this week's plants versus zombies is a bit of a blowout:

i talk a bit about gog and the drm-free movement along the way. it's a little political, but you folks will proooobably like it.

anyhow, three levels, some drm soapboxing and a silly couple of small fails or two await....:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfcELt9KOkw

in evoland this week, we spend most of the episode trapped in a cavern.

also, i've officially started editing out fights, because we've seen a lot of this stuff before and in turn-based battles like these are, there's no real forward momentum.

enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMSsaoisw5M

i /finally/ notice i have lock picking and stealth as actual skills that i can really use in hero's quest 1. it only took nine episodes ;)

plus, more back story when we talk to abdulla doo at the inn. should have been done on night one, but ah well. better late than never ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTMDem-000o

it's plants versus zombies wednesday!

i step into dave's store, but it turns out that i'm too poor to buy anything.

so we carry on with adventure mode and knock out two levels, both of which are a little frantic and in which i make some hilariously bad decisions. we lose one lawnmower, but i do ok, otherwise.

plus, i show off the cactus and blowver.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLIX1KRqF4o
this is from long ago and pardon me for bringing it up again:

i found a copy of shivers and played a little of it. it's not a bad game, but i can see why there aren't a lot of lp's done of it. there are various gameplay issues that make it functionally un-lp-able.

as an example: the fact that every game the little ixupi statues move around all the time makes it very tricky to play through "coherently" for watchers.

the other problem is related to the puzzles - sierra got lazy on this one and there are a handful of puzzles that are scattered around and are /repeats/ over and over again of the same thing. exasperating to play through, let alone watch [though, that could easily be edited out.]

i spent a little time with it, but i'm sorry to say that it's probably not a thing i'm likely to ever play through :(

i do appreciate the recommend, though. it seems like a fun little romp :)

Lighthouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuseeeee!! :D Probably my favorite Sierra game :P

There's been a few attempts that I uncovered while randomly dredging through youtube, so I got my Shivers fix in. Thanks for taking the time to address it again!

Shivers' atmosphere was way creepier than its cartoonish villains and Goosebumpsesque intro, and I think that's where the game had most of its appeal. The creepiness of that museum and the great work they did on the OST made that game, despite the random pot locations and lazier repetitive puzzles.

I always thought it was too bad that the second game never quite lived up to the first one, in either tone or atmosphere, with some very small exceptions here and there.

sorry it took me so long, too. i had to go and dig for a copy through my collective friend's lot of old games. i eventually fond /someone/ who'd bothered to buy it after going through his dumb number of game boxes. [he has a whole room. he's been playing games since the zx spectrum. it took a while.]

i /loved/ the atmosphere in the game - and - barring some unfortunate voice acting ["the ixupi are sooo eviiill!"] - i get exactly what you mean. if sierra had made it like one of their more traditional games [ie: static puzzles and only one-of-a-kind of puzzle scattered throughout] - i would /certainly/ play this, to kind of juxtapose how jarringly different this one is when considered against their general body of work.

but just playing through some of it, i immediately understood why no lp'er has seriously tackled it. it's an excellent game to play - as a result of it's random structure and that creepy vibe, but it's not a good game for watching.

i also want to chime in with two other things: that ost is marvelous. and the second game [which i own] doesn't hold a candle in terms of tone. i liked the idea of the rock band, though. and i /love/ that the guy who played guitar in those songs is still around as metaljesusrocks on youtube. [he's awesome, by the way. and you should totally check him out.]
it wasn't a game i played, sadly. the reviews said they were trying to cash in on the myst success and so i never looked into it.

years later, i went to go and look up reviews for it, and it turned out that lighthouse was even /more/ difficult than myst. [and that seems like a crazy thing to do, to me, if you're going to try and set up a franchise, which is - i assume - what they were going for.]

to both of you, thankyou for watching - if you are. i /very/ much appreciate it.

evoland friday!

we do some further spelunking...in 3d!

also, we find one of the rooms i dislike in the "temple" we're in, which happens to be the "whirlwind room." urgh.

we get about half way through the dungeon and i don't die. which is good, considering that these sections are very twitch-based and i'm not very good at that ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUotQx_hf5M

more hero's quest:

we find the thieves guild and trade all our loot for a couple of silver.

that and i kill a guy i've been dreading for most of the playthrough, but it goes quite well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu7PX5FJ1fY

Now I want to play Quest for Glory =)

you totally should. especially the first game.

all these years later, it's wonderfully open ended and fun. [except stealth. which is a silly stat to raise.]

thankyou so much for watching the video, if you did.

I did watch the video =)

I am hardcore Sierra fan and I still replay the classics.

You can't really "replay" the classic Siera games because you know how to avoid all those different deaths and half the fun is seeing all the ways the writers make you die.

i appreciate, very much, that you did so :)
for what it's worth, i beg to differ. while, yeah, some of the deaths were funny and memorable, some of them were also just plain unfair.

it was - in some of the earlier games - totally possible to screw yourself out of the ending if you weren't careful - and you could die from that - and i think that was awful, awful design.

but beyond that, i think it's always fun to replay these games because of the warm fuzzies they give me while i'm playing. for me, at this point, it's far more than being just about "solving a puzzle" or "exploring the world." it's more about going back to an old friend and rekindling - even if for a little while - that fond friendship we once had.

the death of sierra at the hands of vivendi was a true shame.

i really wish that ken and roberta had kept their dream going - and kept on making fun games like this for the current generation.

(having said that, i totally appreciate what they gave us.)

everyone will play these for their own reasons.

I could not agree more. IMO the games are more then worth replay. Take Colonel's Bequest yes I know the ending and most of the game by heart from replaying over and over =) . But I love the atmosphere, the exploration, and you know what I might have missed Clarence and Wilbur having a chat outside the study.

Another is the LSL series. It has a points system. (I do not do walkthroughs) nor do I really care for points but I can easily replay to see if I missed something or get a higher point count.

They do not make adventure games like they used to. There was a ton of story and exploring and the atmosphere alone is worth getting sucked into for a few hours.

LSL 1 is one of them games you could easily miss an item and then sail off and you would be screwed. I found this not to my lucking. I prefer not to play for hours only to have to start over.. I am not a good saving girl. lol.