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It's a genre we've all enjoyed, surely. Practically everyone that's ever laid hands on a PC has played that epitome of point and clicks - Monkey Island. C'mon, admit it. Behind your piles of the massive titles - Command and Conquer, Quake, Diablo e.t.c a fair few of you will have the Monkey Island diskettes. I know I do. These kind of games ruled, when you had to find a piece of steak to distract the dogs, but first the jolly innkeeper wanted a chair, but the witch has that... It was massive fun, and I was never quite sure why. Where's the fun in getting so frustasted that you couldn't find the silver codpiece or whatever?
Surely the sheer absurdity of point and clicks is a factor. I cannot say I've ever seen one that takes itself seriously. It's always set vaguely in the human world, but never once will it leave a key hanging in the door. It'll be in the old matchmakers travelling monkey's suitcase. It's great. Also, above all, they give value for money. I've never taken so long over a game as a point and click. FPS? They are over soon, it's all a matter of small keys and big BIG guns. Strategy games take longer, but eventually you'll see all you have to do is flood the evil git with mammoth tanks. Sims of any sort don't really HAVE an ending, but you'll eventually get bored of piloting the Boeing 747 expertly and decide to wildly crash it into the flight control tower. It's a relief that proper pilots don't use this to train...
Anyway, seem to have gone off at a tangent there. Point and clicks were long-winded and you spend hours and hours completing them, because it was a matter of perfecting your technique...in a game-playing way, of course. The best example of this has to be the sword duels in Monkey Island, where you had to get the right combination of insults to win the duel - "Your mother was a festering cow" has to be countered by "You cannot hold your grog, swine!" or something like that, and it was fun, perfecting this. Although, you are always going to have people who aren't of the right mind for point and clicks. People who'll rather go blow the hell out of those evil Brotherhood of Nod guys, or pilot their Boeing 747 into a flight control tower...Thats fine, and those of us who love our point and clicks can cackle whilst escaping the cannibals cookpot with a feather duster.
Another point. The fine titles of point and clicks are much rarer than the multitude of Doom/Quake's and the thousand C and C replicants. There must be a reason for this, and I believe it to be the sheer complexity of point and clicks. They must take ages to develop - Broken Sword 3 has been in development at Revolution Software for over two years. So what are the memorable point and clicks? We have the Monkey Island series of course, the best two being Monkey Island's 1 & 2. But why is that? Why don't I enjoy the 3D ones as much. I think it's because graphics mean sweet FA in a point and click. You don't care if the facial expressions and lip synch isn't perfect. The 2D Monkey Islands will always be the best, and the chap who thought up the name Guybrush Threepwood is to be commended. I salute him. Next I come to the other great series of point and clicks - Broken Sword. I have to admit, I loved these even more than the Monkey Islands. Shadow of the Templar and the Smoking Mirror still have pride of place in my CD rack. The adventures of George Stobbart and his French tart Nico were great to play, and even more absurd than Monkey Island, if that is possible. The crowning moment must be retrieving a toilet brush for a desert bar rom a local kebabs saleman who was using it to baste his meat in Shadow of the Templars. Classic stuff. The attention to detail in that game was amazing, and I still rank it as my top game of all time. Then there's the Discworld series. Discworld 2 was the great one of that series, but Discworld Noir was the first 3D point and click I truly enjoyed. But that probably came from my love of the book series. They weren't ever as successful as the other greats.
I now come to my final point - Is the age of point and clicks drawing to an end? The last great one was The Grim Fandango, and it's a sad thing that we consider that a great game, compared to Broken Sword. Monkey Island 4 flopped, and didn't once touch on the classic nature of Monkey Islands 1 & 2. Why is this? The only reason I can think of is the massive shift to console gaming, away from the PC generation. Consoles aren't designed for point and clicks - you need a mouse, and the F buttons. There have been some translations, but they are never as good on a console as on a PC. Now, as more and more companies choose console before PC, I think the golden age of point and clicks may be drawing to a close, sadly.
All I can do is await Broken Sword 3, and hope that it lives up to the massive standards of the first two. It won't, I'm sure, because Revolution can't produce it in 2D. 3D is the most marketable. Broken Sword 1 is being brought to the GBA, but I can't see it working half as well as the PC version. Point and clicks aren't a console-viable game, and therefore they'll fade out of our gaming lives, and no-one will notice, because we're too busy blowing stuff up with guns. In a point and click, you'd blow it up with an explosive billiard ball.
Cheers,
Stryke.
Surely the sheer absurdity of point and clicks is a factor. I cannot say I've ever seen one that takes itself seriously. It's always set vaguely in the human world, but never once will it leave a key hanging in the door. It'll be in the old matchmakers travelling monkey's suitcase. It's great. Also, above all, they give value for money. I've never taken so long over a game as a point and click. FPS? They are over soon, it's all a matter of small keys and big BIG guns. Strategy games take longer, but eventually you'll see all you have to do is flood the evil git with mammoth tanks. Sims of any sort don't really HAVE an ending, but you'll eventually get bored of piloting the Boeing 747 expertly and decide to wildly crash it into the flight control tower. It's a relief that proper pilots don't use this to train...
Anyway, seem to have gone off at a tangent there. Point and clicks were long-winded and you spend hours and hours completing them, because it was a matter of perfecting your technique...in a game-playing way, of course. The best example of this has to be the sword duels in Monkey Island, where you had to get the right combination of insults to win the duel - "Your mother was a festering cow" has to be countered by "You cannot hold your grog, swine!" or something like that, and it was fun, perfecting this. Although, you are always going to have people who aren't of the right mind for point and clicks. People who'll rather go blow the hell out of those evil Brotherhood of Nod guys, or pilot their Boeing 747 into a flight control tower...Thats fine, and those of us who love our point and clicks can cackle whilst escaping the cannibals cookpot with a feather duster.
Another point. The fine titles of point and clicks are much rarer than the multitude of Doom/Quake's and the thousand C and C replicants. There must be a reason for this, and I believe it to be the sheer complexity of point and clicks. They must take ages to develop - Broken Sword 3 has been in development at Revolution Software for over two years. So what are the memorable point and clicks? We have the Monkey Island series of course, the best two being Monkey Island's 1 & 2. But why is that? Why don't I enjoy the 3D ones as much. I think it's because graphics mean sweet FA in a point and click. You don't care if the facial expressions and lip synch isn't perfect. The 2D Monkey Islands will always be the best, and the chap who thought up the name Guybrush Threepwood is to be commended. I salute him. Next I come to the other great series of point and clicks - Broken Sword. I have to admit, I loved these even more than the Monkey Islands. Shadow of the Templar and the Smoking Mirror still have pride of place in my CD rack. The adventures of George Stobbart and his French tart Nico were great to play, and even more absurd than Monkey Island, if that is possible. The crowning moment must be retrieving a toilet brush for a desert bar rom a local kebabs saleman who was using it to baste his meat in Shadow of the Templars. Classic stuff. The attention to detail in that game was amazing, and I still rank it as my top game of all time. Then there's the Discworld series. Discworld 2 was the great one of that series, but Discworld Noir was the first 3D point and click I truly enjoyed. But that probably came from my love of the book series. They weren't ever as successful as the other greats.
I now come to my final point - Is the age of point and clicks drawing to an end? The last great one was The Grim Fandango, and it's a sad thing that we consider that a great game, compared to Broken Sword. Monkey Island 4 flopped, and didn't once touch on the classic nature of Monkey Islands 1 & 2. Why is this? The only reason I can think of is the massive shift to console gaming, away from the PC generation. Consoles aren't designed for point and clicks - you need a mouse, and the F buttons. There have been some translations, but they are never as good on a console as on a PC. Now, as more and more companies choose console before PC, I think the golden age of point and clicks may be drawing to a close, sadly.
All I can do is await Broken Sword 3, and hope that it lives up to the massive standards of the first two. It won't, I'm sure, because Revolution can't produce it in 2D. 3D is the most marketable. Broken Sword 1 is being brought to the GBA, but I can't see it working half as well as the PC version. Point and clicks aren't a console-viable game, and therefore they'll fade out of our gaming lives, and no-one will notice, because we're too busy blowing stuff up with guns. In a point and click, you'd blow it up with an explosive billiard ball.
Cheers,
Stryke.
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Ant wrote:
> Well done on a great GAD win Stryke!
--
Thank you, my friend. Chess, sometime? I checkmated Grix in a daring move tonight! ;-)
> Well done on a great GAD win Stryke!
--
Thank you, my friend. Chess, sometime? I checkmated Grix in a daring move tonight! ;-)
Edgy wrote:
Oh yeah! I got that game, and the slightly more recent, graphically better and the only serious point and click I've ever played:
>Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity
yes, yes! great game. I think :D
I can't remember it too well... all I remeber is flying into Romulan space and destroying a few warbirds, before heading on to take on a Federation starbase :D
The bit with the musical patterns on the shifting floor was impossible! it took me ages to figure it out!
Oh yeah! I got that game, and the slightly more recent, graphically better and the only serious point and click I've ever played:
>Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity
yes, yes! great game. I think :D
I can't remember it too well... all I remeber is flying into Romulan space and destroying a few warbirds, before heading on to take on a Federation starbase :D
The bit with the musical patterns on the shifting floor was impossible! it took me ages to figure it out!
Well done on a great GAD win Stryke!
Well, I don't have time for lowly people who can't even do lip synch, y'know.... nah, I blame my MSN. I might have left it on while leaping about and going "Yahoo, I can get Tekken 4!"
And well done for the GAD. :0)
I said on MSN, but you ignored me... *wipes away tear*
I said on MSN, but you ignored me... *wipes away tear*
RastaBillySkank wrote:
Ahhh, Sam and Max... I completed it ages ago and re-discovered it at the same time as MI. Annoyingly though, I'm stuck... I can't remember how to get that big dude out of the room in Conroy Bumpus' Mansion so I can use the AR machine adn deactivate the security system. And I also can't rememebr what I have to swap to get Bumpus' wig...
Find the manual for the servant robot that's moving around inside, that's above the doorway in the bedroom. You can reach it by using the extending arm thing when on the bed.
You need to go to the vegatable place first, before you can get the wig. This requires going to the Bigfoot Dance, which you'll find out about after you free the Bigfoot, I forget his name, in Bumpus' Mansion.
What's the Capital of Brazil? God knows. :0)
Ahhh, Sam and Max... I completed it ages ago and re-discovered it at the same time as MI. Annoyingly though, I'm stuck... I can't remember how to get that big dude out of the room in Conroy Bumpus' Mansion so I can use the AR machine adn deactivate the security system. And I also can't rememebr what I have to swap to get Bumpus' wig...
Find the manual for the servant robot that's moving around inside, that's above the doorway in the bedroom. You can reach it by using the extending arm thing when on the bed.
You need to go to the vegatable place first, before you can get the wig. This requires going to the Bigfoot Dance, which you'll find out about after you free the Bigfoot, I forget his name, in Bumpus' Mansion.
What's the Capital of Brazil? God knows. :0)
*pops head into topic and smugs non-stop for a while, then wanders off in search of hot cross buns*
Cheers lads, I am indeed very smug, especially after a dull day at school. Cheers SR, you sure know how to brighten someones day :-D
Congratulation Gaz, Smug Aren't you, even more smug than usual now I bet. Go write AB's Diary now! : )
The post deserved it.
The post deserved it.
Well done on the GAD win! Myst is a fave of mine.
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