Let's Play... Simon the Sorcerer 3D

[coolsome]

I like pie!

[Darth Marsden]

Cheers guys.

OK, so now we have our sprite-in-a-lantern, let's go show it to the guy at the Wizard Academy or whatever.



Now all that remains is for Simon to take the TEST (yes, that's how it's spelt).



You and me both.

The hall then fades away and is replaced with this:



It's animated so the lines move away from the camera, like we're in a tunnel or something. It's possibly the most impressive visual effect the game's done so far.

And it's a rip-off from TRON.

*sigh*



Another typo. "for the what"? Oops.



Oh, right. Let's hear it then.



...and Simon's just farted. Because the game's run out of 'dark' humour and decided to go for 'toilet' instead. Charming.



Oh you're KIDDING. Simon's farting screwed up the magic test? Sweet heavenly maker...



I think that was supposed to be subversive or something. Ugh.



Oh, fucking FINALLY. It's only been three sodding games before we actually get to do some proper magic (unless you count the god-awful Hush Puppies puzzle from the second game).

So, what do we get to do? Fire magic? Ice magic?



Fashion magic.

Fucking FASHION magic.

Just... great.



Yes. ME.

So, we can now cast Fashion Magic. What spells does it have?



...

OK. Let me explain how this works then.

Basically, when we cast a spell, we can choose to say three different words, each one for a different colour. We can choose between Red, Yellow and Blue. When we cast magic, we can say any combination of these words - say, Red and Blue - and then the end result is...



Yep, we can now change the colour of our clothes. Whoop-de-fucking-do.

So, naturally, I do this:



BLACK LIKE HIS SOUL.

(Also it's by far the best looking colour)

Anyway. We're a Wizard Harry so let's get into that Wizards-Only club and find the guy who can forge us some papers.



Oh, right - it's still night. Oops.



That's better. NOW let's get in there.



And here we are.

I'm not going to show you the puzzle here, but I will describe it, since it's rather fiddly and I'd like you all to hear about it.

So obviously the Wizard isn't here. If we talk to that face just to the right of Simon's hat, it tells us that Porkins (the name of the Wizard) is in the <INSERT COLOUR HERE> room.

In order to get to the <INSERT COLOUR HERE> room, we need to light up the appropriate colours on the buttons Simon's almost standing on, and then enter the tube on the left. The room's exactly the same as this one, only it's got a different coloured light on.

When we get to the <INSERT COLOUR HERE> room though, Porkins isn't there either. If we talk to the face on the wall, it says Porkins just left for the white room (which is the one shown in the image).

We can go back and forth between the two rooms and never catch Porkins (he always goes to the same colour room), so the solution is to simply go to the same coloured room as the one you're in.

In this case, Porkins kept going between the blue room and the white one. So, while in the blue room, we just try to go to the blue room again and...



Gotcha.

Oh wait - it's THAT GUY! Oh, I do hope he makes Simon suffer some more!



WEAK.

Wait - normally wouldn't be a problem?



OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE. Isn't ANYTHING simple in this game?



Yes, it is rather.

So we need to go find his sodding quill. Fantastic.

Now there's one area of the map I haven't shown yet (well, three technically, but only one's relevant right now), and that's the 'bad' part of town.



It's basically just a back alley with slightly less desirable types in it.

(Also, check out the robes. You can actually see them properly now and everything. Man, black is coooool.)

Anyway. First up is getting in.



Oh, and picking up a black cat. Because, y'know, why the hell not.

You can also look at the cat and Simon will do a terrible Cartman 'NO KITTY IS A BAD KITTY' bit. I could do it better, to be frank, though it is a bit more timely a joke than the fucking Pizzarina.

Right. Now our actual entrance into the alley proper is blocked by this thing:



It's a dog with wheels instead of rear legs.

...eh, whatever.

If we look in the dumpster just to the left of him, however, we find...



...an old shoe! Which we can promptly give to the dog.




We're left with just the shoelace after that, which I'm sure will in no way be needed at all.

Anyway. We now have access to the path beyond. Oh, what wonders await?

[coolsome]

You seem to be hardened to him doing stuff like putting a disabled dog in a bin.

[Darth Marsden]

It's one of his lesser crimes, to be honest. I was more surprised I didn't have to lace the shoe with poison or something, since that seems to be more the games style. Guess I lucked out.

[Darth Marsden]

...and we're back.

So beyond the dog is these two kids. They actually have quite a bit of background dialogue - it lasts for a good 4 minutes before it starts looping.

They don't really have anything useful to say to Simon though, beyond calling him a girl.

Y'know, 'cause of the robe.

...

Let's check out the other path.



The only thing of interest is this manhole. We might as well go down it.

(Note the clipping issue in Simon's back!)




That plank is incredibly fiddly to walk across, for the record.

But anyway. We have ourselves a door. For some bizarre reason, Simon decides to knock rather than just barge in like he normally does.

Anyway. We knock on the door.



Ah, balls.

And right on cue, the fairy godmother appears to tell us how to knock.

It's not hitting ACTION, is it?



Huh. Apparently I'm psychic now.

Let me try this out.

*hmmmmmmmmmmm*

I predict that once I find out the password it's going to be impossible to enter because the game is so poorly coded.

Let's see if I'm right.



Predictably enough, the street urchins know the password, and they'll only tell us if we provide them a better game to play than football (or, if you're American and WRONG: Soccer). The only condition is it has to use the ball they've got.

The answer is actually fairly clever. What other sports are there that use a football (an ENGLISH football) sized ball?

Basketball?

Yep.



Hmm... I wonder...



I'd like to point out that at this point my inventory has over 30 items in it, which stretches out to four pages. It makes the 'cycle inventory' key rather useless.



Strange how the hole seems to have moved somewhat to form an almost perfect basketball hoop, isn't it?

Anyway, that's enough for the kids, and they give Simon the password.



For those not in the know, it's basically this football(!) chant, familiar to all football(!) fans.

Let's go and knock that on the door then!



Oh look. I WAS RIGHT.

The problem here is that you have to be VERY quick with this. If you're not perfect with your entry, or you wait a split-second too long, Simon will declare that you've entered the wrong password.

Here's the problem. The urchin's delivery of the password was slower than the one you heard in the video, so naturally you think to imitate him.

Turns out that's the wrong thing to do. You have to imitate the speed of the chant that was in the video. You have to hit ACTION once, then wait a fraction of a second, then hit it again, fraction of a second, then hit it three times extremely quickly, fraction of a second, four times quickly, fraction of a second, and finally hit it twice more.

It took me a good damn while to realize this, and even then it was hard to get the timing just right. Bear in mind that I didn't have the video to use as a reference, just the urchin's interpretation (which, again, was about half the speed of the one you heard in the video).

Not the first time the game's screwed me over by not properly explaining things, and it won't be the last either.

Seriously - I got so frustrated I thought the game was bugged!



Anyway. When we get it right we're magically transported (via a sudden cut) to inside the room. The only thing of interest is these two who are playing conkers.

The kid on the right (the one in the dorky outfit) is the one with the quill we need, and we can only get it back by challenging and beating him at a game of conkers. One problem - we don't have any conkers.

...so let's go find some.



This is a tree in the church, which is one of the locations I've skipped over 'til now. We can't enter the church (though we can get onto its roof later), but for now we just need the tree.

As you can (just about) see, it's got conkers growing in it. Well, horse chestnuts actually, but eh, same thing. Sort of.

Since Simon's far too lazy to just reach up and grab some, we'll have to knock some down. This sounds like a job...



...for HAMMOR!



Surprisingly, the animation for this wasn't as terrible as the time we whacked the bell with the gnome in it. Heaven preserve us.

Anyway. We now have some horse chestnuts.

We can't just go back and use one yet though, oh no. We have to put a string in one of them. And for that, we need something pointy to make a hole in them.

Like...

...a dart?



Yup, that'd do the job nicely. Only problem is, the goblin won't let us have one. So we're gonna have to steal one.

First, we head up to our room and climb out onto the roof.



Ah yes, there's that chimney. Maybe if we put something over it?



Like, say, the blanket from Simon's bed that I never mentioned we had because I didn't even realize Simon had picked it up until about an hour afterwards?



Yes, apparently.



And since the room's so foggy, the goblin opens the window. Time to be a dick again.



We challenge the goblin to a game of darts and aim well above the dartboard so the dart flies through the now open window.



As a result, the dart's now stuck in the wall outside the inn. We can go and pick it up now.

Once we do that, we use it with the chestnuts to put a hole in all of them. And just in case you don't know the best way of making a good 'conker' (which I didn't, and I'm willing to bet you didn't either), the game thoughtfully provides the methods in the item's description.



Like so. If your memory's good, you can probably remember where we can do two of those three, but the third... that'll be another new place.

Next time on Game Grumps Simon the Sorcerer 3D: We play conkers. Badly.

[Secret Fawful]

Sorry, Marsbar, but everything Simon does you're just as accountable for. I have called the authorities and they will be by to collect your carcass shortly.

[Darth Marsden]

But... it's not my fault! The game made me do it! I PLEAD THE FIFTH!

[Alcoremortis]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

But... it's not my fault! The game made me do it! I PLEAD THE FIFTH!

It's too late to plead the fifth because you've already confessed!

[Darth Marsden]

...well, bugger. Will you guys visit me in prison?

[Alcoremortis]

We'll bring you a computer so you can finish Simon the Sorcerer.

[der_ketzer]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

...well, bugger. Will you guys visit me in prison?

Every day.

[flesk]

We'll even bring you hookers for conjugal visits. Just pull through and finish this let's play.

[Darth Marsden]

Dawww. I love you too, guys.

OK, so a quick reminder of what we were doing:



Yeah, that's what SHE said.

...ahem.

We'll get the two we've been before out of the way first.



Vinegar's at MucSwampys. It's the sachets on the counter that we couldn't pick up.



Baking's back in the Beer Garden at the inn. It's the BBQ where we picked up the tongs (which we haven't actually used yet!).

Now for the varnishing. This requires us to go to another new location in town.

The reason I haven't shown it before is twofold.

1) It's not been needed before.

2) It's kind of out of the way.

It's basically to the right of the Sheriff's Office, and the path's really quite small.



Yeah, it's to the right of the houses with the graphical glitches. If we go down there, we find...



...a door that doesn't lead anywhere (YET), a shed of some sort we can't interact with, and a small can next to the shed. The can's full of...



And with that, we've made our conker as strong as it can be. We just tie it up with the shoelace and we're good to go.

So we head back down the sewer (the game thankfully doesn't make us do the secret password thing again, thanks Christ) and challenge the odd-looking kid to a game of conkers for the quill.



Here we go. Pointless minigame time!



And here it is.

The premise behind conkers, if you don't know it, is fairly simple. You just take it in turns whacking each others conkers until one of them breaks. That'd be the loser.

If you'd imagine that makes it rather random, then...

...well, yeah, it is.

There's things you can do to strengthen your conker - the three which we've already done are the traditional methods of making your conker stronger - but beyond that, there's not much skill involved.

And, naturally, that's nicely reflected in this minigame.



Here's what happens when you lose. The first time I played, he did this to me on his third hit, which was bullshit.

I tried this game about four times before I finally won, and I still think it was blind luck that was responsible.

It's a little hard to see in that picture, but if you look at HIS conker, you can see a large chunk missing. In my winning game, I just kept hitting that spot until his conker blew up like mine has. It took six smacks, so quite how mine survived longer than his is anyone's guess.



For the record, if you lose, then naturally you lose your conker and have to make another. YOu don't have to go traipsing all over with another horse chestnut, thankfully - you have more in your inventory, and the hardening effects applies to all of them - but you do need to re-string the shoelace through them to get another one ready.

But who cares about that - we won! So now we've got the quill. Let's go give it to the other wizard.



Once we've caught up to him again, of course. Thankfully this time I'm smart enough to ensure we find him in the white room so we can actually see what's going on.



And in return for the quill, we now have our 'official' papers. Lovely.

Let's give 'em to the goblins, shall we?



One other distracting thing (other than recognising one of the voice actors again, since she voices one of the football kids as well) is the fact that there's no mouth animation on the goblins when I first talk to them here. It returns after I show them the papers, but before that their heads just sort of moved around a bit. Very poor show indeed.

ANYWAY. We ask them to open the gates for us.



Oh, what fresh level of hell are you going to send me through to appease you now?



...say what?



...what the hell is a Rainbird?



Oh. Well, that could be useful.

...what do they want for it?



I'm probably going to regret this, aren't I.

(Also, I just love that facial expression the goblin on the left's got. It's like pausing a movie the exact second the main actor blinks)



They take a few items, though the game doesn't tell us exactly what.

All they say is:



Actually, that's extremely handy, since this is the sort of adventure game where you don't automatically lose items once they've outlived their usefulness - they just clog up your inventory.



As you probably guessed from that, this has happened before. Twice in the second game, IIRC.



This is the Rainbird Horn. We use it, much like the Pizzarina, to call the bird for a lift.

The rules for using it are fairly simple - only use it outdoors, don't try to go anywhere dangerous, and you can only land on special squares that look like larger versions of the life pads from earlier.

(Rather amusingly, the fairy godmother appears to tell you all this RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE GOBLINS. And, typically, they don't even react to it)



I wasn't going to feature the fairy godmother any more (since I do her job far better than she does), but there's something she says here that bears closer analysis.

When she refers to the controls for the Rainbird, you may have noticed that she doesn't refer to the ACTION key - she instead says the actual button on the keyboard, the CTRL key.

This is the first and only time she does this.

OOPS.

I'll admit, it's useful to have her actually say the keyboard commands, but it's out of character and contrary to what she's said before and will indeed say in future.

And yes, I know this isn't the biggest issue in the world, but it's a fuck up and goddamnit, if I'm going to point out one typo then you can be damn well sure I want THIS recognised!

...right. Let's use this Rainbird then.



GAH! WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?



Oh, it's the Rainbird. Right.

Well, welcome to the world map. Guess what? IT SUCKS.

The Rainbird is actually rather fiddly to control. It uses the standard movement controls, but as you can see, when you turn the damn thing banks into the turn, so it's easy for your spatial awareness to get completely screwed up, especially if you have to do a 180.

It also doesn't help that the layout of the world doesn't quite match the way we've been running through it on foot. The gnome flinging contest is shown on this map, for instance, when it actually mysteriously vanished after we won it. Something else also shows up on this map that hasn't actually appeared there yet (at least I don't THINK it does), so that's confusing as well.

Finally, it doesn't help matters at all that the Rainbird will get stuck on things from the map that are too tall, meaning you have to do an (already established as confusing) 180 to break free.

It's shocking how badly designed this is when the basic 2D maps we used in each individual area were so much easier to use. It's another example of "we've got a 3D engine so make EVERYTHING in it!", and wjile it's not the biggest problem I have with the game, it's still frustrating.

Eventually I manage to overcome all the terrible design decisions and figure out where the swamp is.



Oh, I do hope I don't have to do anything horrible to anyone here.

(We're SO going to.)

[Darth Marsden]

...and we're back.

Right. Where were we?



Oh yes, the swamp. (Notice how, despite me changing the colour of Simon's robe, the rim of his hat is currently yellow. It does this occasionally in cutscenes - lazy programming, methinks.)

Unfortunately the swamp doesn't have a map, so I can't show you an overview of everything that we'll be visiting right now. It's not a huge map though (for once), so it shouldn't be that major an issue.

To start with, there's not a particularly large area we can explore.



That's why.

No, not the alligator - the WATER. Simon won't go in it, and to be perfectly honest I don't blame him.

In the area that we CAN explore, we have this:



Since it may not be entirely clear, let me tell you what's in the shot.

Just to the left of Simon's head are some vines attached to a wall. We can climb up those.

Just to the right of Simon's head is an axeman cutting down a tree. The bright thing on said tree is a beehive.

Can you guess what we're going to have to do?



If you guessed we'd climb the vines, then duh. No shit, Sherlock.

What I mean is: what ELSE do is the game going to make us do? Remember, the game's made us do some pretty terrible things so far.



If you guessed that we'd have to knock the beehive onto the axeman, then...



...well, that about says it all really, doesn't it.

He throws the beehive on the ground next to his axe and runs off screaming.

Aren't we proud of ourselves?



Oh, that's BULLSHIT and you KNOW it, Simon.

Right. So we pick up the axe. We can then use it to cut the vines. We can only do this from the top of them, so we have to climb back up and do it.



Oh, brilliant. We've only gone and broken the bloody thing. Well done.

Now that we've cut down the vines, we can't actually climb back down, despite the ledge we're on now only being about as high as Simon himself and therefore quite easy to just jump down from. Sigh.

The ledge does lead to another path though. One with a warning sign.



Does this mean Simon might die horribly? Let's hope so!

So we head on towards the quicksand when this little guy appears.



We can't quite understand him, but apparently he wants Simon to follow him across the quicksand.



So we do, the camera rather awkwardly changing to this overhead view as we do.

The problem with the camera being HERE is that it has to move as we head further across the quicksand. It's rather awkward.

Anyway. The little creature makes a series of jumps to points ahead of us, and we have to walk from each of these points to the next in a straight line. If we do so, we'll get across safely.

Unfortunately (or not, depending on how you view what's about to happen) the game's quite strict about what constitutes a straight line, and if you get it wrong...



It's quicksand, Simon. You know that - you read a bloody great sign on your way to it.



Are you now? Well, good. Can't say you don't deserve it.



And with that, Simon dies. Slowly, painfully and horrifically.

...



(visual pun FTW!)



Oh, right. There was a life pad. Bah!

This really did take me quite a few goes to finish (though the sight of Simon dying horribly did make it somewhat bearable), though I did eventually get across.

When we do, we end up back near the crocodile.

And so, since we now have the stick from the axe (as well as the axe head, I suppose), we do the most natural thing that comes to mind.



Now, if we combine the croc with the vines we cut down earlier, we get...



Yup, a way across the swamp.

I'd be annoyed at how Simon did this without any prompting or hints to suggest that this is what he should do, but eh, I'm kinda numb to the madness by this point.

Anyway. We can now ride over to a couple of further areas. We'll go with this one first:



As always, long story short. That's a princess, and her hamster Sir Squeaksalot is stuck up a tree.

Well, we just knocked ONE thing out of a tree - let's make it two for two.



Piece of piss. Now let's go get the git...



Oh. Oh bugger. We'd... we'd better get after him then.



Oh, there he is. Blimey, he went pretty far. Well, let's get him home then.



Don't say that.

Don't EVER say that.




Oh, Simon. Will you EVER stop killing innocent creatures?



Yeah, because THAT'S the most important thing here, isn't it.

Would appreciate a few responses guys, got a LOT of images on this page.

[Syd]

I think we should get a kill count going for Simon. It looks like he's already shaping up to be quite the mass murderer.

[WarpSpeed]

Did it give any hints on why we should be helping this princess who hangs out in swamps in the first place?

[Darth Marsden]

Originally Posted by Syd

I think we should get a kill count going for Simon. It looks like he's already shaping up to be quite the mass murderer.

Check my sig. We're up to 4 now.

Originally Posted by WarpSpeed

Did it give any hints on why we should be helping this princess who hangs out in swamps in the first place?

Only that she'd have my head cut off if I didn't help her.

[der_ketzer]

Originally Posted by Darth Marsden

Only that she'd have my head cut off if I didn't help her.

Don't help her then. End this nightmare now. Do it for all of us. He'll kill us. He'll kill us all!

[Darth Marsden]

Oh I would, but every time Simon dies, he always respawns at one of those life pads. Bah!

(Fun fact: one of the later puzzles actually forces you to get Simon killed. It's glorious.)

[der_ketzer]

Well I can't wait!
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