the late 90's.) so I was conditioned to using computers and having to think a lot at an early age. For some people in my age bracket, maybe they lived with a technologically impaired family and it impressed their parents that they knew just how to use a computer let alone get into this complex gaming genre. So you see, there's lots of variables that get taken into account here. But I'm still finding that escapism is a highly prevalent theme, and the aggregate effect being that some people felt it made them smarter and/or improved deductive reasoning skills.

Monday or so when I'll have to start writing the said paper to have it handed in by the end of the week. I'll count up how many interviewers I had (now it's 5 in person and I think about 10 or 12 answered here so far, but that could change by the time I write the actual paper and can fix that stats as I go along) and make a fancy pie chart of effects. I hate writing papers but pie charts do own. And of course once again thanks to everyone who replied here or PMed me with what they had to say, your participation is literally helping me pass this course!

[no option]

ProgZmax: You bring up an interesting argument. Indeed, life's full of puzzles and the game creators had to seek some inspiration from that in order to create what we've all played over the years.
You're totally correct in saying that some people just find solutions to problems and think logically, whether or not they're hardcore adventure gamers-- my point (and one of the points I'm bringing up in my research project) is that not everyone out there has completely inherent resourceful thinking and that adventure games brought it out in them and/or really strengthened it. Since I've been playing these games for 16 years and my starting point was early childhood-- the aggregate effect it's had on me from the ages of 5-21/present or other people who started playing these games as a young child appears to be stronger than it would be for someone in an older age bracket who wasn't as impressionable with learning things.

Here's a good analogy for it: In most American public school systems, by the second/third grade (average 7-8 years of age) or so the teachers really start drilling multiplication tables into your brain and it's nonstop until the fifth grade or so. This way, when you're asked a simple multiplication problem, you can answer it in 1.5 seconds and when you look at one, you can do it in your head incredibly fast. That is the desired aggregate effect they want you to have by age 11 or so.
So when someone starts adventure gaming at the same young age: Resourceful thinking really gets drilled into your brain and becomes automatically part of you, just like the multiplication tables. If it wasn't inherent in you already, then it becomes inherent in you by default.

A little sidenote I must add to this too: My height of playing adventure games before the internet became as widely used as it is today, we still had that great old-school hint system UHS before it became an online system: but walkthrus weren't as readily available, instead there were pay-per-minute hint lines and hint books you could order through the company (if available). But because this was just slightly before the wonder of millions of walkthru/hint databases in cyberspace and being able to hop on forums as easily as this and talk to fellow gamers about how far they got in games-- it was sort of like back then, there was no option for walkthrus to get past that one  litte part/uberly frustrating puzzle you were stuck with. (Like the infamous cheese thing in KQ5!!) So you HAD to learn resourceful thinking. See what I mean? By the mid-90s or so, then yeah, if you were stuck...you could always just take the easy way out and look for a walkthru or find a gaming chat forum somewhere to ask for help. Though of course, a lot of us gamers are now grateful for all those aforementioned things because there's nothing worse than spoiling the immersion factor with a brain-frying puzzle or that one little thing you forgot to do or inventory item that your eye keeps missing on the screen.


thomas & Ali: I relate to that heavily!!!  Have you ever felt like there was a literally a little map in your head too? And that after you just talked to someone and they told you about something somewhere you heard a bell and saw the words "NEW LOCATION!"?

And of course, searching your pockets and seeing an inventory screen in your mind and wondering what items can be combined and what can't and what can currently get you out of a certain quandary.


Once again thanks to everyone who sent me a reply with their opinions, input, life stories, gaming observations, etc...you're all helping me get an A on this project for sure!!

Sheepisher: I missed the same things in Duty and Beyond too at first. Well, here's some spoilers to ensure you'll get the cool ending!

How to win Bess's love:

Spoiler

When you first see Bess in the mansion, use dialogue option #2. When you see hear near the Bakery in London, use the umbrella on her.

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Points:

Did you remember to look at ALL the blue cups you found in every realm? And this one's a doozy, you also have to just LOOK at the open window in the mansion when you're outside by the graves. And LOOK at the treasure chest when you're undersea, remember to look at it BEFORE you fill it!

Rescuing Stan:

Spoiler

That pig standing by the Chief's hut when you first get teleported to the Medieval Realm is Stan. Did you read all the books in the wizard's library? Before you give the man in the pub his harp back after you put the unicorn hair in it, use it on the pig to restore Stan to his true form. Now it should be Stan that you're rescuing from the Lamb St shop instead of the stranger.

[close]

Points I Missed At First:

When you're looking at the books in the study later, it says "Feeding Dolphins In Icy Water". It's a clue. Did you catch the 2nd fish in the underwater realm? When you put all the gems in the holes towards the endgame and you grab the tickets outside, use that fish on the water.

Let me reassure you, the ending is certainly not disappionting once you use these spoilers and gotten all the points! 

[problem-solving techniques and ingenuity]

Thanks to everyone who replied so far!! This is definitely putting me on my way to getting an A on this project!

Replies, personal and general:


m0ds: "Aggregate" pretty much means overall, but with a reference point-- ie, over a period of time, or for a couple different values, etc. In this case, it's the views of different people who are adventure game aficionados. Individually, it would mean the overall effect that adventure gaming may have had on your life.

The most common themes I've found so far (the 3 in-person interviews I've had and in the forum replies I've just seen) is escapism and entertainment, namely for those who prefer the puzzles of adventure games over something like complex TV shows or reflex-based video games. Escapism ruling for those who use these games as an outlet to escape being mistreated by peers, co-workers, etc.

I relate to the escapism theme the best: My life now is nothing like my childhood and adolescence. I was lucky to get out alive. My family didn't understand me and they could only help me so much with what other people put me through.

LimpingFish: Believe me, I relate to peer trouble and adventure games being your number one escape outlet. I sure do:

What the kids at school put me through bordered on hate crime. Namely because I'm a Jew. But so much more than that. Lots of things...one of the most hurtful was that they said I was really just a boy with boobs. (In the 3rd grade.) The things they said and did, I didn't even have self-esteem until I was 17.5, 18 when I moved back to NYC. So in adventure games...I was able to escape being the only New York Jew in a culturally sterile backwoods south New Jersey pit (Ask me about the pure living hell of the Stokes State Forest trip in the 6th grade, a special edition of Rachel's Tales From Hell), where I could dream of having magic powers and awesome weapons to smite the living crap out of the kids who made my life hell and treated me like a subhuman because I was this "f.cking weirdo" and "foreigner". I could put myself in other worlds where conventional life and order didn't even exist, let alone ones where it did and I could let my imagination run free. I loved those games more than anything and still do. Even today when I want to escape from the hassles of my everyday life and haven't been too social lately, getting deeply into one of these games appeals to me more than other forms of entertainment.


thomas- that's a remarkable achievement regardless of age, to pick up another language mostly by playing adventure games in such a short period of time. I didn't fluently pick up French until after I had it for about 3 years in high school (had 5 yrs total) then went off on my own in France and in French Canada (also helped by playing French games as well) but on a non-English speaking point of view, English is indeed the toughest language for most people to learn. And it's very sad but true that the gaming industry today markets more reflex-based games or games with 3D graphical explosions and whatnot, than puzzles and storyline. Not only will our future's children be conditioned to speaking multiple languages on numerous electronic devices, but who knows what other things they may be desensitized to.

ProgZmax: I wholeheartedly agree on both the player and designer viewpoints of what the industry has turned into. I had an epiphany a year ago that made me drop the Computer Science sector I was in at uni, when I realized there was no point in me learning the new languages just to made into a drone writing codes for mass-market games that are just pyrotechnics, not interactive stories with memorable dialogues and characters. I changed majors before it was too late to switch out. And you're precisely right: They care more about hardware revolutionizing than about writing ingenious software. It's all about having more memory to get a higher score and the toughest reflexes.

But I disagree just slightly on the note of adventure game puzzles being removed from reality here:

ManicMatt: That is one nifty device!! See, it may not be the actual puzzles and objects that are represented in adventure games that have relevance to real-life resourcefulness. But it's the problem-solving techniques and ingenuity picked up over long years of playing these kinds of games that can lead people to build nifty devices like this to solve real-life problems.

And here's a fine example of it right now!! I didn't realize my battery had only 18% in it because the outlet behind me is dead! I'm going to tear off a piece of paper in my notebook and write a note telling the maintenance dept. to fix it. and since there's no tape around...the gum I've been chewing on the past hour will do just fine to stick it to the wall above the outlet. See what I mean! Most people would've just said, "No tape? Screw it."

But they don't call me the Famous Adventurer for nothin'! I'll be checking back here after my battery's had a chance to recharge!

I never played Torin's Passage, but it just didn't look too exciting. Hmm, now i know it isn't!

And I agree wholeheartedly that Mask of Eternity sucked. Maybe it would've been fine as a stand-alone game. But I could only play up to a certain point because, well, there's only so much fighting these stupid critters and trying not to get killed that I really care to do when the game itself is NOTHING like the King's Quest I knew and loved since I was 5. It should've just been marketed as an action game with adventure elements, like Might and Magic.

And I just hate 3D.

I think the only 3D games I've ever liked are MI4, RedJack: Revenge of the Brethren, and Mordy 2. Otherwise give me 2D rendering any day. And I know, KQIX is in 3D but it looked good in the demo. And it's like that whole world being redone...I can't wait til that project's done.

[entirely new]

Today I had to choose a topic for a critical thinking essay for uni, with the option to turn it into a research project.

I could rant all day about how the gaming industry's changed and how I wished I was born earlier to have been a programmer in '92 or '93, I know that this forum is where thousands of other people feel the same way I do. However, I'd like to propose this for a research project:

What do you feel is the aggregate effect that long periods of adventure gaming have had on your life?

In a nutshell for myself for instance, I've been playing these games for about 16 years, back when a 5-year-old child using a computer was considered a prodigy. (Today, toddlers are conditioned to using computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices the same way they are conditioned to use other things in daily life.) I won't get into the details of the unhappy portion of my childhood, but adventure games were my number one escape from everything. I played them when I needed to run away. Or when things were good, I still played them because I loved to and just liked a good story. It made me want to be a programmer so I could do the same for kids just like me. But the aggregate effect it also had was that it gave me vocabulary much larger than expected for a child, and strengthened my imagination and creative resolve. It made me a more resourceful person without a doubt: the ability to use whatever I can around me to solve problems.

Some aggregate effects are different though. Maybe some gamers feel that they have had no effect. A few other old-schoolers I talked to said they felt the same as me; that gaming was an escape for them since they hated home and school life. Others may not have felt this way.

I'd like to get at least 15-20 different peoples' opinions based on their life experience and the aggregate effect of playing adventure games frequently for incredibly long periods of time. All ages, genders, creeds, and calibres of gamers welcome. However, the only stipulation I ask is that you can't be entirely new to the adventure/old-school adventure genre. 16 years is a long time and I know that some people in my age bracket may or may not have a number that high, but I say, you have to have been a hardcore player for, say, at least 1-2 years or more.

Thanks in advance!

Rui: Indeed! Well, I think the only person who truly could get away with that joke is Ron Gilbert himself, or unless some other creators tried very hard and managed to pull it off with the same calibre.

I just never got....well, anywhere in Night of the Hermit. I talked to everyone I could and gathered an insane amount of inventory items but just had NO IDEA what to do with them all. Like I could get an idea of what the NPCs wanted me to do but had no idea how to execute it.

I'm still working on my LSL-influenced pièce de resistance, On The Prowl. I think I'll be 40 before I ever finish it: though people keep telling me to try making something simpler. I'll try that route first. Well, I'll be posting some backgrounds in the Critic's Lounge when I get a chance when I finish them all. I want to finish all my art, sprites, dialogs, and music before I start screaming for help with scripting. Still debating if there should be hilarious death scenes or not. I'll probably have only one ending for the game instead of 2+/alternates...

...but I can promise it will not be disappointing! The intro and ending will most likely be rather long (by adventure game terms) AVIs.

But I just realized too, one of the other most disappointing endings I've seen...the Castle of Dr. Brain. Though the Dr. Brain series isn't considered an adventure game proper, still, it is in a way because it's another famous VGA game by Sierra and it's tons of puzzles to solve and there some continuity and storyline-- ie, you're trapped in the Castle or in Lost Mind you had to get his brain functioning again. But the ending of CoDB just sucked!! He just shows up in a control room and tells you your score before the credits roll. Booooring.

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...

Would an old school New York Hardcore gal like myself count as an 80's thug? I might like a stab at this.

You might want to look at the juncsource Module collection-- no cape sprites in there but they're easy "cookie cutters" to work with if you use them on your own or add to them/revise them. If you know how to use AGI/SCI rippers, ripping the QFG hero would be a good place to start. Or I could draw one if you give me an idea of what you're looking for.

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.

MI2's ending was pretty cool in my opinion: Traditional themes and expected endings/happenings can be great, but sometimes untraditional themes and twists can be even better.

Has anyone played Cirque du Zale? That game was really awesome and had a great twist on tradition...the ending was just a tad disappointing but I think the whole twist on tradition made up for everything.

But Book of Spells' ending was really disappointing! I liked the turn of events and the story, but the ending was so very very disappointing.

I've never played Simon the Sorcerer 2, I must find it somewhere. I really liked the first one. In the game I'm still working on, I want to model the map/travel screen after the one I saw in StS1, only all the locations are present, not showing up as you move along in the game. My game is also going to have both traditional and untraditional approaches to the storyline and gameplay. I'm currently working on making a frame-by-frame AVI for the long intro!

But to stay on topic here, another disappointing ending was from a short AGS original, Gaea Fallen. There are 2 different endings and both were pretty disappointing! Still, it was a real nice game, had that nice genuine early 90's-Sierra middle ages mythological feel to it, especially the music.

Indeed, profit would be nice. But it's just that, well, I consider adventure gaming to be an underground network just like my music/culture: Sometimes bastardized by the mainstream, the true concept it was founded on is kept alive by those who care about it and believe in it and want to continue it.

Seriously, I'd given up total hope on the games I grew up with and seeing more of its calibre being made, til I found out about AGS and the people who really care to keep old-school gaming alive. That was also the same day I quit taking Comp Sci at uni then switched majors and never looked back!

But to stay on topic: Some people care more about keeping concepts and ideals strong and going rather than making money off it. Which we can't legally do with AGS anyways since no one but Chris Jones himself has rights and loyalties to the engine.

But if you make up your own interface/engine/language and want to make money off it...more power to you!

First, I'm glad to see to my thread's gotten some pretty cool feedback.Ã, 

But I'm intrigued by the views on the MI2 ending being disappointing. I mean, it was cool in some ways but frankly disappointing in others. Like it was a nice deviation from the norm, not the typical LucasArts hero ending. But at the same token it did leave you with that "Huh? That was all I got?" feeling.

Still, the disappointment factor of the MI2 ending was NOTHING compared to MI3's ending!! And I haven't played MI4 in ages because it the CDs don't work on my PC, they worked on Macs [interesting.] Eh, well, I stopped using Macs a couple years ago. But even though it wasn't the ending proper; just towards the endgame (shall leave this as a spoiler in case certain readers haven't played all 4 games)

Spoiler

I thought it was a pretty cool plot/entirety twist that it turns out Herman Toothrot was really Grandpa Marley all along! It's soÃ,  those daytime TV shows I don't watch!Ã, 

[close]

But I can't quite remember how it ended. I think it was fairly cool...but kinda need to refresh my memory there.

But hmm, I might wanna see that thread that greatly analyzed the MI2 ending, heh heh.

JBurger: Yes, I know that Clue game you're talking about! The gameplay itself was pretty sweet but I'd never played it all the way to the end, I lost that game the 1st time my hard drive died. Is it on Underdogs? Even though you gave me a heads-up that the ending wasn't too great, still, I'd like to see it, haven't played it in a real long time and all.

Wow. That bandanna is seriously badass. I am truly in awe!

I discovered FT 9 years ago and didn't even get to play it til late last year (growing up a Mac user had some disadvantages and so did being 9, 10 years old and not being able to buy what I want.) But I was obsessed with the idea for years and wondered when I'd ever get to play it.

And now that I'm a PC user who has [or likes to think I have] some disposable income, still, I'm pretty poor and like to download what I can. But I get what you mean about the "feelies", there ARE just certain nostalgic things you can't get with just downloading the PDF's of the manuals and whatnot,

My parents got me the boxed version of Willy Beamish (am I the only one who misses Mac System 7 and 3.5" Mac floppies? *sigh*) for my 8th birthday. I'm 21 and still have the Willy, Leona, and Horny stickers hanging up by my computer! Ã,  I never removed them, they're still in their original backing and everything! It's childhood and old school nostalgia I just can't get rid of.

I agree on the game pricing issue to an extent...granted, in the early 90's when VGA point n clicks were a huge deal and then the advent of SoundBlaster and making game characters talk became a huge deal-- keep in mind, it was the apex of gaming technology then! Today...people are mostly paying for the hack-n-slash/shoot em up value and how much extensive gameplay is achieved from that. All 3D and gore...is it just me, or does 3D start to look ugly after a while? It makes me miss the golden age of adventure gaming of yesteryear even more.

But yeah. The Willy Beamish stickers are probably one of the few feelies I still have left from when I moved out of my folks' place...I know that my Mix N Mojo wheels are probably still laying around in my old room somewhere. If there other "feelies" I'd ever want...hmm. I'm sure there's a few but it's been a long day; my brain shut off about half an hour ago.

Good luck to you with getting officespace and starting a gaming empire: And I bet if that thief ever breaks in the vault after solving five different puzzles including sticking a golf-ball retriever with a severed hand attached into the window, all he/she will get is "I Broke Into Scumbuddy's Office And I All I Got Was This Stupid T-Shirt."

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.

DC: Indeed! I was 10 years old when that game came out and I remember playing it with my dad, the Carno cutscenes and the demon scared the living crap out of me.

And then all of that insane blood, gore, and intensified storyline...to just have Adrian glare at the mansion then walk away. Definitely ranks up there with the MI3 caliber.

The Zak game: It's not the official VGA version per se (not sanctioned by LucasArts), but it was put out by the wonderful folks at LucasFan as "The New Adventures of Zak McCracken" and done beautifully. (Same way Tierra Entertainment made the KQ remakes.) I think it can still be found on a couple different sites today.

I couldn't rip any screenshots from the LucasMania game but I had been wondering where those great VGA shots came from, they looked so close to the originals that I figured it was an either an expert rendering job, or done by LucasArts as it was.

So AHA, there IS indeed a VGA version. I must find it! Anyone know where I can download it, or should I start scouring the bottom of ebay?

I'm just surprised I missed it, being that I've been on the adventure game scene for 15 years and barely ever missed a thing.

I pretty much agree with most of the above answers!!

Weirdguy, yes the MI2 ending was just a *tad* disillusioning...but the game's such a great classic that I still love seeing it every time. It's a nice deviation from the norm, just showing them as kids...and then if you sit all the way through the credits there's that endless amount of suggestions of what to do with your spare time.
MI1's ending was pretty cool and

(funny that new post came in, just what I was thinking)
MI3's was too short and yes, disappointing- that little 5 second cartoon was all we got? Come on LucasArts, what happened here!

Rui, well FT's ending was a tad suspenseful in the way

Spoiler

that at first you don't know whose funeral you're at-- if it was Ben's until the movie scrolled all the way to the right and you saw him there. But I'd only played a demo of the game in 1996 so I always wanted and wanted the game and wondered what cool biker story awaited so I was held in suspense until late 2005! Sadly a close friend of mine died the same week i got the game and I was going through a lot of things and I don't know, the ending just made me SAD, in spite of untraditional romantic maudlin theming and all. Then even sadder when I found out there wouldn't be an FT2... But in conclusion, the ending did disappoint me just a tad. But it didn't stop me from discovering the Gone Jackals older music. Ã,  okay, this is going slightly off-topic.

[close]

m0ds- The Dig ending. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever made it to the end!! I was turned off from playing it for a long time namely because stupidly, my version doesn't even have music. I think mine came from AGamesRoom before the ESA shut it down and I never got the musicpack. But yes, I never made it to the end of The Dig...now I know that if I do, the ending won't be so great!

But oooh! I can't believe I forgot to mention the mother of Disappointing Adventure Game Endings...
...The Castle of Dr. Brain. After all those brain-teasers...but hey, like Dmitri said, it's that ego boost from solving all those puzzles. Hence what Dr. Brain was originally intended for. ^_^

Hand-in-hand with the previous forum topic of the most frustrating puzzles, what games do you feel had the most disappointing endings? Either storyline-wise/what you wished happened, or just "Argh! I solved all those puzzles and stayed up til 3 AM trying to get all the points for THAT?!"


I felt that Full Throttle did. I'm a sucker for the unconventional romantic maudlin themes  and was soooo disappointed that Ben and Mo didn't run off together. I later cried when I found out FT2 was cancelled mid-production.


Same with Book of Spells: the game was really neat and I liked it but the ending just left me so disappointed.

There's a couple more that I can't think of right now...but I'd just like to see who else felt the same way about disappointing game endings.