![]() ![]() A small example of this is when you notice a character listening to the radio, and the contents of that radio show must be shown to another character in a different part of the hotel little narrative bits that link the hotel to itself are scattered all over the place. You aren’t trying to take on the entire universe in one go, and the focus the game has allows for some nice connections between characters and points of interest to flourish. The setting is a great strength, which means when you do run into issues (a few times I found myself stuck with an unexplained roadblock), the ‘talk to everyone again’ process doesn’t take you a prohibitive amount of time. No, you’re stuck here, in Hotel 404, with nothing but the hotel rooms and staff to keep you company. You aren’t journeying to faraway islands, or slaying dragons across countless continents. As Mike the bellboy, you’ll spend all your time at a hotel, which, for an adventure game, is a smart move it showcases a lot of individuality, with every facility and guest room possessing its own style that immediately informs you of the scope of your adventure. Get everyone out of the hotel ― staff and guests ― in a single weekend in order to appease the disembodied brain of your mysterious uncle. Upon booting the game up and appreciating the groovy soundtrack, the premise is clear. It’s actually possible to stay on-track throughout, something you can’t undervalue in a game like this. I’d sooner play Not Another Weekend a thousand times over than attempt to grind through a classic point-and-click game from years past. So does Not Another Weekend achieve this? Developers now have to rely on another approach to evoke that (unearned, for me) nostalgia, whilst also making the game less irritating and actually playable ― without a step-by-step guide or a brain wired into the adventure game matrix of Sierra’s Roberta Williams. While that might’ve been okay back then, such puzzles would not fly today. ![]() It’s clear that developers in the ‘80s weren’t about making things easy Sierra and Lucasarts were absolutely fine if you were stuck on a puzzle for weeks on end, until you finally realise you were supposed to put a candlestick you’ve slathered with honey on a horse’s backside so it’d run through a shop, setting fire to the shack on the other side of the island ― or something of that nature. Their bizarre puzzles and unintuitive logic can feel absolutely rubbish at the time, but brings joy whenever you look back at it. There’s a distinctive, indelible charm to these games. In recent years I’ve gone all the way back to the genre’s roots, through Grim Fandango and Monkey Island to the likes of King’s Quest. I say all this to illustrate how out-of-place my nostalgia for point-and-click adventures is. When I finally gained access to my very own computer and the option to play whatever I wanted, we were well into the new millennium.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |