Your favorite and least favorite puzzles out of the 5 games?

I think most my favourite puzzles were from TPD. The box in the sewer where you had to move red and green balls, at Roswell getting item 186 and the crossword all stand out for me.

I really dislike the droids on Alcatraz in Overseer. I have no problem with the GRS droid in UAKM, besides it freaking me out when I was younger (okay, it still does!) but two droids were too much for me to think about. It turned the game into one long LOAD-SAVE fest near the end, and it really destroyed the pacing for me.

Now, my favorite puzzles include Malloy's puzzle boxes (except Elijah Witt's box) and the fight with Big Jim Slade. I also like the alternative solution to how you can stop the alien in Roswell.

Also, it'll probably irk me forever that they got Roswell and Area 51 mixed up

-Fred

There's an alternative solution to stop the alien??

Edit: You talking about resetting the timer?

Fred Buer wrote:I also like the alternative solution to how you can stop the alien in Roswell.

Also, it'll probably irk me forever that they got Roswell and Area 51 mixed up

-Fred

There's an alternative way of stopping the alien? Also, isn't Area 51 the testing ground for experimental government projects derived from alien technology, not pure alien tech itself?

Fred Buer wrote:I also like the alternative solution to how you can stop the alien in Roswell.

-Fred

You mean the one with the sprinkler system, or the other one? I only did the last one once by accident, but I could never reproduce it...?

Bests, Rockefeller

I think we've all played these games too much, so we get frustrated by stuff with the highest room for error even when you know the solution. Stuff like the GRS Droid and the cloud monster in Roswell.

But I think design-wise, the worst puzzles are the ones that are just illogical and have to be figured out randomly. For instance, there's a point in Overseer where you have to go back to an abandoned office like 3 days after it's relevant to the story and find a piece of mail that magically showed up there. It's totally unintuitive.

Another example is in Pandora, there's a point where Malloy's coat shows up in his room, but the event is triggered by actions that have nothing to do with Malloy. It's unintuitive. We all know to do this since we've played these games a million times, but they represent a more serious design flaw, I think.

Sprinkler system? Now I really gotta replay the game!

-Fred

Frogacuda wrote:I think we've all played these games too much, so we get frustrated by stuff with the highest room for error even when you know the solution. Stuff like the GRS Droid and the cloud monster in Roswell.

But I think design-wise, the worst puzzles are the ones that are just illogical and have to be figured out randomly. For instance, there's a point in Overseer where you have to go back to an abandoned office like 3 days after it's relevant to the story and find a piece of mail that magically showed up there. It's totally unintuitive.

Another example is in Pandora, there's a point where Malloy's coat shows up in his room, but the event is triggered by actions that have nothing to do with Malloy. It's unintuitive. We all know to do this since we've played these games a million times, but they represent a more serious design flaw, I think.

In defense, the puzzle you're talking about in Overseer had an initial inventory item you could get on the first visit to make things more logical. As far as Malloy's Jeans go there may have been afk .wav files that put you on the right direction. It's seems very logical to be at one of Malloy's hangouts to look for Malloy. But I kind of agree that I like it better when game progression is driven directly through the player's actions instead of selective time.

Fred Buer wrote:Sprinkler system? Now I really gotta replay the game!

-Fred

On the sprinklers, it would be sweet to see Tex try and smoke in a building somewhere only to have him get doused by overhead sprinklers.

Fred Buer wrote:Now, my favorite puzzles include Malloy's puzzle boxes (except Elijah Witt's box) and the fight with Big Jim Slade.

I didn't care for that fight. It felt like all I was doing was trial and error until I forced out the right answer the game wanted from me.

I like all puzzles.

The puzzle on the Moon Child when trying to revive Eva Schanzee was pretty cool (no pun intended); all of Malloy's boxes were very difficult, especially the slider puzzle when under the time restraint; the brain puzzle in Overseer was hard at first; and a few others not coming to mind made all the games a true adventure gaming experience.

Even to this day, whenever I attempt the Moon Child resuscitation puzzle, I don't stand a Schanzee.

Ba-dmm pssshhh!

-Fred

Fred Buer wrote:Even to this day, whenever I attempt the Moon Child resuscitation puzzle, I don't stand a Schanzee.

Ba-dmm pssshhh!

-Fred

haha. Brilliant Fred.