Adventure Gamers - Forums

I certainly don’t deserve any credit for participating in the Community Playthrough. Although I enjoyed the opportunity to make a comment here and there.

This game has always been in my Top-Ten forever. If you don’t believe me, go to the archives and check it out.

As has another of my Top-Ten games, Freddy Pharkus, Frontier Pharmacist.

Although it may be too early for another Josh Mandel game, I suggest the above be put on the back burner for another Community Playthrough.

The good news is that you can purchase it pre-configured for DosBox.

As an observer, I think this was the best Playthrough ever.

I haven’t finished the last episode yet, but I hope to get to it this weekend.

Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon - 4.5 / 5

An ensemble of great characters in the punniest game ever made!

The Good:
- Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon provides a nice introduction to the world of Spider Robinson’s book series, without you needing to have prior knowledge of the books’ content. And that’s a good thing because I only know of his books because of the game.
- Spider Robinson’s folk songs that were written specifically for this game are really fun. I listened to them occasionaly during the game.
- The graphics in the game still hold up, which is no mean feat for a game that was released back in 1997. The characters and backgrounds are both clear and pretty realistically portrayed. The game also features a couple of cool cutscenes.
- Voice acting in the game is good all-round. The voices match the characters, and the acting is never bad. In fact, at times the acting really stands out (but more on that under ‘The Great’).
- The stories in the game are really good and diverse. You go to wildly varying locations, sometimes even in different eras. A couple of the stories surpass the others (Al Phee’s, Pyotr’s and especially Josie’s story) and could very well be included amongst ‘The Great’ in this listy review.
- The game has a pretty well-balanced difficulty throughout. Apart from a couple of hard wordplay puzzles, most of the puzzles in the game will be solved without trial-and-error, without having you completely stumped, but also without ever feeling like a walk in the park.
- Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon is a really lengthy game. You easily net 30 hours of gaming with it, yet it never drags. A lot of the time spent in the game is spent reading all the descriptions and puns, but that’s a good thing. In fact it was refreshing having to read this much in a game again.

The Great:
- Most of the main characters are very likeable. Doc, Noah and Josie are people you really would like to get to know in real life (which is a credit to both Spider Robinson’s writings and Josh Mandel’s adaptation). But above all: Jake Stonebender, the character you play as throughout the game, is one of the best-written characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of watching/playing. The guy is simply loveable, with a great personality, and he’s been given a LOT of depth. This game manages - in a time span of about 30 hours - to make Jake Stonebender feel like family.
- Not only the main characters are well-written: this game also has a couple of really memorable minor characters. After you’ve finished this game, you’ll frequently think back at Guzman (the funny/creepy pilot), Pyotr’s drier-than-the-desert butler, the old gypsy woman, not one but two hilariously uncooperative receptionists/secretaries, the insanely intimidating Dr. Dupliscidus, etc. The game is just filled with distinctive parts and moments.
- The game has an extreme level of interactivity. Every single screen is just brimming with interactive hotspots, most of which have multiple actions that can be performed (all of which have their own separate description or even series of descriptions). You’ll be clicking on everything, trying everything with everything, just to see what the description in the game will be. You’ll even be doing more of this than you’ll be actually advancing the story. And the most important aspect of this interactivity is:
- The puns! The puns! Practically every single action in the game is accompanied by a pun. Sometimes dialogues (d)evolve into a salvo of puns. Everywhere, *anywhere* you click, you’ll have a pun thrown at you. And not just that, but they will consistently be funny. You basically will be smiling and laughing your way through the entire game, which is exactly why having hundreds of clickable hotspots is so time consuming: you won’t want to miss a single joke in this game! I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that was this funny *all the time*. And even if the odd joke misses the mark, the game is fully self-aware of its punny nature and will pretty much mock its own type of humour at every opportunity. Laughing out loud every couple of minutes is not something that’s out of the ordinary with this game - it’s a true triumph of comedy!
- Josie’s story contains a section where you have to make chocolate, starting with some cacao beans and using nothing but a vague recipe in a brochure and some medieval equipment. For me personally, the entire chocolate-making puzzle is one of the very best puzzles the adventure genre has ever produced: it’s logical, you get a rough guideline to help you (so you at least know what you’re supposed to do and you’re never really stuck), it takes quite a few steps to complete (none of which are obtuse - so it’s complex, but perfectly doable), some parts have a very clever (and not too obvious) solution, and the entire thing is even educational because it depicts how you really make chocolate. Going over all these steps will make you crave chocolate, so you could even say that this part of the game turns into a sensory experience…
- Squish’s story ends with one of the best visual gags ever in a game, proving that not all the humour in this masterpiece comes from puns.
- There is a single moment where the tone of the game changes, and it’s handled brilliantly. In a game that relies on comedy for just about everything, they managed to sneak in this subdued and effective moment that packs an enormous emotional wallop. It completely blindsided me and the power of its writing (and accompanying voice acting) made me shed a tear. This one moment presses home the depth of the characters and the humanity of Callahan’s Place and it’ll linger in the back of your head…

...to be continued…

...continuing…

The Bad:
- Some of the music gets repetitive after a while (especially in rooms with hundreds of hotspot interactions to read). This is noticeable the most during Pyotr’s story - coincidentally the story with the most interactivity and the longest periods of time spent at the same screens.
- There is an overreliance on wordplay puzzles that can sometimes be quite difficult for younger players, or for non-native (American) English speakers.
- Al Phee’s story contains a couple of very minor text display bugs. Absolutely nothing to fret over, though.

That’s pretty much it.

The game is just great. It’s a tribute to camaraderie that’ll leave you thinking about human nature while having you laugh your heart out. Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon is not just one of the funniest games I’ve ever played, it’s also one of the very best!





I really wanted to give this 5 stars, but for some reason I can’t bring myself to it. Maybe it’s the fact that Ralph’s story and Parabolus’ story (the last two we played) were the “weaker” (if you can call them that) stories in the game. Plus, I’ve always used the “when in doubt, pick the lowest rating” motto.
It still puts Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon at either number 7 or 8 in my all-time top 10 of adventure games. Not too shabby if you ask me.


A big thank you to Sefir for competently leading this great playthrough, and a very big thank you to both Josh Mandel and Jim Montanus, not only for making such a brilliant game, but also for turning the playthrough into something like an Ultimate Special Collector’s Edition Director’s Cut Version…

And also a small slap on the hand of TimovieMan for suffering from writer’s block in reverse: not knowing when to stop typing.
Seriously, my reviews get longer and longer each time (and it’s not helping their quality, not one iota).

^
What he said!

My only question would be the “Star” rating. As I have mentioned, CCS has always been in my top ten. No game is perfect. I agree that the last two episodes are the weakest.

(Aside: I would like to know if the game sequences were created in the approximate order that they appeared in the game. If so, that would certainly be a clue as to the “weakness” of the final two considering the pressure Take2 was putting on the team to bring the game to market.)

But it is hard for me to think that of all the games I’ve played for almost 30 years, if not more, that the top ten in my list wouldn’t be worthy of five stars.

rtrooney - 22 April 2013 06:28 PM

My only question would be the “Star” rating.

... it is hard for me to think that of all the games I’ve played for almost 30 years, if not more, that the top ten in my list wouldn’t be worthy of five stars.

Well, I’ve only given 6 adventure games the full 5 stars, so they’re numbers 1-6. And there are 14 adventure games that have gotten 4.5 stars (completing a nice top 20 now). Together with The Dig, CCS is in the “nearly 5” bracket, so they’re 7 and 8.

Sefir - 23 April 2013 03:15 AM

(the minor glitches in Pyotr,s story could have been mentioned in the cons perhaps…)

I didn’t experience any minor glitches there. Well, I’ve had the game crash on me twice when trying to enter Casimir’s, but I’m running Vista - I’m used to random crashes and they don’t necessarily originate from the game I was playing…

Imagine every single of Jake’s friends having its own story/chapter (Mike, Doc, Mickey, Eddie, etc). It would have been at least twice in length…(or a good script for CCS2 Kickstarter! Kickstarter!!)

I would back this!

TimovieMan - 23 April 2013 06:59 AM

Well, I’ve only given 6 adventure games the full 5 stars, so they’re numbers 1-6. And there are 14 adventure games that have gotten 4.5 stars (completing a nice top 20 now). Together with The Dig, CCS is in the “nearly 5” bracket, so they’re 7 and 8.

Well, I’m 65 and you’re 32, so I may have played a few more games. Thus, earning 5s in my top ten might be easier than earning them in your’s. I’ve also got a lot more 1s and 2s. Hell, I’ve probably got a lot more 0s.

But I see your point. It may depend on how many flaws you accept and still consider it one of the best games ever. And, of course I’m biased due to my association with Josh.

I just finished the game 10 minutes ago and am so sorry to see it end.  It was wonderful for all the reasons you mentioned, Timo, and fun to play right to the end.  Thank you, Sefir, for keeping us on the straight and narrow during this playthough.  I enjoyed reading everyone’s reactions to the different episodes as we finished them.  I’m going to give it a bit of time, but this is definitely a game I will replay,

rtrooney - 23 April 2013 07:01 PM

But I see your point. It may depend on how many flaws you accept and still consider it one of the best games ever. And, of course I’m biased due to my association with Josh.

It’s just a subjective ratings system I use. Basically, there’s only a very narrow margin between 4.5 and 5, and I rarely criticize things I’ve given 4 or more.

I haven’t played a lot of games that only got a 1, 1.5 or even 2, though. But I tend to look for games that I know I’ll like, and if they’re really so bad as to deserve a low rating like that, I’ll probably not even finish them.
It’s not like with movies that you usually finish them in an hour and a half. Games usually take up at least 10 hours, and I don’t like “wasting” such an amount of time on something I dislike…