Adventure Gamers - Forums

chrissie - 24 August 2013 05:11 AM

It was good to see the screenshot gallery filled up!

You’re welcome!

TerminusEst - 26 August 2013 06:50 PM

For those of you catching up: please, feel free to finish the game at your own pace! But then it’d be great if you can come back here and let us know what you think about it. This thread is not going anywhere.

Oh good. Missed the deadline on this one (sorry) but am happy to report I finished the game approximately 24 hours ago. For some reason I had more trouble than I expected with the mystery code at the end so with my usual bout of frustration, i.e., throw brick at screen (well almost) I decided to give it a rest. But then suddenly I got an inspiration, I won’t say what just that it involved using a certain type of other electronic device totally unrelated to the game.

As for the Hollywood-ish endings I myself wasn’t all that disappointed. As I’ve suspected earlier, the design team had other aspirations for the game but as with many projects of this sort expenses and other constraints needed to be managed and controlled.  Given what they had though, the important thing was to leave the player pondering over what is really far more surreal than anything that could be easily and simply tied up, and I think on that front that it worked. At least it did for me. I believe also that it was very appropriate to give the player control as to the option to make both choices and see the fallout. To be honest I have to say that making the choice to save Ceres left an image that literally freaked me out. But I had seen a similar image before, right?

Aside from a certain glitch, overall I thought it was a very good game. Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and comments as it helped make Obsidian a far more fulfilling and thought provoking experience even if I had actually completed it when I first started it years ago.

RayB,
When I played the game the first time, I had hours of trouble and frustration with the end puzzle, too, plus I had to do it twice because I hadn’t saved.  Since I hope to get to the end again in the next couple of weeks, I think I’ll be relying on an electronic cheat myself unless things go differently this time.

Oh, and I liked both endings very much.  They made me think.

Thanks for leading this walkthrough, Terminus.  Although I’m still far behind, I enjoyed reading everyone’s comments.

TerminusEst - 26 August 2013 06:50 PM

Excellently written review, TimovieMan! I just had to say that its quality compares to the stuff that AG publishes. Really enjoyed reading it.

Thanks for the compliment, but I really think the AG reviews are in a whole different league…

RayB - 27 August 2013 09:33 PM

Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and comments as it helped make Obsidian a far more fulfilling and thought provoking experience

^ I’d like to second this.

Playing in group and discussing it on the go definitely enhances the experience.

Even playing it AFTER a community playthrough is completed (as I’m doing now with the first Gabriel Knight game) has benefits in terms of fun things to try, expectations, additional info and even a better understanding of what’s going on in the game…

chrissie - 28 August 2013 11:36 AM

I’m glad you managed to finish the game RayB & was so pleased to see that I wasn’t the only one that wasn’t so disappointed with the endings & agree with your comments!

Thanks chrissie, I’m glad I did too. Looking forward to the next CPT just as long as it’s not Fahrenheit which I know it won’t be. 

Lady Kestrel - 28 August 2013 02:00 PM

When I played the game the first time, I had hours of trouble and frustration with the end puzzle, too, plus I had to do it twice because I hadn’t saved.  Since I hope to get to the end again in the next couple of weeks, I think I’ll be relying on an electronic cheat myself unless things go differently this time.

Oh, you don’t know how much that just made my day! 

Ok, I’m terribly late to the party but I will add my notes here anyway. Finished spider realm in one sitting tonight, it took me roughly as long as the bureau, maybe a bit longer, 2.5-3 hours, didn’t really check the clock when I started so that’s as exact as I can be.

Puzzles:

Honestly the tree and wave puzzles were the easier ones. The tree took a short while to perfect but at least you knew what you were supposed to do and it didn’t really require reflexes or anything, just a basic sense of rhytm. The waves I clicked through in seconds. Overall the oil realm was very easy, only the pattern took me more than a minute.

I was stuck for a while with the tornado, missing the extra screen like some others. The hardest one was the metal realm though, I just didn’t figure out that it was an equation. I made the end product instantly and then I tried everything. I thought I was supposed to “activate” them or somethig and kept trying out the 2 known recipes and even their parts on the machine and then combining them again. I had to peek UHS which told me about the equation. After that I was done in 5 minutes. I’m quite sure that just adding a questionmark to the tube would make the puzzle more approachable. As it was now, many of us struggled with figuring out what we were supposed to mix.

Now it’s too late to continue but I should be able to have another night in not too distant future for the rest.

I think I agree with the notion that this game will be better on a second playthrough. Like this it is rather confusing and even frustrating. Also my long break doesn’t really do wonders for the immersion and the story. But I guess I’ll play it through now as more of a puzzler and try to have that second playthrough some time later to really focus on the story.

Took a while to get back to the game again but I fisnihed it tonight. Before starting the final episode of Cognition, so see how I much I did want to finish this game?

Bismuth realm had a few very nice puzzles. The church definitely took me a long time, at first I thought it was just about getting the symbols in the right order and I spent some extra time trying them out before realising what the statues did. After I popped a visit to the statues I realised what I was supposed to do but it certainly took me more than a few minutes, damn you engineers! It was satisfying to solve it by myself though and I couldn’t give up since I knew what I was aiming for.

After the church, I handled the statue quite fast, was a very nice gallery by the way.
The clue for blank canvas was rather obvious to me.

But then I had a real brainfart with the last flight.
It just never dawned to me that the controls worked like the “chessboard”. I needed a hint for that. I spotted the red light, I knew that the piazza pointed that red light to me, but still nothing. Earlier I had even noticed the non-regulation warning for hitting the button next to the starting one but totally forgot the thing.

As for the conductor realm, the puzzles weren’t so good in there as many mentioned. I pretty much lucked out with them, took me longer time to finish the last puzzle again for the final scene, hit the wrong 7th or 8th buttons constantly…argh.

The “unhappy” ending was more impressive but yeah, they were rather abrupt. Not horrible though, I’ve always been much more forgiving to the endings than most people in here.

Through the game I felt that Ceres was indeed very much inspired by Lilah. I thought she even took a female figure (at least partly) because of that. I can see that she could think that Lilah would also appreciate her vision in return. But yeah, it seemed a bit off that Lilah herself could possibly choose to not to flip the switch.

The game was beautiful with strong puzzles. The theme and setting was interesting and the surreal surroundings of course. I really would have liked subtitles, had some difficulties here and there making out what the people said (probably should have played with headphones screaming). I think the story worked well as psychological scifi horror.
The old school kind of horror without scare scenes and gore and such. The nightmarish surrounding and the slow realisation of the future Ceres has planned for humanity are very much horror to me but obviously I wouldn’t go around and advertise the game firstly as horror game.

Overall I’m having a hard time giving this game a score. It is a good game but it was rather frustrating at parts and I definitely didn’t play it in the best manner (scattered in to a few sessions with very long pauses in between). I’ve also played very few of these kind of first person exploration games so I don’t really have anything to directly compare it to either. I’ll let you know if can pin a number to it.