Adventure Gamers - Forums

Tenebra - 18 July 2022 04:03 AM

Now my interest has grown.

“Change your perspective, see things in a different light”. 
“It’s a game about the world and trying to understand it.” Ok, these last words are from the game designer’s own mouth talking about his own game, so they should be taken with a degree of skepticism but they still sound profound. I googled Moriaty and The Witness and found something about the secret of Psalm 46.

The lecture about the secret of Psalm 46 is one of his best lectures. IMO. His Infocom games will always be in my Text Adventure Top Twenty, especially Trinity. But he’s best known for Loom.

BTW my recent avatars and sigs are from The Witness. If you get to play it please post your opinion of the game? I’d be interested.

Charophycean - 18 July 2022 05:05 AM

Tenebra - 18 July 2022 04:03 AM

Charophycean - 18 July 2022 01:05 AM

I’ve listened to a few friends talk about Disco Elysium and got the impression it falls into the “weird for the sake of weird” category. I’m willing to be wrong about that if it’s a really good game. I’m not too enthused about hopeless and oppressive atmospheres unless they’re used for higher ends, I just don’t enjoy them as much as I used to.

Hmm for now it’s hard for me to give an founded opinion on whether it’s weird just for being weird, I don’t have that impression yet, I do think it’s innovative for example I must pay attention to the character’s morals and how this can be affected by our decisions or about accepting or rejecting/ignoring the skills that speak to us. There is also a philosophical and political component I might add.

There is an oppressive and hopeless atmosphere that I don’t think will change during the game. What do you mean by higher ends?

 

Well, I used to believe that the universe was just like that - hopeless, oppressive. So anything that reflected that appealed to me, games, movies, music. Now I’m more of the view it’s not like that, that was just a view I had, so such media doesn’t appeal to me so much. But if a game uses an oppressive atmosphere to, say, demonstrate something to the player, and not simply be hopeless for its own sake, then that’s fine. A game like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream did something like that.

@Tenebra and Charo: I usually don’t like games or movies that advertise ‘dark gritty realism’ as a selling point, largely because I’ve realized that reality is usually not very gritty at all, and *never* as ‘dark and gritty’ as the piece of media pretends that it is. For this reason, I was very tentative about Disco Elysium. Didn’t matter; I loved it.

Karlok - 18 July 2022 10:03 AM

The lecture about the secret of Psalm 46 is one of his best lectures. IMO. His Infocom games will always be in my Text Adventure Top Twenty, especially Trinity. But he’s best known for Loom.

BTW my recent avatars and sigs are from The Witness. If you get to play it please post your opinion of the game? I’d be interested.

I know him from Loom. When I googled it I found a video of a lecture surely the one you are talking about and another one about “Psalm 46 and The Witness”, I watched a few minutes of the latter but then stopped for fear of a spoiler.

I will.

Charophycean - 18 July 2022 05:05 AM

Well, I used to believe that the universe was just like that - hopeless, oppressive. So anything that reflected that appealed to me, games, movies, music. Now I’m more of the view it’s not like that, that was just a view I had, so such media doesn’t appeal to me so much. But if a game uses an oppressive atmosphere to, say, demonstrate something to the player, and not simply be hopeless for its own sake, then that’s fine. A game like I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream did something like that.

Baron_Blubba - 18 July 2022 12:41 PM

@Tenebra and Charo: I usually don’t like games or movies that advertise ‘dark gritty realism’ as a selling point, largely because I’ve realized that reality is usually not very gritty at all, and *never* as ‘dark and gritty’ as the piece of media pretends that it is. For this reason, I was very tentative about Disco Elysium. Didn’t matter; I loved it.

It is understood.

The “reality” is neither too gloomy nor too cheerful, neither one thing nor the other. I guess it is somewhere in the middle and I say guess because it will always be conditioned by our own experiences and subjective perceptions. It is our vision that matters and that is and will always be our real world. So personally I tend to be drawn to games and/or movies like the one captured in this game which speaks to my own current perception.

I don’t know how Disco will use this atmosphere, I’ll see.
I have no mouth is a very good game, I enjoyed it very much.

mrpmosh - 18 July 2022 02:23 PM

Companions of Xanth. Don’t know why I skipped this one for so long. It’s a charming fantasy adventure full of dad jokes. Really enjoying it so far.

That looks fun. I really want to try more Legend games. No recommendation bombardments needed—I know exactly what I’m missing out on.

Baron_Blubba - 18 July 2022 05:52 PM

mrpmosh - 18 July 2022 02:23 PM

Companions of Xanth. Don’t know why I skipped this one for so long. It’s a charming fantasy adventure full of dad jokes. Really enjoying it so far.

That looks fun. I really want to try more Legend games. No recommendation bombardments needed—I know exactly what I’m missing out on.

I stopped playing that game at specific point because I got some really creepy vibes. I remember distinctly it was just past the door ajar.

Been going through some of the highly rated games on the site I’ve overlooked, and have been pleasantly surprised by two I took the opportunity to nab at heavy discounts.

Relicta is very much in the mode of Portal and The Talos Principle. The physics themes here are magnetism and gravity. All puzzles revolve around the ability (via special gloves) to invert magnetic and gravitational fields of boxes and special pads, in order to trigger exit gates and move on. It does have a story, but really doesn’t need one since the game rides totally on the puzzles. So far it’s keeping my interest, as long as I play in short bursts. For a few dollars, not a bad deal.

Lacuna, billed as a sci-fi noir detective game wasn’t something I thought I would like. For one, I’m not into noir, and I thought the game would be mostly walking and talking and not much detecting. Well, after a few hours with Lacuna I’m still not into noir, even though the story manages to be interesting and suspenseful enough. There’s also lots of walking and talking. The detecting, however, is very solid. Making deductions by going over clues and dialogues with a fine tooth comb - that’s what I want in a detective game. It also doesn’t always demand you figure out things right away. You can often submit “sheets” (the game’s version of quizzes) while the story’s progressing. I like this system a lot, and I like how Lacuna treats the player as intelligent enough to figure out things on their own.

What a fantastic game Norco is. Feels like I’m playing a long lost Legend Entertainment game from the 90s. A touch light on the challenge side of things, but I’m only just past Act 2 and it’s still the most enjoyable thing I’ve played all year.

I’m playing in expert mode and it removes the text highlighting, but curiously not the passcode solutions underneath the keypads. Very odd.

Having completed the digitisation of my record collection I’ve now been able to return to playing some games.

I had started Syberia - The World Before but hadn’t gotten very far as I detest being told when I can save, albeit automatically. I’m in agreement with what others have said elsewhere in that there’s little game play, graphics are beautiful and the story is enjoyable. Just gone into the past at the Refuge.

As it was a Kickstarter I’d backed started Whateverland. Like the graphics, the characters, the story. The puzzles seem sound so far. But! There’s a mini-game, which, to be fair, was told about in the Kickstarter campaign, but it’s badly explained (developers have accepted this and are apparently doing something about it) and is everywhere   There’s one game to be played against everyone that you have to interact with. Since I couldn’t get any of my pieces to do anything I’ve dropped Whateverland for the time being. I know you can skip them via balls of red thread but that’s not the point. I will go back to it though.

The Excavation Of Hob’s Barrow is one of only 3 games I’ve ever wish-listed on Steam and I bought it first day of release. Thoroughly enjoying it so far. Just past the point where I’ve actually been to Hob’s Barrow. Only criticism is some of the accents used by the actors which, otherwise, is top notch. The “locals” accents are very caricaturised which is odd since Cloak & Dagger Games are British so I suspect that it’s the work of Wadjet Eye. It doesn’t detract but could have been more engaging. Very good game though and I well recommend it.

Jabod - 08 October 2022 08:25 AM

Having completed the digitisation of my record collection I’ve now been able to return to playing some games.

I’ll comment on the other stuff later. But you deserve kudos for completing this task. I tried it. Have around 1K vinyl albums. They take up a lot of space. My wife bought me a turntable designed for the digitization process. Computer hook-ups and software installation went well. And then I realized the real problems. One, the digitalization was going to take place in “real time!” So, for every LP I was recording, I would probably be spending an equivalent amount of time monitoring/tweaking/labeling/et al each and every one of the 1K+ albums. And two, because this was before the era of dirt-cheap SSDs, I had no concepts of what it would cost to save those digital audio images. I think I was about 40 albums into the project when I gave up. Not that it’s a great solution, but I figured the cost of my time, storage, etc., I might be better off just purchasing, when available, CDs of all my records. Most are in the bargain bins by now. So it wasn’t that big a hit. And, for those that could not be replicated, I can digitalize them. Surprisingly out of the 1K+ albums, only 28 could not be found on CD.

Tim, to avoid thread pollution I’ve started a new topic in chat and responded there