So first it was Quake month, and now it’s LBA!! In the span of 3 months you’ve covered two games which are special for me, but for completely different reasons 🙂
It seems only fitting that I share my experiences of this game also, together with some of my background story.
So as I mentioned last time, I got my first PC in the autumn of 1996.
Gaming was only a minor part of the reason I wanted the PC at all at that time. I was much more into office software, programming, DTP, and exploring multimedia. I was however exposed to some 3D games at school, like Doom and Descent, and I liked the idea of having these at home to play at my leisure. Despite this, Little Big Adventure was the first game that was gifted to me, making it the first full version PC game that I owned.
My initial impression of it was one of disappointment. The game starts you off in a prison, which I felt was a rather negative setting from the outset. Trying to escape from the prison is both tedious and punishing.
Trying to jump on the bed and over the glass walls, but it doesn’t work… waiting but nothing happens… change action mode… oh here’s a transporter… but it not descending because i’m stood where it’s supposed to land, so it goes away… waiting for the transporter to return, and then getting beaten unconscious by the guard… the game restarts.
Aggressive mode and sluggish controls fighting with the guard… oh the transporter left without me… waiting for the transporter… successfully escape my cell, but zapped unconscious by the elephant and the game restarts.
Go through all that again… but this time the transporter catches my head as it passes me on the stairs and the game restarts. ugh… 🙁
I mean honestly, at the time this stuff felt more tedious than sitting in school. The only reason I was persevering with it was because it was a gift, and it was the only full-version game that I owned, so I felt some sort of obligation to suffer onward.
In that first play session, I didn’t even manage to escape the prison. It was a few days later before I could stomach trying the game again. In my second session did I manage it, but it was just more of the same thing which followed, only with a bigger world, which made it only slightly less tedious, and there was a bit of exploring to enjoy there.
The whole game consists of fumbling around due to a distinct lack of guidance, clumsy unresponsive controls leading to annoying setbacks, then making negligible progress and boring repetition.
There were a few positives for me however. For one, the game music is especially lovely. It’s one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard in a game. I would sometimes insert the CD just to play to the CD music. Secondly, the visual design of the game is very pleasant. A lot of love has clearly gone into the design of the characters, the look of the environment and the buildings. It’s a real shame that the gameplay let’s it all down.
Patchy play over the weeks which followed, but I struggled on, upto the white leaf desert island. I had so much trouble jumping over the rocks from the fishing boat that I abandoned the game soon after. I didn’t feel I was making any real progress by that point either. The CD was stored away hopefully never to be touched again, and the game was soon forgotten. In retrospect I had only completed about 25% of it.
LBA left me with this strange nostalgia. I got little enjoyment out of it, yet it has remained special to me. This was the first game I played out of a sense of obligation.
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In 2016 (before dosgameclub was even a thing), Tijn mentioned this game to me on IRC, and a lot of these memories resurfaced. It had been almost 20 years since I had played it, or even thought about it… Maybe it was time to take another look at the game, to see if my opinion of it had changed at all.
For better or worse, I found my opinions hadn’t changed. Playing it was just as much of an unsatisfying struggle for me now as it was all those years ago. I didn’t play very much of it.
Meanwhile, our friend rnlf was busy at this time restoring 90s PC hardware, and collecting 90s boxed games. In early 2017 he acquired his own a boxed copy of LBA, and he recorded a series of playthroughs for our entertainment. His experiences and frustrations with the game were similar to my own, and he gave up playing only slightly further on than the point where I quit back in the 1990s.
Later in 2017, inspired by rnlf’s effort, I found a source port called WinLBA, and a walkthrough, and I tried to charge through the game as hard as I could. The walkthrough took a lot of the fumbling out of the game, giving me clear tasks and a definite sense of progress. It allowed me to focus on the physical aspects of the game: running around, combat, and interacting with things. I found it was a lot more enjoyable playing with the walkthrough.
I still didn’t manage to complete the game, but I got about 90% of the way there. I think there was some sewer I got stuck in, and the walkthrough wasn’t clear, or didn’t match with what I was seeing… I’m not sure now.
So yeah, I still haven’t finished it. Part of me would very much like closure :p
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