Jump to content

Guide Dang It/Video Games/Adventure Game: Difference between revisions

Guide Dang It/Video Games/Adventure Game (view source)

Revision as of 04:19, 9 April 2014

219 bytes removed ,  10 years ago
m
Mass update links
VisualWikitext
m (categories and general cleanup)
m (Mass update links)
Line 2:
{{quote|-''An obstacle stands in your way! There doesn't seem to be anything obvious...''|''[[Guide Dang It|guide]]''}}
----
* The grand-daddy of them all: In a time in which there was no internet, it was considered a good thing that most Atari 2600 games were rather simple. When the ''[[Swordquest (Video Game)|Swordquest]]'' games were created, however, simplicity went out the window, and many gamers found themselves frustrated and nearly on the verge of insanity trying to solve these epic puzzles.
** Most Atari 2600 adventure games had a certain amount of [[Read the Freaking Manual|RTFM]], which is one reason modern gamers on emulators often get frustrated. The king of RTFM (and also this trope), was ''[[Raiders of the Lost Ark (Videovideo Gamegame)|Raiders of the Lost Ark]]''. Unfortunately, the manual left out a couple of steps (and didn't describe one vital object) for solving the game. Leaving a bunch of kids to puzzle out, with no internet (even the magazines were tight-lipped). A LOT of kids gave up, some eventually made the necessary leaps of logic. A modern gamer with no manual, forget it.
* ''Manhunter: New York'' and ''San Francisco'' are the worst. [[Fission Mailed|You have to get a game over a specific way]], and then you are given a name to search for later in the game. Normally, a game over in these games are something you try and ''avoid''. Especially since they would often either say "rest in peace" or a silly message. Meaning you probably would not think to take these as a hint - ''especially'' since a lot of those snarky death endings often say "That wasn't a good move!" or "Here's a hint: Don't do what you just did!"
* Too many to count in the original ''[[Alone in The Dark]]'' trilogy, as well as ''The New Nightmare'', but some examples from the first game:
** Pregzt, the final boss. What in the game hints at [[Kill It Withwith Fire|burning him with the lamp]]?
*** Nothing in the game, but the [[All There in the Manual|instruction manual]] has specific directions for what to do, only written backwards, i.e. ''eert eht fo retnec eht ta ti worht dna pmal eht thgiL''. Guide Dang It, indeed, because most people ignore PC game instruction manuals outright, if they got one with the game at all.
*** But there is a painting in the gallery that hints this.
* In [[Syberia (Video Game)|Syberia]], you must manufacture some legs for an automaton. The dialogue describes how only a certain model NUMBER will work, but conveniently leaves out the fact that said model number is an item you just plug in. The real determinant is the color of the wood, which is never hinted at. As an extra special bonus, the color you end up choosing on the control panel IS NOT THE SAME COLOR AS THE REST OF THE ROBOT!!! Thankfully, you can just brute force it, since there aren't that many choices.
** Better, you do get what can only be described as the opposite of a hint: {{spoiler|the brochure mentions such fine imported materials as "Madagascar ebony". Ebony is black. The wood you use is NOT BLACK.}}
*** To be fair, there is a picture of the correct wood in the brochure. But it's very easy to overlook.
* The creators of ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'' have stated that they would be surprised if anyone has beaten the game without resorting to spoiler information.
** There's a strict rule that any time anyone gives out a spoiler to a secret word for the Strange Leaflet Quest, that word becomes invalid. The only hint (on the wiki, not in the actual game) is that the words you're looking for are [[Shout -Out|Shout Outs]] to old text adventure games.
** The ''[[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot]]'' familiar, the recipe for which was supposed to be a fun spading project, but which was reportedly discovered by the player Bashy buying eight of every item in the game and seeing what got consumed upon making it.
** The Misshapen animal skeleton can only be acquired by combining 100 unique bones found during combat in Spookyraven Manor. Without a guide, it's impossible to know what bones do what, and how many are needed in total. Even better, the bones that drop from enemies in the Manor are random, necessitating either trial-and-error combat for days to get all the pieces, or by buying them all separately in the Mall and figuring out which pieces you're still missing.
Line 41:
* The second ''[[Simon the Sorcerer]]'' game also features a crowning moment of Guide Dang It near the end of the game. You need to be able to sneak past a monstrous guard. The solution to muffling Simon's footsteps? ''Wear a dog''. This command makes Simon magically transform the dog into a pair of fuzzy slippers and wear them. It should also be noted that a recurring source of humor is Simon's near total inability to use actual magic, so him being able to do this trick comes out of nowhere.
** [[Rule of Funny|Hush puppies.]]
* Obscure Sierra adventure game [[Gold Rush (Video Game)!|Gold Rush]]. Let's start with the fact that the opening is a [[Timed Mission]] and certain areas make the game [[Unwinnable]] if you spent too much time in the game. Then combine it with [[Trial and Error Gameplay]] (on the "Land" route, at least). and then throw in a puzzle that requires you to not only have switched a mule you just bought for another one you have no reason to search for in the first place but also {{spoiler|have picked up a family picture (that you have no indication you can take) in your house at the start of the game before selling it}} and you have headaches WAITING to happen.
* [[Torins Passage|Torin's Passage]], another relatively obscure Sierra Adventure game is not necessarily [[Unwinnable|impossible]] to win without a guide, but can be a major pain in the ass without a guide on some of its puzzles. More painful examples include the The Lands Above's phenocryst and the crystal used to make its platform usable <ref> you have to press the shard you get from the guard (Herman) into one of three different colored holes on a control panel (with the exception of the fourth hole, the red hole, which just switch what the other holes do), making pillars rise and fall until you somehow get them all to lower and make the phenocryst usable</ref>, the Escarpa's tiles to find its phenocryst <ref> You have to collect a handful of tiles all around the level, which isn't bad in itself, except that you later have to rearrange them on a podium found in the bottom of the world to make a face. Unfortunately there are many shapes you can make that can be deemed by a player as a "face" (nevermind a [[Blatant Lies|"smiling"]] face, and the hint system is absolutely useless in finding out what the hell the face is supposed to look like</ref>, Purgola's rearranging of the purgolin priests and priestesses (Ostiaries), both to lead Torin {{spoiler|and Leenah}} to a phenocryst and also to access it <ref> The first phase is to rearrange the Ostiaries along corners or parts of the pentogram so that each of them line up with every other one in a way they all have at least one trait in common (such as lining up all the Ostiaries whom have a gold belt, who have green hoods, who have white robes, etc) in either lines they're connected to. The second phase involves rearranging them between female and male, and then making them shuffle about in the most inconvenient way possible to hopefully get them to be arranged from the lowest-pitched singer to the highest (for the men) and the highest-pitched singer to the lowest (for the women). It is possible to make the second phase ''much'' easier by [[Good Bad Bug|keeping a female and male pair on the wrong side of either groups while rearranging the rest in the right order]] before you have to make them sing, but of course the hint system won't tell you that</ref>, Asthenia's [[Pixel Hunt|huge-ass maze with the tiniest wrench on earth]] <ref> you need to find a wrench in said huge-ass maze, and the only indication it's there is that it glitters from time to time and that the hint system eludes to it, but won't tell you much else on how to get to it</ref> and its crystal lazer puzzle <ref> rearranging crystals in a box so that a light reflects on them in particular angles written on the crystal. You have to get the light to shine from its source crystal to another crystal on the other side of the box</ref> and finally Tenebrous's (The Lands Below's) grass trekking <ref> after helping the sunflower, you have to navigate over hotspots indicated by the grass telling you variants of "yes" and "no". Of course, said hotspots aren't always consistant and they have [[Pixel Hunt|a relatively small area that'll get them to say "yes" to]], sometimes even making you look back in an area after moving an inch when it is ''now'' deemed safe when before it wasn't</ref>.
* In ''[[The Labyrinth of Time]]'', most of the game is standard point and click adventure, but at one point in the game in order to progress you need to move through a "Surreal Maze," which was a repeating room that could only be escaped by going through the exact right path. Very much like the Wind Fish's Egg in Link's Awakening. The only problem? Unlike Link's Awakening, there is NO point in the game in which you told this path. Even worse is the fact that there's no pattern to the solution either that you could conceivably guess; it's a COMPLETELY random sequence of paths, and there is NO WAY to finish the game without doing this maze.
* ''[[Myst]]'': One example of this: Getting out of the Mechanical Age requires you to rotate the main area of the age to get to two small islands that have part of the password leading out. The problem? There was a bug in the game when it was first released that prevented the area from rotating towards one of the islands. A patch was later released to fix this, but until then players had to use the guide to find out what the solution was.
Line 75:
* ''[[Shadow of Memories]]'' (''Shadow of Destiny'' in the US) has a bunch of them in the course of normal play, especially if you want to get the best endings: two or three conversation choices at different points in the game send you down different branches, which not only affects which ending you get, but also the backgrounds of the various characters! The game makes reference to the specific conversation choices being "important", but beyond that makes no mention as to WHY they're important. Then, of course, there's the problem of actually proceeding through the game, which, in later chapters, requires travelling to multiple time periods... Between that and trying to reconcile the various endings, a guide is definitely needed!!
* Speaking of obscure endings, the computer role-playing game Planescape Torment has an alternate ending that is so annoyingly well-hidden that it might as well be an easter egg! To get this ending, you must backtrack after a certain point in the game to get a bronze sphere (a key item). Then you must go through the entire game with that sphere until you reach the room before the final boss. There, you somehow "use" the sphere, letting you get an alternate ending by talking to the final boss. HOWEVER, the game gives absolutely NO indication that you need the bronze sphere, or that you need to use it in this one specific area - if you use it anywhere else, it just does nothing. In addition, you have to be a mage - if you're any other class, the sphere does nothing even in that area. Not to mention that the game doesn't make it clear how to become a mage - you might play through the entire game without knowing. Altogether, this is worse than just cryptic - it isn't explained at all!
* [[Infocom]]'s ''[[The HitchhikersHitchhiker's Guide to Thethe Galaxy (Videovideo Gamegame)|The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy]]'' adventure game. Ye gods. Not only are many of the clues found in the literal in-game "guide," but there's no index on the thing, so you have to keep guessing searches. How else are you going to figure out that the Brownian motion is used to power the improbability drive? And in many puzzles, the Guide is about as informative as its entry on Earth. The early game is filled with [[Lost Forever]] items whose function is often obscure and which you have to obtain on a time limit. Most notorious of these is the Babel fish: unlike in the book, where Ford simply sticks one in Arthur's ear, getting one in the game involves a bizarre puzzle in which two items (one of them probably lost already) get combined in a way that makes absolutely no sense until tried. Being overly familiar with the book doesn't help all that much, since the game diverges from the book's story; you have to prevent {{spoiler|the dog swallowing the microscopic space fleet}} from happening like it does in the book.
** One of the most egregious examples is the {{spoiler|toothbrush}} in your room on starting the game, which has a good chance of being required ''at the very end of the game''. Even the {{spoiler|junk mail}} that is required to get the {{spoiler|babel fish}} is hardly comparable.
** Or how about the fact that, to open a case that contains an item that you need, you need to find out which word of the second verse of the Vogon's poem is the password (which changes every game), which can be figured out by pushing a button on the case itself. However, what it doesn't tell you is that the Vogon won't even ''say'' the second verse of his poem unless you enter the command ENJOY POETRY after the poem has started. You do get a small hint towards this (the Vogon reading the poem says you didn't look like you enjoyed it if you fail to input the command), but not many people would think that "enjoy" would be a verb that the game would recognise.
* ''[[Runaway A Road Adventure]]''. The game had it's puzzles mostly grounded in realism up until a moment about halfway through: you need to use a [[WW 2]] machine gun, but it's out of ammo. Solution? Load it with ''tubes of lipstick'' mixed with gunpowder. That's just the developers being ''mean''.
* The ''[[Hamtaro (Anime)|Hamtaro]]'' [[Game Boy]] and GBA games fall into this trope rather well. Especially with the one character saying he'll only give you This if you give him That. {{spoiler|You LITERALLY have to find an item named "That" for him.}}
* The interactive fiction game ''[http://www.wurb.com/if/game/117 Jigsaw]'' gives you plenty of opportunities to completely screw yourself out of victory without even knowing it. Most of them are about failing to collect all the jigsaw pieces in a time period before doing something that renders them [[Lost Forever]] (an in-game device does tell you if there are pieces you haven't discovered in that time yet, but it won't warn you when you're about to inadvertently make it impossible to get them), but the biggest one by a mile has to be the drawing competition at the very end of the game. To win it, you need to have collected a sketchbook and pencil hidden in a stool at the beginning of the game and sketched at least four animals over the course of the game. There's little indication in the game that this will become vital later on, and if you don't do it, you fail to get the competition prize ''and'' can't complete the game without it, even after you've spent hours slogging through all these [[Lost Forever]]-riddled historical [[Timed Mission|Timed Missions]] beforehand. ''Guide dang it!''
** What makes this ''especially'', ah, interesting is that the author of ''Jigsaw'', Graham Nelson, is also the author of "The Craft of Adventure", an essay on interactive fiction design whose "Player's Bill of Rights" basically warns designers ''not to do this sort of thing''. As Graham admitted, "like any good dictator, I prefer drafting constitutions to abiding by them."
** The worst part is how the first part of the game, the prologue, is not only timed, but incredibly hard as well. (if anyone knows how to avoid the party, I'm Serperoth, feel free to contact me). Plus, with older/obscure games like that walkthroughs are rare, hard-to-access or both.
* Speaking of [[Interactive Fiction]], anything and everything designed by Andy Phillips. For some of the puzzles, not only do you have to think in a very unconventional manner, but you also have to solve them in a very specific way. Even if you know what you're supposed to do, the game may appear like that's not going to work, fooling you into thinking that's not the solution - simply because you're not going about it the exact right way.
* All the ''[[Clock Tower (Video Gameseries)|Clock Tower]]'' games have this to some extent, but by far the worst is ''Clock Tower II: The Struggle Within''. Not only are various endings based entirely on whether or not you happen to be playing as Alyssa or Bates at the time, but other random problems crop up - for instance, doors locked to Alyssa are open for Bates, even if you just changed personas. Possibly the worst example is a statue that, if examined, comes to life and chases you (providing a second antagonist for that scenario.) While you think you'd want to avoid this, if one ignores the statue, they're shoehorned into the "G" ending in the last level for no apparent reason.
* ''[[Star Trek: 25th Anniversary (video game)|Star Trek: 25th Anniversary]]'', during the level That Old Devil Moon you are faced with a door locked with a 5 digit security code. Your only hint is that the owners were a "superstitious" people. Even going through Player Guides now, none but one mention how you were supposed to figure out the code, they just tell you what the code is. Apparently you were supposed to look up the planet's information in the computer before beaming down, then look up information on the races who live there and making note of their special numbers. The code is the result of rendering one of the numbers in the Base of another of those numbers.
** But the worst part is that there is no way to return to the ship after you land on the planet. So If you saved over your only save game after landing on the planet, without getting the answer from the ship's computer, without a guide it becomes [[Unwinnable]]
*** Star Trek: Judgement Rites fixed this by allowing you to access the ships computer during missions by using the communicator, at least in one mission.
Line 107:
** Needless to say, [[Retsupurae]] did a great job tearing the games' puzzles apart.
* ''[[Time Hollow]]'' is pretty good about avoiding this for the main path... but there's a few optional tasks you can perform that fall squarely into this. All but one of them, you have no reason to suspect are even ''possible'' without checking a guide, in fact.
* ''[[MilonsMilon's Secret Castle]]'' [http://www.gametrailers.com/player/44794.html?type=flv gets a lot of criticism on this front], though most of it is exaggerated. Left+ Start continuing the game seems like a Guide Dang It, but it is mentioned [[All There in the Manual|in the manual]]. Most of the secrets are not marked, but many of them are [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj6r4lff0-o optional], or redundant, or placed in such a way that running through the most obvious path in the level with the shoot button held down will find them by accident. The reason this game belongs on the page? Milon can move blocks to reveal doors. This is not mentioned in the manual. This is not even slightly hinted at in the game; there is a shopkeeper who gives hints, but he found it more important to tell you to "FIND A SAW" (the saw is in an item shop, for free, in a game with infinite inventory space and no negative-effect items). Even if Milon is standing near a block he can move, and pressing up against it, the game's animation does not indicate that Milon is pushing it and you must push it for several seconds to move the block. Worst of all, the player cannot make ''any'' significant progress without figuring this one out; you can enter three rooms, only two of which will have anything in them.
* Every game in the ''[[Zork (Video Game)|Zork]]'' series has one of these. For example, getting past the cyclops in the first game requires either saying "Odysseus" or feeding him lunch. Attacking him with the sword, knife, or your bare hands; trying to sneak past him; or giving him anything else or saying anything else results in a game over.
** The game hints at both of these; the message you get if you hang around him or give him something indicates that he's hungry, and the Odysseus thing comes from mythology. If you don't know mythology, there's also a hint in the black book that you obtain during the course of the game. (The first letters of each line of the commandment in the black book spell out ODYSSEUS.) Incidentally, "Ulysses", the Roman version, also works.
** There's also the Loud Room, which [[Interface Screw|screws with your commands]] by making the last word echo echo echo ... and ignoring it. You can leave the room, but you literally can't do anything else else else ... including seeing the room description again again again ... taking inventory inventory inventory ... and so on on on ... There are actually two solutions. One makes sense and involves {{spoiler|draining the nearby lake through the dam which is the source of the noise}}. Unfortunately, it takes a while and only works for a few turns at a time. The permanent solution is to {{spoiler|stand in the room and '''type "ECHO", which magically STOPS the echo''' (or at least makes it so you're no longer bothered by it)!}}
Line 125:
* It would seem that most of the mystery in the 1990 puzzle/adventure game ''Theme Park Mystery'' is figuring out what the object of the game is. The puzzles range from the frustratingly obscure (the Zoltan fortune-telling machine, which {{spoiler|does tell you what the game objective is. Eventually.}}) to the downright surreal (the chess board in Dreamland). What makes the game particularly Guide Dang It is that it comes with a booklet that turns out not to be a manual, but a guide to theme parks and amusement parks throughout history.
* Those flipping pictures frames in ''[[Ty the Tasmanian Tiger]]'', which are not only in ''invisible crates'' and need a particular 'rang to find (forcing you to search through every nook and cranny of ''every. Single. Level.''), but are ''required'' if you want to [[One Hundred Percent Completion|access]] [[Secret Level|the Secret Level]]. Oh, and the best part? Once you've accessed the Secret Level, ''123 more pictures frames become avaliable to find''. Krome sure can be a bitch.
* ''[[The Goonies (Videovideo Gamegame)|The Goonies]] II'' has most of the key items and goals like this.
* In one of the ''Scooby-Doo'' CD-ROM games, you have to click a random torch on a wall to trigger an encounter necessary to the plot. Why click that specific spot?
* In ''Detective Barbie'', you have to specifically walk INTO the wall with the funny footprints at the base to open the secret passage.
* Some of the Lost and Found items in ''[[Flower, Sun, and Rain]]'' are pretty straightforward. Some of them... not so much. For instance, the third one in Scenario 4 has the hint that the guest in room 407 drank all the cocktails from the restaurant, and they're worried because that's a lot of alcohol. No, you're not supposed to add together all the alcoholic ingredients listed for the cocktails. No, you're not supposed to add together all the ingredients, alcoholic or otherwise, either. You're supposed to add together the the alcoholic concentration of the drink, that for someone without enough chemistry knowledge would be indistinguishable from temperature. Try guessing ''that'' without looking it up.
* In ''[[Indiana Jones and Thethe Fate of Atlantis|Indiana Jones and the Fate Of Atlantis]]'', one of the first puzzles you face is trying to get past an obnoxious bouncer to interrupt your colleague's speech. You can either talk your way past him, knock him out, or stack some boxes and climb through the window. What is not apparent is that your choice here completely changes the storyline of the game (which tailors itself to the solution you chose), and since most Adventure gamers are conditioned to assume that the first solution that works is the only solution that will, many players missed out on 2/3rds of the game.
** That's not quite true. The actual branching point comes later, once you've found the Lost Dialogue. The path Sophia suggests depends on how you got past the bouncer, but you can still pick any of the three paths at that point. However, it's not apparent that that conversation is so vital.
* [[Douglas Adams]]'s ''Bureacracy'', in some very bizarre manner, makes some amount of sense with most if its puzzles to start with (a parrot missing its left wing will become very excited upon seeing a painting of Ronald Reagan-- think about it). However, when you get to the airport, the game requires you to climb one of the structure poles and crawl into the air ducts, and what happens when you leave the air ducts is bizarre, to say the very least. There is no indication at any point that you can do this, no sane person ever would, and this only marks the beginning of the puzzles making no lick of sense.
** Isn't the circuitous, nonsensical, and oftentimes entirely irrelevant shenanigans your average [[Title Drop|bureaucracy]] tends to put one through the entire point of the game?
* ''[[Broken Sword (Video Game)|Broken Sword]]: Shadow of the Templars'' has the infamous goat puzzle. At one point in the game you reach a screen with a goat tied to a stake in the ground, where you can do three things: go back, approach an old rusty plough or go to the entrance to the next screen. When you try the latter two options, you get butted by the goat, preventing you from progressing in the game. The solution is to click on the entrance to the next screen, then when you get hit by the goat and the player character is getting back onto his feet, click on the plough. George will ''jump up and run towards it'' and move it in such a way that when the goat tries to attack him again, its chain gets stuck on the plough. The game in no way indicates that you can actually do this.
** ''[[Broken Sword (Video Game)|Broken Sword]] II: The Smoking Mirror'' has the boar puzzle. Not sure what it was with this series and troublesome animals. Late in the game you can only get to a certain path on an island by shooting a pig with a dart, which then charges you. If you grab a branch at just the right moment, then you can jump out of the way; the pig will charge through the undergrowth and open a new path — the one you'll need later to find your way off the island easily. If you don't, then he just knocks you down. You get up, dust yourself off and life goes on. If you'd grabbed the branch, you could go straight down the new path to your intended destination. If not, you have to [http://www.gameboomers.com/wtcheats/pcBb/Broken%20Sword%20II/plateau.htm navigate the jungle yourself]. You do this with directions that you are not told through three similar screens with six exits each that repeat whether you're lost or on the right track. There is no indication that you're making any progress or that you can progress, and one wrong path means starting again on the journey you don't even know you're on. Some players thought that the game was [[Unwinnable Byby Design]] at this point and restarted.
* ''8 Eyes''. Like ''[[Castlevania|Simon's Quest]]'', [[It Got Worse|but worse]]. It doesn't have the invisible stairs and pitfalls, breakable walls, unintuitive items or nonlinearity, but makes up for it with the [[Power Copying]] swords that give you no clues to the correct order, the [[Magical Mystery Doors]] of Germany, the unintuitive stage layout of Africa, and most significantly, the final logic puzzle that you can only legitimately solve using a series of clues from earlier stages... that are hidden in random unmarked bricks. You can't return to the stages, either.
** Wrong. The manual gives you almost all the information you need. It tells you your first sword is only good against a boss "near France". This could be Italy, Germany or Spain. You do need to trial and error those, but it's not hard. After that? The order of the levels is handed to you on a silver platter. When you beat the boss, "you have earned a more powerful sword." There is a picture of said sword. The COLOR of the sword corresponds to the jewel held by the next boss! After beating the first boss, you get a red sword. Who has a red gem? Egypt! What level comes next? Egypt! As for the hidden clue scrolls, the manual tells you they exist, that you MUST collect them, and that they are hidden. It then goes on to list a half dozen more items that are hidden, and explicitly telling you "Use your sword, Cutrus, or the boomerang to find items hidden in the walls." [[Read the Freaking Manual]].
* [[Illusion of Gaia]] had plenty of these, including but not limited to a puzzle where you had to stand still on a glowing tile for about 20 seconds, a point where you could not proceed without reading a letter that a party member ''slipped into your inventory while you were sleeping'', a fair number of small, essential items lying in completely arbitrary places somewhere in enormous dungeons that you could only find by a glint of light they would give off every few seconds, and a [[Bonus Dungeon]] that you could only access by collecting ''all 50'' of the Red Jewels scattered throughout the game with no clear pattern, most of which would be [[Lost Forever]] if you missed them. Fortunately, [[All There in the Manual|the game's manual included a mini-walkthrough]] that would clue you in to the solutions of the more obscure puzzles.
* Even the thorougly nonserious ''[[Strong BadsBad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Video Game)|Strong Bads Cool Game for Attractive People]]'' had its share of these. But the absolute worst by a long shot was the way to get the ninth "expression of affection" in Baddest of the Bands. First off, it's an ''in-game hint'', which means that hints have to be turned on. Then 1. you have to sabotage Two-O-Duo and Pom Star (just those two, ''not'' Cool Tapes) 2. DON'T do the Teen Girl Squad comic, and 3. go to the Two-O-Duo stage, which is the only place Strong Bad will give the hint that serves as the expression of affection, and wait until he does. I'm glad that sites like [[Game FAQs]] exist; I guarantee you that I wouldn't have figured this out on my own in a million years.
* [[The Problem Withwith Licensed Games|The NES adaptation]] of ''[[Platoon]]'' lives off this. Most of the game is a nondescript forest maze, with various objectives strewn about, and practically no in-game hints, although the manual offers a few clues.
* In the Point and Click game of ''[[Blazing Dragons]]'' had you stuck until a dodo delivered a message. Problem was that the dodo was being shot at by a hunter (who thankfully went to a certain [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy|academy]]). The solution was to backtrack all the way back to the second room you probably visited and to stamp a dodo on the endangered species list. Afterwards the hunter is arrested.
* The ''[[Ace Ventura]]'' licensed video game has a puzzle where you need to assemble several elements into a totem. No hints are given. You're supposed to figure out by trial-and-error, apparently, that it's supposed to be [http://gfx.gaminator.tv/data/screen/3595/697/9428-2.jpg this abstract thing.]
* In ''[[Cave Story (Video Game)|Cave Story]]'', you need the rope to get the good ending and save everything from complete destruction. But you can't get that item if you get trapped in an (apparently) unavoidable hole and get the unfinished Booster, as pretty much everybody will do in their first playthrough. And that's only the beginning: {{spoiler|you have to locate the rope in a corner of a large cave, then find out how to drain Curly's water, then how to restore her memory, and finally, you have to guess where the entrance to Hell will appear after the (apparently) final battle.}} Good luck guessing all of that by yourself.
* The point-and-click DOS game ''Alien Incident'' features mostly sensible puzzles, but has one that makes hardly any sense at all. Near the beginning of the game, there's a door with flashing lights under it that can't be opened. For some reason, using the remote controller found in the mansion will open the door. Once inside, the player will learn that the remote controller actually controls a television inside. Why does it also open the door though, remains a mystery. The worst part, though, is that the puzzle isn't really necessary until quite late game, when the player has several other areas to exhaustingly search as well.
* Older Than The Internet. Have you ever tried playing the original text-based adventure game? It's called Adventure, it invented the genre, and it's bloody difficulty to figure out.
Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/919456"
Cookies help us deliver our services. By using our services, you agree to our use of cookies.
More information