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Radiofloyd's Retro Thread - Dreamfall The Longest Journey


radiofloyd
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Following on from the shout thread... Ok I think that title is pompous enough. :)

I've been exploring the colourful Quaramonte City and bumped into some old friends:

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You meet this couple in Syria in Broken Sword 1.

The "smoking mirror" of the title refers to the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca, as Professor Oubier tells you in Quaramonte City.

As far as adventure games go, Broken Sword is definitely guilty of having some pixel hunting and obscure puzzle solutions. Also, progress often requires repeatedly talking to people to unlock new dialogue options. But these problems don't really mar the game. It's worth mentioning that they are some of the most beautifully soundtracked games I've ever played.

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Made a lot of progress in the game today. This scene brought back horrible memories:

bs2memories_zps3f0dc647.png

But actually I got through it fine, which is kind of surprising. I guess younger me just didn't understand that you have to talk to people over and over. You could also completely miss the branch in the background which I did for a few minutes. But overall I have to say that this part was fairly logical, which is not my memory of it at all!

Now in the London museum with Nico.

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Well, like I said, GOG and PC stuff first. After Broken Sword 2 will definitely be Fallout, which I'm quite far into. After that I'm thinking something like this:

Curse of Monkey Island

Day of the Tentacle

Beneath a Steel Sky

Icewind Dale

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines

Loom

The Dig

Neverwinter Nights

Those older adventure games shouldn't take me very long. I might have to buy Full Throttle, Grim Fandango and Blade Runner on ebay if I can't emulate them. I haven't checked how must they cost, or the minimum specs. But I do have a Windows ME laptop that hopefully should be able to play them.

Then it's just continue on - Fallout 2, Icewind Dale 2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Escape from Monkey Island, Broken Sword 3 and 4...random games like Anachronox, Another World, Divine Divinity, Septerra Core, Sanitarium, Pathologic, Sid Meier's Pirates, and moving on to the Gabriel Night and Tex Murphy series.

If I get that far I'll be happy. I haven't decided whether I'll put time into games like Ultima, Wizardry and Might & Magic before moving on to the Snes and N64 - I think at that stage I'll just move on.

My Snes to do list isn't that long - off the top of my head, finish Secret of Mana, then Super Metroid, Link to the Past, Seiken Denetsu 3, Super Mario Rpg, Terranigma, Secret of Evermore...I think that's it. N64 is just three games - Super Mario 64, Majora's Mask and Paper Mario. Paper Mario is the one I'm mainly interested in.

PS1 should take me a while with games like Alundra, Wild Arms, Suikoden, Grandia, Vagrant Story, Chrono Cross, Dragon Quest VII, Xenogears, Persona 2, Star Ocean 2, Front Mission 3, Final Fantasy Tactics...plus random games like PaRappa the Rapper, Devil Dice and Symphony of the Night. Yeah this should take me a while...

You can see how I have to do something like this to get anywhere! :)

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I'm onto the last section of the game now, I'll finish it tomorrow. Overall I'd say it's hard to separate this and the first game, but I would say BS2 is just slightly more consistent. Broken Sword 1 got off to a great start but there were some lulls throughout the story (the part where you visit Ireland springs to mind). The Smoking Mirror definitely feels shorter, in a good way, and you never spend too much time in one place. But both games have their high points.

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"Happiness is an inside job."

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And by tomorrow I meant in an hour's time... Great game. :)

Next: Fallout. I've done a fair bit in Fallout already, Shady Sands, The Raiders Camp and all that. So I'll be picking up the story at Junktown. I've been following this excellent guide because honestly Fallout is not an accessible rpg, even by the late 90s standards. Well it's pretty straightforward to pick up and play but it's easy to miss a lot of things if you don't know where to look for them, and it helps to do things in a structured order... Especially with the 100 day timer or whatever it is.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Ok, I'm back. I cleared out the quests in Junktown and have now moved on to the Hub. The art direction in this game is fantastic.

I'm really just ticking boxes according to the guide I'm following than blindly immersing myself in the game. The only reason I'm doing this is because of the time limit and I don't want to fuck anything up. A fool could see that there is an incredible game here that would really reward multiple playthroughs. But this is 2014, not 1997, and I've got a backlog to get through!

Like I said above though, I don't plan on following a guide for Fallout 2, which will probably be around #10-20 on this list.

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  • 1 month later...

Randomly booted up Super Metroid and played that for around 20 minutes, awesome game. Anyway as a result I downloaded a shit ton of Snes and Mega Drive roms.

For the Snes: Breath of Fire 1 & 2, Dragon Quest III, Live A Live (this will test my Japanese...), Star Ocean, Super Mario Rpg and Super Mario World 1 & 2. I already have a bunch of Snes roms so that rounds out my collection nicely.

For the Mega Drive: Beyond Oasis, Crusader of Centy/Soleil, Landstalker, Phantasy Star II-IV, Shining Force 1 & 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3 and Sonic & Knuckles, Warsong and Wonder Boy in Monster World.

I fucking love 16-bit. :)

I'll mess around with them in the morning.

I'll get back to Fallout after my exams...

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  • 1 month later...

Started this. The graphics have obviously taken a leap forward from the pixels of the first two Monkey Island games.

Cursepic_zps380013e8.jpg

The point and click interface has been simplified as well. Should be a good one.

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  • 5 months later...

Like a certain ghost pirate, this thread refuses to die... Looking back, it's funny how little I talked about Fallout. But it's that kind of game. If you follow a guide you reduce the game to its bare nuts and bolts, my play through was more of a whistle-stop tour.

Anyway, I made good progress in the Curse of Monkey Island today. I had reached a point where I was completely stuck after getting the scissors from the barbers. I checked a guide and it turns out you are supposed to use the scissors on the undergrowth, that opens up a new area and a lot of ways forward. Eventually I ended up back looking at the guide trying to figure out how to recruit the crew members, it turns out that the solutions involved using random inventory items on certain people - I thought I'd tried all the combinations, but obviously I hadn't! I think Monkey Island has to be one of the more irritating adventure games in terms of puzzle solutions. My memory of Broken Sword is that you can often make progress my exhausting dialogue options, Monkey Island has that too but also a lot of inventory noodling and travelling back and forth.

The Curse of Monkey Island is probably the easiest of the first three games (and obviously the most modern), but I'd have to say it's also probably the weakest. It has never been my favourite adventure series, I don't find the humour or writing particularly funny (in general). But still there is more charm to The Secret of Monkey Island and LeChuck's Revenge.

Anyhoo, today I played through one of the highlights of the game so far, duelling banjos.

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On to Part IV now, "The Bartender, The Thieves, His Aunt and Her Lover."

Enjoyed the return of an old favourite, insult swordfighting.

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I can't remember if it was in LeChuck's Revenge but essentially it works the same as in the first game, you practise against a bunch of random pirates to learn the correct answer to each insult, and then you have to apply those answers against a boss who will use his own set of insults.

My favourite was:

"I'll hound you night and day."

"Then be a good dog and sit, stay".

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  • 1 month later...

Came back and finished The Curse of Monkey Island. It has its moments, but by and large its a tedious game. I can understand the appeal of trying to muddle through this game 20 years ago, before the days of the internet, but now...

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Let's try and get a bit of momentum going into 2015, on to the next one! Revolution's Beneath a Steel Sky.

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