That’s my experience with 99% of old school point and click games. At some point in every one it devolved into me running in circles and trying every item on every object.
When I played Day of the Tentacle I got stuck. Eventually I caved in and ordered the official hint book. Mind you, back then this entailed mailing a physical letter and the money somewhere. I guess my parents helped with that. And then you had to wait for your order to arrive. And the post was a lot slower than today.
I waited weeks for the book to arrive. And then, the day before it came, I finished the game. Use physics book with horse was the last puzzle I needed.
But the money wasn’t wasted entirely. The game’s story was written down from the pov of one of the characters. Pretty funny.
Hint books were an experience back then. I remember the hint book for myst had this whole narrative about some other person who got trapped in the book, which was supposed to be like the player. It was this whole story of how they solved all the various puzzles. I remember it being quite long but I was also like 9 so maybe it was just like 10 pages
Yeah, basically every game that runs on scummvm is a good candidate here: leisure suit Larry, kings quest, police quest, the dig, sam and max, Indiana jones and the fate of Atlantis, all the sierra and lucasarts ones
Myst series is another good one. Journeyman project trilogy. These all ruled when I was like 12 years old
I miss when games were confusing and aimless by default. I know there are still games like this but I feel like the default now is a game that’s like “oh hey, go down this hallway full of locked doors! Except one door is unlocked, that’s a secret area, good for you! But otherwise go down the hallway to the next hallway!”
Also the end of the hallway is glowing, and there’s a pulsating dot on your minimap. And if you take 5 seconds longer than needed, your character says to himself: “maybe I should go to the end of this hallway”.
Oh man, king’s quest. Those games were literally impossible without a guide and you needed to go to areas in very specific steps to not softlock the game.
You’d play leisure suit Larry or whatever and get 3/4 of the way through and get stuck. Then you’d check a walkthrough and realize you didn’t check the trash can on the first screen of the game for a key item and now you’re fucked and literally have to start over from the beginning
Or you’d get to a death condition and get a screen that just mocks you: remember to save early and save often!
I gave up on point and click games when the solution to a problem in Monkey Island 2 was to put a fucking dog in your pocket. Even the look Guybrush gives when he stuffs the dog in is like "bet you didn’t think to do that initially huh…?’
The funny thing is that LucasArts games were done as the “antithesis” to Sierra games, as the latter were chock full of cheap deaths and “Did you remember to do some little side thing 2 hours ago? No? Progress locked, fuck you” situations
Hard to recall them since I tend to drop them when I get stuck. If I look up a hint and find out it is something that never had any previous hints to figure out I also drop the game because nothing is more frustrating than guesswork.
Fallout 1: If you play it going in blind and don’t look up help, a first playthrough can be stressful early on if you don’t know how much progress you are making on the time limited main quest.
Kenshi: The game doesn’t have quests or main goals, so it is up to the player to figure out what they want and how to get it. Certain game areas are lethally dangerous, factions can be angered if you don’t figure out their customs, and even in less lethal areas being beaten and crippled by bandits is a real problem.
I hate timers on games that give you little guidance. People claim that Fallout 1’s timer is too lenient, but I ended up replaying (and failing) the game twice and still not coming close to finding the water chip. Also, the game constantly reminds you “We’re all dying, hurry up! Every minute you take is an other life lost!”. Same reason I dislike Lightning Returns.
The funny thing is being enslaved by the religious zealots is one of the best starts you can pick in the game. You’re stuck in a quarry doing backbreaking work (which levels strength), are fed just enough that you won’t die (acquiring food is normally a nightmare in the early game), and most importantly the guards won’t (intentionally) kill you, only knock you unconscious if you misbehave. Which matters because taking damage is how you train toughness, making it one of only a few places on the entire world map where you can train it without a high risk of death.
And it gets better. Every night after your shift you can sneak out and practice lock picking on doors and slave shackles and assassinating sleeping guards (since failure only results in a beatdown), which combined with the strength and toughness grinding leads to you becoming a ninja powerhouse by the time you escape.
You certainly can say it, but I’m going to have to mostly disagree it’s a good example though because I felt Half-Life was very linear. What it did do a good job at was creating a convincing illusion of non-linearity, which I can certainly see some people getting lost in occasionally, but probably briefly (unless you have particularly poor navigation abilities which some people definitely do). It can be especially bad once you get to Xen, which felt deliberately confusing and not really the greatest section of the game for a lot of reasons.
My first playthrough of Half Life 2, I bailed from the boat when it got stuck on the wall in a section with lots of guns. I continued on foot through two more loading zones until I reached a section that required the boat to progress, so I walked all the way back to get it lol
I wouldn’t add hollow knight to the list. It is an exploration game, being lost is the point, the problem are linear games that you don’t know where to go next.
The original Final Fantasy. If you don’t have a walk-through open next to you I have no idea how you would naturally beat the game in a respectable time frame.
I think I managed to get the Earth and Fire Crystals and couldn’t figure out how to get to where the Water Crystal was. All of THAT was from literal wandering.
I don’t even remember “where” I got, but I do remember I got to a point I had no clue how to progress. My party was around level 46, super powerful, but I just couldn’t find the right dungeon anymore
Metroidvania games can be pretty good for this sometimes. One that really got me was Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. You have to get an ability to progress at a certain point that is a random drop from an enemy. Any game that relies on RNG for progression is going to make me go running in circles. I love the game, but did not love that part.
RotN doesn't have any progression requirements that aren't scripted drops, off the top of my head, but I could be wrong about that. What ability are you thinking of?
Dawn and Aria of Sorrow do, but in fairness those are communicated in other scripted drops and are part of the "get the good ending" puzzles.
Oh, man, you may be right. I've gone back and forth the Igavanias so much I definitely don't remember which "go underwater" upgrade goes where.
Gonna look it up because it's gonna kill me otherwise.
Okay, yeah, got it. I remember now. They do a weird thing in that one where you have a bad way of moving underwater by using a weapon and you unlock the proper walking underwater thing after. So yes, you do need to kill enemies to get it as a random drop. It's a super high drop rate, though. I think I didn't remember because you have to be fairly unlucky (or be speedrunning and not killing enemies, I suppose) to not get it naturally, but you are correct.
Such a great hangout game. As a kid with a vivid imagination and not enough English understanding to follow the plot I enjoyed my time just roaming around crafting spells and exploring samey dungeons a whole lot.
I got certainly the most lost I’ve ever been in a game in a Daggerfall dungeon, trying desperately to find the tiny wall tag that’s supposed to be the exit.
I still think about how I managed to finish it once, then tried again 1 month later only to be completely dumbfounded as to how to get the damn yellow block upgrade again
I had tried a few times before, but the first time I actually completed Metroid 1 was just after its remake, Zero Mission. The original game was included (also as a bonus in one of the Metroid Prime).
The thing is, the map structure is the same (just with extra levels, more puzzles and ability gating). Power-ups and bosses that already existed in 1 are at the exact same spots. Helps a lot if you can just remember where important stuff is supposed to be.
Silent Hill 2 - dropping canned juice in the laundry shoot. Weirdest mechanic I’ve ever seen, nothing pointed to do it, just finding the juice was weird, how was I supposed to know to put it down the laundry shoot of all places. My friend who got me to play it watched me wander around the apartment for like 10 - 15 mins, getting more and more confused and frustrated before telling me what to do.
There is a really fun Doom mod called “my house” that seems totally absolutely normal artsy house recreation at first…
Until you discover the mirror universe and the downstairs (at the time this mod released multiple overlapping layers of level geometry was not technically possible).
Been playing Diablo 2 Resurrected again, so… Diablo 2. Especially on higher difficulties some of those areas (Durance of Hate, f.ex) are extremely maze-like and the only reliable way to navigate it is to just follow the left wall no matter what.
Otherwise, I played a demo for a game years ago that I can’t remember the name of anymore that was built around non-Euclidian geometry, so walking through a door in one direction would take you to one place, but walking back in the other would take you somewhere else instead of back to where you came from and such.
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