I just want to vent about a game

[Cooper]

So I made a vow:

I will play all the games I bought on steam at least once.

So I've been going through and trying them all. I tried Anna.

Oh.

My.

God.

To get into the mill, you literally have to put two shards of a mirror into a hole in front of the door, put a pinecone in the middle of them, set the pinecone on fire, and burn it out.

It would have been fun to watch me play it though--I imagine--especially for moments like these:

Me: *puts out fire*
Game: House starts shaking, ghost laughs
Me: Scary.
Me: *grabs key*
Game: "I can't do that" (it literally says this)
Me: Yes you can a**hole.
Me: *grabs key*
Game: Alright.
Me: *goes to door that needed unlocked, tries to open it*
GAme: "It needs a key"
Me: Right. I have the key. Fine, I'll do this the long way. *Goes into inventory, grabs key, clicks door*
Game: "I don't know what to do with that"
Me: YOU DON'T KNOW ITS A KEY AND A GAHHRHGH
Me: *does it again*
Game: "why should I do this?"
Me:" BECAUSE IT IS A KEY. AND A KEYHOLE. AND A DOOR. THAT IS LOCKED.

(For reference, the key did not go to the TWO obviously locked things, no, it went to a tiny drawer in the corner, which gave you a bag of leaves and a block.)

And later, I see a bunch of hands sticking out of the floor.

Me: *walk up to one* Hi there. You must be having fun. High-five? No? Ok, that's fine. You're probably symbolic for a dead person I buried in the floorboards, so I don't imagine you're up to that. *looks around at the multiple hands and feet* People...

Game: I can't reach that. It's too high.
Me: Well, look at this nice ladder I found over here. Grab it. (Game doesn't show the interactive marker) Come on. It's a ladder. It's right here. It MAKES SENSE. GAH

After I: attached plant seed to roots until they turned green (because that makes sense), snapped them off, put on a mask (after attempting to set fire to it), put the vines in the center of black spots on the walls, smeared it with ash of a heart that I burned (after I got it from a painting which I cut with a knife I set on fire), then set them on fire, I decided I was done.

And yes, I totally used a guide the entire time. Watching playthroughs I could kinda see how the game led you to the conclusions you had to reach to get to the game, which is good, because common sense definitely wasn't going to lead you there.

[Salted Grump]

Adventure games and common sense kinda divorced around the time Monkey island was still good.

(For example, using an inflatable duck with a hole in it, a clothesline, and some bread tongs to collect a key in The Longest Journey)

[Fire_on_High]

LOL I remember some of the puzzle solutions being crackish as far back as Shadowgate...

[lordlundar]

Adventure games and common sense kinda divorced around the time Monkey island was still good.

That divorce happened long before then. Sierra still hold the title for that breakup.

[jedimaster91]

And normal people sometimes wonder why we gamers often don't have much "common sense." Flippin games beat it out of us. >.>

[EricKei]

It's older than that -- think Zork and the other text-based games from Infocom and the like. In those, not psychically knowing the VERB they wanted you to use could cause you to fail or even kill your character. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy had some obscure shit.

e.g.: "grab" may or may not work if they wanted you to type "take", and vice versa. Ditto "strike" vs "hit" vs "attack" (an enemy). It got even worse with complex item names, as, often, only ONE of the words in the name was an acceptable way to refer to the item.

H2G2 ex: iirc, one item was called something like "That thing that you are not quite sure what it is"...If you wanted to use it, only "THING" would be accepted. ("That thing" would cause the game to ask for clarification, wasting a turn)

LOL I remember some of the puzzle solutions being crackish as far back as Shadowgate...

SG is being remade and expanded, thanks to a successful Kickstarter

[gremcint]

The mother of all hair tearing out games, King's Quest 5.

at the end you have a powered wand and a non powered wand and there is a mysterious machine in the wizards castle.

Here is what you do, you somehow just know that you put one wand in each part of the machine and then use the tiny piece of cheese that you picked up earlier to power the machine. It is very easy to miss that cheese and impossible to go back for it, heck you could possibly not even get the chance to get it.

[lordlundar]

The mother of all hair tearing out games, King's Quest 5.

at the end you have a powered wand and a non powered wand and there is a mysterious machine in the wizards castle.

Here is what you do, you somehow just know that you put one wand in each part of the machine and then use the tiny piece of cheese that you picked up earlier to power the machine. It is very easy to miss that cheese and impossible to go back for it, heck you could possibly not even get the chance to get it.

Ah yes, the cheese that you have one shot to get at the very start of the game, can easily be missed and you have a number of chances to use it to get past a particular point. It's a wonder people actually finished that game before the internet.

And of course, heaven help you if you set the game speed on fast or were running a computer with a fairly high clock speed. Stupid games weren't programmed with limiters.

[EricKei]

H2G2 did that, too -- there was an innocuous item you need to grab from the first room, without which, the game is literally unwinnable. You use it much, MUCH later on.

[Chromatix]

The one thing I remember from H2G2 is that Arthur is actually capable of carrying an object called "No Tea". He automatically has it whenever he *doesn't* have a cup of tea. I forget what that "object" was actually used for.

IIRC, this had an interesting interaction with the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation drinks vending machine. The one which invariably produced a liquid which was almost (but not quite) entirely *unlike* tea.

[Bardmaiden]

IIRC, this had an interesting interaction with the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation drinks vending machine. The one which invariably produced a liquid which was almost (but not quite) entirely *unlike* tea.

I wonder if DNA wrote that after a trip to the States, because when I had a "Tea" there that was basically my reaction

Thinking about it my reaction to tea in America would be because the milk is different to what I'm used to and the water has different levels of chemicals in it than is used in the UK.

[EricKei]

Chro - iirc, you can actually pick "No Tea" up at one point WHILE you already have some tea (it's that sort of game, folks), which allows you to pass through an previously impassable barrier shortly thereafter...because the NPC you are dealing with is impressed by your ability to do this. This, of course, requires that you first divest yourself of your common sense ^_^

[Jay 2K Winger]

Ye can't get ye flask!