Puzzles are at the core of Adventure gameplay, they provide challenges for you to overcome with brains rather than brawn. For Action Adventures, they offer a break from the hacky-slashy-stabby-shooty element of title.
Every week I’ll bring you a new puzzle, drawn from some of the best and worst adventure or puzzle games I’ve ever played. Every two weeks I’ll even leave you one of my own for you to solve. If you do, I’ll find a way to reward you!
It’s been two weeks and no one even tried to solve my little riddle. For the record, the answers are Grave or Coffin. Joel from Geekout South-West nailed it weeks ago and that’s why I didn’t let him participate this time. But don’t worry Joel, this is a fresh one!
For this week’s puzzle I’m going for my personal Kryptonite: Numerical Sequence/Pattern Puzzles. You can see them in many games, predominantly in Frogwares’ Sherlock Holmes series. The thing you need to do is figure out the value of X.
7 10 6 12 15 11 X 25
It’s fairly simple but it might stump some of you out there!
Now for this week’s puzzle I have another classic, but this time from Sierra instead of the LucasArts.
In Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers you’ll spend most of your time talking to people, the puzzles mostly being about finding the right items you need to get them to spill. During the third day you need to meet a gentle old lady, but she won’t give the time of day to your lecherous investigator. So you need to fool her…by stealing clothes from a priest. As always, I won’t go into full details on how you go about this because I don’t want to ruin it for you.
Gotta hand it to him, he knows how to disguise!
The reason I love this puzzle is because not only does it move the story forward but it also supports the characterisation by showing you just what the protagonist is capable of to get what he wants. There are many other moments in the game were you commit questionable acts in your quest—and in fact, it’s a common element in the series…including the infamous cat hair puzzle, but we don’t talk about that one—but nothing beats tricking the old lady. Gabriel proves just how much of a sleazebag he can be. But his performer is Tim Curry so you can’t really hate him for that. Gabriel Knight is still at the top of my list because the puzzles not only move the story forwards but they support the characterisations. You learn more about the characters with every puzzle solved, as they are actions they committed, decisions they made.
Have you ever played a Gabriel Knight title? If so what’s your favourite moment? If it’s the unmentionable cat hair, we need to talk about your tastes my friend. If it’s the strangely homoerotic conversations with Von Glower in Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within that clearly made Gabriel’s actor uncomfortable, then you’ve got a fantastic sense of humour and I like you!
Make sure you solve this week’s puzzle and don’t forget to come back next week for another puzzle!
Last week I finished my Anniversary run, not knowing it was Legend’s birthday! So this week I’m making up for lost time and playing my favourite game and the first in the LAU trilogy, Tomb Raider: Legend!
After the disappointment I felt over The Angel of Darkness and Chronicles before it, this game was the best that could’ve happened to me as a Tomb Raider fan. It revitalised my love for the series and not only gave me back the Lara I had always known and whom I loved but it gave me the first chapter in a wonderful story that would continue in the games I’ve already played through as part of this series. And it’s Tomb Raider’s take on Arthurian legends, what more could you ask?
Much like I did with Anniversary, I will update this article over the next few weeks when a new video is ready! For this run you will have my (not-so) lovely commentary, because my voice has returned! If I haven’t mentioned it before, my voice left me behind after playing the really cool voice-activated title In Verbis Virtus, which I will review soonish!
If you like what you see, consider subscribing to TMA’s YouTube channel. And don’t forget to vote on the polls below. Let me know if I should skip all cutscenes from now on and vote on which series I should go through next in Classic Play!
Pneuma is a first person adventure game putting you in control of a would-be-god as he travels through a new world while commenting on his own divinity and the nature of creation.
Beautiful visuals, music and phenomenal voice acting.
Intriguing plot.
Bad:
POV puzzles can be frustrating.
No real puzzle variety.
Too short.
Review
You start the game in complete darkness, something your character doesn’t like, so uttering famous words a crack opens in the void and light spills in, opening a door towards a beautiful white hallway. Musing on how his words manifested light he comes to the ‘obvious’ conclusion that he is God and he created this world, yet he feels it’s odd he keeps meeting challenges and puzzles. Throughout the story you will hear him philosophise about his nature and that of ‘his’ world.
It’s not a complex plot, but it does lead to a satisfying payoff. Without revealing the surprises Pneuma has in store for you, the game plays you as much as you play it.
One of the very few ‘interaction’ puzzles in the game.
In terms of gameplay and puzzles, Pneuma is a one trick pony, with more than 90% of puzzles visual based. This means you’ll be looking at (and away from) things—glowing metal eyes in particular. There is very little interaction and you can count these puzzles with one hand. While it’s a very interesting approach to puzzle design and offers some interesting moments, it can also lead to some degree of frustration when a simple camera movement derails the puzzle you’d been working on for minutes. In the playthrough video below you’ll see two of those puzzles, one involving a wall with holes you need to close by looking and approaching, and one where your point of view changes the colour of the tiles on the floor. Both get tiresome very quickly—though I did solve them for my main playthrough.
Environments are gorgeous and seem straight out of a Roman villa, with classic style architecture and murals. The opening white rooms give way to colour as the character gets tired of their emptiness and this visualstyle remains until the end of the game, where you once again shift into a forest path.
Audiowise, the highlight of this game is Jay Britton’s voice acting. The character is instantly likeable and his quest for answers, to make sense of the world around him and his own existence makes him relatable and quite human, even if you never see anything of him. That isn’t to say the music isn’t good, it’s actually fantastic and you’ll probably want to get the soundtrack—if you don’t get it together with the game in a bundle!
This is a short game, with only five or six chapters and each of these is a few puzzles long. There’s a good chance you might be able to finish it in one sitting, but the story makes this short ride very sweet.
This is what you’ll do for most of the game: stare at glowing eyes!
Conclusion
Pneuma: Breath of Life is one of the cleverest games I’ve ever played. It’s quite short and you’ll have some frustrations with the puzzle design, but you will enjoy the ride for as long as it lasts.
The Talos Principle is a first person adventure game, developed by Croteam, where you control a robot working his way through dozens of challenge rooms guided by a voice from above. Will you obey and seek eternity in servitude or will you quest for the truth, no matter how hard it may be?
When Talos opens, you find yourself in what seem to be Greco-Roman ruins. As you explore, you find your first puzzles and challenges and a voice speaks to you from on high. His name is Elohim and he claims to be your creator. He wants you to find sigils—Tetris Blocks—to prove you’re worthy of paradise. You will collect the sigils through overcoming the various challenge rooms.
These rooms are in giant simulated worlds in three towers—the first with a Greco-Roman feel to it, the second with an Egyptian theme and he last with a Middle Ages vibe. And as you explore them, you’ll come across terminals with the emails, blog posts, rants, articles and thoughts of the people behind the simulated world and the library containing all human knowledge and history. Through them, and especially through Alexandra Drennan’s time-capsule messages, you learn of their struggle to finish this project before the world—and humanity itself—come to an end. It’s a heartrending epistolary story but also an uplifting one, as you read and hear about humans at their best in the face of inevitability. It’s a wonderful plot and one I’m overjoyed of experiencing. And that is without considering the deep philosophical debates, over the nature of humanity, you have with the Library Assistant AI, always there to put you down and offer counterpoints to your arguments.
But it’s not just the story that kept me coming back, but the puzzles. Each room has a theme, a set of tools you should/have to use and one of the Sigils. You start out with only the Jammer, to disable barriers and hazards such as turrets or bombs. As you collect Sigils you unlock the Connector, to redirect beams of energy—red or blue depending on the emitter; the Fan, to lift yourself and objects off the ground or propel you across distances; the Playback terminal, to record yourself performing actions and then generate a recording-clone to perform them (my favourite tool); and finally the Platfom, which you’ll never use on your own but with a Playback clone.
For some QR codes you need to be very crafty!
Talos’ rooms are all about logic and experimentation to reach your goal. You’ll jam doors so you can pass beams through them, overlap red and blue beams without crossing them, lift Connectors on boxes so they reach enough height to redirect beams even across challenge rooms or all the above using the Playback terminal. As you progress the challenge ramps up and it’s such a joy to complete the hard rooms. After playing so many inventory-based games in the past few years, I sincerely missed logical ones and that’s what Talos offers. It’s about logic but also creativity, to think outside the box and find the solution that best works for you.
Completing each room’s puzzle is hard enough but there are also Stars spread across the levels and you need 10 of them at a time to open the star doors in every tower and reach special closed-off worlds with greater challenges. Some star puzzles are straightforward, a variation on the room’s theme and goal, but others will blow your mind with their complexity. One in particular, involving some pillars and buttons, was extremely challenging to figure out. Finally, there are Sigil puzzles, where you arrange a set number of the Tetris blocks together to form a square or rectangle. The first ones are simple but they too become increasingly challenging as you progress through the game.
If there is one flaw to the game it’s the hint system. In some rooms you can find a little shrine where you can ask for help, but unless you’ve woken the messengers up by visiting their home simulations, you won’t get any. It fits into the simulation world’s myth, but the tool you need to unlock them is in the third tower so you’re going to spend a long time without any help from a guardian angel.
The upside is you’ll often find QR codes across the levels and challenge rooms, telling you more about those that came before you, the world and the puzzles themselves. Some are very cryptic, but they can offer significant help if you read carefully. You can even leave your own messages for your friends to find, but these are just random phrases generated from the documents you read and your conversations with the Library Assistant. Some are deep, some are fun and others are just right down silly. “Frogs are people too!” is my favourite.
DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS!!! Overlap them instead!
The fact I mention challenge rooms might make it seem like they’re closed-off, claustrophobic, but you’d be wrong to assume that. Environments in Talos Principle are astoundingly beautiful. The first area is comprised of ruins, true, but there is lush vegetation, sandy and rocky beaches, vast expanses of water and detailed constructions that leave you in awe. The Egyptian one is straight out of your wildest archaeological dreams. And the last one makes you feel in Camelot…if it had lasers and turrets. Even outside the simulated levels, the temple-like lobbies are phenomenal and are in stark contrast to the rusting metal of the towers and the lifeless frozen expanse where they all stand. The visuals in Talos tell as much a story as the documents and voice-overs.
Speaking of voices, you only ever hear Elohim and Alexandra but the voice acting is superb. Elohim is grandiose and imposing, and Alexandra is as human as you can get. It’s her voice that carried me through the journey that is the Talos Principle, even if at times she broke my heart. In terms of music, from the simple melodies to the Latin religious choirs, it’s all amazing. At times when I played Alexandras recordings, there were sweet gentle melodies in the background that seemed both uplifting and saddening at the same time, depending on what she said. Maybe it was the location’s music—her messages mute all other sound effects—or maybe it came with the time capsule, but either way, the music moved me.
Names are indeed a funny thing. TMA could well stand for Tested Mature Avocados!
The nature of humanity and civilisation!
Handsome bot with a badass axe!
Croteam has good comedy taste!
This is the only complaint I have of the game!
Is it just me who thought of The Mummy after looking at this?
You can find messages your friends leave!
Beautiful castle
Simba, Everything the light touches is our Kingdom!
There are some cool easter eggs in this game!
Life lessons right there!
Documents in terminals can be very philosophical
These get really difficult later in the game
Conclusion
The Talos Principle is not only about amazing puzzles, but also about a very human story in a game where you never see one of our species. Instead, you feel the impact they had on the world.
What are Annoying Game Mechanics? They’re those that when you find them you can’t help but groan. You’ve seen them at their best and worst and now they just annoy you on principle!
If you find the series name familiar, then you might remember it from its 1001Up days. But now, after careful and hard negotiations (not really, the 1001Up crew are lovely people), AGM has made its move to The Mental Attic. Is it permanent? Who knows, but in the meantime I hope you enjoy it here as much as you did before and make sure to visit AGMs former home as well!
For this relaunch of Annoying Game Mechanics, I’ve chosen one that I’ve recently seen while on my Classic Play series: Flooding Puzzles.
You’ve seen them in almost every game imaginable. Those sequences where you have to raise or lower the water levels to open new areas or to make puzzle-related objects float. Exactly what the puzzle entails depends on the game but it’s almost become a staple of adventure games, especially action-adventures.
My problem with the mechanic is there are so many things you can do with water: you can alter its states, shifting from gas to ice and back to liquid in a fantastic chemical puzzle; you can use water levels to fill containers for weight-puzzles; you can have a fire & water puzzle, where you use one against the other; piping puzzles to direct the flow of water in the direction you want, among others.
Yet despite those examples, and the many more I can’t even begin to imagine, the implementation we most often see in video games is using flooding. Now every time I see this mechanic, I instinctively sigh and think “not this again.”
The staple of an annoying mechanic is that it’s seen both good and bad days. The following are some of the best and most disappointing uses:
Good:
The Water Temple from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time defined this puzzle for the modern era. A sprawling labyrinthine dungeon where you must raise and lower the water to open new areas, reveal treasures and gain access to previously impossible to reach ledges and doors. The Water Temple is famous—or infamous depending on whom you ask—and is one of the hardest Zelda dungeons to date.
A close second is the 2nd Dark World dungeon in A Link to The Past, which also featured levers to raise water levels.
The Tomb Raider series loves this mechanic, but no other game does it more often than Tomb Raider Anniversary, with almost back-to-back water-level puzzles.
The first one is in Greece in the Poseidon room. A vertical shaft where you must raise and lower the water a few times to get a raft to the exact place you need it to reach a ledge. This one also involves a fair dose of box pushing, pulling and underwater levers.
The second one is the previous example on steroids, this time not a vertical room but an entire ancient sewer/waterway. With long drops that will instantly kill you and checkpoints at the most inconvenient locations and times, this is a pain in the arse to play to be honest, but it is well designed and has a right way to do it…and the way I did it the first time around.
The third one involves flooding an entire room, then lowering the water to shoot some scarabs to open grates and then re-flood the area to escape. It’s not really complex but flooding plus platforming make it interesting.
Bad:
The Resident Evil series is famous for using these,notasbrainteasers but time-wasters. Simple crank puzzles to flood or drain areas.
Resident Evil 2 has the perfect example: Go into a canal, arrange boxes in a straight line, raise water level and go through.
Resident Evil 4 is another perfect example. The sewers under Salazar’s castle have a flooded section and the challenge of it all is making it through the area and its many one-hit-kill enemies to the crank you need to drain the water.
Wet-Dry World in Super Mario 64 is not one of my favourites. The initial height of the water depends on how high you jumped into the level and you raise or lower the water with coloured crystals, seven of them in total and spread throughout the environment. It’s a pain to find the exact one you’re looking for and if the water level’s high enough, it’s going to be a long swim down to the crystal you need. Hope you don’t drown!
There are many more examples of this annoying mechanic at work, but I can’t list them all. Do you have a favourite flood puzzle, or one you just can’t stand? Let me know in the comments and be sure to come back in two weeks for another issue of Annoying Game Mechanics!
Gallery
(Image Credit: Stella’s Walkthroughs) The Sanctuary of the Scion has the 2nd biggest one in the game
(Image Credit: GamrTV) These hateful things…
(Image Credit: lparchive) Disappointingly simple is what you get from flood/drains in Resident Evil
(Image Credit: Nintendo64Movies) My least favourite level in Super Mario 64
(Image Credit: ScrewAttack) The Water Temple brings nightmares to many…I loved it.
(Image Credit: VGMaps) Check the layout of this!
(Image Credit: Sai’s Gaming World) The Poseidon Room, the first Flood Puzzle Anniversary throws at you!
The Poseidon Room Artwork
(Image Credit: pimpmyshed) You never even see the waterfall, you just crank away!
Puzzles are at the core of Adventure gameplay, they provide challenges for you to overcome with brains rather than brawn. For Action Adventures, they offer a break from the hacky-slashy-stabby-shooty element of title. In this series, I’ll bring you a new puzzle every week, drawn from some of the best and worst adventure or puzzle games I’ve ever played. Every two weeks I’ll even leave you one of my own for you to solve. If you do, I’ll find a way to reward you!
Today’s puzzle also comes from the vaults of LucasArts, from its most popular adventure game series: Monkey Island, specifically the 2nd in the series, LeChuck’s Revenge.
After dealing with Largo LaGrande on Scabb Island, Guybrush Threepwood, Mighty Pirate, sets out to find the four pieces of the map to the legendary treasure of BIG WHOOP. One of these pieces is in Rum Rogers’s shack but to get to it you need to shut-off a particularly impressive looking waterfall. How do you do it? Well, there’s a fire hydrant at the top of it, so of course you need a monkey wrench. Good thing you have a catatonic monkey in your pocket, right? How do you get the monkey? We’ll leave that alone because I don’t want to ruin the puzzle if you haven’t played Monkey Island 2.
Yes, this puzzle is moon logic, and I usually hate these. But this is moon logic at its best, based off wordplay. You need a monkey wrench and you have a stiff monkey, quite easy to make the leap. It shows the strength and weakness of this style of puzzle design. If you’re familiar with the English language, then you’ll figure it out instantly, but if you’re not or you’re playing it in another language, then the puzzle makes little sense.
This puzzle also shows how creative the LucasArts team was when it came to designing silly puzzles. The entire sequence, from finding the monkey, shutting off the waterfall to getting your hands on the map is one ridiculous moment after another.
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge has wonderful and challenging puzzles, but for me the best will always be this monkey business. When I played the game, I finally had enough of a handle with the language that I picked the word-play clue instantly. It didn’t just make me laugh but also made me feel proud of my linguistic ability.
Do you have a favourite Monkey Island puzzle you’d like to mention? Don’t forget to come back next week for two new puzzles, one from a game and one of mine!
I even considered ranting a bit more just on the very sore subject of the timed exclusivity, but that topic’s been run to the ground and as a very wise friend said on twitter, enough is enough.
But I still feel there’s a lot to say about this 20 year-old series.
In past articles I’ve been quite negative and resistant to change, but I’ve made it clear that I want to be wrong! I want Rise to make me eat my words. I want the Tomb Raider not only to rise but also to stand tall and keep going.
I know I’ve made it seem as if I wish this Lara never existed, and it might be partially true, but it’s just because I know how strong a character the original was, even in all the silliness of her series. She was confident, strong, capable and brilliant. She faced everything head on, even if she had doubts, remorse or reservations. But she also enjoyed herself. She saw the wonder and beauty in every place she visited and she pulled you in so you could see things from her point of view. Everything was an adventure to her and she took as much joy as she could from whatever she did, something I wish I could do more often.
As a character I admire the original Lara and I found her more inspirational and captivating than most male video game characters. As gaming changed and we entered the dude-bro era, Lara remained herself, with all her charm, wit and copious amounts of sarcasm. And of course backflipping, diving and shooting animals!
At least until they moved on from her to Nu-Lara.
I don’t want this new younger Lara to be exactly the same as the original, as much as it may seem like it. But I do want her to inherit some of her traits. Tomb Raider 2013 was a misery fest, and so far, between all TR media, it seems they want to take her into the “angst-filled hard-ass” archetype and I hope it doesn’t happen. The world doesn’t need any more of those. We need someone who sees the beauty and wonder in everything, someone who reminds us that even the worst circumstances have some good in them. Nu Lara is strong, we know that, but so far the only growth has been on the scabs covering her many wounds. Even the comics—bridging the games—have too much pain and misery and very little happiness.
I’ve said it before. When you’re telling a story, if there aren’t good moments, then the bad ones lose effectiveness. And so far, Lara has had too many bad moments and very few good ones. Her close circle of friends is less there to offer comfort and support but to be victims and hostages.
(Image Credit: Dark Horse Comics) Enough with the blood & mud and doom & gloom. Let’s hit some ruins!
If Tomb Raider were a novel, I wouldn’t worry about the character because she would be in Rhianna Pratchett’s hands and she is an outstanding writer. But the creative vision for the character belongs to the developers and so far, they seem to prefer grit and misery to adventure and excitement and joy. For Rise, they tell us she’s having issues dealing with the events of the first game (or possibly the events of the 2nd, as we don’t know if the therapy is before her trip to Siberia or after), and she’s going to a therapist. I fear this is just to make Lara much more vulnerable, and that the therapy is just a “plot gimmick” for this game instead being instrumental in the character’s development.
But there I go again being negative. Sorry about that.
I want Lara and the new Tomb Raider series to learn the lessons of its predecessor and combined with its own stories evolve into something new and better. I want this Nu Lara to be better than the original. I want her to inspire people as much as the original did—including me. I want her to find the joy of exploration, the awe and wonder and the adventure in life, instead of just wading through pockets of misery.
For the games, yes I want to see more puzzles. I know, I sound like a broken record on this, but it’s part of the adventure genre. It’s part of that sense of wonder I mention, to find ancient ruins with incredibly complex mechanisms you need to piece together or use in some way to progress. Sure, we can get away from box pushing, I’ll be the first behind that idea, but we need that awe, that joy of discovery and that’s what I want the series to bring in the future. I hope Rise’s tombs will be as good as they promise or even better. I want them to be complex, and combine items and physics and platforming.
(Image Creidit: Otakusphere) Go big, go silly, go insane! Be stupid, be brilliant!
In terms of platforming and acrobatics, I want Rise to take it into a bolder direction and future games to go even further. From the classic pits with a rope over them to ditching the climbing gear and just do it by hand. My good friend, Kelly from the Archaeology of Tomb Raider, said that a lot of the challenge of platforming went away with the auto-grab and that is generally true, but there was still a great chance of failure. If you don’t believe me, just check out my Tomb Raider Underworld and Anniversary videos, you’ll see me dying often enough. And that’s where I hope we’ll move, not into the same platforming elements from the past, but the same challenge and risk, to those moments where if you don’t jump at the exact edge, you won’t make it across the gap. I know I’m sounding nostalgic and wishing this series was like the past one, but again, I just want it to learn and use the past series to evolve into something better.
Finally, combat. They’re already going in a very good direction by letting you sneak past enemies instead of just shooting and killing.
However, the one thing I want the most for Tomb Raider—as a game—is for it to be sillier. Gameplay and events grounded on reality are good but sometimes you can squeeze a bit more fun out of a sequence if you allow for some nonsense. Perhaps it’s physics not working exactly as they should, or the character being more agile than she should in a given situation, such as five back-flips in a row while firing two guns at incoming raptors. The Oni were a good first step, but I hope they step further away from ‘reality’ and more into the silly bits!
And all that together is what I want and what I hope from the Tomb Raider series in the future. I don’t want Lara and her games to mimic the classic series, but I do want them to acknowledge their existence and use them to improve upon, to evolve into a series that will have cynical fans like me jumping for joy and enjoying adventures with this Lara as much as we did with the Classic.
But until I play Rise, I can’t do anything but that: hope.
I love puzzles, not the 1000 piece landscape ones everyone’s tried to assemble at least once in their lives. No, those drive me insane. The ones I mean are the gaming puzzles, riddles and brain-teasing challenges. Some need items and for others you just need to use whatever brain cells you have left after binging on Dragon Age Inquisition for eight hours a day.
Puzzles are at the core of Adventure gameplay, they offer challenges for you to overcome with brains rather than brawn. For Action Adventures, they offer a break from the hacky-slashy-stabby-shooty element of title.
Over the past few months, I’ve been hard at work on designing my own puzzles for an in-development adventure game demo. I’ve gone through the classics: inventory, moon-logic, number sequence & math, cryptography and text-based and even old school riddles. For example, here’s one I posted on twitter a few weeks ago, just popped in my head and it was better than I expected:
Ominous when empty. Sad when full.
What is it? Only one person has solved it and in fact offered a different response that works well!
In this series, I’ll talk about some of my favourite puzzles in games, from the silly to the brain melting. But that’s not all, every other week, I’ll also give you one of my puzzles for you to solve, some of them are simple and others not so much. If you solve one first and you’d like to submit one of your own then I’ll feature them in a future issue. I’ve already given you one to get started, and now I’ll focus on this week’s puzzle. It’s from a really old, classic LucasArts adventure: Full Throttle.
At one point in the game, you need to get into The Vulture’s hideout, but it’s protected by a minefield. Getting through it is hilarious and it involves a remote-controlled car and a boxful of Powerblast-battery-powered bunnies to clear the way!
When I first played this game, I wondered what to do with the minefield, and I tried a single bunny, got an item in return but ten I was stumped, because as is the usual case for me, I hadn’t seen something in the environment, but once I did, it all clicked into place and I solved the puzzle and finished that sequence, laughing like a maniac while doing so. It’s funny, on hindsight maybe not that funny, but it just caught me by surprise, especially because the music shifts to Flight of the Valkyries!
It’s another example of how creative the people at LucasArts were/are at creating puzzles. Sure, it’s on the edge of being moon-logic, but there’s enough sense in it that it doesn’t seem far-fetched.
Below you’ll see the end of the puzzle. I want you to have a giggle but not ruin the entire thing for you!
Do you have any favourite puzzle or memory from Full Throttle or any other adventure game? Let me know in the comments!
Last week I finished the playthrough for TR Underworld so it’s time for Anniversary! All part of my plan to play all the Classic-Lara games in reverse order.
For those unfamiliar with this game, it’s a remake of the first Tomb Raider, but with story elements adjusted to fit those of Tomb Raider Legend, which I’ll be playing next as part of this series!
For the first video I did some commentary, not only about the game but the series in general as well as some random musings. The rest of the segments have no commentary as I’ve been playing the voice activated Action-adventure In Verbis Virtus, and now my throat hurts quite badly.
Be sure to check out the polls below and tell me what you want for the rest of the Tomb Raider Classic Plays and what game series I should tackle next. If it’s not listed n the poll, you can add one!
Part I – Vilcabamba
Part II – Greece
Part III – Egypt – Temple of Khamoon
Part IV – Finale – Natla Mines & Atlantean Pyramid
If you like the video, give it a like and consider subscribing to the YouTube channel and of course here on the site.
If you read my Rezzed coverage you’ll know some of the best games there were those from Fireproof Games: Omega Agent and The Room Three, and that thanks to them, I discovered The Room One & Two.
The Room and The Room Two are puzzle-centric adventure games. As your almost silent protagonist you progress through a series of rooms solving intricate puzzles and slowly piecing the story of your predecessor’s research into the Null Element, a strange and otherworldly material and power source that slowly draws people close to it mad. During the events of the first game you’re following your friend’s footsteps, opening a puzzle box that draws you ever closer to the Null. During The Room Two however, you travel to rooms used by others who discovered the element, trying to escape from the endless maze of rooms and puzzles. The Room series, as stated by the developers themselves, is light on plot and following it will depend on each player—and they expect most to ignore the story altogether.
The Room revolves around giant puzzle-boxes, one per chapter. Each of them has multiple puzzles to solve, ranging from inventory to deduction, and solving one will open the way to another or give you an important item needed to complete yet another puzzle. The game starts you off easily but soon enough drops you into the deep end and you’ll have only your wit—and the useful hint system—to help you solve the puzzles.
Don’t get used to the tutorial, it won’t last long!
One of my favourite boxes is also one of the last in the game, where you have puzzles on the side that open as you find ways to generate and reflect light. They’re all wonderfully intricate and the way solving one puzzle opens up the others in a chain reaction is fantastic. I still replay this segment every so often.
This game is where you can most clearly see the Chinese Puzzle-boxes that inspired the development—as well as the Hellraiser elements that inspired the tone and atmosphere.
You learn plot elements through other people’s notes and letters!
The Room Two expands on its predecessors offering larger rooms with multiple locations and puzzles to complete. These puzzles become increasingly complex. One of the early rooms is a pirate ship and it took me the longest to complete of all of them, but every time I pulled a puzzle off I felt like a genius…until the next one stumped me.
The controls are very simple, consisting of just swipes and taps, but everything from turning a key to pulling open a drawer controls smoothly. To use the inventory items, you can tap for a closer look (needed, as some items are themselves puzzles) or drag them to use.
You also have a special lens. You find it in The Room and in its sequel, you first need to repair it before putting it to use. The Lens shows you hidden messages and lets you see and interact through objects made from the Null element. If you see an iridescent object or surface, then it’s time to pull out the lens! Point-of-view puzzles using the lens feature heavily in both games, so you first use it to make random symbols visible, and then rotate the camera to form numbers or letters with them.
I do wish the lids on objects opened automatically or with a tap. I was playing on my mobile, with very little surface area so I always had issues with lids. This was a game developed for tablets and while you can play it on mobile phones, I wouldn’t really recommend it. You’ll often squint or tap like crazy to find small hotspots and it gets a bit uncomfortable. Dragging items to hotspots proved a challenge as well, as the aspect ratio made it so my—admittedly chubby—fingers completely covered the item, so I couldn’t see if the item was useful in a given situation or not at all. And it might be my mobile, but playing the game violently drained the battery.
The lens reveals things hidden to the naked eye!
Visually it’s impressive, perhaps the best-looking game I’ve ever played on mobile. They’re the type of visuals you expect from a PC game. Puzzle boxes and rooms are intricately detailed and there are tons of tiny elements that bring rooms to life, from delicate wine glasses on a table to hay and cannonballs in the pirate room. The Room Two even features a full cinematic ending that before playing I didn’t ever expect to see running on my mobile.
In terms of sound, both Room games have wonderful soundtracks. The main theme for the games has become of my favourite videogame pieces, both soothing and eerie at the same time if you can believe it. Speaking of eerie that’s the music’s direction in each room. It can be as subtle as a single tone, almost a whistle, to more intense pieces, often with dissonant cords to take you over the creepy edge into disturbing. It all plays fantastically into the madness theme and with the visuals and the sound effects—creaking boards, whispers, and even footsteps—they all make up this lovely atmosphere of fear. I sincerely recommend playing this game with full volume. If you don’t you won’t get the true experience.
Sometimes, items are puzzles as well!
Conclusion
With The Room Three soon to hit the Apple App Store, now is the time for you to go play these two games. They are outstanding puzzlers with an intriguing plot. If you’re like me and you love a brainteaser, then you’ll enjoy The Room and The Room Two
