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what game has the absolute best puzzles?

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Oscar - 06 April 2016 05:11 AM

It is a surprisingly good game and I do enjoy it, however the puzzles are no more than average. The better puzzles of the game are all standard ones that can be found in your average adventure - sliders, box puzzles, safe-cracking.

What impresses me so much about the puzzles in this game, is the extreme variety of them. You both have a Sherlock Holmes type deduction puzzle, you have a time-line reconstruction kind of similar to Ethan Carter (but also different in the mechanics), you have a crate stacking puzzle like in BS4, art comparison puzzle, number code cracking, box puzzle etc.

Now you could argue that separately they are nothing special and something that we have seen in other games, but my point is that you have plenty of crate stacking puzzles in BS4 but there isn’t any deduction puzzles in it, and you have plenty of deduction puzzles in a Sherlock game but they don’t contain any crate stacking puzzles. It is the extreme variety of not just different puzzles but also in completely different puzzles types that makes MM2 so special imo.

There is of course some puzzles that are better than others, and there was also one that annoyed me immensely, but I would rather have a few bad less good puzzles that having to solve the same crate stacking puzzles over and over again.

Oscar - 06 April 2016 05:11 AM

I’m in chapter VI of the game, and while the puzzles are in theory quite nice they have big problems. What makes them frustrating is that they are mostly tasks that could be done so easily in real life, but it feels like the game sabotages the task to make it harder for you.

I don’t really think that is a valid argument. I don’t think you can compare solving a puzzle in an AG to what you would have done in real life. For example there are plenty of intricate door puzzles in AG’s, where if it was real life then we would just break a window and climb through that, or use brute force in some other way. It is a bit like criticizing a FPS for having the protagonist killing countless people or a RPG for having healing potions, instead they should be judged by how well the combat or the RP elements work. Similar with AG’s, they should be judged by how well the puzzles work as puzzles, not by how close to real life solutions to the obstacles they are.

Having said that, then yes the game strides toward a higher difficulty than most AG’s, and puzzle solutions that would usually have worked in other AG’s often doesn’t work here, simply because the game throws in an extra little twist, or as you call it “sabotages the task to make it harder for you”. But personally I actually found that it made it more realistic and not less.

McGyvering different tools and fixing things with whatever material you can find is NOT as easy in real life as it is most AG’s, in fact I would argue that 99.9% of all puzzle solutions in AG’s would never have worked in real life - Hell, 99.9% of everything McGyver did in the show would never have worked in real life (Mythbusters have actually tested some of them) - So it might still not be real life solutions, but throwing in some twist to make it harder, actually makes it feels more realistic to me.

Oscar - 06 April 2016 05:11 AM

... The latter is particularly bad, that a book written by a professor would be so unclear. Lara’s answers exchange “for” and “with”, you don’t know what you mean when you say it and even after solving it you don’t know why it’s right. This is the only one I needed a walkthrough for because there was no chance of understanding it. There may be translation problems here (is the game originally German?), which also occur in most lines of dialogue.

I don’t know / remember what book and puzzle you are referring to, but yes the game is originally German (though I believe made by a Czech developer), and yes there is the occasional bad odd translation, but never anything so bad that I had the slightest problem understanding what was meant, and more a case of “that is an odd way of phrasing that” than outright translation errors. Personally I just hand-waved these moments with the fact that the protagonist and most of the other characters are non-native English speakers, so they are allowed a few errors or oddities in how they phrase things Wink


Anyway, regardless that there seems to be quite a lot about this game that we disagree on, then I’m glad that we at least agree that it is a good game Smile

     

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Rhem

     
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Iznogood - 06 April 2016 09:03 AM


Anyway, regardless that there seems to be quite a lot about this game that we disagree on, then I’m glad that we at least agree that it is a good game Smile

Yes, we can. I was surprised to find the game was released in 2012. Even for 2016 it has outstanding production values (English translation and voices aside).

     

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for me, DOTT has the best puzzles.  maybe it is because it was so innovative at the time but, it is still fun to play.

     

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DoTT and FoA.

I never liked Sam and Max’s puzzles tho, I found that game very overrated.

     
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So in my research for examples of great adventure game puzzles I came across an article that had me in stitches! The writer is great. It’s a little older, so many may have read it already, but is worth a laugh: The 10 worst and most WTF adventure game puzzles (PC Gamer)

Sorry, it’s sort of the antithesis to this thread, but I thought still an appropriate place to post it Smile

     
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Pixelthis - 09 April 2016 06:31 AM

So in my research for examples of great adventure game puzzles I came across an article that had me in stitches! The writer is great. It’s a little older, so many may have read it already, but is worth a laugh: The 10 worst and most WTF adventure game puzzles (PC Gamer)

All 3rd person games, no surprises there. Where’s colpet?  Tongue

     
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Oscar - 09 April 2016 07:41 AM
Pixelthis - 09 April 2016 06:31 AM

So in my research for examples of great adventure game puzzles I came across an article that had me in stitches! The writer is great. It’s a little older, so many may have read it already, but is worth a laugh: The 10 worst and most WTF adventure game puzzles (PC Gamer)

All 3rd person games, no surprises there. Where’s colpet?  Tongue

Cool

     

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Pixelthis - 09 April 2016 06:31 AM

So in my research for examples of great adventure game puzzles I came across an article that had me in stitches! The writer is great. It’s a little older, so many may have read it already, but is worth a laugh: The 10 worst and most WTF adventure game puzzles (PC Gamer)

Sorry, it’s sort of the antithesis to this thread, but I thought still an appropriate place to post it Smile

Cracked run a bunch of those:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19974_the-6-most-absurdly-difficult-video-game-puzzles.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_21764_5-video-game-puzzles-clearly-designed-by-hateful-people.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_22716_the-5-most-painfully-difficult-video-game-puzzles.html

     
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Antrax - 10 April 2016 03:02 AM

Cracked run a bunch of those

Very funny Smile The babelfish puzzle from Hitchhiker’s guide is listed in many of these as a hateful puzzle, but I’ve seen a bunch of people also list it as one of their favorites!

I wonder if this is the sort of puzzle you’re after, RockNfknRoll? Most of the ones in these articles are the opposite of your description in the OP (do not require much thought to solve; Are given everything in scene; too much help). Tongue

     
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Antrax - 10 April 2016 03:02 AM
Pixelthis - 09 April 2016 06:31 AM

So in my research for examples of great adventure game puzzles I came across an article that had me in stitches! The writer is great. It’s a little older, so many may have read it already, but is worth a laugh: The 10 worst and most WTF adventure game puzzles (PC Gamer)

Sorry, it’s sort of the antithesis to this thread, but I thought still an appropriate place to post it Smile

Cracked run a bunch of those:
http://www.cracked.com/article_19974_the-6-most-absurdly-difficult-video-game-puzzles.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_21764_5-video-game-puzzles-clearly-designed-by-hateful-people.html
http://www.cracked.com/article_22716_the-5-most-painfully-difficult-video-game-puzzles.html

Still all 3rd person games.

     
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colpet - 10 April 2016 06:57 AM

Still all 3rd person games.

So why don’t YOU tell us what the absolute best puzzles in 1st-person games are, colpet?

     

See you around, wolf. Nerissa

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colpet - 10 April 2016 06:57 AM

Still all 3rd person games.

Oh, there is also plenty of bad puzzles in 1st person games, but apparently nobody cares enough about them to make a list Tongue

     

You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ

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Iznogood - 10 April 2016 08:48 AM
colpet - 10 April 2016 06:57 AM

Still all 3rd person games.

Oh, there is also plenty of bad puzzles in 1st person games, but apparently nobody cares enough about them to make a list Tongue

That is what makes me smile. Mainstream review sites think 1st person games are bad, never mind giving their puzzles a chance.
I did respond to this thread on the first page. The best puzzles combine exploration and discovery, games like Rhem and RIven. My most recent best puzzle experience goes to The Room games.

     

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