Adventure Gamers - Forums

If anyone gets stuck or is baffled by the weird puzzles: feel free to ask for some hints and tips!

I’ve got the battery!

Log file says I’m at 52%, and this after 4 hours and 48 minutes.

I remember what to do in almost every situation, but I don’t always remember which puzzle follows which, so I’ve probably already done a bunch of actions that were unnecessary for this particular section.

I’ve also taken a peek at an achievement guide for the Steam achievements, mainly for the non-story-related missable ones. I’m trying to go for all of them. This also means I’ve done some random extra things (like ringing the present-day bell in the foyer 100 times for the “Most Annoying Guest Ever” achievement, and even playing Maniac Mansion in-game for a bit, so I could microwave the hamster for the “Chef” achievement, among others).

I’m at 41 out of 58 achievements so far and have done all but 3 of the missable ones, one of which concerns the battery so I can’t have done that yet, and the other two only unlock at the end of the game - not skipping any cutscenes, but I’d have gotten that anyway, and leaving Green Tentacle’s loud music on for the entire game...



The game is still as great and funny as I remember. I’ve already chuckled many times at the comments and situations in the game. Again.

But…

I’m rather displeased with the Remaster itself. Sure, the graphics get upscaled, but they didn’t necessarily improve them much. In fact, some of the reworked things just look inferior or plain “off” to me. I especially get a feeling that there’s a lack of depth in the redone graphics.

Just compare these screenshots: the boards that make up the house seem like boards in the old version, whereas they look like painted lines on a white wall in the Remaster. Same for the ground: the original has depth, the remastered ground looks like it’s smudged…

To me personally, this looks like the worst of the LucasArts Remasters. I had less issues with the design changes in the Monkey Island Remasters even!

Add to this the fact that the verb coin is oversized, and that the mouse pointer jumps position to the “most probable option” instead of remaining in the middle, which feels completely counterintuitive. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve right-clicked, instinctively moved the pointer upwards a little, only to then click outside of the coin and cancelling the action.
The verb coin in the Monkey Island 2 Remaster was one of the absolute best examples of an adventure game control scheme done right. Here it feels like it’s not much of an improvement over the verb bar.
And I’m someone who likes verb coins!

And then there’s the sound.
In the Monkey Island Remasters, it was great to finally have voiced characters, and in Full Throttle the main draw was how much the quality had been improved for both the music and the voice acting.
Here there’s only a slight improvement in the voice work, noticeable but minimal, imo. And the music feels like it’s been poorly redone. Like a modern muzak reworking of the original.

I will finish this playthrough in the Remastered version, but after that I highly doubt I’ll ever play this game with Remastered settings ever again…

Imo, Double Fine dropped the ball on this one.

I hope can VP-out here for a moment (& apologies to anyone who actually understands visual design): I love the pixel art tricks and techniques to enhance visual information. Some of them are obvious (like dithering), others you hardly notice. All sorts of shading- and placement techniques that use the way our brain is wired to suggest depth, structure and plasticity.

Veovis - 31 January 2022 11:39 AM

I may join this CP. Played DotT around 20 years ago and have fond memories of it. I figure this is a good opportunity to play the remastered version. Played that for a couple of hours last night and think I’ll continue, even though I felt hopelessly stuck when I stopped playing.

It’s interesting how I remember vividly almost of the puzzles, and it’s been a long time since I last played the game. It’s just the nature of the puzzles, they’re so wacky, yet incredibly smart that it’s hard to forget them. Just think of vinegar and how they used the time-travel in order to solve that puzzle! I have to admit I was stuck once so far in this playthrough, and it’s because I forgot how to motivate depressed man to leave the room. Other than that, everything is going smooth so far.

Vegetable Party - 31 January 2022 07:45 PM

The game is pretty wacky about hints and puzzles. Some solutions, even after you found them, take some real mental gymnastics to make sense. If your brain has not been severely deranged by moon logic, this games is like an astronaut training programme. And the shuttle is an outhouse.

Yeah, oldschool as you can get. Though, if you’re sticking with the game after you find out that the mutated tentacle is on a mission to take over the world… well, I guess, the puzzle logic can’t get any worse than that!

millenia - 02 February 2022 03:27 PM

With the remaster I am a bit wary about the verb wheel though. Will I be missing out on some great comments for not trying to eat doors or whatever? I agree that the old graphics were great but the new ones look good enough.

Even, though they kept the verbs in the coin interface that are most related to the object and left those that produce a generic response, there probably will be some remarks lost in the process. However, you can play the Remastered edition with new graphics/sounds and with old interface. That’s what I do.

Nico2021 - 03 February 2022 10:15 AM

Just need to find a way to make that guy go bury the time capsule. He keeps saying that he ll do it the evening but i suspect i need to do more puzzles first before that happens.

Did you give him precisely what he needs for the time capsule? If so, why wait until he buries it? He will already have done so in another time period.

TimovieMan - 02 February 2022 07:31 PM

I’ve got the battery!

Log file says I’m at 52%, and this after 4 hours and 48 minutes.

Great! I’m also around 50% in this part of the game, and I did a lot of side-things as well. I believe the order of things for everyone should be oil, gold, and then vinegar, based on actions that are needed in order to get them

TimovieMan - 02 February 2022 07:31 PM

Sure, the graphics get upscaled, but they didn’t necessarily improve them much. In fact, some of the reworked things just look inferior or plain “off” to me. I especially get a feeling that there’s a lack of depth in the redone graphics.

I agree, like I mentioned in the introduction post, it’s faithful in style to the original, but lack the artistic depth of it. It seems to me they used some sort of an upscale filter similar to graphic options that ScummVM provides, and re-touched some of the parts by hand, and also made some areas wider by drawing a completely new parts left/right in order to make backgrounds pleasing for a higher-resolution. The result is exactly that - a reproduction, mimic of the original that is fine and passable but can’t really have the artistic value of something that was done with a clear artistic intent from the scratch, which was to provide game equivalent of Looney Tunes/Saturday Morning Cartoon with its crazy, surreal cartoony angles, irregular shapes and lusty color palette.

Actually, I’m yet to see a remastered edition of an old adventure with graphics that surpass the original - none have succeeded so far. It’s not “better” just because it’s in higher-resolution, and that seems to be the main notion of producers of said remasters. Old games had artist working with technical restrictions of a time (namely, pixelated graphics) but that did not limit their expression because they knew they have to work with that. Steve Purcell’s backgrounds in Monkey Island 2, for example, are nothing short of a masterpiece, and while remaster did a good job, the 20 years advantage still did not favor it, as the original had more style. Similarly, Peter Chan’s and backgrounds of other artists involved in DOTT worked with pixels in their favor to hide and hint of something that isn’t there because of that, and it would take a slightly more effort to fill those areas now in higher resolution, other than just rescaling it and removing pixels.

That said, I got used to the new graphics, and I’m playing the Remastered edition with new graphics, because pixelated on a full-screen is too much stretched, and if I’m gonna play the old graphics I would probably play it in a windowed-mode.

It is. But now you have Laverne to help you out! She’s smart!

What do we have guys? Anyone still searching for the battery? This part is not easy and there were a lot of things needed to be done, so please tell me if you need more time until we all start with the next part??

I’m there. I’m trying to see if there’s an alternative ending, because tentacle society doesn’t seem too bad.

Silliest thing happened on my second playthrough of the game, not too long ago, but a while since the first. I got stuck and was pretty much stumped by failing to close one door from inside the room.

I managed to catch up. It’s weird how much I remember of the game. Even the starting demo music and the stupid cow during the credits.

I chose all the remastered stuff except for the control scheme. I’m not a fan of verb wheels so I opted on using the old ScummVM verb box.

My game has not run smoothly. It froze at the “quote of the day”. I got “Step one. Find plans.” Then I though there was a dramatic pause, but then nothing happened. After some clicking around I managed to skip the rest of that conversation and continue the game. Also, I managed to displace music completely. I was thinking how silent everything sounded. Was it really this quiet? But didn’t think of restarting the game until characters started commenting on music that wasn’t there. Also a couple of times subtitles haven’t been following the speech correctly.

The puzzles have been fun, though they don’t seem to hard because I seem to remember them quite well stil.

I agree that the graphics are nothing to be praised about, they’re ok, that’s it.

Loving Laverne again. All three main characters are pretty good, but she’s my favourite.

I haven’t been continously laughing or anything, but there’s some funny stuff. I never played Maniac Mansion so I’m missing a lot of jokes I bet, and I’m probably a bit lacking in the American history department still. But there are still many good jokes here and there that I do get and they hit the mark. One I can think of is the Blue Tentacle commenting on how ugly of a human Laverne is, and when I replied on the lines that I should probably shoot myself then, the tentacle kindly told me that it’s not necessary as there is a specialized doctor for it. I guess there’s actually a lot of good stuff coming from the human pets angle.

I think I was around 45% of completion.

I’ve gotten some extra achievements but I haven’t hunted for them, and I guess it’s too late to start now if I’d wanted to catch them all.