We’ve all played them. Backtracking, not knowing where to go. Going back and forth. Name some of these games from your memory. I’ll start: Final Fantasy XIII-2, RE1
Son, you’re talking to a guy who spoke no English when he first played the legend of Zelda for NES. Talk about playing a game that doesn’t tell you where to go next
Riven
Myst 3 and hollow knight got me that way. Hollow knight was the worst, I simply couldn’t tell where I needed to go and where I’d already been 😅
I like hollow knight, but i don’t think i can ever go back to that game. I had so much fun for a few hours and then i walked around for an hour or two, being beyond lost.
Interestingly that’s the exact thing I loved about Hollow Knight. I got so immersed in the exploration specifically because I got lost. On my first playthrough I ended up sequence breaking the game and cleared out deepnest, ancient basin, hive and kingdoms end before the city of tears. I was way out of my depth and I loved every moment of it.
Myst 😭
Mirror’s edge
/s
La Mulana for sure! It’s a game where you play as professor Lemeza Kosugi (i.e. Japanese Indiana Jones) exploring an ancient temple. I admit that I did not have the patience for it. The map is huge and exploration is very non-linear. You also have to solve fairly obscure puzzles. If you really wanted to give it a go, I’d keep hand-written or typed notes separate from the in-game notes. They only let you save so much data at once, and you need more notes (or a good memory). I still kind of loved exploring the maps even partially though. It’s pretty huge and ambitious in scope.
The combat and movement are not fantastic though. Not bad, but they feel very limiting compared to typical metroidvanias that let you style on enemies as you get better at the game. The game is not very shy about how it enjoys killing you too! I respect it, but it was tough for me to enjoy.
Came here to say this!
Star Flight. I played it on Genesis, and it’s still one of the greatest games I’ve ever played.
One space ship, 270 solar systems, and 800 planets. The manual included a captain’s log that was sent back in time from the future, but without that you’d just be scouring the stars for clues, interrogating aliens, digging through ancient ruins, and watching slowly as a rash of planet-destroying solar flares spreads through the galaxy.
So fucking good.
Many of the early console and PC games were only solvable by finding answers in published magazines. Nintendo was notorious for this - they had their own magazine called Nintendo POWER and a hotline you could call to get tips. A few that come to mind:
Blaster Master / Goonies 2 / Mad Max / The Kings Quest games / The Black Caludron
Kings Quest? I played them on pc. They had stuff you needed the manual for but that was it. Did they change it for Nintendo?
Apologies, I can see how I was confusing. I was listing both Nintendo and PC games that came to mind; Kings Quest and Black Cauldron were PC
Probably just a comment on the moon logic puzzles in some of the games. And yea, Sierra had their own hint line to call. Or write in
Disco Elysium for me. Too many open directions. Too much player agency. I had no idea where I should go.
The funny thing about Disco Elsyium is that there’s so much to do in the opening area and it builds such a rich picture of the city that you assume it’s a much bigger world than it really is.
It really isn’t that much bigger than the first part, but they did such a great job you don’t end up minding.
I always took Disco as just a “stumble into the plot” kind of game. You’re not supposed to go anywhere.
True, but the problem (at least for me) is that I was simultaneously going nowhere and running out of places to go. I legit wasn’t sure how to progress literally any of the opened quests and felt like nothing was getting done.
Morrowind, but in a good way
I still remember the first time playing morrowind and being blown away by the freedom. For some reason my clearest memory of that game is a dude falling from the sky and splatting. Then I stole his magic boots and died the same way.
That’s my experience with 99% of old school point and click games. At some point in every one it devolved into me running in circles and trying every item on every object.
Yeah, basically every game that runs on scummvm is a good candidate here: leisure suit Larry, kings quest, police quest, the dig, sam and max, Indiana jones and the fate of Atlantis, all the sierra and lucasarts ones
Myst series is another good one. Journeyman project trilogy. These all ruled when I was like 12 years old
I miss when games were confusing and aimless by default. I know there are still games like this but I feel like the default now is a game that’s like “oh hey, go down this hallway full of locked doors! Except one door is unlocked, that’s a secret area, good for you! But otherwise go down the hallway to the next hallway!”
Disco Elysium gave me this experience in a new context. But better, because it blurs the line between success and failure.
Also the end of the hallway is glowing, and there’s a pulsating dot on your minimap. And if you take 5 seconds longer than needed, your character says to himself: “maybe I should go to the end of this hallway”.
Oh man, king’s quest. Those games were literally impossible without a guide and you needed to go to areas in very specific steps to not softlock the game.
All those old games were so punishingly hard
You’d play leisure suit Larry or whatever and get 3/4 of the way through and get stuck. Then you’d check a walkthrough and realize you didn’t check the trash can on the first screen of the game for a key item and now you’re fucked and literally have to start over from the beginning
Or you’d get to a death condition and get a screen that just mocks you: remember to save early and save often!
I gave up on point and click games when the solution to a problem in Monkey Island 2 was to put a fucking dog in your pocket. Even the look Guybrush gives when he stuffs the dog in is like "bet you didn’t think to do that initially huh…?’
When I played Day of the Tentacle I got stuck. Eventually I caved in and ordered the official hint book. Mind you, back then this entailed mailing a physical letter and the money somewhere. I guess my parents helped with that. And then you had to wait for your order to arrive. And the post was a lot slower than today.
I waited weeks for the book to arrive. And then, the day before it came, I finished the game. Use physics book with horse was the last puzzle I needed.
But the money wasn’t wasted entirely. The game’s story was written down from the pov of one of the characters. Pretty funny.
Hint books were an experience back then. I remember the hint book for myst had this whole narrative about some other person who got trapped in the book, which was supposed to be like the player. It was this whole story of how they solved all the various puzzles. I remember it being quite long but I was also like 9 so maybe it was just like 10 pages
The worse is when a solution seems obvious but doesn’t work. Then you lose your mind clicking everything until you get the actual solution.
Never had this issue with monkey island games…
Halo ce?
I got lost a few times in that game as a kid. I do not htink it is too bad these days. I think it was a matter of being put in a significantly larger world from what we were used to.
I’ve played it so many times at this point, I think I could navigate it without enemies or needing to click on consoles it with my eyes closed.
Most 90’s and late 80’s point and click games (Sam and Max, Full Throttle, Monkey Island, The Dig, Loom, Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Zack McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders, Kings / Space quest, Dark Seed, Beneath a Steel Sky)
Dark Seed was old school hard and explained nothing. Gave up multiple times, wasn’t playable for me. Sucked because I’m a huge fan of H.R. Giger.
Any metroid game.
Ecco the Dolphin is literally impossible without a guide.
designed that way to make more money on people renting it over and over to try and beat it IIRC
I am not really seeing it. I did finish it without a guide back then. It was the Windows 9x port, but I don’t think it changes much.
Really in my case a guide would not help for the hardest parts, which were mostly the crazy moves needed to push those floating things to break rocks and to swim against currents with boulders.
That game was like an unforgiving crack rock
Chrono Cross. You can accidentally write out all the endings of the game if you try to play without a guide.
Also Mordor 2. Completely procedurally generated world. The game literally can’t tell you where to go, it doesn’t know.
