Adventure Gamers - Forums

I’m just fooling around with the game. I’ve never played it before. Some good humor. Not great humor. I’ve got the wrench. And that’s just about as far as I have progressed.

I’ve got to be honest, I’m not having any fun playing this game. I know it’s been rated the “best ever” by some. And that may have been true when the game first came out.
But it is certainly not the best ever.

I think I can understand why people like this game. Particularly those who have played it over and over again. But, for someone who has never played it before, it has no appeal at all.

I will try to clunk around with the game. Don’t expect me to keep pace.

Edit: The above was probably too harsh. But it’s still true, I’m not enjoying the game. It’s hard to say why. I’ve been vocal about my dislike of retro graphics. But that doesn’t apply here because this is a retro game. The graphics are as they were originally designed. The puzzles, at least the ones I’ve solved so far seem a bit contrived. Obtuse is another word to describe them. And, being contrived, such as the wrench puzzle makes them not only frustrating, (to me,) but totally lacking in any sense of enjoyment when the puzzle is solved.

I just don’t understand why I find this game so un-enjoyable.

I made it to ground level, but poor Joey!  I guess we won’t need him as a welder anymore.

The game gets much better towards the end. Turns into a very good classic cyberpunk game.

Worth all the praise. Just stick with it. It is number 19 on the top 100 list and deserves it.

It is darkly funny at times and at others just plain strange.

I’m way behind, but feel some satisfaction that I made it out of the furnace.

Activating Joey was a real PITA. I didn’t occur to me that the game would be so pixel sensitive. And, just as I spoke of contrived puzzles earlier, getting the elevator to work for me took five tries. Two were because of the game mechanics. I.e I left clicked on the elevator rather than right clicked. And twice more because I didn’t realize that if I just waited, the transporter would eventually show up.

Saved the game here. It appears I have three Exit options. Will likely not get to explore more until Sunday.

Whatever you might be celebrating. Or if you’re not celebrating anything at all ... Have a great weekend.

chrissie - 16 April 2019 12:06 PM

I know nothing

So I went back in (and up - so I haven’t done anything on ground level yet) just to check those documents on a terminal. I have decrypted briefing and report documents and an encrypted Phoenix document, so I’ve read the first two.

TimovieMan - 14 April 2019 11:13 AM

[spoiler]He might have been right too. As long as we don’t find anything out about this Overmann, there’s still a chance we’re Overmann. Or at least our mom was, which could be why they’re looking for us.[/spoiler]

Nailed it!

Although that may have been implied early on because I seem to be under the impression that we’re Overmann since the beginning of the game (or rather since Reich was killed).

I have made it to the stopping point.

Lucky for me, the game has a built in hint system for when you get stuck. The games puzzles are more fun than difficult.

As usual, Tim’s comments are spot on, great reading.

SoccerDude - 21 April 2019 10:51 PM

The pixel sensitivity was something very common in games back then(the game dates back to 1994). For example, when we were playing Shivers, I had to click everywhere in every scene to make sure I didn’t miss an important item or clue.

I’m just playing the game in my own time. And I seem to be spending as much time with a video walkthrough as I do actually playing the game. Re: Pixel hunts: there are pixel hunts and then there are PIXEL HUNTS. A true pixel hunt, to me would be exemplified by the mural puzzle in the recent AGCPT of Post Mortem. In the case I mentioned, you can roll your cursor over the junkpile and identify where you need to place the circuit board. But not quite. Because dragging the circuit board to the location where the bull’s eye highlights isn’t good enough. It must be positioned slightly to the left and slightly lower than the target in order to activate Joey. That’s why I call it a PITA. There’s nothing in the game that tells you where you need precision as opposed to just picking up a can of WD40.

As far as a comparison to pixel hunting in Shivers, I see none. At the worst, you enter a scene and begin clicking on things, and you die ... because you accidentally clicked on a wood Ixupi while holding a wax pot.

Still, I will continue. Hope to finish. Although, I’m sure it will be far after the game has closed. But I have to say that I still don’t see how this game made it into the top 100. I’m playing the game, but am, most certainly, not enjoying the game.

Then, you might ask, why are you still playing it? My only answer is that I have given up on too many playthroughs in the past because I found the games un-enjoyable, that I am committed to finishing this one.

I’m not seeing the pixel hunting issues in this game.
Sure, we’re used to hotspot indicators and this game lacks that, but there hasn’t been a single object that I have missed so far.
Either the hotspot was at least 4 pixels in size, or it was blatantly obvious visually that something was there (like the plastic explosive).

The game even features the reverse: something that I fully expected to be a hotspot ended up NOT being one, like the red thing on the left in the very first screen of the game (right next to where you got the iron rod). That looks like a ribbon or something (seriously, what is that?) but it’s not something you can interact with…


As for why this is in the Top 100, so far it’s not really standing out for me either - just a solid game for its time. Still a lot of plot left to discover, I think, so it could still improve.

And while it’s not something that’s apparent since we’re so used to it now, the concept of having NPC’s that wander around on their own schedule (Lamb especially) was pretty novel for its time, I believe.