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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
There is a serious contingent of people that want a maniac mansion remake! I haven't played Day of the Tentacle but it looks like gog.com has a remastered version of it. hmm....
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May 6, 2023 00:08
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sb hermit posted:There is a serious contingent of people that want a maniac mansion remake! Day Of The Tentacle is amazing! I absolutely adored it back in the day and it's always fun to revisit. It was my last LP before I went on hiatus in 2016 as I had a bit of a mental breakdown, it's a shame really as Bobbin Threadbare agreed to co-comment a playthrough of Maniac Mansion but I was just too overwhelmed during the initial recording of it and wasn't up to following through with it.
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May 6, 2023 00:28
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What even was the point of that North Pole micro-puzzle? My best guess here is that it's a remnant of a cut North Pole location that they didn't want to go to waste, but it just feels so completely superfluous on every level.
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May 6, 2023 00:36
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Carpator Diei posted:What even was the point of that North Pole micro-puzzle? My best guess here is that it's a remnant of a cut North Pole location that they didn't want to go to waste, but it just feels so completely superfluous on every level. I have absolutely no idea as there is nothing that we take away from it for later use. It's just a self contained area of the game included because... puzzles?
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May 6, 2023 00:41
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Carpator Diei posted:What even was the point of that North Pole micro-puzzle? My best guess here is that it's a remnant of a cut North Pole location that they didn't want to go to waste, but it just feels so completely superfluous on every level. sounds logical to me like someone had made all that background art and nobody wanted it to go to waste
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May 6, 2023 01:05
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 This is a fairly short video as it is the final part of this segment. I feel fairly confident in saying that we are past the halfway mark right now. In this video, we make a new friend and engage in even more nonsense. I think that I'm beyond the point where I'm trying to make sense of things and have just begun to let things just happen and roll with it. It's not that often that I start to feel that disconnection with a game but it has happened a few times before now.
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May 8, 2023 22:41
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I think "clear the room at a chili eating contest" refers to the fact that both chili and peanuts are foods known to cause flatulence. Maybe the combination makes the resulting gas particularly dire in Zak's case.
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May 9, 2023 07:48
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:
I think this game's writing wants to dial up the nonsense to 11. Any notion of sense or cohesion is probably out the window.
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May 9, 2023 07:51
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I'm not sure how to proceed at the moment. I'm trying to record another update but an item in the next area has completely disappeared from the game entirely. I thought I was going crazy at first as I couldn't find it but it turns out it just doesn't seem to exist any more.
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May 10, 2023 21:55
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 We have a whole new segment with several new screens to explore. I won't spoil what's going to happen, see if you can guess for yourself from the image. An item in the first area was not there during my original attempt at recording, in fact, it was completely gone from that save file and I have no idea why as it was there during my practice run. I kept the original recording with the missing item in and I carried in with another recording where the item was actually there. I had to scrap another attempt at recording because, for some reason, Xsplit has decided that it's going to mute my microphone randomly.
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May 10, 2023 23:55
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 This video starts out with a couple of more failed attempts. Someone commented on the last video that the King leaves the room when the satellite dish is turned off and asked what happens if we teleport to the ship while the device is still switched on. I decided to find out and to record the results. The first puzzle in this segment is absolutely obnoxious and we have to do it because of HARD MODE! The rest of this segment is pretty straightforward, thankfully.
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May 13, 2023 22:43
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May 14, 2023 03:14
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Also, I wonder if the voice actor for The King was given any direction when making the sounds for sleeping
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May 14, 2023 03:15
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I understand this is a budget game and we can’t expect the standards of a commercial game, but couldn’t they have told Zak’s voice artist to at least attempt an Elvis impression?
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May 14, 2023 03:49
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If you showed me any item in Zak's inventory and ask me where he got it, besides Sushi, I think I would only have a 5% chance of answering correctly.
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May 14, 2023 04:31
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I hope the original Zak devs that endorsed this never saw the airplane segment, everything else feels like charging Al Capone with unpaid parking tickets and tax evasion.
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May 14, 2023 16:32
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There's a pretty lengthy diary on the game's home page about them tracking down the original devs and meeting up with them that borders on "creepily obsessive".
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May 14, 2023 17:38
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 In this video, we find out what happened after Zak pushed the switch. We also find out what happens when he pulls it too. There are three new(ish) areas that we get to explore and we get back to some fairly standard pointing and clicking. But then the game decides to take yet another very sharp downward turn when we speak to the only character that we encounter throughout. We are starting to reach the end game now. I have no idea how much longer there is to go but judging from the walkthrough and the progress that I've been making through it with each update, we probably only have two or three more videos left to go. But I have been wildly wrong in my predictions before now so don't quote me on it. sb hermit posted:Also, I wonder if the voice actor for The King was given any direction when making the sounds for sleeping Now you mention it, I wonder where the noise for the soup slurping came from. Zaroff posted:I understand this is a budget game and we can’t expect the standards of a commercial game, but couldn’t they have told Zak’s voice artist to at least attempt an Elvis impression? That is a bit of an odd one, considering that the guy has put on accents in other areas. Ignatius M. Meen posted:I hope the original Zak devs that endorsed this never saw the airplane segment, everything else feels like charging Al Capone with unpaid parking tickets and tax evasion. gschmidl posted:There's a pretty lengthy diary on the game's home page about them tracking down the original devs and meeting up with them that borders on "creepily obsessive". The aeroplane segment was a crime against adventure games. I'd like to give it some leeway as it's a gratis game but there are some things that can't be forgiven. I may be missing something but I can't see anything creepily obsessive. This is the one that I've found: http://www.mckracken.net/cms/between-timespace-2/besuch-bei-lucasarts.html The first part mentions being invited to a party by Matthew Allan Kane at his house. The second part mentions that they were in touch with David Fox, but he was busy but were told to keep calling to see if he was free and he did make the time to meet them both.
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May 16, 2023 23:56
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In your playthrough, you mused about the special properties of the white crystal. From what I've seen in your finale video for the first game, its only use is in assembling the skolarian device. Likely because it's the last crystal and the hardest to get to (since it's on Mars).
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May 17, 2023 01:35
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sb hermit posted:In your playthrough, you mused about the special properties of the white crystal. From what I've seen in your finale video for the first game, its only use is in assembling the skolarian device. Likely because it's the last crystal and the hardest to get to (since it's on Mars). That's what I was thinking but I couldn't remember properly. Thank you for clarifying. It just seemed odd at the time that we had two crystals with special powers and a third that didn't.
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May 17, 2023 10:25
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I may be missing something but I can't see anything creepily obsessive. This is the one that I've found: http://www.mckracken.net/cms/between-timespace-2/besuch-bei-lucasarts.html It read obsessive to me, maybe I misinterpreted it. What I'm not misinterpreting is Zak not shutting up about being in a game. It's not funny or cute, goddammit.
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May 17, 2023 19:14
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I was wildly wrong in my prediction, it turns out that the next video will be the last one. We're pretty much about ten minutes of gameplay from the end and there's an epilogue after the credits. All I can say is that the tone of the ending won't surprise anyone. I will probably attempt a recording soon.gschmidl posted:It read obsessive to me, maybe I misinterpreted it. Broken Sword 2.5 also had a similar level of verbal diarrhoea, maybe more. The self-referential dialogue really does become very old, very fast.
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May 18, 2023 10:31
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 And just like that, it's all over. This is the ending of Zak McKracken: This has been a mostly enjoyable game but it was let down in a lot of areas. For a free game, there were many moments of modest adventure gaming, the length of the game is phenomenal, the writing was fairly good for the most part and the graphics were really well done. But, there were some horrible puzzles though, the aeroplane segment was unforgivable and the North Pole segment didn't need to be there at all. The writers went up their own arse fairly often, some of the monologues were just too long and the self-referencing started to become overdone. Having two, non-skippable and with zero hints, sentence puzzles was also bang out of order. A lot of the puzzles did make logical sense but there almost as many that didn't make any sense whatsoever. This game was a very mixed bag but I still had fun playing it and I still remain impressed by it, I think that it's remarkable that it even exists. Thank you, everyone, for being part of this LP. I'm at the end of my adventure game list right now but that doesn't mean that I'm going to stop doing them. It just means that I need to make another one and I already have a few titles in mind but some of them may not work. I'm going to attempt a playthrough of the rather obscure Rent-a-Hero next and I've already conducted a short practice run, it's quite an awkward adventure game. The developers of this game went on to become Rockstar Vienna and ended up porting over a number of their titles to various consoles.
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May 18, 2023 13:17
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In a way, this game feels a lot like a low-budget version of a Quantic Dreams or Bloober Team game: really good visuals and sound (except maybe that explosion sequence in the pre-credits cutscene), utterly wasted thanks to the terrible writing and directing. And Jesus Christ that epilogue is agonizing. What is it with Germans and shagging in adventure games? And, uh, a "routine pregnacny test"? Speaking of agonizing, Rent-A-Hero. I remember it as one of the worst adventure games I've ever played. Thanks for playing this so I didn't have to.
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May 18, 2023 13:53
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This game was terrible. Tenish years ago I decided to stop playing adventure games and just watch LPs instead. I was questioning this decision, but this game convinced me that I was utterly correct.
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May 18, 2023 14:44
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gschmidl posted:In a way, this game feels a lot like a low-budget version of a Quantic Dreams or Bloober Team game: really good visuals and sound (except maybe that explosion sequence in the pre-credits cutscene), utterly wasted thanks to the terrible writing and directing. And Jesus Christ that epilogue is agonizing. What is it with Germans and shagging in adventure games? And, uh, a "routine pregnacny test"? As far as I know, surgery is the only reason why a pregnancy test would be part of a routine. I haven't played through Rent-a-Hero before, my only experience with it so far is doing playtesting to see if it was feasible to LP. I really don't know what to make of it so far but the reviews for this game make it seem very favourable. I guess that time will tell, from what I do know of it the game is relatively short so even if it is terrible it won't last for long. One interesting thing to note is that the studio is Austrian and a lot of the people who worked on this game also worked with LucasArts in localising many of their releases into the German-speaking market. Some of them also went on to make the X series of games as well.
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May 18, 2023 14:48
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VictualSquid posted:This game was terrible. What made you decide to stop playing adventure games?
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May 18, 2023 14:49
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:What made you decide to stop playing adventure games? Some adventure game with good story and terrible gameplay. Slow animations and boring puzzles. I don't even remember which one it was.
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May 18, 2023 14:54
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Rocket Baby Dolls posted:I haven't played through Rent-a-Hero before, my only experience with it so far is doing playtesting to see if it was feasible to LP. I really don't know what to make of it so far but the reviews for this game make it seem very favourable. I guess that time will tell, from what I do know of it the game is relatively short so even if it is terrible it won't last for long. Being Austrian myself, I played it in the original German. I don't fully remember why I hated it so much, it's been decades, but I think it was endless, slow trekking between locations and an unbelievably unlikeable protagonist.
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May 18, 2023 16:01
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Thank you for the LP, it's undeniably more fun for me than actually playing the game. There's really a serious amount of effort put into this game, especially given all the 3D animation that was done. I wonder if they did mocap or if it was done by hand or a mix.
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May 18, 2023 18:55
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VictualSquid posted:Some adventure game with good story and terrible gameplay. Slow animations and boring puzzles. I don't even remember which one it was. I recently finished a playthrough of Dance Of Death: Du Lac & Fey. The storyline was fascinating, the game had excellent writing and the voice acting was absolutely superb. But the game itself was painful to play through, walking around was an absolute chore. I know that it's an adventure game but if half of your time playing it is walking around then I'd rather it be effortless when it's just moving from one location to the next. gschmidl posted:Being Austrian myself, I played it in the original German. I don't fully remember why I hated it so much, it's been decades, but I think it was endless, slow trekking between locations and an unbelievably unlikeable protagonist. The developers decided to go for a British cast for the English version, well, mostly British. sb hermit posted:Thank you for the LP, it's undeniably more fun for me than actually playing the game. I've just been reading a little more about this game. It turns out that some of the people who worked on this game also went on to work for Daedalic Entertainment, who also used the same game engine to make a number of their own games. Oh sweet Jesus, I've just found this: https://ogni-xr21.itch.io/zak-mckracken-goes-looking-for-hot-coffee-in-several-wrong-places 
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May 18, 2023 23:11
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Is that the game they had to take down after the devs of the original game revealed the girls in it were based on real people?
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May 18, 2023 23:48
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Zaroff posted:Is that the game they had to take down after the devs of the original game revealed the girls in it were based on real people? That would be The New Adventures of Zak McKracken. This one looks like it's going to take things down to some new lows.
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May 19, 2023 00:19
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I am just bemused by the number of Zak McKracken fan games! What is so special about an enjoyable game from the late 80s that people feel the need to make so many fan sequels (and include out of place sex - did they take the ‘Zak goes to bed alone… again’ line from the original game to heart and made it their duty to give him some action)?
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May 19, 2023 04:08
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Zaroff posted:I am just bemused by the number of Zak McKracken fan games! Zak is just a wacky 80s adventure game protagonist with unethical ideas and the wherewithal to accomplish them. If you want to write and publish an adventure game, it's much easier to take an existing and familiar setting and characters than make something new out of whole cloth. Of course, ignore the fact that Annie is a scientist in her own right. Or that Leslie and Melissa were intrepid fearless adventurers of their own that were able to convert a VW bus into a spaceship.
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May 19, 2023 05:45
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