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Jdawg445Lady Kestrel

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Adventure Game Scene of the Day - Friday 29 April

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Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

PM

Casual Friday

We have, on occasion, talked about the thought that Elephant Games is not producing games like they used to. Well this game, Urban Legends - The Maze is from Elephant Games prime years.

It has just about everything except voice acting. And while there aren’t many opportunities to interact with other characters, there is ample opportunity for our protagonist to interact with us, the game player. While those two entities are actually the same, the protagonist is constantly offering a narrative regarding his observations. I think it would be nice if those observations had been voiced.

The main action takes place inside what must be the largest television studio ever built. The sets, themselves, are huge. The premise is that a television show, aptly titled The Maze, is produced here. Just befor the season finale is to be filmed, all the remaining participants have disappeared. The families of the various participants have hired you to find out what happened.

During the course of your investigation you will visit all of the main sets in addition to the headquarters building. Booby traps are everywhere. It’s hard to imagine the stress the game participants must have been under it they encountered even a few of the same traps. The sets include an abandoned house, an ocean liner, an apartment building and the site of a plane crash to name a few. All along the way you are being provoked by a masked character. One assupmtion might be that you are chasing this character from set to set. But he is always one step ahead. So the other assumption is that he is leading you. To what, we have no idea. Presumably you will eventually find out.

The game has its fair share of hidden object scenes. They are difficult. The scene designers went to some lengths to hide the hidden objects. A few objects are easy to spot. But the rest require some imagination, as in “could that smooth curve behind the bookcase possibly be the top of a boomerang?”. Even if you play in casual mode, the hint button is slow to load, so you might as well gut it out.

The puzzles are also a little devious. While TimovieMan sniggered a bit at my I’m thinking there is a hidden object scene where you get a smoker to smoke the bees to get the hive/honey to give to the bear to get the helmet to give to the guard so you can enter the town. comment, there are a lot of those in this game, e.g., find the watering can so you can collect the water. Then find a fishing bobber so you can put it in the jar with the magnet. So you can fill the jar with water and retrieve the magnet. If you didn’t grow up playing perverse-logic AG puzzles, you will find some of them mind-blowingly hard.

Music is suspensful, and totally appropriate to the game. Best thing I can say about the graphics is that they are good, but have a disshelveled appearance. It’s as if a once-pristine environment recently went through an event where everything went horribly wrong. The story and plot are what they are. You’ve been hired to do a job, and you are doing it. You do save/rescue participants along the way, and their narrative lends backstory as to what is going on.

A really great game with one gigantic flaw. Game designers, whether they come from the casual or adventure spectrum, must all have a belief that this game is the beginning of something BIG. And so they build in a cliff-hanger ending that promises more good things are right down the road. That does a double disservice to the player. One, it deprives the player of satisfactory conclusive ending. And two, when the second game in the series fails to materialize, the player is even more frustrated by the ending of the first game. The Maze fits that category perfectly.

Do not let that keep you from playing it! Just say to yourself “I don’t care what anyone else says. That’s the bastard that did these horrible things!” You’ll be fine.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Total Posts: 8471

Joined 2011-10-21

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Great summary, and I fully agree with what you say about the whole cliffhanger angle that a lot of games (and movies) use.

The only real cliffhangers that I actually like are of the “And the Adventure Continues…” variety.

     

The truth can’t hurt you, it’s just like the dark: it scares you witless but in time you see things clear and stark. - Elvis Costello
Maybe this time I can be strong, but since I know who I am, I’m probably wrong. Maybe this time I can go far, but thinking about where I’ve been ain’t helping me start. - Michael Kiwanuka

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Total Posts: 5035

Joined 2004-07-12

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Good article. I think the ending of A Vampyre Story is the exemplar of this kind of disappointment in AGs.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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