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Grim Fandango and Day of the Tentacle remastered versions ing cheap on PS4 store

Started by Mister Six, February 08, 2021, 06:34:17 PM

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St_Eddie

Quote from: madhair60 on February 12, 2021, 09:42:13 AM
Damn. The upscaled graphics matched with the same number of animation frames - along with some weirdly smoother bits of background detail - make Day of the Tentacle Remastered look downright cheap and nasty. Thankfully you can smash that F1 button to get the original graphics back.

It is an unfortunate side effect of upscaling animations which weren't designed to be viewed that way.  Personally, I'm fine with it but objectively you're not wrong.

Still, I think it's preferable to the flash animation style of animating characters in modern hi-res adventure games - where the characters' limbs are essentially on a pivot and swiveled into position (as seen in titles such as Broken Age); sure, the result of animating characters that way is smoother but ultimately it looks far cheaper to my eyes because it looks like... well, a flash animation.  I'll take individually drawn animation frames over that any day of the week, even if the result looks jerky in hi-res.

popcorn

All of those "remastered" graphics look pretty orrible to me. So glad they let you turn em off.

madhair60

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 12, 2021, 10:00:26 AM
It is an unfortunate side effect of upscaling animations which weren't designed to be viewed that way.  Personally, I'm fine with it but objectively you're not wrong.

Still, I think it's preferable to the flash animation style of animating characters in modern hi-res adventure games - where the characters' limbs are essentially on a pivot and swiveled into position (as seen in titles such as Broken Age); sure, the result of animating characters that way is smoother but ultimately it looks far cheaper to my eyes because it looks like... well, a flash animation.  I'll take individually drawn animation frames over that any day of the week, even if the result looks jerky in hi-res.


Oh absolutely. It may be a mismatch between art and animation but at least it's faithful to the original.

Timothy

Played a few hours of Full Throttle this morning. Forgot the horrible sections in which you have to drive the motorcycle and kick people with objects.

Might try Day of the Tentacle soon. I liked it a lot when I played it years ago. Wonder how it holds up.

St_Eddie

Quote from: popcorn on February 12, 2021, 10:12:20 AM
All of those "remastered" graphics look pretty orrible to me. So glad they let you turn em off.

The Double Fine remasters are great like that.  The player can choose to mix and match which elements they want as originally presented or in remastered form, be it original versus remastered voice, music, graphics or interface.  The player can choose each element individually.  Everyone's a winner!

Quote from: Timothy on February 12, 2021, 11:04:46 AM
Played a few hours of Full Throttle this morning. Forgot the horrible sections in which you have to drive the motorcycle and kick people with objects.

Yeah, those sections suck.  Luckily you can hold shift and press V to automatically win each fight and get back to the puzzley narrative goodness.  There's no shortcuts for the destruction derby section though, sadly.

Quote from: Timothy on February 12, 2021, 11:04:46 AMMight try Day of the Tentacle soon. I liked it a lot when I played it years ago. Wonder how it holds up.

Narrator:  "Timothy soon discovered that it did indeed hold up very well and Timothy was happy and once again all was right within the world, as it should be."

Timothy

Thanks for the Full Throttle tip! That makes it all more enjoyable.

This thread sparked my enthusiasm about point n click adventure games again. Can't wait to try all the commendations.

Hand Solo

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 12, 2021, 10:00:26 AM
Still, I think it's preferable to the flash animation style of animating characters in modern hi-res adventure games - where the characters' limbs are essentially on a pivot and swiveled into position (as seen in titles such as Broken Age); sure, the result of animating characters that way is smoother but ultimately it looks far cheaper to my eyes because it looks like... well, a flash animation.  I'll take individually drawn animation frames over that any day of the week, even if the result looks jerky in hi-res.



A cheap and cheerful animation technique 40 - 50 years ago, but basically applying the same technology to a computer is a bit shit especially if you're a proper production studio.

Incidentally to anyone, Ron Gilbert did an in-depth review of Monkey Island and the software used to make it for the 30th anniversary a few months back.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Hand Solo on February 12, 2021, 11:57:01 AM


I will never tire of seeing that monstrous cat chomping on a building as long as I live and breathe.  Easily my favourite moment from all of Monty Python's works.

Quote from: Hand Solo on February 12, 2021, 11:57:01 AM
Incidentally to anyone, Ron Gilbert did an in-depth review of Monkey Island and the software used to make it for the 30th anniversary a few months back.

Coo.  Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever seen this particular video before, despite being a massive adventure game nerd.  Ta.

EDIT: Oh, I have seen it before.  It's a good video though!  Check it out, those who haven't seen it yet.

Hand Solo

Quote from: St_Eddie on February 12, 2021, 12:08:12 PM
Coo.  Oddly enough, I don't think I've ever seen this particular video before, despite being a massive adventure game nerd.  Ta.

It doesn't start until 3 hours in and is about 2 hours long, which is annoying because the video length is 5 and a half hours, which I could have easily watched.

St_Eddie

Quote from: Hand Solo on February 12, 2021, 12:14:28 PM
It doesn't start until 3 hours in and is about 2 hours long, which is annoying because the video length is 5 and a half hours, which I could have easily watched.

See my edit above ;)

But yeah, you'd have thought they'd have edited it for the YouTube upload.  Lazy landlubbers!

Zetetic

Quote from: popcorn on February 11, 2021, 01:17:23 PM
My biased, crappy, limited one-man perception was that in the 90s they were one of the "main" computer game genres, and I still meet many people who reminisce fondly about Monkey Island who haven't really touched a game since (and didn't touch much else at the time either) - whereas adventure games today feel a bit of a sideline and odd fractured genre.
I don't really disagree with this view, but I suppose I don't interpret it as any kind of death.

It's a far smaller part of gaming overall and there's fewer dominant producers within it than 30 years ago - but if you're in position of being able to sell even a few thousand games at $15, that's still a commercially healthy situation (capable of supporting an artistically diverse one).

popcorn

Yes I basically agree, though I can't help but sense that this market that was being served in the 90s somehow isn't being served now. It's like the genre has become so fractured, and you don't have a strong, reliable, "safe" brand like LucasArts was, that the games don't really find themselves to people like my sister. This is all baseless speculation though.

Sexton Brackets Drugbust

Grim Fandango was the first Adventure Game I completed without using a walkthrough at any point. I still regret discovering the genre as an impatient kid in the mid 90s and blitzing my way through the golden age classics, convinced there was this endless supply, not realising a veritable Adventure Game desert lay ahead at the turn of the century.

I.D. Smith

Quote from: Sexton Brackets Drugbust on February 12, 2021, 03:32:05 PM
Grim Fandango was the first Adventure Game I completed without using a walkthrough at any point. I still regret discovering the genre as an impatient kid in the mid 90s and blitzing my way through the golden age classics, convinced there was this endless supply, not realising a veritable Adventure Game desert lay ahead at the turn of the century.

I loved Broken Sword 1, which I played through on my own and without a walkthrough (including the goat bit), but for some unknown reason I decided to play the entirety of the sequel with a walkthrough, not even attempting any of the puzzles myself. I didn't even have the excuse of being a kid, as I was probably about 16-17 at the time. As a result, Broken Sword 1 and 3 I remember fondly, yet I can barely remember anything about 2. I guess it's the gaming equivalent of skim reading a book.

As an aside, in the mid 00s I made some really half-arsed attempts at making my own point n click game using Adventure Game Studio (which I believe is still going). Never got very far with it, though: didn't have the patience, talent or work ethic to get much further than making a small man walk about a screen a bit. I still harbour dreams that one day I'll go back it and finish it (i.e. do the remaining 99.9999% of the work required to finish the project).

popcorn

Quote from: Sexton Brackets Drugbust on February 12, 2021, 03:32:05 PM
Grim Fandango was the first Adventure Game I completed without using a walkthrough at any point.

Do you work at nasa now?

Hand Solo

Monkey Island 2 was probably my most anticipated game ever, so for some insane reason when I got it for my birthday my best mate stayed over and we sat up all night going through it with a walkthrough from a games magazine. 28 years old.

Bizarre really, but I think it was because I thought the 11 disks were a bit too much of an arseache to bother with. I did play it a load after that and would usually assign a mate to disk swapping duties but it was a bit sad I never got to play through it with the wide-eyed wonder of the first one. Really should have waited until I got a hard drive or something. In fact I don't think I've replayed it since the 90s so I would have forgotten so much a jaunt through the talkie version may be warranted at some point, ditto for DOTT and Sam & Max since I played them all with just text.

After Thimbleweed Park there's the Delores Mini-Adventure, if that might quell the controversial ending of the game?



Another one I never got round to playing is Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic, with Terry Jones and John Cleese in the voice cast, anybody know if it's worth a bother? You'd think all those ingredients would be a match made in heaven.

I forgot, in the vain of Darkseed and creepy alien Giger-esque worlds, there's a relatively obscure Amiga title I remember completing that's quite an odd one, lots of weird artefacts and strange puzzles - Kult: The Temple Of The Flying Saucers, also known as the more Ed Woody Chamber of the Sci-Mutant Priestess:


Zetetic

Quote from: Hand Solo on February 13, 2021, 01:22:56 PM
Another one I never got round to playing is Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic, with Terry Jones and John Cleese in the voice cast, anybody know if it's worth a bother?
I thought it was an interesting experiment in some ways, and it's a shame that The Digital Village didn't survive Adams's death to learn from the problems with it. I wonder if anyone of the people from TDV went on to do anything worth looking at...

I wouldn't bother not falling back on a walkthrough the moment you experience any frustration though. But I feel like that with almost all these sorts of games, if I'm honest.

madhair60

Already stuck in Day of the Tentacle. Everyone like "it's the easiest one". Absolute scenes. I'm embarrassed.

madhair60

Laverne looks joyfully demented in the original graphics. The remake ones just don't compare.

popcorn

I've played all the LucasArts classics several times and though it's very hard to be objective when you remember the solutions I honestly don't think the puzzles started making a lot of sense until Curse of Monkey Island. DoTT still has a few weird ones in there.

Hand Solo

Quote from: madhair60 on February 13, 2021, 06:58:55 PM
Already stuck in Day of the Tentacle. Everyone like "it's the easiest one". Absolute scenes. I'm embarrassed.

It must be incredibly tempting to just google the solution these days? Back when I played all of them there was no internet sanctuary, I remember ordering a Monkey Island hint book I think was advertised in-game from Lucasfilm after I got stuck at one point and it came with a piece of red plastic, you'd have to hold the plastic over the page to read the hint, and I think it was done in three stages.. the first would tell you what the broad objective was, the next hint down was actually hinting at how to do it, the third would just tell you what to do. Ooh, someone's uploaded a copy.



And here's the hintbook for Le Chuck's Revenge with the red writing I remember.

Don't forget you have to go on Ed's computer and complete the original Maniac Mansion to properly finish the game..

madhair60

It is very tempting, but people saying it's easy in this thread makes me want to persevere.

madhair60

Made a tiny bit more progress, now absolutely stumped.

Have to say, the loop of running to the Chron-o-John to flush items back and forth is pretty tedious.

Consignia

One you do it twice, you can just "give" an item to another character and it will end up in their inventory. Which is a relief because you do it a lot.

madhair60

Quote from: Consignia on February 13, 2021, 11:01:19 PM
One you do it twice, you can just "give" an item to another character and it will end up in their inventory. Which is a relief because you do it a lot.

Would have been nice of the game to tell me this...

I'm stumped and irritated. I can see, I think, what I need to do, but no idea how the game wants me to do it.

madhair60

Right, so I can't cut the rope with the scalpel, but I can just pick the rope up. Okay.

bgmnts

Its not hard you pull the monkeys tail using the tail puller you found on the first screen, that makes it drop the banana, you combine the banana with the tissues in your inventory and that makes the Banana gun, you use the banana gun on the monkey to shoot him and devour his corpse, giving you the ability to throw your shit at the balloon. When the balloon pops, a teddy bear will fall out. Combine the Teddy bear with the banana gun and you have a thermonuclear device. Use that to go to the next room.

Hand Solo

Quote from: madhair60 on February 13, 2021, 11:41:02 PM
Right, so I can't cut the rope with the scalpel, but I can just pick the rope up. Okay.

Now imagine logic ten times worse than this, but also you die all the time based on the slightest thing and forgot to save and have to swap disks the whole time and you're probably a child. That's Sierra. You can't judge them from an Ivory Tower of playing them in an emulator years after they came out as a concerning adult using save states etc AND you've got all the solutions online that you even forget you constantly use because the game is incandescently frustrating. You can't critique games that way.

madhair60

Quote from: Hand Solo on February 13, 2021, 11:48:46 PM
Now imagine logic ten times worse than this, but also you die all the time based on the slightest thing and forgot to save and have to swap disks the whole time and you're probably a child. That's Sierra. You can't judge them from an Ivory Tower of playing them in an emulator years after they came out AND you've got all the solutions online. You can't critique games that way.

This seems to be an attack on a position I haven't actually put forward. Can we just rewind and go from scratch? I've already apologised for being a twat, I don't want people on here to think that of me anymore, I know I'm a stupid cunt, I'm trying to stop.

With Sierra I'm well aware of their agreed shortcomings and don't begrudge anyone for not liking them. I like the games a lot because they're often hateful, it gives them a personality that I enjoy as a fan of archaic shit. Does this mean I can't be irritated by silly stuff in Lucasarts games? I don't think it does.

Hand Solo

Quote from: madhair60 on February 13, 2021, 11:54:38 PM
With Sierra I'm well aware of their agreed shortcomings and don't begrudge anyone for not liking them. I like the games a lot because they're often hateful, it gives them a personality that I enjoy as a fan of archaic shit. Does this mean I can't be irritated by silly stuff in Lucasarts games? I don't think it does.

Just be aware the S&M you're into is actually really watered down from the sedo the original games dished out. I know they might not have been directly aimed at children but obviously a lot of children did play them. Also, didn't Sierra have a premium hints phone-line for clues? Hmmmm. It's almost as if they didn't want you to get anywhere..

I'm just surprised you can get stuck on something like DOTT when ANY Sierra title is infinitely more taxing. I don't understand the Sierra death regroup idea either, surely you can just save your game in DOTT and think about it after the fact to ruminate on a solution, how does dying provide any sense of agency when you're going to be relying on saved games anyway?

If you want to do a play along of something really fucking annoying and noteworthy to take the piss out of, how about Altered Destiny? I had this as a kid and fucking hated it, not only was it a point and click adventure from the 90s but you had to write the fucking guessy words into stuff too. It was awful and you die all the time even though it's not a Sierra game.

Looks like people already have, but not very amusingly. This game is rife more exposure and a piss-ripping.