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!
Originally released in 1999 Grim Fandango is one of the last adventure games released by LucasArts. It combines Mexican folklore with a Film Noir plot and stars the grim reaper himself…well, one of them anyway.
Fantastic world combining Noir and Mexican folklore.
Superb voice acting and music.
Revamped control scheme.
Bad:
Clunky inventory system.
Peyote-logic puzzles.
Review
I won’t deny it. I was excited when I saw the news for the Grim Fandango remake. I remember playing it when I was younger, about a year after release, in 1999. I borrowed the game from a friend—you know, back in those days where DRM and serials weren’t a thing.
I’ve been playing the game recently, going through it once more and I realised I didn’t remember a thing about it. I couldn’t remember the solution to even a single puzzle, which to be honest is perfect for a review. So let’s get to it.
How it all starts: with hole-punched card!
Grim Fandango puts you in the shoes of Manuel “Manny” Calavera, an agent for the DOD, The Department of Death. As an agent his job is to find the recently deceased and depending on their personal history get them the best deal possible on their trip to the afterlife. If the soul has been especially good, they can get a direct trip on the Number Nine express train to the Ninth Underworld. If there are dark spots in their bio, the options range from lying in a coffin shipped by mail to a walking stick for the long journey.
At the start of the game, Manny’s been in a slump, only getting bad clients and cheated out of new ones by his colleague, Domino. Deciding to take matters into his own hands—and yours—he intercepts one of Domino’s clients and claims her for his own, thinking she’s assured a spot on the Number Nine. But it turns out his bosses rigged the system and have stolen everybody’s tickets. With Meche, his would-be client, now lost in the underworld and the conspirators pursuing him, Manny sets out to find the girl and stop the bad guys…but mostly find the girl.
The lovely Meche Colomar!
The story is a traditional Noir plot. There are conspiracies, intrigue, betrayals and deceit at every corner. But it is a Tim Schafer and LucasArts game so there is plenty of comedy as well, mostly from how surreal the world and locations are. Unlike other LucasArts games there aren’t many pop-culture references, instead they take jabs at familiar Noir tropes and poke fun at how we all imagine death and the afterlife to be. It is however a darker game than other in the Lucas catalogue.
The story plays out in four acts or Years, each with a different location, new characters and new pieces to the conspiracy. I loved the Year transitions. Years 1 and 2 end with Manny in a precarious position, stuck at a dead-end café and a broken down ship respectively, but the opening cinematic for the following one show him turning those around—the Café into a successful nightclub and casino called Café Calavera and the ship into a mercantile vessel. And all of it without losing sight of his goal of finding Meche and get her to the Ninth Underworld.
In the end perhaps, but in the meantime we all dance the Grim Fandango!
Manny as a character is one of the best in adventure games. He’s both selfish and selfless at times, he cares even if he has to manipulate and cheat. He’s not an angel, but he’s not evil either. In essence, he’s a very human and relatable character, with strengths and flaws. The supporting cast on the other hand is a collection of extremes and Noir tropes, from the sultry femme fatale to the extremely greedy villains. But that isn’t to say they aren’t as interesting as the main one. Each has their unique personality and they make you want to know more about them. Glottis, for example is one of my favourite characters. He’s a Mechanic Demon, first acting as Manny’s driver and on the way becoming his loyal companion…and comic relief. Meche starts off as the typical good girl, but shows more strength and determination you would think she had. The central characters all grow during the story, and that is rare in adventure games.
Manny’s inventory…grrrrr
Grim Fandango’s visual style takes its inspiration from Mexican “Dia de los Muertos”—and in fact it is that exact day at the start of the game, the only time when the dead can visit the living. All characters look like Calaca figures, walking skeletons. When Manny reaps a soul, what comes with him isn’t a ghost but another bony figure. Environments area mix of 1930s aesthetics, such as you would find in classic film Noir, and Aztec architecture. There are high-rise buildings and race tracks with Aztec colour tones and even temple-like structures in the last act, but there are also more traditional Noir locations, such as the Poet’s nightclub The Blue Casket or even Café Calavera. The locations and character designs draw you in as much as the voice actors and music do.
The game uses static environments with 3D objects and characters and fixed camera angles. The remake improved on the character models, though considering they’re all skeletons there wasn’t much to improve. Mostly they just made the faces more detailed. But they also improved on the lighting, and this bit adds a lot more to the game’s atmosphere, especially at the start. Now light streams through Manny’s blinds, falling on him in stripes as if it were the office of a Noir detective.
Good solid advice!
The game also features FMV both during gameplay, such as when opening the mailing machine’s door or the elevator in Rubacava, and for story cinematics. The latter mostly take place between acts or at significant moments, such as when you pull up the SS Lamancha. The remake doesn’t change anything about these, nor did they have to because they work perfectly well. In fact, the best thing about them is the original development team went to great lengths to make sure the characters and environment in the FMVs looked exactly as they do in the game’s engine—called GrimE and based on the Jedi Knight engine, no SCUMM for Grim Fandango—so that players always saw familiar faces.
Speaking of actors and music, there isn’t anything bad to say here. The sound design is outstanding. The soundtrack mixes the jazzy tunes you need for the Noir vibes with traditional Mexican music, in the process creating a new style that instantly brings the name Grim Fandango to your mind. Hell the music is so good there were moments I stopped progressing just to take in as much of it as I could. It’s the kind of videogame music you’ll buy the soundtrack and listen to it every day!
Voice acting is superb, particularly because most of the actors are native Spanish speakers, making them much more authentic and convincing, but also because as actors they give strong performances. I often complain how screams and shouts in games feel half-assed, but in Grim Fandango the actors give their all and remain convincing no matter the situation.
Finally, there’s the gameplay and this is where I have a problem.
I hate the inventory system for Grim Fandango. I sincerely do. Instead of the grid-like inventory used in other LucasArts titles or the horizontal list-like inventory of games such as Sam & Max, you can’t see all the items you have at once. Manny’s suit is your inventory and every time you need an item, you’ll have to scroll through the entire inventory. Worst still is that it doesn’t remember what the last item you looked at was, and it even gave me the impression that the item positions changed from one look to another. I knew an item, a piece of bread, was two items to the right when I first looked, but the second time I had to scroll even further. It ties nicely with the item-drawing animations, as the inventory is essentially part of it but it’s clunky and can make you waste a lot of time. It actually made me grateful there aren’t any item combinations, because that would’ve bene a terrible hassle.
You’ll find traditional Mexican/Aztec designs and colours throughout the game!
As this is a LucasArts game, the puzzles are almost exclusively inventory ones and they are generally in the moon-logic realm. To be honest, I’m now convinced Schafer and his team were on peyote while designing some of these, because you would have to bombed out of your head—or be a long-time adventure gamer—to figure them out. For one puzzle you need to figure out the combination of numbers and days for a winning betting ticket using pieces of casual conversation, a plaque for a statue and the complaint of a worker. For another, you’ll drink alcohol with gold flakes just so you can have some stripsearch time with a sexy officer to get her metal detector. See what I mean?
As you progress, however, the complexity lowers and the last act has generally easy puzzles, which is slightly disappointing.
One of the best aspects of the remake for me is they built in a fan patch, released years ago, that changes the control scheme from the tank-controls the game originally had—inspired by Resident Evil, popular at the time of the game’s release—in favour of point & click controls. It’s much more comfortable though the originals are still present and work really well with the added gamepad support.
There’s tons of commentary to hear and enjoy!
I mostly played the game using the original rendering, which you can switch to at any moment in the game’s menu, but I did enjoy the developer commentary. In commentaries we often hear from the designers and storytellers about something fun they did, but this commentary is from the entire team. From their field trips for environment design ideas to the struggles to program certain things in the game, to how many pieces of different engines they cobbled together to build Grim Fandango. As a software developer, it was fascinating to know the ins and outs of the development side of this great title.
Tim Schafer mentions something very interesting during the commentary. He states that the game happened because of the amazingly talented people that came together at the time, but also because they and he infused in the game a lot of what was happening in their lives. And that if they decided to make the game now, it wouldn’t even get close to what we have, even if they made it with the best of intentions.
The original visuals aren’t the prettiest, but I still prefer to play with them!
Conclusion
Grim Fandango is a hell of a ride. There are grievances with some of its design decisions, especially with the inventory and the original controls, but they don’t really detract from the outstanding experience. It’s a folklore story with Noir soul, and one of the fines adventure games ever released. And I think Mr. Schafer is right, this game couldn’t be made today and have it make the same impact.
The Supreme League of Patriots might sound like the name of an odd superhero comic book. In truth it’s a point & click adventure game, developed by indie developer No Bull Intentions, and set in a fictional version of New York city filled with real life superheroes. Continue reading Review: Supreme League of Patriots
Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments is the latest entry in Frogware’s Sherlock Holmes series. Instead of a grand scheme, this game treats us to six different cases that need Sherlock’s amazing deductive skills.
The Good
Fantastic puzzles
Brilliant deduction system
Beautiful visuals
Interesting and varied cases
Intriguing morality system
The Bad
Too many samey lock-picking puzzles.
A couple of cases are too straightforward.
Previous titles in Frogware’s series placed Sherlock on the pursuit of a large conspiracy, with several minor investigations to propel the story further. This time around however, we are treated to a classic approach to Sherlock Holmes: independent cases. If you read the original works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most of the stories are just like this, one-off deductive adventures. Six consecutive cases compose the game, each with varying degrees of complexity and an abundance of red herrings. It’s classic Sherlock on PC, and I couldn’t have hoped for anything better. Having said so, a couple of the cases are too straightforward, with the responsible parties being pretty obvious.
The red herrings actually form the basis of the game’s deductive system. While on a case, any new insight you glean becomes a Clue and pairing up clues creates a node in your deductive space, modeled like neurons in Sherlock’s brain. When you have matching deductions, these will link and generate new deductions, some of which are new investigative avenues for you. Some, however, will have double meaning. You might have proof that someone had a motive for a murder, but some other evidence might point out his innocence, and the deduction space reflects that by making the node a dual one, the branching deductions depending on which one you choose. False leads and wrong conclusions come into play almost organically from your observations, which I think is the greatest accomplishment of the game’s deductive system; no matter your choice, it feels natural. Once you have enough evidence or deductions to make a case against a suspect, a golden node will spawn, representing one of the many conclusions possible. Once you’ve unlocked them all, by changing your assumptions on the different dual nodes, you can simply press a button to check your conclusion list before making your choice.
Profiling helps deduce important facts!
Once you’ve committed to a conclusion you have to decide how you’ll solve the case. You will have two choices at any given time: Convict or Absolve, harsh or merciful. It’s the game’s version of a morality system, helping you shape the man Sherlock ultimately is under your guide. What’s really interesting, however, is that no matter the choice, it never plays out in an out-of-character way. Whether he convicts a man or lets him go, it feels as something Sherlock would do. I was ready to have issues with this morality system but when I saw how it worked, I realized it’s a brilliant mechanic. It gives the player the feeling of choice, but it also remains true to the Sherlock Holmes we all know.
There are some inventory-based puzzles but they’re the minority, as most tend to be about observation and logical analysis. My favourite puzzles were the association ones. At a couple of spots in the game, Sherlock finds a familiar smell but doesn’t immediately know where from, so he needs help to visualize the objects he associates with the smell. These are image perspective puzzles, where you get a fragmented image, and you have to rotate it to find the point of view from which you can see the whole thing. I’m only sad that you don’t use these more, as they are quite brilliant. Instead of the complex puzzle-based locks present in The Testament of Sherlock Holmes¸ this time around all locks work the same, each increasing the complexity a bit more. While the first few times these puzzles are quite interesting, they become samey very quickly as they are all based on the same principle. Variety in the lock picking would’ve been nice.
The deduction space, where you’ll (happily) spend most of the time!
This game introduces two new mechanics to Sherlock’s arsenal: Sherlock Vision and Imagination, both of which you use to figure out new clues. Sherlock Vision automatically highlights important information in bright yellow, performing some initial and instant analysis before giving you the option to examine more closely. It doesn’t light up every other hotspot as it’s meant for specific clues. Imagination on the other hand reconstructs missing evidence, such as a box that might have been moved from a given spot. It also allows you to create simulations of how things might have happened. Both mechanics are very intuitive and easy to use.
As always, some evidence needs to be researched in Sherlock’s lab and archives, and Crimes & Punishments does away with the color-coded lab-puzzles from Testament, and favours a variety of lab analysis puzzles. The Roman Bathhouse case had the most of them and they are all fantastic, my favourite being the ice-cream recipe one. I can’t say more for fear of ruining it for you. Beyond the lab, however, every case will have at least one experiment, from testing out a ventilation system to throwing harpoons at pigs. Yes, I’m not making that up.
The best nose in the British Empire!
Crimes & Punishments does something really interesting with loading screens, which can get to be a bit long sometimes. While you’re on the carriage, the trip itself being the loading, you can check your clues and go over your deductions. I found this very useful, giving me the time to go over the notes and deductions before arriving to my destination, almost as if I sat next to Sherlock, looking over the case while he read Dostoyevsky’s Crime & Punishment.
Finally there’s the social aspect: interrogations. Witness interviews and suspect interrogations are part of every case, and first you need to observe the suspects, using the visual cues they provide to build a profile on them. If you played Moebius: Empire Rising, it’ll be instantly familiar. When you have the appropriate information and you catch someone on a lie, a quick-time prompt will appear and you’ll have a chance to use your evidence against them, forcing the suspects to give up valuable information. It’s a simple system and it’s not overused and instead adds the challenge of getting it right every single time, as you must choose which piece of evidence to use to prove they are lying.
I love that the case-book he’s checking in the loading screen matches the current case!
This is the most beautiful Sherlock game Frogwares has made to date. The Unreal Engine takes the visual quality from previous iterations to a completely new level and brings Victorian England to us as never before. It’s not just the models and textures though, it’s the tiny details such as newspapers on the floor and garments hanging from chairs that take make Crimes & Punishment’s world come alive. Kew Gardens and Whitechapel are outstanding, the first with its rich floral majesty and the second as dark, grim and seedy as you’d come to expect.
Sound-wise, I loved the fact the music shifts tones to match the mood. At the start, the music is jovial, as it’s just another morning of Watson scrambling around the room while Sherlock shoots around with a blindfold on, but then in the first crime-scene it’s almost muted, just a few separate notes giving everything a mysterious air, and this trend continues for the rest of the game, the music even dying down when it would only be a distraction. Voice acting has always been one of the strongest points for the Sherlock games and it remains so in Crimes & Punishments. Some people have said they would love to have Benedict Cumberbatch voice this Sherlock, but not me, I think Nick Brimble does a fantastic job as the character.
Sherlock’s costumes are something else!
In the end, Sherlock Holmes: Crimes & Punishments goes back to basics and delivers a true Sherlock experience. No grand plots, not a single mastermind behind everything, just a man using his brains to stump everyone else. It’s Sherlock through and through, so what more can we ask for?
The Mental Attic Score: Worth Overpaying! This is the highest score available on The Mental Attic.
Goodbye Deponia is the last instalment in Daedalic Entertainment’s Deponia Trilogy, finishing the story of Rufus, Goal and the doom of the junk world Deponia.
The Good
Charming visuals
Creative ingenuity puzzles
The Bad
Moon-Logic-centric
Unlikeable cast
Convoluted plot
Goodbye Deponia picks up right after the events of its predecessor, with Rufus, Doc, Goal and Bozo on their roller car. Things seem to be going smoothly until Rufus messes things up and causes the roller to be destroyed, forcing the team into hiding while trying to stop the destruction of Deponia.
From the start, this game showed me its greatest flaw: characterization. In the past two games Rufus has always been selfish and self-absorbed and both a genius and a klutz, and it was disappointing to see that two outings hadn’t been enough to make him mature or change a little bit. Rufus is extremely unlikeable as a protagonist and makes it difficult for the audience to give a damn about his antics. Most of the secondary characters remain the same as they’ve always been, and while there are a handful of characters that do change, the game makes a point out of destroying their lives so they revert to type. By the end, I just wanted all of Deponia, including these flat characters, to die a horribly slow death. I was offended that they decided to dismiss Rufus’ asinine behaviour with this cop-out excuse: he’s a clone and programmed not to care about anyone’s life. It’s lazy writing.
Using food and condiments to clone. I’m not kidding, it’s this weird
The plot is a convoluted mess. Every title in the series has gotten close to having Rufus and Goal reach Elysium, only to have something happen at the last minute, which derails the plans, and Goodbye Deponia does it again, giving me the impression that the plot was artificially inflated just to extend game-time. It’s even more apparent when the logic and argument behind the roundabout are so weak. Another proof of extended plot is the fact that at one point you control three Rufus clones, each with their own missions and puzzles that make the game feel bloated.
The writing and humour themselves are much hit and miss. There are very funny references and Rufus’ “We are Asses” speech near the end is fantastic, but in most cases the jokes are downright offensive, coming off racist and sexist at best. It’s made even more disgusting by what I previously mentioned: you are forced to wreck other people’s lives to make progress. There’s a sequence involving a Monkey and a Grinder that is very offensive. I am not politically correct, but there’s offensive-funny and Deponia misses the mark on that and goes straight for simply offensive.
The Bozo family house has a built in laugh track and some atrocious writing!
The gameplay is standard point & click adventuring, with puzzles coming in two varieties: inventory based and ingenuity puzzles. Inventory based puzzles are very annoying and often require obscure and frankly obtuse leaps of logic to which “Moon Logic” doesn’t even apply anymore; Mars logic is more apt. You have to combine almost random items with each other in order to progress. The randomness is the most apparent with the spiced-up pie you serve Bozo, an old vending machine with toothpaste, dust, pepper and other nonsense put on top. It doesn’t make much sense, but you get through it just by trial and error.
Ingenuity Puzzles are the real gem in this game as they take a step back from the convoluted logic-leaps and just have you use your wits. From a Disco-themed puzzle in which you need to keep cameras from seeing Goal to a tapeworm removal surgery puzzle. They’re a much-needed break from the moon logic madness that plagues the game and I’m sad there weren’t more of these puzzles.
This puzzle was very fun and creative!
Sound-wise, it has good voice acting and the hobo-singer between acts remains the best of the series. Background music however, tends to get a bit repetitive, especially in areas with plenty of backtracking. My biggest gripe however, comes with Cowboy Dodo, and annoying new character, which has a couple of appalling musical parts.
Deponia has always been charming in its derelict kind of way and with its cartoonish visuals and the third installment brings more of that bizarre and goofy goodness. Environments look shabby and downright uncomfortable but they work for Deponians. Items are easily identifiable and character animation is very good. I do have mixed feelings with the animated cutscenes though. Some of them look very good but others, especially those with plenty of ‘action’ look like cheap flash animations.
Some cutscenes look really well!
In the end, Goodbye Deponia closes the trilogy with a bittersweet leaning towards sad conclusion that would’ve worked even better if they’d taken the proper care to polish their plot and characters. As it stands however, I can’t say I’ll miss it and after playing Memoria, Goodbye Deponia seems to be a step back for Daedalic.
The Mental Attic Score: Wait for a Sale. If you can, get the game in a bundle with the other two, so you can play them straight, if you dare.
Quest of Infamy is a Point & Click adventure game by Infamous Quests and published by Phoenix Online Studios. It’s a mix of the adventure game genre with RPG, featuring classes and combat and different skills in the same way as the classic Hero’s Quest games. Continue reading Review: Quest for Infamy
Starting now, I’ve added something new to the reviews, a little Good vs Bad summary at the start because I know some people just don’t like lengthy reviews. Let’s get started!
The Good
Strong puzzles.
Visually stunning.
Fun LucasArts (mostly) Easter Eggs.
Fun collectibles have you scanning the environment, taking in the beautiful visuals.
The Bad
Story is a mess.
Characters are flat.
Spells are underused.
Hint Spell is useless.
Limited World-hopping.
Some puzzles tie together rather loosely and require big leaps of logic.
I had originally planned on writing one big massive review of all the Telltale games, but I still haven’t finished playing through The Walking Dead and Wallace & Gromit (on this one it might be because I loathe Wallace & Gromit), and I don’t even have Jurassic Park, so I’ll write up individual reviews for each game. This time it’s Tales of Monkey Island.
I used to assume everyone knew, at least knew, what Monkey Island was, until I met a few girls and both were like “what the hell is that?”, so I’m not going to assume and give you a little background info on the series, nothing extensive of course, there’s Wikipedia for that.
As of 6am today, all of Venezuela, my country, is “celebrating” its Presidential Elections…just wanted to say that. And now for something completely different!
Games, specifically, Video Games.
Being a visual media, we have to accept that Visuals, the graphics are important, the question is, just how much? I think that like with many things, it depends on the case and the gamer. Some don’t even touch a game without a certain level of graphics, which more often than not means a certain level of detail and gloss in a photorealist visual style (define photorealism as realistic).
I think the best approach for this is to have a pro-con discussion, but since this is my blog, I’ll be arguing with myself, and no, I’m not crazy…not yet anyway. I’ll try to look at both sides of the argument and let you decide for yourself which one is stronger. Continue reading A Visual Matter
No, I’m not gonna define the genres, you can check Wikipedia for those, but I am gonna talk about my favorites and mention a few games in each, little gems you might not know about.
