Messages

I did fell on a some glitches and bugs, 2 even crashed the game but overall it was simply awesome. I've waited for a conclusion to Bestowers of Eternity for a long time but the wait totally worth it. However I'd appreciate if you could subtitles the DVD style commentaries the next time.

A new episode in less than a month, it's good to see that some companies understood how episodic format works.

Rui, while I agree with most of what you said, "Ask X about Y" can easily be a major turn down and a guess-the-verb situation when it is badly designed and doesn't have enough synonyms. Often in games with text parser I just wanted to discuss about something very mundane and revelant to the person I was talking with, but easily spend some minutes just to guess the exact word required to ask about it.

I wonder if it would be feasible or better, rather than having tedious "ask X about Y" fest, to just program a "talk to X" which would open a dialogue mode, similar to the SCUMM games where you would be given 3 or 4 conversation options, each possible choices with a number attributed to them, and all you would have to do would be typing a single number or letter to converse with persons.

Same thing with Sierra kind of game, rather than ask X about Y, you would simply have to type a number/letter to pick a subject from a list of possible conversation subject that you have unlocked so far (kinda like GK1), a conversation tree with a "back" option (like the point and click QFG games), or simply a list of subject that are revelant to the character you are currently discussing with. I guess it would have to be designed further to get some sort of standard dialogue mode, one that is easy and simple to use, so the conversation mode do not change from games to games.

If well coded, it could also allow you to manually type conversation subjects, may it be optionnal conversation options that are useless but just help building a mood, or key important conversation subjects, which, once discussed, would be added to your list of subject you can now discuss with everyone.

For Star Trek and Futurama, there is already Space Quest which is basically scifi and parody in the same game. And there's also 2 Star Trek adventure games by Interplay.

For Batman it really depend which Batman you got in mind, if it's the old 60s Batman, Fatman is in the same vein.

Superhero League of Hoboken is pretty much like Justice League, except more funny and more crazy.

Prison Break would be nice but I don't know how it could be done with today's adventure games standards (no death sequences, no walking deads, no timers...). I guess it would require solving a certain problem everyday rather than total free roaming.

Want to write a book about whaling? Go whaling, don't read Moby Dick.

This is akin to the old line 'If you haven't experienced something firsthand you can't write about it'.

No, I think what biothlebop meant was that if you wanted to write a book about whaling, then you should go whaling because if you read Moby Dick for reference, you will be inspired, consciously or unconsciously by Moby Dick. On the other side, if you never read or heard a single thing about Moby Dick, or any other fiction about whaling, then what you will create will be original because you will have thought about it all by yourself, without any outside influence. A friend of mine who write novel does the same. Basically he thinks if he ever read a book again, he'll discover everyone already wrote everything he ever wanted to write about every subjects.

It can be made for various reasons, to pull the plugs of the giants who have enough support that a little parody is unlikely to hurt them at all. It can also be made for the opposite reason, to show how much you loved one person's work, how much it marked your life and your imagination and it inspired you enough to make a present to the author or the community. Then the game is just like fan art, except an overkill one, with backgrounds, animations, programmings and musics. It's not because it isn't original that it isn't constructive.

Mostly because when I look at that pile of games I still haven't played yet, and when I calculate the number of interesting games that are released every years, and the number of game I finished this year, then I will be up to date with the gaming world when I'll be 40yo.

The article that ruined my life. Of course, since I read it 5 years ago, I played a lot of AGS and amateur games, but I took it too seriously and I stopped to play commercial games or upgrade my computer completly. And now that I am back in the commercial games loop, I got 5 whole years of great commercial games to catch up with.

I agree with GarageGothic on this one. It may be a nice read but it is too much of a black and white philosophy, because in reality, for every EA, Ubisoft, LucasArts or Vivendi, there is a Hitman Blood Money, GTA Vice City, Spore, Bioshock or Alan Wake game that is worth and must be played.

So think carefully before going into scratchware philosophy. Because personally I lived a scratchware lifestyle for 5 years, completly devoid of commercial games and regret it completly.

I've passed this topic on his forum.

http://www.chefelf.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=5993

I share your stomach problems over the "commercial potential" and it "being longer".

I would probably change to a Mac or Linux if it wasn't for the fact I would be back to stone age gaming speaking, with little to no games to play, and forced to use countless emulators just to cover my gaming needs, which last I checked, could only fully support an hundreds games at best in the ocean of games released so far. Pretty much like DosBox was a 4 years ago when you were lucky if you could run, without sound and music, one of your favorite game with it. Add to this all the indie games I play, plus AGS games which, like a friend of mine constantly remind me, can't be runned on Linux when they use DLL.

And from all the persons I chat with and who are using Linux, I have yet to not hear one of them saying "I'm re-installing Linux" every 3 months and hear one of them say "I've finished to config Linux, everything went flawlessly" because I can easily listen at them cursing their module configurations for 3 whole days until it is installed for them, and this every 3 months. Sound like the good old Firefox Vs Opera debate to me. Whenever come the subject of Firefox functionality "You can install 20 extensions to make it work like Opera" and whenever come the subject of Firefox stability "Firefox work fine for me, it must be those 20 extensions you installed".

That's why I stick to XP. It's not like XP is screwing us, it's not like we were forced to move to Vista. Hopefully, in the following years Bill will retire and the next dude taking over will notice there is absolutly no company that are willing to change all their hardware just for an OS, or nobody who want to see their additionnal 1GB of RAM support (The sole reason, with better DirectX support, to use Vista) wasted in the shiny interface, and they will produce something that will be to Vista, what Win2K was to WinME.

If that's what it take to make people realise that a flashy design doesn't outweight a shovelful of bad points. Personally I don't plan to switch to Vista. When I'll buy a few games that require Vista to run, I'll simply ask someone to install me a boot menu so I can play those while keeping XP for my other activities.

Simply wonderful. :o

Graphically speaking, musically speaking, and the story... This game goes straight on my list of games with the best endings ever.

Personally I like them easy until the story kicks in, then for the rest of the game it should be medium puzzles sprinkled with tough puzzles here and there.

It's important for them to be easy on the begining to first hook your players on your game to make sure they'll keep playing until the very end. When I played Pleurghburg: Dark Ages, I remember spending something like 4 hours just to unlock the door at the morgue. And it's only after unlocking it that the awesome story kicked in. I was lucky, P:DA was the fourth AGS game I played, back when I thought it would be a good idea to play thru every AGS games released. Because if I had played it nowaday, I think I wouldn't have had the patience I had 4 years ago, to play 4 hours on a single puzzle when I wasn't hooked on the game yet, and I would have missed one heck of a gem in the AGS community.

And I don't think the puzzles' difficulty should lower at the end, I've just been deceived by too many cheesy ending puzzles where everything simply flow too quickly compared to rest of the game. I think MI2 got it well. While keeping a degree of tension and danger, you could roam freely in the area and collect objects, you could still solve puzzles in whatever order you wanted, just like you could in the middle of the game, there had a puzzle or two that kept you thinking for a long time, but they were not deviously obscure or illogic, just left you smiling with a "Why I didn't thought about this before" relief when you solved them.

Not to play the devil's advocate, but while I think some of these articles deserve to be on wikipedia, I do find some to be kinda redundants. All of Yahtzee's games entries could easily be put in one single article about Yahtzee. Same for Dave Gilbert's games which could easily be both in his entry. There are some that do deserve to be deleted since it's simply nothing but pimping or because it's simply not notable enough in the amateur adventure game community, thus don't have their place on wikipedia.

It's good to see that while the guy seems to be full of himself on his website, he is at least consistent to vote "Delete" on his own wikipedia article.

He has a blog, and don't worry, there's enough people over there that are begging him to continue.

But seriously I doubt more people begging him is what he's looking for. If I were him, I'd probably be waiting for a bunch of talented people interested to work on an amateur MI3, because at this rate, it's pretty obvious that he'll bring the secret of Monkey Island in his grave before LucasArts give up on the franchise, and even if they did, he would have to find a work around CMI and EMI, because a commercial MI3 would probably just please the crowd that were unsatisfied with them and possibly confuse the people if it excluded CMI and EMI.

Oh! Cool contest! That sound like a potential second use for my driving license's picture other than freaking out people with it at the parties. With the beard and the pissed off look I got on it, I looks like a wife beating biker from one of Jim Walls police games. The picture is so scary I'm kinda glad I didn't shave for the picture.

What are you talking about? That is what happens at the end of MI2. Yes, it is accepted by MI3, but those events DID happen at the end of MI2.

But we do agree on one thing. That we will forever await Ron Gilberts MI3.

As Scummbuddy pointed out, I was referring only to the evidence that we're actually given by Ron Gilbert himself, at the end of MI2, which does seem to push us towards the "voodoo spell cast by LeChuck" interpretation (again, note little Chuckie's spooky eyes and Elaine's direct remark), which is clearly where the writers of CMI got the idea in the first place.  I do agree, however, that there is some ambiguity to that ending and that, as others have said, only Ron Gilbert knows for sure!

Yes, now that you refresh my memory, it's true that MI2's ending could involve a curse. But MI2's ending is simply not explaining enough and everyone's interpretation on the ending remain an interpretation amongs any other interpretations until we see Ron's MI3. Surface hints like the glowing eyes and Elaine's closing line seem to foreshadow a curse from LeChuck, subtle hints, like the grog machine, the e-ticket, the tunnels, the constant circus and festivals everywhere and Guybrush's parents waiting so long for their kid to show up again they literally died for waiting too long in the waiting room seem to foreshadow a little Guybrush imagining all this.

Ron's MI3 would surely have involved both, but on what level is what we have no idea about. The curse idea could easily be the meaning of MI2's ending and Big Whoop being something created by LeChuck to trap Guybrush, like they did in CMI.

It could also foreshadow the problems Guybrush would face in Ron's MI3, by this I mean that MI2 ends nicely, just like MI1 ended (or should I say MI3 begins nicely, just like MI2 began), and in MI3, Guybrush is on to another adventure, or bragging at his friends on how he found the treasure of Big Whoop and defeated LeChuck again until he discovers about LeChuck's curse and the curse become the problem to be solved in MI3.

Or it could be the real secret of Monkey Island, as if one twist ending wasn't enough. And this also apply for the child's imagination idea, it could be the explaination for MI2's ending, or the real secret of MI. We know the sequel would involve both, but we don't know what dosage, for each ideas, Ron would have used for MI3. Since the surface hints are more visible than the subtle ones, the hints seems to point toward the curse being the explaination of MI2's ending or a foreshadow of the problems Guybrush would face in MI3, and the child's imagination being the great revelation at the end of the game. But since Ron made no sequel, we can't know for sure.

Ron's MI3 obviously qualified for the old saying that say the most beautiful things often have the worst fates.

I say this because the whole point to the MI2 ending is that Guybrush isn't just a little boy playing pirate games with his brother ... it was all a spell created by LeChuck to keep Guybrush out of his way.Ã,  (This is made pretty clear when, as the Threepwood family walks away, little Chucky's eyes glow spookily red ... and we also see Elaine still waiting for Guybrush to return from the hole on Dinky Island and she literally says "I hope he hasn't fallen under a curse or anything".)

Well, that is the explaination given at the begining of CMI, which wasn't made by Ron Gilbert thus isn't the true meaning of MI2's ending. I think everyone would say the same if it was someone else than George Lucas who made Star Wars Ep3 or if it wasn't J. K. Rowling that wrote the last Harry Potter book, and this, without having a single note or idea on what Lucas or Rowling wanted for their series to end.

But with the internet, the overall sloppiness of Escape from Monkey Island, and the various theories on what is the true secret of Monkey Island, something happened which splitted the people in 2 crowds:

Those who read the articles and threads about the secret of MI, thought all these subtle details and foreshadowing only visible when you search carefully were pure genius, reject the ideas received from CMI and EMI and who are now waiting for Ron to make his own MI3 game to conclude the series,

And those who read the same threads and articles, thought it was a plain dumb "It was just a dream!" ending, didn't like the direction Ron was taking, didn't want the MI universe to end like a big dream, a kid's fantasy or something not real and who may or may not wait for MI5, depending on their opinions of EMI.

Personally, as much I love CMI and hate EMI, I'm more waiting for Ron's MI3 and the true conclusion to the series than another commercial MI game to ruin the series even more than EMI did. Who know, maybe LucasFan will work on that when whatever project he's working on will be over.

As for Simon the Sorcerer 2, I finished the game 2 weeks ago and I kinda agree that it was disappointing. I liked the twist at the end but it kinda happened too fast, the story has no climax whatsoever, it's not like any other similar adventure game where you know you're at the ending puzzles because you're confronting the final boss or the countdown to total destruction was just activated. Instead, you think the final part of the game is just about to begin but in reality you're watching the ending and that was kinda deceiving.

I began playing on sunday and finished it yesterday in the the late hours past midnight. Having finally found the hints sign telling where the last secret level was, I couldn't go to bed until I got the 100% score. Great job as always.

The wind sequence might have been just a little bit too difficult however. Once I finished it my fingers were all cramped and the CTRL key started to function half of the time. I think I'll give this key a rest for the next couple of weeks.

I can't believe you re-used one of the tricks you used in A Game with a Kitty to hide a big diamond.

Spoiler

Cleverly hiding a door in the background, you did that to hide a bag of money in one of the last level of AGwaK, and used that trick again in this game.

[close]

Finding that bag of money left me stumped for hours in AGwaK, and I had told myself to never fall for the same trick again, yet you re-used that trick and I was completly stumped again.Ã, 

One last thing I liked was the fact big diamonds and secret levels only required thinking, observation and a bit of reflexes to be found. There are some similar games where, because these are only optionnal and don't affect the normal play, the devellopers push it to the limit with an awful amount of superhuman reflexes required just to get these. In this game, everytime I encountered such situation where it seemed an awful amount of skill were required, thinking a bit about the problem revealed a solution that was simplier than what I first had in mind.

I would tell you that I can't wait for your next platformer if you make an another one, if it wasn't for the fact the adventure gamer in me is shouting to play another adventure game as awesome as Cedric and the Revolution.

I'm sorry to bring such a unconstructive post to the table, but I had to bring this up regarding the MI2 ending...does anyone have a copy of that thread from aaaaages ago analysing that ending in great detail? I was initially disappointed with the MI2 ending also, but after reading through this and the possibility that it could be more than it seems then I decided I like it. Anyone?

Are you talking about this article?

http://www.scummbar.com/resources/articles/index.php?newssniffer=readarticle&article=2