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omega64: Did you use tank controls?
Nope, i used the new one and i didn't have any problem with that. My only complain is related with the camera/control since there will be parts where you will be pressing up and the camera changes the angle and your reaction will be to change the direction but eventually you get used to that.
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LinustheBold: I really, really, really expected to like The Samaritan Paradox, and so I'm surprised at how ambivalent I feel about it now that I've got it finished.
....
I'm a bit surprised that several people on GOG have responded to this game in a "meh nothing special" fashion, or downright disliked it. Subjective feeling I can understand as many things are a matter of taste, especially regarding the ending. Strangely dark twists are a staple in Nordic storytelling so that can alienate some people. But there are some points where the criticism I've seen about the game is somewhat unfair.

For one, about the requirement of "outside knowledge". I couldn't find a single puzzles here where outside knowledge was required. The Bergwall residence library holds the hints, if you're referring to the puzzle I think you meant (it's a bit tricky to speak in a way that doesn't contain spoilers). Unless your definition of outside knowledge is vastly different from mine in which case games like Journey of a Roach can be considered unfair because they require you to understand some basics of electricity that a very young player might not know, hence outside knowledge.
I didn't encounter any instances in The Samaritan Paradox where you have to guess out of the blue like one has to at the end of Runaway where the computer girl asks Brian what his favorite movie/director is, in that case it's not even outside knowledge it's completely pointless design as there is no way but to guess and it just results in trial and error. Runaway 2 with the barkeeper's boyfriend's names continued the tradition, albeit in a much funnier way.
In general, Samaritan Paradox gave me too many rather than too few hints, it's a classical problem with many or even most adventure games where the game occasionally puts the cart in front of the horse by serving you up hints before the problem is presented to you in the first place, making the puzzles easier rather than harder. The only time I felt the clues were insufficient was at the gate puzzle. One of the icons looks like a shoe box but it's supposed to depict something different and as a result I got stuck in that part for close to an hour and ultimately decided to systematically move around all the sliders until the gate opened - which in many adventure games is often the faster way to solve a puzzle rather than figuring it out (currently playing Lost Horizon where this quite often is the case, bit too easy). Anyway, that was the only instance where I thought The Samaritan Paradox was failing logic but if the logo had been drawn more clearly, one would be able to solve this puzzle without trial and error and entirely by logic as the poetic riddles given by the corresponding NPC are clues enough.

The second thing I'd like to address is that this game is somehow directly compared with old school adventures to point out how it falls short for having lower production values etc but at the same time gets criticized for gameplay that the vast majority of classic adventures get equally or even more wrong - including some very big name ones.
Let's face one uncomfortable fact: All point & click adventures are anal retentive in that there is virtually always only one precise solution to each puzzle and you have to do certain things in a very pedantic sequence or else the game doesn't accept it. Even if there are multiple solutions, you'll still have to do the variations in an equally pedantic way. As for pixel hunts and times puzzles, all been seen in "untouchable classics" as well. And even though the pixel hunts and timed puzzles are less obnoxious than in many of the classics, Samaritan Paradox gets flak for it. I think it may come down to individual experience but I found the timed sequence at the beginning of Space Quest more annoying than anything in Samaritan Paradox. Many Sierra games and the Quest series in particular take great joy in killing you off at various spots where you can't foresee it and are forced to play a trial and error game. This can be fun when not overdone, as I thought it was in The Samaritan Paradox inside the warehouse when you have to come up with a plan and over the course of 3-4 failed attempts figure out how to make your plan not fail. Overall, I didn't feel trolled by the game anywhere near as much as with most of the classics. I must point out that I get stuck in just about every adventure game, old or new and often even in the easy ones.
Currently, I'm stuck in The Cat Lady, Sanitarium and Memoria, all 3 of which are more on the easy side but I somehow still managed to get stuck, it's quite annoying. So I'm surprised to see The Samaritan Paradox classified as difficult, I didn't experience the game as obtuse at all. On the contrary, after playing many free AGS adventures that were all of a vastly lower quality than The Samaritan Paradox and after even more commercial adventures where I either got stuck for the most pointless reasons or took way too long to finish, I felt this game was like an oasis in a desert. Finally, an adventure game in the classic style but without maliciously trolling and instead all logical puzzles. Adventure game logic, that is. I've seen puzzles from The Samaritan Paradox called illogical, some of them are idiosyncratic and quirky but I didn't see any illogical puzzles here. There are neither really illogical puzzles à la Space Quest / King's Quest nor logical but criminally obtuse puzzles like Runaway 1 & 2 has.
If you want nothing but 100% BS free logic, you'll have to play a dedicated puzzler instead.

PS: Thanks for your [url=http://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_finished_in_2015/post374 ]review [/url]about Dream Chamber, never heard of the game before and this caught my interest, put it on my wishlist!
Post edited February 05, 2015 by awalterj
Finished Armed and Dangerous and it was great. Gameplay-wise it is a TPS with some special levels where you must defend a place against waves of enemies. It was quite similar to MDK 2. Cinematics between levels were top notch: the insane story is told with a lot of humour.

Full list here.
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awalterj: I couldn't find a single puzzles here where outside knowledge was required. The Bergwall residence library holds the hints, if you're referring to the puzzle I think you meant (it's a bit tricky to speak in a way that doesn't contain spoilers).
We're going to have to agree to disagree, except that I will say that I didn't think either "meh" or dislike it, exactly. I thought it was all there, and it wanted to be good, but it was botched.

The game needed an outside eye to adjust for tone and bad execution. The errors and inconsistencies in voicing, for example, were egregious, and there's no excuse for that, except that devs - and this game is not alone in this problem - didn't think it was important enough, and squeezed it in between last-minute tasks. Voicing is as important as coding, because it's how a player interacts with the game. It's criminal that so few indie designers understand this. It's like indie film directors who cast bad actors and then wonder why no one takes their movies seriously.

WARNING: mild and mostly non-specific spoilers follow. Exact plot elements are not named, but there are some allusions to situations. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, right?

As for puzzles that I found poorly designed, well, I didn't even bother with the bunker puzzle you mention: after a few failed combos I realized that whatever they thought the clue said, it didn't actually say that. It was wildly misleading, so I looked up the answer before I sank too much time into it.

No, the puzzles that come to mind are the combo of ingredients to put in the pot - none is described or demystified anywhere else, making it pure trial and error across a series of possible ingredients, many of which won't even be used - and the gate puzzle, which was ridiculous. A reasonable player could not arrive at the solution from the information given; therefore it's badly designed, by definition. And the puzzle with the fan, which might have been solveable if the elements had been described, but they were not. And the dead-end after Ord acquires change in the bar, which is both trivial and terrible.

And the super-complex nonsense in the church, when it is barely even established what our goal is (this was a common problem, I often had no idea what Ord was trying to do, since he rarely communicated it). And the two main puzzles in the ship, one involving being locked in when there was no screen hot-spot nor any indication that Ord could act during the animation, and the immediately ensuing conundrum of where to hide: there's a spot about one pixel wide where you have to click, and the game gives no indication that the strategy is even correct in that location.

On the dragon island, one of the locations you must visit to get the water bottle is so visually removed that I had no idea there was a live spot there: it looked like part of the background. The actions you have to perform once you find it are equally bizarre. None of these puzzles is in itself too hard or too obscure; they are just poorly designed, badly placed and rendered, and absent the clues that a reasonable player would want to make it fun to solve them. Sierra games give you feedback when you're doing the right thing near the right place, because if you don't respond that way then the player will naturally assume, after five or ten or twenty failures, that the strategy is wrong. The protagonists in games of this period constantly remind you of their goals. Here, the designer, who knows how it all turns out, seems to believe that it's all relatively obvious.

The "clues" in the library, for example, did not read to me as clues - I found the library long before I found the item they were supposed to help with, and had already tried to find a way to apply those details to everything going on long before that item arrived. It's a good idea to supply that information, but the hints come at the wrong time. Again, it's just bad design. That's not where those clues should be. I gather this is mostly a one-man project, but he really needed someone who had not designed the game to work it through with him before the coding was begun. Basically, to sit there and ask him, over and over again, "How would they know that? When did you tell them this? Where did you explain it? How do they know what to do next? If you call this thing a 'hole,' will any ordinary gamer understand that it is part of a ventilation system? Why would you think that?" And so forth. My impression from the game and the dev blog is that he really thought these moments were amusing giggly fun, when I found them to be unreasonable obstacles that stopped me from playing the damn game until eventually I wanted to give up and quit.

If this game had been done by Wadjet Eye, I think it would have been delightful. I've gotten stuck from time to time in the Blackwell games, but it's because I was making a mistake, not because they weren't guiding me right. A little break or some other strategies, and I was always able to get back in the saddle. Not here.

And if you do chase down Dream Chamber, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

Edit: Also, the warehouse puzzle did not bother me at all. It was a situation where the solution needed to be learned through trial and error, but in a very reasonable way. It wasn't too obvious, but it was obviously something that could be resolved: I was confident that I had all the information I needed, and just needed to work out my steps. I enjoyed that one a great deal, and solved it without outside references. All the ones I mention above, though, were problems because they were not adequately explained or presented. I'll do trial and error, with a tame number of variables. I won't just flail around with no idea about what I'm doing. That got old for me as far back as Myst, which I never came close to getting anywhere in - though I'm curious to see how it plays for me today.
Post edited February 06, 2015 by LinustheBold
I did finish evil within.. was it fun.. kinda.

Edit:
*not a wall of text*
Post edited February 06, 2015 by Antimateria
Updated my list
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paladin181: Updated my list
Was shadow of mordor fun and also.. what do you do in that game? =P
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Antimateria: Was shadow of mordor fun and also.. what do you do in that game? =P
The game is a great lot of fun. You murder Uruks. Then you murder a few more Uruks. After that you go to a new map and learn new ways to murder Uruks. Following that you ride giant cat/wolf monsters called Caragors to murder Uruks. Then you get monstrous troll/ogre/giants to murder Uruks for you. And while you're at it, you can brainwash Uruks to kill other Uruks for you. At the end of the game You have Uruks murder other Uruks for you, then do a QTE and win. You also hug kittens*, chase Gollum, and save prisoners... by murdering Uruks.

*No kittens were actually hugged in the playing of this game.
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Antimateria: Was shadow of mordor fun and also.. what do you do in that game? =P
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paladin181: The game is a great lot of fun. You murder Uruks. Then you murder a few more Uruks. After that you go to a new map and learn new ways to murder Uruks. Following that you ride giant cat/wolf monsters called Caragors to murder Uruks. Then you get monstrous troll/ogre/giants to murder Uruks for you. And while you're at it, you can brainwash Uruks to kill other Uruks for you. At the end of the game You have Uruks murder other Uruks for you, then do a QTE and win. You also hug kittens*, chase Gollum, and save prisoners... by murdering Uruks.

*No kittens were actually hugged in the playing of this game.
Sounds.. hmm.. well not groundbreaking. also that race eludes me.. like many other race.. like ricerace.. There are so many rices and every race is so rice that it is so tough to rememberice. ^^
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LinustheBold: The game needed an outside eye to adjust for tone and bad execution; the errors and inconsistencies in voicing, for example, were egregious, and there's no excuse for that, except that devs - and this game is not alone in this problem - didn't think it was important enough, and squeezed it in between last-minute tasks. Voicing is as important as coding, because it's how a player interacts with the game. It's criminal that so few indie designers understand this. It's like indie film directors who cast bad actors and then wonder why no one takes their movies seriously.
It's criminal that indie games with potential like that don't get more funding. Voice acting costs money, this game had virtually no funding.

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LinustheBold: As for puzzles that I found poorly designed, well, I didn't even bother with the bunker puzzle you mention: after a few failed combos I realized that whatever they thought the clue said, it didn't actually say that. It was wildly misleading, so I looked up the answer before I sank too much time into it.
All the hints for the bunker puzzle are right there in the game,even down to the exact order for the sun dial. I'm sorry this didn't bring you any joy, it sucks to get stuck and then you hate the game, I know that story only too well.

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LinustheBold: No, the puzzles that come to mind are the combo of ingredients to put in the pot - none is described or demystified anywhere else, making it pure trial and error across a series of possible ingredients, many of which won't even be used - and the gate puzzle, which was ridiculous. A reasonable player could not arrive at the solution from the information given; therefore it's badly designed, by definition. And the puzzle with the fan, which might have been solveable if the elements had been described, but they were not. And the dead-end after Ord acquires change in the bar, which is both trivial and terrible.
It's all about very very basic color mixing, and there are no dead ends as you can always toss the milk out and start anew.
You should have seen the complex and super anal precise color mixing charts I had to do for classes at art school, plus all the batshit binders and pigments involved. Mixing two/three colors together in this game is really as simple as one can make such a color puzzle and I thought it was fun. Kinda reminded me of Kyrandia 2 Hands of Fate with all its potion mixing. Again, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy it and that can't be helped but just because you had trouble it doesn't mean the game is badly designed. Seek blame within yourself first, be a man!
Same for the gate puzzle, you should have seen me curse at it when things didn't make sense to me. In the end I saw that every single, and I mean every one of those riddles makes sense. If only the "shoe box" was more recognizable as what it actually is, that was bad graphic design. But the riddle design is ok, no logic errors there. Your criticism here seems ill founded yet again. Others had no trouble with this. Be a man!

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LinustheBold: And the super-complex nonsense in the church, when it is barely even established what our goal is (this was a common problem, I often had no idea what Ord was trying to do, since he rarely communicated it). And the two main puzzles in the ship, one involving being locked in when there was no screen hot-spot nor any indication that Ord could act during the animation, and the immediately ensuing conundrum of where to hide: there's a spot about one pixel wide where you have to click, and the game gives no indication that the strategy is even correct in that location.
I can't remember the church part as problematic, your mission is to infiltrate and do espionage and that's what you do. Also, bit of priest trolling, purely as a means to an end of course :)
As for the hitboxes for the times puzzles, I agree those are tightly mapped but these are situations with very contained options to begin with, after 2-3 failed attempts it should become obvious what the only option is. As for that particular one with the 1 pixel are, well that specific part of that object is rather small but once you realize that's what you need to click on it isn't hard to hit. I absolutely hate times puzzles in p&c adventures and thought these here were moderate, not even remotely aggravating as in many other games.

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LinustheBold: On the dragon island, one of the locations you must visit to get the water bottle is so visually removed that I had no idea there was a live spot there: it looked like part of the background. The actions you have to perform once you find it are equally bizarre. None of these puzzles is in itself too hard or too obscure; they are just poorly designed, badly placed and rendered, and absent the clues that a reasonable player would want to make it fun to solve them. Sierra games give you feedback when you're doing the right thing near the right place, because if you don't respond that way then the player will naturally assume, after five or ten or twenty failures, that the strategy is wrong. The protagonists in games of this period constantly remind you of their goals. Here, the designer, who knows how it all turns out, seems to believe that it's all relatively obvious.
Sierra gives you feedback? Yeah, it let's you die, then you knows you're wrong :/
I greatly enjoyed the bottle & dragon puzzle, kinda fairy tales-y and Princess Bride-ish that whole sequence, one of my favorite parts. Great fun I had, and I'm usually jaded and only get lukewarm enthusiam out of games.
Never got stuck due to a pixelhunt in Paradox but I've gotten badly stuck due to pixehunts at least once or multiple times in almost every classical p&c adventure. Runaway sunglasses, I curse you...

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LinustheBold: The "clues" in the library, for example, did not read to me as clues - I found the library long before I found the item they were supposed to help with, and had already tried to find a way to apply those details to everything going on long before that item arrived. It's a good idea to supply that information, but the hints come at the wrong time. Again, it's just bad design. That's not where those clues should be. I gather this is mostly a one-man project, but he really needed someone who had not designed the game to work it through with him before the coding was begun. Basically, to sit there and ask him, over and over again, "How would they know that? When did you tell them this? Where did you explain it? How do they know what to do next? If you call this thing a 'hole,' will any ordinary gamer understand that it is the opening into the ventilation pipe that leads into the next room? Why would you think that?" And so forth. My impression from the game and the dev blog is that he really thought these moments were amusing giggly fun, when I found them to be unreasonable obstacles that stopped me from playing the damn game until eventually I wanted to give up and quit.
Again, I'm sorry you didn't enjoy the game while I did. Doesn't mean the game is badly designed. This all sounds angry to me. Your sight is clouded by the dark side. Can't you be a little bit more fair and just say you didn't like it, instead of blasting the work of that one guy who put all his heart and soul into the project. Be a man!

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LinustheBold: If this game had been done by Wadjet Eye, I think it would have been delightful. I've gotten stuck from time to time in the Blackwell games, but it's because I was making a mistake, not because they weren't guiding me right. A little break or some other strategies, and I was always able to get back in the saddle. Not here.
I enjoyed The Samaritan Paradox more than I did all The Blackwell games combined, maybe a bit overstated if I also include Deception which was my favorite Blackwell title. Very cool story, just not my kinda gameplay, not enough point & clicky puzzles but that's not what these games aim for, so that's perfectly fine. Resonance and Primordia are of a higher quality than Samaritan Paradox, even Gemini Rue in some regards. However, personally I still enjoyed Samaritan Paradox more, even if I rate those 3 Wadjet published games higher objectively.

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LinustheBold: And if you do chase down Dream Chamber, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
Will do, thanks again. It's rare finds like that why I check this thread so closely.
Post edited February 06, 2015 by awalterj
Lost Horizon

Very nice full length adventure game that has everything you want from a good lighthearted Indy style adventure: exotic locations ranging from the Himalayas to the Northern African desert to the Indian jungle etc, mysterious artifacts, evil nazis including the ever mandatory blonde resolute Nazi woman in charge, Hong Kong triad gangsters, tigers, sharks, goats, you name it. There’s even a kung fu capable female sidekick and you can play as her at some stages though most of the time you play as Fenton Paddock, smuggler and saviour of the world from ubiquitous Nazidom.

And despite a lot of exciting action parts, no timed puzzles, this is strictly classic point & click gameplay. I repeat: no timed puzzles or quick time events! Also, hotspot highlighting in case you miss something which can easily happen with such nicely detailed graphics. And no dead ends so there is no stress whatsoever involved when playing this game. Takes about 9 hours to complete at very laid back speed without getting stuck. That doesn’t sound like much but you’ll move fluidly and spend most of your time actually experiencing the game and the cool story and cutscenes rather than trying to figure out nonsensical gratuitous roadblock puzzles. There are a lot more locations here than in other adventures of similar length, impressive amount of content really. To top everything off, Lost Horizon has absolutely gorgeous background graphics and a cool cinematic style soundtrack. The voice acting isn't spectacular in either German or English but it's perfectly adequate to the occasion and never struck me as subpar.

The puzzles are fairly easy throughout, even a beginner should be able to finish the game without too many hick ups. Just keep in mind that occasionally the same obtuse adventure game mechanics are at work here as in other games, such as you have to right click on an object to examine it more closely and then suddenly you have an additional object in the inventory after that or maybe a new interaction becomes possible after inspecting an item, or sometimes the game character has to be informed about the use of a particular object before he can use it in a certain way. For example, if you find some toxic looking mushrooms and have a clear idea about what to do with those, the character still says “I better ask someone what these mushrooms do first”.

There’s no one I don’t recommend Lost Horizon to, except hardcore adventure fans who need a challenge or else get bored. There will be little to no satisfaction from solving highly complex cryptic puzzles so if that is paramount to you, you might want to skip this game and look for something harder but if you don’t mind relaxing and just playing this for the story and a bit of light to gently moderate puzzling, then have a go at it. As an old fan of Last Crusade and Fate of Atlantis, I approve of this game. Even if Lost Horizon doesn't dig very deeply below the surface, it's more than worth the trip.

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Post edited February 06, 2015 by awalterj
Fallout: New Vegas: Old World Blues. Old World Blues is a DLC for New Vegas and a rather enjoyable one. It takes place in a new landmass called Big Mountain which features lots of industrial style buildings and labs, and is visually a nice break from the wasteland of base New Vegas. The main story is heavy on the humor and is never too serious, coming off like a bad 50s/60s sci fi film in the best way possible.The new characters are likeable (Dr. Mobious is my favorite of them) and each fills their role very well. The quests are fairly varied considering the length of the DLC (the main story will take around two hours) ranging from a stealth test to fighting a giant scorpion. You get some new gadgets and abilities, including a talking set of armor and a robot that can heal you and change your appearance. Overall I really enjoyed Old World Blues, it was a nice break from base New Vegas.
Nihilumbra

It's a rather short and linear platformer about escaping The Void. In each chapter you unlock one color that you can use to spread on the ground/walls to change its properties (make it slippery, bouncy, sticky, hot or conducting electricity) so as you can imagine there some puzzles here too. The actual gameplay is rather weak, controls are a bit clunky, the screen is changed BEFORE you reach the edge which is very confusing and potentially a reason of many deaths and puzzles and platforming sections are easy and rather boring. The game is interesting nevertheless because of a narrator who tells the story about being lost, feeling abandoned and guilty as you play. It really made the game worthwhile so I can still recommend it.


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Dying Light

This game is what Dead Island should have been. Mirror's Edge + Dead Island = Dyng Light.
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paladin181: The game is a great lot of fun. You murder Uruks. Then you murder a few more Uruks. After that you go to a new map and learn new ways to murder Uruks. Following that you ride giant cat/wolf monsters called Caragors to murder Uruks. Then you get monstrous troll/ogre/giants to murder Uruks for you. And while you're at it, you can brainwash Uruks to kill other Uruks for you. At the end of the game You have Uruks murder other Uruks for you, then do a QTE and win. You also hug kittens*, chase Gollum, and save prisoners... by murdering Uruks.

*No kittens were actually hugged in the playing of this game.
Your post is lacking an important information about the game: Is it possible to kill Uruks??? ;)
Post edited February 06, 2015 by PaterAlf