A corpse, Feds, a cantankerous foul-mouthed clown, a game dev, a strange town with strange people and a case to solve. It sounds like Twin Peaks, but it’s even more bizarre, it’s Thimbleweed Park.
Tag: Monkey Island
Puzzle Design – Narrative vs Challenge
If there’s one thing that you can expect from an adventure game, it’s puzzles. They’re part of the genre, and even the slew of choice-based adventures we’ve seen in the past few years have at least one puzzle in them, a little challenge to break the pace from the monotony of watching interactive cutscenes.
If the above sentence makes it sound like I don’t like choice-driven games, you’re getting close, though it’s not exact either. I like challenges and puzzles in my videogaming, and when it comes to adventures, I want puzzles, be it logic, inventory or even conversation based. It’s why I loved Life is Strange, it didn’t sacrifice the puzzling for the choices, finding a good balance between them.
But as I sit here contemplating adventure games I realise there are different approaches to puzzle design, and while this might a gross oversimplification and generalisation, I believe you can put the overall design approaches into two categories: Narrative Driven and Challenge Driven. Continue reading Puzzle Design – Narrative vs Challenge
Review: Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet
A fearsome kooky pirate out to find a mysterious treasure before her great enemy can do so with his army of birds! No, it’s not Monkey Island, you fool, it’s Nelly Cootalot!
Continue reading Review: Nelly Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet
Point & Click Villainy – Are Adventure Protagonists really Heroes?
I’ve mentioned this in the past but I’m a big fan of Adventure games, particularly the point & click variety. I love solving puzzles, going to interesting locales and meeting strange new people—something I also enjoy in real life. I like the complex stories, the narrative and even more when these two and the gameplay mesh together.
But one thing I’ve noticed over the past few years as I’ve gone through dozens of these titles is that the protagonists of these games, those we control, whose inventories we use to frantically click everything on everything, aren’t really heroes most of the time. In fact, their actions seem borderline villainous. Cheating, stealing and lying are commonplace in adventure games and more often than not, the solution of a puzzle means the destruction of someone else’s livelihood if not their lives altogether. Continue reading Point & Click Villainy – Are Adventure Protagonists really Heroes?
The Weekly Puzzle – Lactose Eruption
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 once in a while I’ll even leave you one of my own for you to solve. If you do, I’ll find a way to reward you! Continue reading The Weekly Puzzle – Lactose Eruption
The Weekly Puzzle – Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey…Swamp!
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 once in a while I’ll even leave you one of my own for you to solve. If you do, I’ll find a way to reward you! This week has a new riddle, just for you!
“He’s old and patient, always moving but never wandering. He’s rough, has seen all branches of life and will share the fruits of it with you if you wait long enough.” Continue reading The Weekly Puzzle – Wibbly-Wobbly Timey-Wimey…Swamp!
The Weekly Puzzle – Underhanded Recruitment
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!
As promised and overdue, here’s the new puzzle from my noggin and for yours to decipher. A simple riddle. I’ll admit I’m not the best at making there. I love solving them but they’re not my creative forte. But I wanted to create one as a challenge so here it is. I do apologise, I think I made it a bit too obscure. As always, drop the solution in the comments or wait two weeks for the solution:
“We rarely meet, but when we do, the party’s astronomical. Everyone is welcome to see us, but if you pry, we’ll hurt you.”
Now for this week’s puzzle I’m going back to LucasArts for a three-part puzzle. It’s from The Curse of Monkey Island: the Recruitment. As with every title in the series, the great hero and Mighty Pirate, Guybrush Threepwood needs to find a crew and a worthy vessel. Thankfully for him there’s a trio of pirate barbers in Puerto Pollo. The barbers are Haggis McMutton, Cutthroat Bill and Edward Van Helgen.
The big puzzle is to get them all to work for you, but each of them has a requirement. Haggis won’t go with you unless he respects you, and he won’t unless you show him how strong you are. Being Scottish, he goes for caber tossing and that is too much for spindly Guybrush. You need to challenge Van Helgen to a duel and beat him, and he’s just too good with a pistol. Finally, Bill wants to know how good you are at treasure hunting, and no, those wooden coins in your pocket won’t be enough.
The three puzzles are all about cheating. For Haggis it’s finding a light and bouncy log that doesn’t require much strength. For Van Helgen it’s choosing something non-lethal for the duel and then change the rules midway, to prove to him just how much of an underhanded bastard you can be. And Bill, well, you just need to be extremely friendly, get his jawbreaker candy and use that to relieve someone else of the pressures of jewelry teeth.
What I loved about this sequence is how ridiculous it gets. Bill’s starts out simple, just Guybrush screwing over someone to take advantage of the situation, but when you get to the end, you’ll have met a guy terrified of a giant chicken, El Pollo Diablo. Haggis’ challenge can go on forever unless you realise how to bend the rules to your advantage. And nothing beats Ven Helgen’s banjo solo…until you interrupt him.
The Curse of Monkey island is not my favourite Monkey Island game, but I will always remember it because it was a game that led me to a really good friend. We’d been discussing games and we discovered our mutual love for Monkey Island, so he lent me his copy of Curse, and we spoke about it at length for the next few days. And we both laughed while talking about the crew.
I’d love to know if any of you have fun memories with a Monkey Island title, or any other game for that matter!
Triple-R: Remakes, Remasters & Rehashes!
A few months ago, an acquaintance and I had an interesting conversation on WhatsApp over the subject of remakes. And as I played through the Grim Fandango remaster and saw the slew of once-mobile games being re-released on Steam, I couldn’t help but go back to that conversation and see not only my points validated, but the other’s as well.
Remakes & Remasters are very similar in that they take an old property and give it a fresh coat of paint and make it accessible to new generations. The major difference is a Remake can, and most likely will, change elements of the game from gameplay to plot—such as Tomb Raider Anniversary or Gabriel Knight 20th Anniversary—while the Remaster will generally just upgrade visuals and audio and maybe add a new control scheme—Grim Fandango and Monkey Island Special Editions.
But both bank on nostalgia. Of these two, the target audience isn’t the new generation but the old one, those that played the game when it originally released. They will want to get the new version in hopes of recreating the feeling they had while playing it the first time—and be ultimately disappointed when that doesn’t happen.
Take the Tomb Raider reboot, a topic I’ve almost run into the ground these past few months. On release it moved over 3.4 million units—impressive, unless you’re Square Enix, in which case it’s a ‘disappointment’. How many of those 3.4 do you think were new players and how many were die-hard fans of the original Tomb Raider series? I’d be willing to bet that at least 70% of those were classic TR players.
I’m not completely against Remakes/Remasters, there are circumstances when I welcome them. Grim Fandango is an example, as it was impossible to easily purchase the game before this re-release. But if you can still buy the game and it still runs in modern computers without much issue, then the remaster/remake starts leaning towards nostalgic cash-grab.
Remakes & Remasters are easy, my acquaintance said and after careful consideration I had to concede the point. Even if you have to remake the game from scratch—by which I mean art, voice, coding, etc.—the truth is a lot of the work is already done. You already have a script, a sequence of events and a completed design that you know works, so there’s no need for reiteration.
I use the term Rehash but I mean sequels, new entries in a series and anything that is not a new IP. From Mario to Call of Duty, rehashes keep bringing you similar experiences over and over. And much like the previous two, there’s not a lot of risk involved in their release. The only way a developer will go for a sequel is if the first one sold well or at least met expectations. Based on the first title’s numbers, it’s easy to predict how much revenue the next one will generate. Thus, it’s safe from a business point of view. If the game has a particularly strong following, then it’s even safer to release a Rehash than a new property.
We can see evidence of this in the many cases of games modified to be part of a given series, because it ensured people would buy them. Devil May Cry 2 and the American Super Mario Bros.2 are two of the most famous cases. The former started out as a brand new IP before they panicked, slapped Dante on it and released what is the most reviled entry in the series. The latter released in japan as Doki Doki Panic, but since the actual Super Mario Bros. 2 released in Japan was so unforgivingly difficult, the American market got a heavily modified version of DDP, which might explain why the plot of that game made little sense!
However, depending on the franchise—or the developer in Nintendo’s case—rehashes can be a double-edged sword. While it’s true they carry significantly less risk than a new IP, the longer a series runs, the higher the expectations. Failing to meet them can lead to catastrophic results for that IP. One example is what happened to Ubisoft last year with Assassin’s Creed Unity. After Black Flag, the expectations for a new Assassin’s Creed were at their highest, so when Ubisoft released an unpolished game, the resulting outrage and backlash was so strong they had to give away DLC and even entire games for season pass holders. Nowadays developers & publishers use DLC sales to make to get as much profit out of a title as possible, so you can imagine just how much money was lost because of Unity’s failure. For me, it killed all love I had for the series. And if I’m not alone in that sentiment, it compounds the problem Ubisoft faces for its next Assassin’s Creed. A scorned fan is a scary thing in the videogame industry.
Rehashing does allow refinement of a series’ formula. It’s the reason all 3D Mario games are nearly perfect, and how Black Sails was the culmination of Assassin’s Creed’s design, or even the Call of Duty games—I’m not a fan of them but I have to admit they are very well designed, because each iteration has helped polish out the base concept and mechanics.
This is why you rarely see new IPs from major—big-budgeted—developers, because it’s too risky. It’s much easier to rehash, remake or remaster something than giving you a completely fresh idea. Even smaller studios often go this way because it’s an easy way to make money—I apologise if this comes off as a tad too cynical.
As the videogame industry and its corporations grow, we’ll see more sequels and remakes and fewer new IPs, because shareholders, board members and even just the five-man-studio will want to avoid risks as much as possible. And you can’t really blame them considering how expensive some of the latest games have been in terms of development costs. Last year I wrote an article about the insane budgets for most modern games—visuals and art being the most expensive part of any of them—and things don’t seem to be getting cheaper. Thus, it becomes paramount that there is a profit, or at least a return of investment.
(Image Credit: Just Push Start) Each Zelda is the same at its core, but the journey is always different!
(Image Credit: Gamespot) Without sequels, Nintendo wouldn’t have refined their concepts and this near perfect game wouldn’t exist!
(Image Credit: Stella’s Walkthroughs) At the time of release, finding and getting the original to work was an Olympian task!
(Image Credit: Gamezone) This game is a remastered remake! It only needs to be a sequel for the Triple-R-trifecta! Then again, Capcom is infamous for its rereleases! Street Fighter Anyone?
(Image Credit: GoG) Without the remaster the game would’ve been lost to us forever
(Image Credit: Blog Critics) Remastering a NES game? Sure, why not?
(mage Credit: What’s HUB) A fresh coat of paint and makeup! Did it need it? Up for debate.
The good news is that for every two developers that play it safe, there is one daredevil that takes constant risks with new ideas. Some are indie but there are many established studios out there willing to take a chance with a new IP.
And of course, there are those studios so big and so powerful they can take the risks without much issue. Blizzard Entertainment is an example, a company (in) famous for its “It’ll be done when it’s done!” attitude towards development and release. World of Warcraft, Diablo III and StarCraft II have given the company so much revenue they can take as many risks as they want. The recently announced and in development Overwatch is an example, a fresh IP in every way, including genre.
How does this affect us? Well, we need to keep an eye out for those new properties because they tend to fly under the radar of most big-name gaming sites, unless the developer is one of the big ones like the aforementioned Blizzard. On the other hand, maybe we shouldn’t buy remakes/remasters of a game unless A) you can’t get it anymore or B) it doesn’t run on your operating system. The likelihood of the original being a superior game is quite high.
And as for sequels I think the only thing we can do is what we already do: play them, enjoy them and then complain about the developers not coming up with new IPs. It’s what we’re used to doing anyway and if there’s one thing my acquaintance has a point on it’s, “you can’t force gamers to do anything!” And yes, I do realise what that means with regards to my previous statement on remakes!
What are your thoughts on Remakes, Remasters, Rehashes and the state of the industry?
The Weekly Puzzle – Monkey Business
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!
Review – Tales of Monkey Island
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.
