Final Thoughts

[Pix]

#7301

I played through the first 2 Discworlds last weekend. I liked the series a lot back in the 90’s. Going back now, I’m less keen but there was still plenty to enjoy. The puzzles in the first game were worse than I remembered if anything. That is definitely my big problem with Discworld 1. It’s essentially unplayable without a walkthrough at times, it’s just not worth the grief. It’s interesting that the studio were talking about 100 hours to finish the game – that’s crazy for an adventure game. If it’s taking that long you are well into try everything on everything territory which isn’t how adventure games should work. If you do resort to that, you should at least think afterwards that you should have been able to come up with the solution if you’d been smarter. Discworlds puzzles often left me thinking, “why did that work at all?” It’s definitely a game that doesn’t want to help the player out. Things like the constant back and forth with L-Space wound me up. Why not have the shortcut to the map available in the present and past to save people time walking through the same screens over and over? Why play the same wandering around animation every single time so you have to skip it? Lucasarts were long past making these sorts of design errors with their games by this time.

The humour didn’t quite hit the mark for me a lot of the time either. It’s whimsical but rarely made me laugh. The game does have still an amiable charm to it, largely courtesy of Pratchett and the excellent voice acting. I much prefered Simon The Sorcerer from some months back though. I will say that the production values of Discworld are fantastic, all the artwork, acting and music. A lot of effort clearly went into the game and the love of the source material does shine through. Overall, I’d say it’s a slightly above average adventure of the era but wouldn’t make it into a list of the better point and clicks as far as I’m concerned.

The second game was quite the step up. The puzzles are much, much fairer. The dialog gives out hints to solutions, there isn’t anything that isn’t solvable. I even enjoyed the dialog more – it occasionally got a little childish but it made me laugh regularly. The actors did an admirable job considering there were only 3 of them voicing every character apart from Rincewind. Perfect clearly learned from their errors in part 1 and turned out a much better game. It’s well worth trying out if you finish the first one. I’ll be going on to Discworld Noir this weekend.

[Shattered]

#7305

Thanks for the write up! I’m just getting started and the inventory system seems so frustrating, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m doing something wrong. It’s good to know that I shouldn’t feel bad if I need to throw in the towel and resort to a walkthrough.

BTW, am I doing the inventory correctly? I can only have 2 items on me, I need to left click on Rincewind in order to grab an item, and if I want to put it back in my inventory I need to click on Rincewind again and put it in the box? And use the luggage to juggle more than 2 items? Oof, kinda makes trying every item with everything a bit tedious.

[Pix]

#7306

You can just use the luggage much like an inventory icon in any other game. You click/double click on the luggage to drop an item straight in. Click on it to open it up and grab what you need, you don’t need to click on Rincewind. The item doesn’t need to come from Rincewind’s inventory for you to use it or anything like that.

You don’t need to use Rincewind’s inventory for the most part. Where it comes in is a few areas where you can’t take the luggage with you. You need to figure out what to bring with you first for those.

[firefyte]

#7330

This game is just as frustrating as I remembered, yikes!

I got half way through the start and then just went for the UHS-walkthrough. On to the second…

There’s so much wrong with this game, and yet so many things that they did right.

On to the second game!

[Pix]

#7331

I’m with you. I enjoyed it with walkthrough in hand but the puzzle design is sadistic. You’ll find the second game much more forgiving.

I finished Discworld Noir over the weekend. It’s quite a tricky game to get running – even on a Windows 98 machine it was still crashing after the intro for me. I had to use a modern patch to run it on period correct hardware! By far and away my biggest issue with it, the game is so dark. Literally dark, I could barely see what I was doing. I initially blamed my CRT losing brightness after all these years but I also tried playing it on a modern PC and it was even worse. Never has a game needed gamma correction so badly. I used a walkthrough liberally as I was missing interactive items because I couldn’t spot them in the mirk.

Aside from that, the game takes a very different tone. It’s aping Casablanca, Big Sleep and the like but manages to throw some Lovecraft in there when you get later on. It’s less funny and cartoonish than it’s predecessors with a sardonic wit about it. There is much more of a plot going on which twists and turns in the Noir style and you’ll have to concentrate to keep track of it all. I don’t think the voice acting was quite up to the job of pulling all this off but it’s still decent. The puzzles can be quite obtuse as ever but nothing on the lines of #1. It’s a bit difficult to judge having said that since I basically ended up following a walkthrough. You have a large notebook of clues which need to be used and talked about so there are a lot of available options. Trial and error isn’t going to work and it’s definitely not an easy game as a result but at least no solutions left me thinking a puzzle was unfair. It’s fairly huge also as adventure games go. If you want a Noir adventure game, I’d go for Grim Fandango first but this is certainly worth your time.

It’s a strong trilogy of games all round really. #2 was the highlight for me by a margin.

[firefyte]

#7346

Completed the second game (again, because I remember it now), and it was definitely a fun experience.

Worth a play by itself, even if it has references to the first one!

[firefyte]

#7355

And now I’m done with Noir. Which is odd, as I remember playing this a long time ago, and up until I played it now, I didn’t remember playing it.

The second and the third game stand out as much better games (albeit the third game feels really linear, and has some bad gameplay qualities). The banter in the third game felt better, along with the rest of the writing.