...my opinion about episode 3

[taumel]

Okay, episode 3 is another enjoyable adventure and more or less comes with the same strengths and infirmities as the other episodes before.

It's kind of short and too easy. I only got stuck for a while in the beginning when i had to deal with Leonard because i didn't examine the room good enough and so missed the big shiny nose which also was a little bit of a problem due to the camera/steering in this room. But beside of this it was more like a movie were you had to click a few times in order to keep the movie playing. Mostly you know already what to do and just wait for the characters to do so.

You feel this lack of challenge and depth even more as you already got through e1 and e2 and so are more experienced by now. Take for instance the final scene were you have to defeat the don and manufacture the toy in order to hypnotize him beeing on fire. You get the idea, do it and that's it, over. In old skool adventures you would think of the obvious but then *oops surprising* there would be a hurdle or two in between so that it's actually a challenge for which after you've solved it get a reward in the form that the game is going on. I'm really missing this. I sometimes felt like the game doesn't need me at all. Really improve the puzzles difficulty, inventory puzzles, insert misleading things, add some more depth puzzles with some hurldes in between. Not every puzzle has to be a harder one of course. The mix is the key.

I really wonder what's wrong with my brain that this is so plain easy...

Contrary to e2 and the in my opinion unfunny and displaced cow the appearance of Leonard was nice as i accidentaly played Texas Hold'Em the day before and Boris Krinkle was a character i really enjoyed - old banana head! :O)

But speaking of Leonard the part were you have to squeeze something out of him was a dissapointment as the options weren't funny at all and again it was way too easy. If you implement something like a Monkey Island Sword fight then why don't you do it right? Funny options and challenging in a way that each time you choose something wrong he relaxes one step again, so that you need three or four right insults in a row to beat him. You know in Monkey Island you also would have to look for where to learn the right insults first - i miss such things.

The other mini game the "whack a rat" also was too easy. Why not decreasing the score if you hit a wrong one accidently? But hey i loved the sapceship door! :O) But i missed some more detail on the flower at the entrance, a little bit swinging or a normal map, she looked so sad.

Beside of Leonard i couldn't enjoy the characters of e3 as much as the ones of e2. The characters in e2 were great! In e3 they were somehow steril and i didn't find them interesting.

There were some really good animations in e3. I enjoyed the ending scene with the robot arms, the pumping pipelins and the nice animations of Sam&Max. Really well done! A thing i'm not sure about are the mimics of Sam&Max. Each time they show up it more looks like somekind of polygon cancer to me. And also if it would be done well, i don't know if they would be needed due to that part of the humour of Sam&Max to me comes out of the fact that they say different weird things with stoic faces.

The music was nice as always but despite how much i liked the song number ten i found it displaced for the scene and the mood there. I'm not sure if this comes because i've been listing to the song before but i guess even if not i would have choosen another one there. And again in this room, there would be so much to explore and use for riddles but nothing nada zero zip, so much artwork and it's not beeing used!

Technically i had some issues that the game was jerking from time to time. This also showed up in old scenes like for instance when Sam&Max walked along the office street. I didn't experience this before. Also with the sound i noticed that Sam was sometimes speaking more silent and louder in the same dialogue - in the gambling room for instance.

All in all i would give it one point less than the other episodes before as it still lacks what i'm waiting for, so i would give it a 7 out of 10. I'm really looking forward to e4 and the hopefully improvements on this one!


Thanks,

taumel

[Haggis]

Originally Posted by taumel

It's kind of short and too easy. I only got stuck for a while in the beginning when i had to deal with Leonard because i didn't examine the room good enough and so missed the big shiny nose which also was a little bit of a problem due to the camera/steering in this room. But beside of this it was more like a movie were you had to click a few times in order to keep the movie playing. Mostly you know already what to do and just wait for the characters to do so.

I got stuck on that exact same puzzle. But overall, the puzzles were good. They made sense, which is what Telltale are trying to accomplish - not puzzles that make you tear out your hair in frustration, but not on the level of a kids game either. And since the puzzles should be getting progressively harder in the next couple of episodes, that's a good thing.

As for the rest of the game, I loved it. My only gripe is that one of the bears sounded exactly like Bosco, but that's the only thing. Bosco himself was great. As was the game.

Oh yeah, and the memory leak thing sucked a bit, but I'm sure you guys can find a solution to that in episode 4, right?

[taumel]

Yep, Bosco was good. I enjoy entering his shop. I just feel it could be a little bit more life in there sometimes. Not even japanese visit this place! And whilst we're at it, i love the normal mapping on the ice cream. Each time i see it it reminds me of a tasteful peppermint ice... :O)

As for the puzzles: Yes they are logic but they're too easy.

[Yohmi]

Just to say, I don't think the same thing but there is so many threads speaking of this, and it has already told that next episodes would be harder and harder. About the (s)wordfight, I'm happy that it don't go back when you tell something wrong. Why ? because I'm not english neither american nor any english speaking country. And if I understand most of the time, when it's time to do word associations with strange sentences, it's more difficult... and would make me angry to try randomly sentences and zap them before they end just to hope next will be the right one. If you want this part being very harder, just think taht the whole lenght of the game would prncipally depends of interrogating a thief by telling him "yo ma". We are in an episodic adventure game.
We all want longer games... but your thread is just aother "about the difficulty..." answer.
And about the nose, It's exactly the kind of funny enigmas, when you have to think of how to solve before to see it.

I really love this episode, the ambiance was so great, mafioso with teddy bears, so unpersonnal, as puppets. I love the music, a very great work about lightning, a better animation (and facial animation, like max's mouth or even his face, which is not for me ugly or something), It's the best for me, there is many improvements in it, the only deceiving thing is that it's too short... but now it's in 4/3 even if your display is on 16/10, they even cut the intro of street music ! very great

[taumel]

I'm also not a native english speaking person and i don't feel that it would add much too the difficulty for us as you remind just some keywords and not the whole sentences. The way it was done here felt incomplete and too easy and i couldn't enjoy it.

[Sir Lemming]

Why not decreasing the score if you hit a wrong one accidently? It does! Or maybe that's only after the first time you do it... I felt that part was as hard as it needed to be.

[taumel]

I played it twice and had the impression that when i first played it and cliked on anything my scores wasn't decreased. And on my second try i had 22 or 23 without any problems.

By the way i'm curious when Bosco will enter his german phase. If you need some help i'm german...bavarian! :O)

[Kord]

Hi everybody!
I just finished the game and found it to be the shortest and easiest to date. The nose puzzle wasnt hard at all, especially since the camera points right at it when you pass the entrance....
Just three new rooms was a little small.
Hope the games will be harder in the future.

Despite all of that, I am still happy those games exist.
Cheerio!

[fathamburger]

Theres a problem with making more difficult games. The reason why Adventure games fell out of popularity is because a lot of the puzzles were not logical and unnecesarily obscure, requiring certain things to trigger, walking in and out of rooms to "reset" states etc and people ended up just clicking everything on everything.

Sam and Max has the best shot of bringing adventure back into the mainstream by keeping things accessible and focused on the story and writing and bringing more potential fans into the fold that might not even know what an adventure game is.

[taumel]

That's interesting that you say so because i have no idea why they stopped making adventure games. For LucasArts i would have thought it was due to StarWars. For the other ones i think there a two reasons a) the adventures got worse and people lost interest in certain titles, b) the industry/some players didn't found them hipp anymore due to fps or whatever came up those days.

I only can speak for myself and the people i've talked about this and the only reason not to buy each adventure anymore is simply because they've released a lot of crap. Take for instance the last Broken Sword Title. What a brilliant first title and then everything got worse. I bought part 1,2 and 3 but not the last one anymore as it simply wasn't working for me in many aspects anymore and so did others.

Regarding the puzzle's difficulty i wonder why the majority on this list as well as the majority of the gamemags i've read exactly say this: That it's too easy and lacks some depth?!

A good game isn't strong in only one aspect. It has to be good on several ones and as for adventures games this strongly involves puzzles!

But there's the evidence that at least one combining puzzle might make it's way into the game as Sam&Max collect one item from each episode in their office (brady cultures' hair and a hypnotizing bear toy so far). I bet this will be needed in the final episode or even before. Hopefully not automatically as usual...

[taumel]

And refering to how logic the puzzles are.

How logic is it to alter Leonard's cheating method whilst he's still sitting at the table in the same room? In a more challenging and also more logic puzzle you would first have to distract him in order to cheat his device without that he could notice this.

Same with Sybil. Does it feel logic to take her cup of coffee away right in fornt of her without distracting her or finding a reason for her to give the cup away?

So...

There were quite a lot of adventure games beeing released the last years especially from german companies but they do all lack in the quality aspect somewhere. May it be the puzzles, the characters, dull dialogues, too short and so on.

Personally i really would prefer having one very good adventure game (a 9 or a 10) instead of dozens of okayish adventures and that's something i haven't seen since a long long time.

[Acidyl]

I have to agree. There wasn't a single hard puzzle to solve, neither was there anything really funny in ep 3.

The solutions to puzzles are to logical and therefore to easy, and there's so little new places with so little things to click, you have to have the memory of a 2-year old to not realize what to do.

Even more, all the characters point out what you have to do (spoiler: [COLOR="White"]you see leonard look up behind you towards the nose[/COLOR]), and everything is right there where you need it(spoiler:[COLOR="White"]the screwdriver is laying right next to the broken one-armed bandit, the ketchup is at bosco's since ep 1 so you know it's there.[/COLOR]

Overall, entertaining? yes. funny? wellll, somewhat maybe. Getting very close to being to short/easy for even the small amount of money it costs? definetly.

[Yohmi]

Originally Posted by taumel

And refering to how logic the puzzles are.

How logic is it to alter Leonard's cheating method whilst he's still sitting at the table in the same room? In a more challenging and also more logic puzzle you would first have to distract him in order to cheat his device without that he could notice this.

Same with Sybil. Does it feel logic to take her cup of coffee away right in fornt of her without distracting her or finding a reason for her to give the cup away?

So...

There were quite a lot of adventure games beeing released the last years especially from german companies but they do all lack in the quality aspect somewhere. May it be the puzzles, the characters, dull dialogues, too short and so on.

Personally i really would prefer having one very good adventure game (a 9 or a 10) instead of dozens of okayish adventures and that's something i haven't seen since a long long time.

I totally agree with your speech about "half enigmas", if we take Monkey Island or Broken Sword, we have to find always a wat to distract or influence people to obtain what we want.
But I think things are getting harder in next episode.

And about a single one adventure, well... the problem is that when I have one, I finish it in three days, here it's just like playing a good game every month. But only a good game, that's true, not more... a single adventure let have something I love : useless people and inventory objects. In episodic format, every single character has a role, just like it was an articulation of the mainline. But there is no really distracting and funny useless people like we have in a broken sword for example ^^

Yes, a great single adventure would be fine also... but waiting two or three years for thre days of playing... it's hard when you see what you have to wait... Runaway, beautiful, maybe great, but not really funny at all... Syberia, just booooooring... and all the myst like, I prefere to not even mention them, it's a different style. Well, I think that's also why I don't complain much about episodic format ^^

[lerenwe]

Bosco's becoming one of my favourite character!

Sacrebleu! I'm french and I don't speak like that! Sons of a cordon bleu!

Ouh lala! I've really enjoyed the jokes about french peoples, you've got a funny thought of us

Aurevoir, chers américains! (Et habitants d'autres pays!)

[numble]

lerenwe: Use the cap gun on Bosco.

[shadow9d9]

Originally Posted by fathamburger

Theres a problem with making more difficult games. The reason why Adventure games fell out of popularity is because a lot of the puzzles were not logical and unnecesarily obscure, requiring certain things to trigger, walking in and out of rooms to "reset" states etc and people ended up just clicking everything on everything.

Sam and Max has the best shot of bringing adventure back into the mainstream by keeping things accessible and focused on the story and writing and bringing more potential fans into the fold that might not even know what an adventure game is.

Sorry, but unless you have some sources I am unaware of, you are only ASSUMING why adventure games fell out of favor. There were plenty of games with logical puzzles. Why couldn't it have fallen out of favor because of better graphics and the coming of FPS popularity, online games, better graphics on consoles, etc?

Last I checked, at least 5 adventure games come out each year, which is still more than pc rpgs.

Your whole argument is based on the fallacy that you alone know why adventure games fell out of popularity.

If the future of adventure gaming is based on super easy 6 item puzzles, then I want nothing to do with it.

Btw, why has myst been so successful(1-5 which was released JUST LAST YEAR)? It is anything but simple...

Syberia brought people back to adventure games... Sam and Max(super easy and super short) is very unlikely to.

Plenty of great logical adventure games have come out since the decline in 1999 or so-

The longest journey, syberia 1-2, barrow hill, dark fall 1 and 2, runaway, return to mysterious island, voyage, agon, myst 4 and 5 etc. None of these were easy or simple or short. All did well.

[Princess_Frosty]

Probably the easiest Sam and Max episode to date, none of the puzzles required much thought at all and like has already been described, I felt it was more of just a story which required me to click a few times in order to progress.

The knock on effect of this is that the episodes become very short, only taking one or two hours to complete tops.

The number of Characters and objects in the game are way too few, this radically decreases the number of possible combinations of objects/people to complete a puzzle.

I hope to see more from the last 3 episodes, it seems obvious that there is much grander plot going on, I hope that the last episode contains all the locations from all the previous episodes with at least one main puzzle in each so the final episode is longer and harder.

I still like the series because I've paid for all the episodes, and I'm a great lover of the original, but should there be a 2nd series I think i'd avoid it unless there was the promis of much more difficult puzzles.

[shadow9d9]

"The longest journey, syberia 1-2, barrow hill, dark fall 1 and 2, runaway, return to mysterious island, voyage, agon, myst 4 and 5.
Also going to add Keepsake, Al Emmo, Ankh, Scratches, Samorost 2, The Moment of Silence, Still life, Broken sword 3 and 4, myst 3, Faust...

None of these were easy or simple or short.

How could you say there is a decline in adventure gaming with 20+ titles released with good reviews in the last 5 years or so!? Name 20+ pc rpgs with good reviews in the same time... I don't see anyone complaining about the death of them! Adventure gaming has experienced a revival and it hasn't been because of super easy gaming.

[Sir Lemming]

For the record, I still think the Indian Poker puzzle is as hard as it needs to be, but I agree that with that puzzle and the Sybil puzzle you should have to distract them first. That would add an interesting element of difficulty without making the puzzles any more obscure (because you'd at least know what to do at that point, you'd just have to figure out how to do it).

As for the idea that these games need to be this easy to be mainstream, I do think the reviews have disproven that theory. Almost every reviewer thinks the games are too easy and (therefore) too short, and that's not something that will encourage people to spend money on the episodes, is it?

[Maratanos]

Originally Posted by shadow9d9

"The longest journey, syberia 1-2, barrow hill, dark fall 1 and 2, runaway, return to mysterious island, voyage, agon, myst 4 and 5.
Also going to add Keepsake, Al Emmo, Ankh, Scratches, Samorost 2, The Moment of Silence, Still life, Broken sword 3 and 4, myst 3, Faust...

None of these were easy or simple or short.

How could you say there is a decline in adventure gaming with 20+ titles released with good reviews in the last 5 years or so!? Name 20+ pc rpgs with good reviews in the same time... I don't see anyone complaining about the death of them! Adventure gaming has experienced a revival and it hasn't been because of super easy gaming.

Originally Posted by shadow9d9

Sorry, but unless you have some sources I am unaware of, you are only ASSUMING why adventure games fell out of favor. There were plenty of games with logical puzzles. Why couldn't it have fallen out of favor because of better graphics and the coming of FPS popularity, online games, better graphics on consoles, etc?

Last I checked, at least 5 adventure games come out each year, which is still more than pc rpgs.

Your whole argument is based on the fallacy that you alone know why adventure games fell out of popularity.

If the future of adventure gaming is based on super easy 6 item puzzles, then I want nothing to do with it.

Btw, why has myst been so successful(1-5 which was released JUST LAST YEAR)? It is anything but simple...

Syberia brought people back to adventure games... Sam and Max(super easy and super short) is very unlikely to.

Plenty of great logical adventure games have come out since the decline in 1999 or so-

The longest journey, syberia 1-2, barrow hill, dark fall 1 and 2, runaway, return to mysterious island, voyage, agon, myst 4 and 5 etc. None of these were easy or simple or short. All did well.

Hooray. We're repeating ourselves...

Oh, and here's a point for you...

The Myst series has been so widely popular not because it's hard (in fact, the hardest game, Myst 4, is one of the least popular, for that very reason), but because it has, by and large, appealed to an extremely large population of people... Young, old, male, female, rich, poor, any race you like, the list goes on...

And although I really don't expect you to believe me, but that's pretty much exactly what Telltale is doing by making their games maybe a little simpler than you'd like.