Comments on: Non-MMO Weekend: Gray Matter

By: flosch

flosch — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:54:40 +0000

That might’ve been it then. Without a mouse (I assume?), they probably need a different control.

Did you maneuver the character with one of the D-pads? Because that I can imagine could end up badly. With pointing and clicking, you have the built-in pathfinder that will adroitly navigate around potential nooks that could drive you crazy when you’re steering manually.

By: Syl

Syl — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:46:06 +0000

Hmmm…I played the demo on the Xbox, come to think of it. never a good idea for such genres.

By: flosch

flosch — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:29:49 +0000

Weird. Maybe they fixed some things between demo and final release? Though that’s unlikely. In any case, I had no problem with the controls at all. Not sure what you mean by the “wheel”, either. I can’t remember any wheel. Maybe I missed some control functionality?

The only thing that I noticed was that the “interact” cursor icon was a bit thin and therefore hard to see when you hovered over an object, but at that point you already knew you were supposed to interact with it, so it didn’t irk me too much.

By: flosch

flosch — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:27:15 +0000

Monkey Island was a bit of a special case. First, it was one of the Lucasfilm Game, which came with their own kind of idiosyncrasies (not only could you never get stuck, you typically had a hard time dying in most of them too). Second, it was very tongue-in cheek and played with the fourth wall on several occasions.

Gabriel Knight, on the other hand, was a game that had some humor, but was mostly focused on a story, and not a very funny story. It played it’s cards straight, without much self-irony, and thankfully succeeded. If you have the time, you probably should look it up on Good old Games, I think it costs something in the region of 5 USD. Even if you play it with a walkthrough at hang (advised unless you’re in for frustration), it will still be worth the money for the 3-5 hours of game time.

Just switch off the voices. At least on my machine, the voices sound horrible; much better to play it “the classic way” with text and music only.

By: Syl

Syl — Sun, 06 May 2012 14:23:15 +0000

I played the demo of GM and was really irked by the controls and camera. I got stuck a lot when trying to navigate different levels on the same, 2D picture – or kept targeting what I didn’t mean to target (the item/target ‘wheel’ annoyed me bigtime).
it’s not like I haven’t played and enjoyed games like Monkey Island in the past, but even there movement seemed easier and targeting/commands more fluent. now that it’s 2012 I think even text adventures could do a little better than the fixed frame approach. it’s nothing I am nostalgic for.

By: HarbingerZero

HarbingerZero — Tue, 01 May 2012 19:14:28 +0000

I was a big fan of the Monkey Island series (who wasn’t?) but I never moved beyond that series deeper into the genre. Well, except for a brief foray into Maniac Mansion, but lets not linger too long on that one…