(I assume you can buy the games in the UK, anyway; you can certainly select “United Kingdom” from the country drop-down box which updates the tax value, but I haven’t taken the additional step of entering my credit card details to see if purchasing actually works.)

report

I am afraid I’m not with Jalf on that one. I would prefer a slightly obtuse puzzle that I have to think about for 20 mins to an entire “game” of immediately intuitive puzzles.

I didn’t say *immediately* intuitive puzzles. I meant puzzles that made sense, that, if you got the right idea, were obvious. Basically puzzles where thinking actually pays off, rather than ones where the only approach is “use Everything on Everything Else”.

Several of the puzzles in Ep1 had me stumped for a while, but never in the “oh fuck this, I’ll look it up in a walkthrough” kind of way. I always had vague ideas for things to try or places to go.

On the other hand, Ep2 left me completely baffled on several occasions. Not just in the “hmm, I’ll take 10 minutes to look this over and come up with a solution” way, but “jeez, I’ve tried everything, what the hell do they expect me to do?” kind of way.

But like you said, one man’s obvious puzzle…. It’s obviously very subjective. Perhaps I just wasn’t thinking right when I played ep2.
I think I got very lucky with Ep1 in that I accidentally followed just the right trail, and always, by random chance, did just the right thing to reveal a clue for the next puzzle. (A friend of mine was completely stuck on the flowerpot/nose thing for ages. I’d examined it earlier, by chance, and so Guybrush had turned it upside down and remarked that it looked like a nose. Obvious for me, but if you hadn’t looked at that *completely unrelated* item previously, you wouldn’t have had a clue what to do)

About the art style, I still think ToMI captures the spirit of MI2 and 3 fairly well, and much better than 4 did. But again, subjective of course. :)

@tmp: Yeah, the mast thing cracked me up :D

report

a hillarious episode. It also felt very solid and clear as far as the ‘comic logic’ puzzles go, the only bit that made me stumped for a while was getting to the treasure chest unnoticed and even that solution made total sense afterwards.

report

report

The obvious solution would have been to launch last month with giving the first episode away for free. An extended demo. It’d pulled in even more publicity and increased sales no end.

report

The problem is of course that one man’s obvious puzzle is another man’s obtuse puzzle… or something like that. That’s why I really like the idea of TT’s scalable hint system. The idea is a great way of catering to all sorts. The problem I do have is that most of the time i think their previous puzzles have not needed the hint system at all.

Also, Jalf, just to leap to Vinraith’s defence again. I think that’s a pretty poor screen cap from MI 4. It’s actually a pretty styalised art direction they took. A quick google search will yield some nicer results. Having said that, the graphics were not as advanced as these eps. But the art style is not really all that different. I would still say though that there is a tad more warmth in 4. Still nothing compared to 1, 2 & 3 for my tastes. 2 & 3 in particular seemed to give the games a lot more of a lively bustling lived in feel. Whereas these eps are very desolate to me.

@ Andrew Dunn: I am worried about what you say, back tracking is one of those things that is rarely necessary from a design perspective and even less likely to be fun. I hope that’s not a trend that continues into the next eps.

report

report

Anyway, seriously? You think *this* is better this?

ToMI’s graphics are more “angular and cold” than this?

I could sort of understand if you’d said you preferred the graphics of MI3, or even 2 or 1. But 4?!

No, you are wrong. :p

And A-Scale, geez, way to carry a grudge… :p

Anyway, what do you mean, “they are not embracing the episodic purchasing themselves, but rather just permitting Amazon to do so”? I don’t really see the difference. Does it matter whether they say “Come to telltalegames.com and buy individual episodes”, or “we’ve hooked Amazon up with individual episodes, go for it if you want them”?

Sounds to me like you just want something to be angry about. They’ve 1) made a good game, 2) made you a good deal for buying the entire season, and 3) made individual episodes available for purchase. I think that would satisfy most people.

Btw, I found the puzzles in ep2 much much harder than in ep1. The first ep really impressed med with how intuitive and fun the puzzles were. I felt like ep2 relied much more on absurdities that no one would’ve ever guessed. But perhaps I was just lucky and did everything in the right order in ep1 to make all the hints fall into place.

report

report

On to the puzzle aspects. I’ve not played much of Ep2 yet but I have played a little. I am preferring it to Ep 1 so far. the puzzles are very intuitive if you ask me. I’ve not been stumped by any of them yet. But I do not think that is a good thing. The point of a puzzle is to challenge you to figure it out. that doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t make sense. Just that they should be more of a challenge. I think perhaps that the situations they make into puzzles are all a bit obvious themselves, so the solutions can’t help but be obvious if they’re going to make sense.

AAANNNNYYYWAY, I do on the whole like the new Tales. I think they’re worth the purchase. Although I STILL don’t understand why they haven’t been available seperately straight from the beginning.

report

report

It’s like if del Toro’s new Hobbit film had xenomorphs in it.

report