Way too easy for fans of the genre

Man, what a dissapointment. Each puzzle took only a maximum of two minutes to figure out, they practically tell you exactly what to do. Now I know it's episodic and the general length of the game was fine by me but if only the puzzles were a teeny bit challanging I would have rejoiced. The last Sam and Max had puzzles that took me up to three days to figure out with solutions that took much trail and error and creative 'thinking-outside-the-box' logic to it. Things with an internal logic that normally could never work but in the world of the game makes perfect sense. This was simply point A to Point B stuff. Now I know they want to draw in a fresh audience that might be turned away from any difficulty and I hope the next episode will ease into greater difficulty but to the people who actually have been waiting for this game for over a decade then it's a bummer. Maybe a difficulty setting next episode? Still made me laugh outloud though.

[Legolas813]

I totally agree. The game was near perfect except for the far too easy difficulty. It seems almost everyone who has played the game also feels the same way.

[jp-30]

Well, those who post at Adventure Games sites, perhaps. And if the Adventure genre is again going to be a viable commercial success it desperately needs to attract new players (or old players that perhaps last played an adventure around the time of Monkey 3 or Grim Fandango). You may find this thread interesting. Looks like some people are getting stuck.

It's a pretty good idea to capture a new audience and not turn them off by having them stuck hopelessly in the first episode they buy. You may have noticed the jump in difficulty between Bone 1 & 2?

I haven't had the pleasure of playing Sam & Max yet, but to me the FUN factor way overrides the puzzle difficulty. And every review I read says there is fun to be had by the bucketload! If I have fun while playing games, then the game was good. But I will concede that some people's idea of fun is beating fiendish puzzles, and beating a hard puzzle gives a certain sense of smug satisfaction.

Personally I'd be worried for Telltale if this first Sam & Max outing was making seasoned adventurers stuck. Bring in the new audience, hook them, then start ramping up the difficulty over the course of the season. Akin to the easier training level or two found at the start of most action games. Given the length of the episodes Telltale don't have that luxury within a single episode.

I'd imagine things will heat up as time goes on...

TellTale could always implement something similar to the "Mega-Monkey" mode of MI games.

PnC Adventure Game puzzles during the early 90s were just so rewarding when you finally solved them, with the actual solution seeming to be so obvious that you can't believe it took you so long to figure them out.

It wasn't that the method of solving the puzzles was complex; it was that a lot of times the solution was just crazy enough to work, such as in HtR when Max gets in the plastic fish in the World of Fish, is picked up in a helicopter, and taken to the World's Largest Ball of Twine restaurant to get 'a piece of string'.

Puzzles aren't hard, they are just challenging to your creativity.

Was I the only one who thought that CMI was waaaay too easy? (mega-monkey mode).

Right here is my take on this situation.

Ive not played it yet so I cant comment directly but as someone who has completed near all the Lucasarts old school point and click games, all of the Discworld ones and quite a few other ones here and there WITHOUT walkthroughs.
The problem with modern society is that although there are plenty of smart people out there who will find the simplicity of this game compared to hit the road a little patronising, there are a LOT of people out there are stupid. Im talking "has to take their shoes off to count past 10" stupid. I work in retail, I see it on a daily basis. There are people out there who do seem to be using 90% of their cranial capacity just to BREATHE.

Sorry to say it but its true.

[Legolas813]

I'm not saying I want to be stuck forever or that I want to use a walkthrough (because I don't). I'm just saying the puzzles could be a little more original or creative, and slightly harder and larger in number.

Well la dee da

[Jake]

While I like the occasional mind-boiling adventure game full of nearly impossible puzzles, I really really enjoy that everyone (everyone) can actually finish Sam & Max, see all the jokes, get to the end of the story, etc, without having to repeatedly put the game away for 2 weeks after getting stumped and pissed off at it, possibly never picking it up again.

I don't necessarily want a game without any challenge, so perhaps the difficulty is something to work on,

BUT

To me, graphic adventures were never about solving puzzles anyway. The puzzles were just a handy prop to hang the story and characters and other design goodies on. I think Psychonauts was everything I wanted in an adventure game, but it played like a platformer. Puzzles are just a tradition and while it's good to make the best of them, it's not what's really important here.

Can't you make a mega-monkey mode (or rampant-rabbit mode or whatever you wanna call it) in the future episodes? You can make it mad hard, so that all the hardcore adventure players get satisfied - while all those who want to finish the game quick can take the easier mode.

Lol. Thinking about the in-game description of the hardest difficulty in Civ IV: "Muuhahaha! Good luck, sucker!".

I don't necessarily want a game without any challenge, so perhaps the difficulty is something to work on,

BUT

To me, graphic adventures were never about solving puzzles anyway. The puzzles were just a handy prop to hang the story and characters and other design goodies on. I think Psychonauts was everything I wanted in an adventure game, but it played like a platformer. Puzzles are just a tradition and while it's good to make the best of them, it's not what's really important here.

I would disagree. The entire gameplay is puzzle (minus the short driving part) and if the core of the game isn't fufilling then all the frosting on the cake isn't satisfying. If i'm playing a shooter and all the enemies do is walk in a straight line, the story-line and style can be amazing but you still don't have a good shooter. So if you take away the strong point of the genre your left with somthing that won't appeal to the people that like it.

The below may comprise largely of opinion:

Yes, the puzzles are what makes up most of the gameplay, but they're not the things that make it an adventure game.

I play a shooting game because I feel an urge to blast stuff, and I play a RTS game because I feel an urge to use my brain to blast stuff. I play an adventure game because I feel the urge to lose myself in a story for a while. If it's puzzles that provide the mechanism for that, fine, but if not then at long as it provides me with a story a character focused experience that I've come to expect from adventures, I don't see what I'm missing.

The fact is, as gameplay, adventure puzzles historically aren't even that fun. Maybe two thirds or more of puzzles in adventure games are either easy enough to get right away or so hard that most people use a walkthrough to get past it. The remaining third are subtle ones that you might wonder about for a little while and then actually work out. If the puzzles were what really mattered I would have given up on adventures long, long ago. The FUN part about solving puzzles is being able to progress that little bit further in the story.

The progression of the story should be a reward for doing somthing though. If I'm playing a action game or and RPG and I defeat a boss, I get rewarded with a cutscene and maybe a weapon. You get such a better feeling when you think you diserve the progression of the story. I absolutly love the feeling of somthing clicking in your brain when your stumped when you finally understand how somthing can be solved. In Culture Shock, I had a bit of a "well duh" feeling as the game attempted to reward my solution.

[Udvarnoky]

Puzzles are just a tradition and while it's good to make the best of them, it's not what's really important here.

I think you're more right than a lot of people want to believe.

I'm a hardcore gamer, but I don't play a lot of adventure games. I'm not a fan of the slow pace or getting stuck in an adventure game. The getting stuck part makes the slow pace of most adventure games unbearable.

I thought the difficulty of Sam and Max was spot on. It was hard at places (I was starting to feel frustrated while breaking the hypnosis), but in general I felt like it flowed well. I did it all in one sitting (took me 4 or 5 hours), but near the end I felt like putting the game down (like I said, I'm not a fan of adventure games, but this one was one of the best I've played). The only thing that kept me going was the fact that if I finished this episode I'd be ready to start on the next. So if the game were more difficult, I would have probably started getting behind in episodes (and based on my experience of the episodic content of Wing Commander: Secret Ops, I know that ultimately means not finishing the series [I haven't finished WC:Secret Ops after almost 8 years])

I'll definately pick up the next episode (Thank God for Gametap!).

All other games have difficulty levels, why can't Sam & Max have it?

Some people are hardcore gamers, and they play their first person shooter games at the "nightmare" difficulty, while other unexperienced gamers choses to play with less enemies etc. It's natural in all other genres except the adventure genre.

I want mega-monkey.

[Legolas813]

How often do adventure games have difficulty levels? Almost never. I don't think it would be an easy or necessary thing to accomplish.

how about some kind of hidden location, that can only be accessed with some difficult puzzle solving.. casual gamers can ignore it.. the rest can try and find it..

How often do adventure games have difficulty levels? Almost never. I don't think it would be an easy or necessary thing to accomplish.

Monkey Island II and III had it.

It's necessary because it's the only way to please hardcore adventure gamers AND people who just want to have a good story. Otherwise, you must chose one of them, and lose the other one.