#and the atlantis stuff that you can tie in with the end of road to gehenna

[minophus]

i did really really enjoy the talos principle. even if i had to look up most of the puzzles.

[jurakan]

What adaptations of King Arthur legends would you recommend?

Uh... okay. Coolcoolcool. I can totes answer this.

I’m including stories/books that are Arthurian retellings, rather than books that are good and contain elements of Arthuriana but aren’t really retellings of the stories (so The Dark is Rising, The Lost Years of Merlin and The Fionavar Tapestry, while good, won’t make this cut).

1. The Arthur Trilogy by Kevin Crossley-Holland

Okay this is a bit of a weird one because it’s sort of King Arthur and sort of not. The story is that Arthur is the son of a knight living on the Middle March, the border between England and Wales, during the 12th century. He’s given a Seeing Stone by the family’s old friend Merlin, and in it he sees the whole life story of Arthur. And as Arthur’s life goes on, he sees parallels to his own life and it helps him understand growing up, especially as he becomes a squire, learns more about his heritage, and eventually rides off to Crusade. Through his Seeing Stone, you see basically all the big name Arthurian stories, and a few that aren’t as common or popular.

I have some issues with Crossley-Holland’s depiction of medieval Christianity--he does, after all, have a cardinal declare that women are all evil, and he takes the shooing women out of the Crusaders’ camp as proof of this--never mind that all these women are the mistresses of the Crusaders, so, uh, yeah. And continuity between books is a little fuzzy; the second and third books have some gaps between them that made me scratch my head. But other than that? Crossley-Holland knows his shiz, man. There are so many random details about medieval life that made it into these books it’s astonishing.

It also has the benefit of being told through a filter. We’re seeing King Arthur’s story as something that already happened, as being watched by our protagonist. He’s sympathetic to a lot of these characters, but he does sort of judge them. Heck, the way Crossley-Holland tells it, it’s pretty judgmental of Lancelot in general, as a man who has deluded himself into thinking he’s done nothing wrong, even if he has the best of intentions. And this series, while it gets grim, does end on a somewhat happier note than a lot of Arthurian literature.

2. The Warlord Chronicles by Bernard Cornwell

Cornwell attempted to write a “realistic” take on King Arthur and came up with this grim story set in post-Roman Britain. If I had problems with Crossley-Holland’s take on Christianity, I have loads with Cornwell’s. He does not like religion. Like, any religion. It gets to the point of having a scene where Merlin declares that all of Christianity is just a rehash of Mithraic cults, which is a common myth but definitively false if you’ve even dipped your toe into the subject. And there’s a lot of violence and sex and I wasn’t really into that. About a third of the way into the first book I almost gave up on it.

“This trilogy sounds terrible Jurakan, why is on this list?”

And then Lancelot is introduced.

If Cornwell hates religion, he seems to hate Lancelot just as much, if not more. And this is when the story become AMAZING because Cornwell’s Lancelot is THE biggest douchebag of all time, but he’s got a great PR crew (made up of poets and bards from his father’s kingdom) selling him as the greatest thing since Roman roads. And the protagonist, Derfel haaaaaaaaaaates him. Everyone does. Even Galahad (who in Cornwell’s telling is Lancelot’s brother rather than his son) hates him. And his affair with Guinevere is treated as just one more thing in a long line of betrayals that he plays off as him being the Good Guy.

Ultimately, Guinevere is played… well not necessarily sympathetically, but as a complex and interesting character who regrets her actions and tries to make up for them. But Lancelot? THE WORST. And once he and Galahad enter the story, is when it gets good, deconstructing that whole thing and it’s wonderful.

Maybe it won’t work for everyone, but I really hate that love triangle. So it worked for me. I also like that Cornwell uses a lot of lesser-known Arthurian characters? The main character is Saint Derfel, and Arthur’s retinue consists of his cousin Culhoch, Lanval, and Sagrimore.

3. The Pendragon Cycle by Stephen Lawhead

What if we tie a bunch of Atlantis stuff to a King Arthur story, use all the old Welsh names, and make it an explicitly Christian story? That’s Lawhead’s schtick. The love triangle is removed entirely; Lancelot only maybe had an analogue in the old Celtic stories anyway, and here he’s made Guinevere’s bodyguard and never a love interest. 

These books aren’t slow, precisely, but if you read the synopses you might get that impression because it takes a while to get to the parts mentioned there. And to be clear, Arthur himself doesn’t appear until the third book (which was the final book, but then Lawhead wrote two in-between-quels about Arthur’s adventures as king). This isn’t Lawhead at his best (that’s King Raven, which is his take on Robin Hood), but it’s pretty darn good, making the epic tale of Arthur even more epic as a battle for the soul of Britain.

Just be ready for hard to spell/pronounce Welsh names. 

4. The Squire’s Tales by Gerald Morris

I just started this series, and though it’s aimed at children and young adults, Morris goes hard into the details of little-known Arthurian stories and masterfully retells them. They’re sort of satire--they mercilessly mock a lot of the courtly love tropes that appear in the Arthurian stories. Tristan is, for instance, a completely unsympathetic moron and a bit of a meathead, who cannot understand why his love affair with Igraine won’t work (or how a vow of silence works).

Morris knows that Lancelot wasn’t always the Greatest of Knights, that Gawain was once The Man, and that any jackhole who tells you the Deepest Love is with another man’s wife is full of it. Lancelot and Guinevere are portrayed as shallow and silly when they start their affair, but when the affair ends they get a whole of character development that makes them much better and interesting characters.

Also these books are very funny. Gawain, for instance, is utterly baffled every time a knight makes him joust to just go down a road. “What are you guarding this creek from? Someone spitting in it?”

5. Sword of the Rightful King by Jane Yolen

Alright I haven’t read this one in ages but I remember it being good? It’s a cool little story about the beginning of Arthur’s reign, and how since people are questioning his reign, he asks Merlin to come up with a plan to legitimize everything. The result is… the Sword in the Stone. It’s a bit of a con, but if it works, it works, right?

Of course, not everything goes according to plan, and Morgan le Fay is planning something. Just what that something is, isn’t clear. And the new kid at court is a lot cleverer than he’s letting on.

It’s a fun little YA book. Like I said, it’s been forever since I read it, so I don’t know for sure how well it still stacks up, but I remember liking it.

Thanks for asking, friendo!

[britesparc]

Weekend Top Ten #400

Special Commemorative Top 100 Videogames

400! Blimey! That’s a lot. Four hundred lists. Crikey. This feels like it deserves some kind of, I dunno, special edition. Sorry, Special Edition. But what to do? And how can I somehow tentatively tie it into the number four or even four hundred?

Reader, I can’t. I’ve just sacked it off basically.

But that’s not to say I haven’t tried very hard to make a really, really special list. So special in fact that I’m doing something I’ve only done once or sort-of twice before: a Top 100. Yes, that’s right; despite this being a Top Ten, today I’m squaring the circle and going the Full Ton.

So having done films before, this weekend I’m looking at one of the few other things I feel I can talk about with a degree of authority: videogames. I’ve been a gamer pretty much as long as I can remember. Whilst I was probably reading comics first – especially Transformers – I wasn’t really collecting them, or reading them widely, until I was in my twenties. Games, on the other hand, I got into pretty hard as a young boy and they’ve maintained my interest ever since.

On compiling a list like this, however, I run against the thing I always run against, which is my knowledgebase isn’t really that wide. I had an Amiga growing up, and then graduated to a PC when I was a teen. Before that I played on my cousins’ computers, which were Spectrums and Commodores. Apart from brief trips to friends’ houses, I barely touched games consoles; indeed, I indulged in a lot of pre-teen “console toy” sectarianism, thinking the likes of Sega and Nintendo were enemies to be defeated (whilst, at the same time, being slightly covetous of the hardware). The first console we ever had in our house was my brother’s Nintendo 64; the first one I ever owned was an original Xbox. To this date, I have only owned (or had in the house, at least) the following: Xbox; GameCube; Xbox 360; DS Lite; Wii; Xbox One. I’ve never had any Sony console, being swayed by Halo and Fable when I finally decided to take the plunge into console-land around 2001.

So all this – combined with a sort-of ingrained frustration and the commonplace mechanics of a lot of “classic” console titles, especially stuff like Zelda and Metal Gear – means there will no doubt be big famous names not on this list. It’s not an apology. I’m not an expert or a journalist; I’m just some bloke wasting time on the internet. Added to this is the fact that, even when I was a kid with oodles of free time, there were only so many games my parents could afford – or, beyond that, only so many that I had time for. I remember longingly looking at screenshots in The One Amiga, PC Gamer, or Edge, wishing I could either find the money or time for the likes of Lure of the Temptress, Starcraft, Baldur’s Gate, LA Noire, Morrowind, and more. Most of these I’ve played, but not really very deeply (ditto the likes of Thief, System Shock, and most of the 3D Grand Theft Autos). And that’s before we even get onto the PlayStation games like Uncharted, Shadow of the Colossus, The Last of Us, and Spider-Man!

Anyway, what I’m saying is, this is a very personal list, and it feels incomplete even from my point of view. There’s stuff that I feel is missing, even from my own personal gaming biography. But it is what it is, and its fractured, fragmented nature is probably a good overview of my psyche, and as such it feels appropriate for a large anniversary like my 400th list.

A couple of other, technical points. In compiling a list this large, I’ve argued back-and-forth with myself over placements, but generally I’ve looked at a game, and the games around it, and asked whether it’s better or worse than its neighbours; as such, that’s where the game is stuck. Sometimes this means I’ll look at the list and think, oh, such-and-such looks too high or too low, but it feels right when nestled against its contemporaries. Also, sequels and franchises: I’ve tried to treat each game individually (both Half-Lifes are there, for instance) but with something like, say, Mass Effect, it felt a bit redundant to include the slightly-inferior parts 1 and 3 when they’re all quite similar but Mass Effect 2 is the best. So quite often one title ends up representing a franchise, unless I feel other instalments are terrific enough to stand on their own, or represent something quite different. But that’s not really a hard-and-fast rule anyway. Oh, and formats: generally speaking, they’re on the formats I discovered or most enjoyed the game on, which may throw up some non-standard entries (like SWOS, which even I think of as an Amiga game, but which I really got into years later on PC). Finally, my memory; there are some older games on here that maybe if I played a bit more recently would go up or down. But they feel important to me and my life as a gamer, so that’s where they’re staying. All that being said, I’m very comfortable with the Top Ten, which is appropriate.

TL;DR: it’s my list, it’s very subjective, it’s based partly on memory or nostalgia, it’s emotional, it’s things that I loved and that meant something to me and that still mean something to me, and that’s all there is to it.

So here we go: Top Ten numero 400. Except it’s a Top 100. Make of that what you will.

The Secret of Monkey Island (Amiga, 1991)

Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (Amiga, 1992)

Half-Life 2 (PC, 2003)

Deus Ex (PC, 2000)

Civilization VI (PC, 2017)

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (Xbox, 2003)

Halo: Combat Evolved (Xbox, 2001)

Lemmings 2: The Tribes (Amiga, 1993)

Crackdown (Xbox 360, 2007)

Fable II (Xbox 360, 2007)

LEGO Marvel Super Heroes (Xbox One, 2013)

Command and Conquer: Red Alert (PC, 1995)

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II (PC, 1997)

Half-Life (PC, 1998)

Sam & Max Hit the Road (PC, 1995)

Medieval II: Total War (PC, 2003)

Portal (PC, 2003)

Perfect Dark (N64, 2000)

Sensible World of Soccer 95/96 (PC, 1995)

Duke Nukem 3D (PC, 1995)

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch, 2018)

Mass Effect 2 (Xbox 360, 2008)

Wii Sports (Wii, 2005)

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii, 2007)

Flashback (Amiga, 1993)

Batman: Arkham City (Xbox 360, 2011)

Animal Crossing (GameCube, 2004)

Halo 3 (Xbox 360, 2007)

Forza Horizon 2 (Xbox One, 2014)

BioShock (Xbox 360, 2007)

Drop 7 (iPhone, 2010)

Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 (PC, 2000)

Quake III Arena (PC, 2000)

GoldenEye 007 (N64, 1997)

Doom (PC, 1993)

Plants vs. Zombies (iPhone, 2011)

Age of Empires II (PC, 2001)

LEGO Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (Xbox One, 2015)

James Pond II: RoboCod (Amiga, 1992)

Syndicate (Amiga, 1992)

Blade Runner (PC, 1997)

Grim Fandango (PC, 1998)

Peggle 2 (Xbox One, 2013)

Superhot (Xbox One, 2017)

Quake (PC, 1997)

Gears of War (Xbox 360, 2005)

Viva Pinata (Xbox 360, 2008)

Unreal Tournament (PC, 1999)

Cannon Fodder (Amiga, 1993)

Banjo Kazooie (N64, 1998)

Quake II (PC, 1998)

Another World (Amiga, 1992)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (MegaDrive, 1993)

Grand Theft Auto (PC, 1997)

Doom (Xbox One, 2016)

Braid (Xbox 360, 2007)

Limbo (Xbox One, 2014)

Worms World Party (PC, 2001)

The Sims (PC, 2000)

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube, 2003)

Pikmin (GameCube, 2002)

Super Skidmarks (Amiga, 1993)

Minecraft (Xbox 360, 2012)

Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (PC, 1992)

Project Gotham Racing (Xbox, 2001)

Tomb Raider (PC, 1996)

Carcassonne (Xbox 360, 2008)

Black & White (PC, 2001)

Frontier: Elite 2 (Amiga, 1993)

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (PC, 2003)

Alien Breed: Tower Assault (Amiga, 1994)

Two Point Hospital (PC, 2018)

Thimbleweed Park (PC, 2017)

Red Dead Redemption (Xbox 360, 2010)

Sim City 2000 (PC, 1993)

Super Mario 64 (N64, 1997)

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time (N64, 1998)

Midtown Madness 2 (PC, 2000)

Civilization Revolution (Xbox 360, 2008)

Jaguar XJ220 (Amiga, 1992)

Simon the Sorcerer (Amiga, 1993)

Chuck Rock II: Son of Chuck (Amiga, 1993)

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (PC, 2000)

Tomb Raider (Xbox One, 2013)

Pokemon FireRed & LeafGreen (GBA, 2004)

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Xbox One, 2018)

LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Xbox 360, 2007)

Back to Skool (Spectrum, 1985)

Transport Tycoon Deluxe (PC, 1994)

Zool (Amiga, 1992)

Super Smash Bros. Melee (GameCube, 2001)

Jetpack Joyride (PC, 2013)

Amped: Freestyle Snowboarding (Xbox, 2001)

Spellbound Dizzy (Amiga, 1991)

Putty (Amiga, 1992)

Ghostbusters (Spectrum, 1984)

Void Bastards (Xbox One, 2019)

Transformers (PS2, 2004)

Seymour Goes to Hollywood (Amiga, 1992)

Microsoft Ultimate Word Games (PC, 2017)

There you go. I already disagree with myself.

[eternallyitson]

I didn’t make this, I just found it a long time ago and saved it. This is the absolute truth, I agree with it 100%. That was many months ago now, and I still think about it constantly. It’s still hard to grasp the reality that I finished it. The entire story of the Dark Tower, from each installment in the series + all the other standalone novels that tie directly into it. I was given a personalized guide that was given to my by someone who has been a fan longer than I’ve been alive, the order was based on Roland’s chronology. It was 17 titles in all (technically 21 because of Hearts In Atlantis) and I dedicated countless hours to this, almost daily for many months. I went the entire time wondering what the end would look like. It was hard to even comprehend the fact that it would end. When I got to the last book, I couldn’t believe that it was the only one left and that after this, it would be completed. Roland’s first sight of the top of the Tower in the distance in the last book made me get giddy with excitement. When he finally reached it, it was far beyond surreal. What comes after is a feeling I cannot explain. It was just like being in a vivid dream.

The night (technically morning) I finished it is a memory that I will never forget. I’ll always remember how mind blown I was. And how I just laid in bed just thinking “Wow. That’s it. My journey is over. I am finally finished”... And especially HOW it ended just amplied these thoughts by like 100. I went to bed after that and even had dreams about The Dark Tower. Which is crazy because some of the characters in the story dream about it too.

Nights like this are common for me, even still. Where I just lay in bed and think of The Dark Tower. I STILL can’t believe it’s over. Or actually what I should say is actually I still can’t believe I finished it. I started it knowing I had a LOOOOOOONG road ahead of me. It might be a daunting task for anybody who’s not already a Stephen King fan, but I was dedicated enough to travel that road all the way to it’s end. The fact I reached that road’s end is still hard to believe. It was an incredible journey. There’s sources/outlets dedicated to Stephen King quotes, or more specifically, Dark Tower quotes. There’s one quote in particular that is written in the final Dark Tower book, this quote is one of the many memorable and highlighted quotes by people who know the books. Although it may sound like it, it’s not from the actual ending of the story. But it’s one that people who know the books can vouch for and apply it to the entire story as a whole. The quote is: “The road and the tale have both been long, would you not say so? The trip has been long and the cost has been high... but no great thing was ever attained easily. A long tale, like a tall Tower, must be built a stone at a time.” - It’s for that very reason it felt so surreal to me to finally finish.

I didn’t even intend for this to be a long post. I initially just meant to post this picture and a few sentences, maybe a paragraph at the very most. But I find it hard to fully articulate the magnitude of how I feel about all of this. Me trying to find the right way to say it just turns into a stream of consciousness that attempts to make what I feel be clear. Me ending up writing all of this is likely in vain as it will likely not be read by anybody. But that’s okay. This is something where I enjoy stating all of this stuff, even if it’s just to myself. Considering the nature of this whole entire story and the nature of Roland Deschain himself, in a way me saying this stuff only to myself is oddly fitting.

[ciathyzareposts]

Curse of Enchantia – 20000 Leagues Under Quality Game Design

Written by Alfred n the Fettuc

One of the greatest things about The Adventure Gamer blog is that we have the opportunity to find out exactly how good the games we didn’t play back in the day actually are. Sure, it’s always great to read more about Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Monkey Island, but it’s the unknown games that really get my attention. Sometimes you can find a diamond in the rough, some unknown great game. For example, it’s thanks to this game that I finally got around to play Gateway and I don’t regret one second of it, it was a great game! Sometimes, time has just forgotten excellent games that you never took the time to actually play.

And sometimes not. Sometimes games are forgotten because they are utterly horrible garbage.

Please tell me you’ve come to release me of my misery

I don’t think a game has ever managed to piss me off so strong so fast. I’ve barely sunk an hour into it and it’s already shown me the a nice selection of cardinal sins of game design. This game got it all : stupid puzzles, interface nightmare, grating music… and I think I barely scraped the surface of it all… my dear friends, I think it’s going to be a long walk in the dark.

But first things first : Let’s start at the beginning. Last time we left our beloved hero, he was shackled upside down to a cell wall by his feet. My only hope is that the hero is actually delirious from the blood gushing into his head and he would wake up eventually into a video game design company and after shattering the fourth wall, the game would become good… Not a chance? Maybe not, but it would make a great premise for an adventure game, wouldn’t it?

So, let’s first talk a little bit about the interface. I think if you look widely at 2D adventure game interfaces circa 1992, we have three main examples of successful interfaces. First we have the “verb and object” SCUMM system of Lucasarts, which in my mind is the most well known interface at the time. Created for Maniac Mansion and perfected with each iteration of Lucasarts games (removing the excess verbs), it gives you freedom to do whatever you think of without guiding you too much. The other example is the Sierra interface (post-parser) where you choose an icon (take, talk, use…) and point at something on the screen. Add to that specific icons depending on the game series (I’m thinking about the tongue in Space Quest or the zipper in Leisure Suit Larry) and you have another perfect interface giving you freedom and letting the developers go wild with anticipation on your nonsensical attempts at trying anything on anything. The third one is obviously the simple “point, click and something happens”. It started with Gobliiins or Legend of Kyrandia (or anything more obscure) and would become the mainstream interface of modern adventure games. Less interactivity but much more simple. You just click on things and see something happen.

Now a little pop quiz : what’s the common thing between these three interfaces? Watch out, the answer is going to be a hard one : You point and you click. This is why our beloved genre is often referred to as “point and clicks”. It’s because you point your mouse at something and you click. You would think it’s the only logical way of playing a graphical adventure game, wouldn’t you? Well you’d be wrong. Here, things are a little different.

The first menu (wait until you see the submenu detailing all the different “use” commands)

Clicking the right mouse button brings up a menu. Here you find several actions. From left to right : inventory, take, use, look at, talk, fight and… I don’t know… jump I guess. Or cheer. We’ll see. The three last are save/load, sound options and credits/percentage completed/points (yes there is a points system but we’ll address this later as soon as I understand exactly what you have to do to gain points, which is still a little unclear for now). Until that, so far so good, right? But you can’t take an icon, let’s say the eye and look at your shackles. Not here. Here, when you click on an icon, it brings you to a submenu with what’s surrounding you. And then you can interact.

e.g. : The shackles

At no time can you move your pointer out of this menu and click directly on the screen. It seems not so bad when told like that, but you have a few other things going. When you click on something that does nothing, you get a simple thumb down. The look option only serves as a matter to see what’s around you considering there is no description whatsoever. And the worst comes when you’re pretty sure you could interact with something but you can’t (for example : the torch) or the other way around, where you can interact with something you never would have noticed (for example : the wall on the right beneath the water pool. No, I didn’t see anything special about it but the interface allows you to interact with it, so it must be special in some way).

And now, my personal favorite : the submenu when you try to “use” stuff

And then when you can interact with something, you have the “use” submenu, which is baffling to say the least. You have, from left to right, the options to : use a key in a lock, use a keycard in a slot (or let’s say putting anything in anything), pushing/pulling something, eating something, wearing something, throwing something, pulling? Or opening a drawer? And putting lego bricks onto each other. Okay, I admit my defeat, it’s time to open the manual. Turns out I’m right about most of these icons, except the second one (“insert”… yeah different icon than “unlock”), the seventh one which is “give”, and the last one which is “tie/attach”. I’m a bit bummed out there is no actual lego brick involved.

Finally, and then I’ll stop rambling about the interface because I feel a lot of you have already stopped reading, there is the “talk” option which only gives you two possibilities : Hi and Help. Turns out it’s also the solution to the first puzzle because you have to yell “help” for the guard to enter and yell “SHUT UP” (in a way that I’m kinda surprised it’s never been done into a meme) before exiting the cell and dropping the key by accident.

My guess is that the guard’s voice was done at the end of beta-testing by a guy who was listening at the music for a month too long.

The guard’s animation is pretty funny, though. You can get a glimpse of the key flying off on the left of the shackles.

So, let’s get going. I hungrily grab the key and free myself of the shackles with the “unlock” function (yeah I’ve tried, the “insert” function gives you the thumb down). Then, going through the cell highlights the right wall as usable so I push it to discover… a paper clip! (which I guess, must have time/space-traveled from the same place I did) What do you do with paper clips, boys? You unlock doors with them! Thank god Brad appears to be a typical teenager with unlocking/thievery skills as they all are.

Thumbs up, Brad! You can now go break into the principal’s office!

Exiting the cell, you enter a long corridor with some kind of weird one-legged monster jumping around, a locked door and a fishbowl. I knew from a first attempt at playing the game that you absolutely need the fishbowl in the third place you visit, so I tried going on without taking it… turns out the monster doesn’t let you pass! On one hand it’s always irritating to see two completely unrelated elements moving on the plot (the monsters leaves his spot because I take the fishbowl) but on the other hand, it seems this game doesn’t allow dead-ends! Thank you Almighty adventure games gods!

Anyway, another weird thing about this game starts in this corridor : you have obvious dangers for your health that you can try to avoid (said monster for example, chases you with an axe, and giant knight statues try to crush you with their weapons) but it doesn’t seems there is any consequence for getting crushed several times in a row. You still can’t die, maybe points are being subtracted from my total but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Add to this the fact that the corridor is full of gems and gold coins to collect for nothing else than added points and the whole thing seems like a very slow and pointless action-ish sequence. I go to the other end of the corridor trying to avoid the weapons of the knights and grabbing as much loot as I can, just in case it shows any use later on.

This is where I use my famous Latin skills and compliment the use of comic book onomatopoeia.

The other end of the corridor holds a door that opens on emptiness, Roger Rabbit style. Brad hovers a bit mid-air, then looks at the camera and shows a “HELP” sign before plunging into the waters below. For now I have to say that the cartoon slapstick comedy kinda works so let’s hope it keeps going.

Fifty years after The Road Runner show and it’s still funny.

Brad then finds himself underwater, which is the famous scene I was never able to pass as a kid. He starts turning blue immediately but wearing the fish bowl on his head makes him breathe underwater (don’t try this at home, kids!) I didn’t have the patience to wait ten minutes in order to see if he could beat Guybrush Threepwood in a snorkeling contest.

The fact that I don’t have anything in my pockets doesn’t really explain why I sunk directly at the bottom of the ocean though… it must be a really heavy fishbowl.

I proceed to free the fish from its trap because that’s what an nice adventurer would do and I explore my surroundings. I find a suspicious patch of dirt and burrow through it to find… an earthworm! Score! At this time the freed fish comes back to me and gives me a seashell. I’m reassured. I thought this action would remain altruistic and unrewarded! This is not the adventurer’s way.

Thumbs up Brad! You now have an earthworm in your pockets!

A few more steps to the left and I find some kind of shop (including neon signs and all) that seem to sell an oxygen tank. Saying “Hi” to the shopkeeper shows that he wants an earthworm for it. So far so good. I give him the worm and… the shopkeeper swims away with the tank! What? Have I been conned?

So long and thank you for all the worms.

I’m sure that if I don’t give the shopkeeper the worm, something completely unrelated would block my progress later in the same area but I really don’t get what happened here… Anyway. I keep going and find myself in front of a nest of electrical eels with a big turtle hovering near them. My first try is to use the “jump” option on the turtle but despite a few tries, it doesn’t work. I then try to give the turtle the seashell and it works!

  To infinity and beyond!

The next obstacle on this VERY linear path is a huge shark coming from the west and pushing me away. I try a few things, including fighting it with the paperclip but to no avail. I try to look around a bit more which is pretty fast considering there is not much space to scan between the eels and the shark and I find a… weapon of sort… I want to say a flail? In a very obvious spot that doesn’t bode well for pixel hunting later in the game.

Yep. Obvious.

I use it to fight the shark (which requires a few tries considering you have to use the “fight” option at a very precise moment when the shark charges you) and the shark is electrified!

So I guess it’s more a taser than a flail… my bad.

A few more steps and… you know it… another obstacle! This time it’s a huge oyster blocking the way. I try to put the taser in its mouth. But no, this time you have to jump over it. And if you’re unlucky enough to choose the “jump” option when the mouth of the oyster is open, it simply doesn’t work. Your timing has to be right for it to work.

  Another problem solved!

Finishing this long path, I find myself in front of a huge bathtub plug. I can unplug it with my flail/taser/stick and I’m sucked into a cave. Ready for more adventuring!

Pictured : the lack of common sense and self-preservation of the average adventure game protagonist.

And with that I think it’s a good place to stop. Sorry about the short gaming time but I feel like my explanation of the interface already made this post way longer than expected. A last piece of rambling before you go… The underwater section is obviously made as a tutorial of sorts. You take a few steps, are in front of a problem and are usually handed the solution pretty easily. However, little Alfred never managed to get through this section. Maybe little Alfred wasn’t too bright, which is a distinct possibility. However, my guess is that the game doesn’t do a good enough job to give you incentive to keep going and that little Alfred’s tastes were already honed by games like Monkey Island or Space Quest to not see the trainwreck of game design this game so blatantly is.

In these two short sections, we’ve already seen nonsensical scoring options, avoiding unnecessary dangers that don’t do anything, one incomprehensible reaction from a NPC (the fish getting away with the tank I thought I just bought), pixel hunting, timing issues with the shark and the oyster, same grating music loop again and again… If these sections were supposed to show you a panel of what the game will have to offer you, I think we’re in for a good time!

Finally taking my revenge on the underwater section after 25 years!

Anyway, see you next time, folks! And I promise more adventuring, less rambling!

Session time : 45 minutes Total time : 45 minutes

Inventory : Paperclip Score : 54 Percentage complete : 11%

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/curse-of-enchantia-20000-leagues-under-quality-game-design/

[adombikes]

This is not the best picture of my new Crust Bikes Romanceur, but it shows the bike with accoutrements for the five hour ride I was on yesterday, and is a bit more interesting as such. This is my newest bike. If you’ll recall older posts of mine where I discuss wanting to replace my Rivendell A. Homer Hilsen with something, well, this is what replaces it. Crust Bikes is a new brand with a cult~ish following a la that of Rivendell. In fact, many of the Crust owners I follow on Instagram are also Rivendell owners, as the bikes complement each other well. If you want something Rivendell~ish, but are married to the idea of disc brakes, Crust is your answer. This bike happens to be the most Rivendell-like bike of theirs, in that it is fully lugged steel with traditional non-sloping geometry, and an overall classic sensibility. It is designed by UltraRomance, after all. 

This bike fills the void in my collection you could call randonneur bike or enduro allroad bike. I loved my A Homer Hilsen for traveling across the city quickly without hesitating to hit some dirt here and there. This bike is second only to my road bike in sheer speed, though it might be a tie for second with my Black Mountain Cycles monster CX. What it loses in speed to my road bike it gains in durability, lock-ability, and most importantly, its ability to carry things. 

The Romanceur is perfectly suited to the ride I did yesterday, though the Black Mountain Cycles would’ve done just as well albeit with a slightly different style of riding. Most of the ride was actually on the road; we took the coast south for about an hour before reaching our destination, an old overgrown stagecoach road known colloquially (among cyclists) as Planet of the Apes. At one point, I asked my friends why it is called that, and they couldn’t agree: is it because the road is reminiscent of scenes in the movie, or because the movie is filmed there? To me, nothing about the ride was overtly “Planet of the Apes” but the name makes sense for some reason anyways. 

My concern for this bike was the disc brakes. I have disc brakes on my mountain bike because they are standard for modern mountain bikes, but didn’t feel confident about having them on a road~ish bike since all my other bikes have been rim-brakers and discs seem to be so polarizing. It turns out I’m not that picky and that I lucked out with the brakes I ended up with; they work great. They are easy to set up, also, and I discovered that swapping out pads is not an issue. One thing I’ll have to watch is pad wear since disc pads wear out faster than rim brake pads, I think. All that being said, I would have swooped on this bike quicker had it just been spec’d for cantilevers. I know canti’s are notoriously bad, but they are more pure functionally and visually in my humble opinion (IMHO or ATMO). 

Someone at a recent bicycle-centered dinner party remarked that this bike might be redundant with my Hunqapillar, and I said that it would not be, though I wasn’t sure having not ridden or even seen the bike in person. I can confirm now that the bike is not redundant with my Hunq, and that it is perhaps most redundant with my Black Mountain MonsterCross. I don’t care and I’m keeping both. The Hunqapillar’s tubing is certainly much stouter, as that bike is meant for lots of ruff-riding. This bike’s ride quality is best described as “springy” where it doesn’t quite plane but it doesn’t fight you while pedaling hard like an Atlantis might. I was slightly worried about the ride yesterday being too rough for the bike, but realistically it would take much more to break a Romanceur. 

I’m very slightly bummed because Crust just released a teaser for their new model called the Lightning Bolt, which is a beautiful translucent green, and all my other bikes are green. What can ya do? I really cannot complain because the Romanceur looks great and silver is a cool color, too. I think it’s important to have a wildcard, anyways. 

The handlebar bag pictured is a custom vegan Makeshifter Canvas Works Outback Saddlebag. It works great as a handlebar bag even though she markets it without mentioning that capability. I found it to be the perfect size yesterday for carrying a jacket, two bags of chips and two tubs of hummus, along with two tubes and a tire lever and a multitool. My UltraSwift Wizard Sleeve wouldn’t fit between the handlebars on this bike, and would have been overkill for a day ride. What makes this particular bag vegan above her normal bag is that she sourced non-wool felt (made from post-consumer plastic!), non-beeswax waxed canvas, and non-leather straps. The quality and attention to detail are at least a notch above Swift industries, which is saying a lot as Swift makes some really nice stuff. 

Overall this bike is amazing and any qualms remain to be seen. The lugs and the fork crown (which is technically a lug, I guess) are reallllllly dope, like medieval almost. One design aspect that might have been overlooked is that since the fork crown is so wide and prominent, it hits the downtube if you rotate the fork enough. Not a huge deal, but it would be nicer not to even think about that. I didn’t notice it or even think about it once on my ride yesterday, so this is a small issue. The WTB horizons set up super wide on the Blunt 35 rims, so they ride nice and plush. I might even convert them to tubeless after writing this. The Novatec hubs seem nice, also, even though they’re kind of an off brand from what I usually get. The sound they make is nice and loud, and unique. The 1x system currently on the bike is fine except I might switch out the derailer for something with a clutch, which will hold the chain tighter (yesterday I was backpedaling a few strokes and dropped the chain - again, not a big deal because it never came off when pedaling forward). I get the sense that this old 9s XT RD is a bit used since it allows for a good amount of chainslap. All this being said, I think I might get a Compass / Rene Herse or White Industries double crankset when I strike it rich. Until then, this 11-34 or whatever it is might be replaced with a SunRace 11-42 or something with a wider range. 

I’ve ranted enough. I’m moderate-to-severely hungover and don’t feel like scrutinizing over writing quality today, so it’s probably a bit more conversational than it would be normally. Read it in a Bukowski voice and imagine I’m writing with a fifth of whiskey on my desk and a cigar between my lips. Over & out.

--Adam