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Post by GamerL on Apr 13, 2017 6:19:25 GMT -5
I just beat this. And it was amazing.
I've never actually played the classic Monkey Islands or Day of the Tentacle yet, so it was weirdly fitting that Thimbleweed Park was most directly inspired by Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken, the ones I have played. And I had a blast, the review is on the money when it says it feels like a "third installment" to those other two games, in fact this is the first game that really proves the viability of these Kickstarter funded throwbacks to me, while I enjoyed Wasteland 2 it was not as good as Fallout 1 & 2, Thimbleweed Park on the other hand is absolutely an equal to Maniac Mansion and Zak McKracken. As far as the voice acting goes, I thought it was fine, not amazing but I think you're definitely meant to play it with voices, without them some character nuance would be lost. And the puzzles (which I played on hard mode fyi) are super well designed, I had only had to look up solutions twice, both of which were pretty late in the game and only one of which would I say was a little too obtuse, other than those two examples I found that perseverance and thinking hard payed off, even when I would get stuck a few times. And about the ending pretty cool, huh? While the meta aspect was heavily foreshadowed with all the fourth wall breaking jokes (which Delores herself points out cleverly), visiting Thimbleweed done in the style of Maniac Mansion's graphics was a really cool surprise, overall I found the ending to be bittersweet, it comes off to me like a "farewell" to this style of game, bringing things full circle to Maniac Mansion in a really clever way, while part of me would like to see another game like this from the devs, if Thimbleweed Park is instead a "last hurrah" it's a perfect sendoff.
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Post by Discoalucard on Apr 13, 2017 10:04:36 GMT -5
I thought the voice acting was pretty good overall. Didn't have any issue with Ray's voice, Reyes took a little adjusting to because of his accent but I think he does "bemused" very well. I think it's consistent with the quality of the other LucasArts talkie games, which were all miles better than anything by Sierra (except Gabriel Knight, Quest for Glory IV and Kings Quest VI...and any of Gary Owens' Space Quest narration).
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Post by GamerL on Apr 13, 2017 12:35:10 GMT -5
I thought the voice acting was pretty good overall. Didn't have any issue with Ray's voice, Reyes took a little adjusting to because of his accent but I think he does "bemused" very well. I think it's consistent with the quality of the other LucasArts talkie games, which were all miles better than anything by Sierra (except Gabriel Knight, Quest for Glory IV and Kings Quest VI...and any of Gary Owens' Space Quest narration). The voice acting could be better but it does fit the vibe of the game well, that's really all it needed to do. Here's some question though about things that confused me. What's up with the Redbox like Betamax-Tron thing? what's the point of it? At first it looked like I needed to get the security camera tape from Leonard but by the time I got a tape from the machine that was no longer a dialog option, is it just a red herring? I noticed the movie you get was Blazing Saddles, which also foreshadows the ending, was that the point? I noticed that one of the two agents can actually get killed, one way is if you walk near the trash can behind the diner and the other is at some point in the game if you don't play as one for a while you'll get this mysterious camera footage of their dead body in the coroner's office, what's up with that? I always reloaded a save when it happened but if one of them dies can you continue the game? how does it affect the ending? Is there a correlation between the bullet hole in the town sign and the number going down from 31 to 30 and the dead body who's feet you can see in the coroner's office? If so who were they and who killed them? Just a strange little detail? I found an odd Easter egg in the forest trail, if you go back after picking the Thimbleberries and use the shrunken head to navigate again, you can find an "X marks the spot" and a plaque saying "an item from another game is buried here, too bad you don't have a shovel", as far as I know there's no way to get a shovel. And finally what was the deal with the conspiracy theorists who thought Thimbleweed was the source of government mind control signals? That was a plot thread that kind of goes nowhere though it did add flavor to this weird little town, plus it's also a homage to Zak McKracken, which is cool.
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Post by Discoalucard on Apr 13, 2017 13:57:18 GMT -5
There's definitely some things that are left ambiguous (I don't think it's ever actually revealed who kills the German guy in the beginning).
One of the FBI agents can be kidnapped at the beginning, but if you wait long enough, they'll awaken in the sewer and you can help them escape. Not sure what the cutscene with the coroners office means but probably nothing.
The "maze with a shrunken head" is one of the references to Monkey Island, there was a similar section near the end of that game.
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Post by drpepperfan on Apr 13, 2017 14:43:49 GMT -5
It does feel like there's a lot of content they had to drop due to budget/time constraints. I've been reading the Thimbleweed Park development blog, and while I'm not even close to up to date (October 2015 atm), there's a lot of things mentioned they have planned that aren't present in the finished game, like fleshed out, optional endings for the other characters, and the ability to chat between the different characters. I'm not sure if any of those points you raised are due to having to leave stuff out, to be intentionally misleading or just a big mistake. Yeah, the treasure stuff is just an easter egg based on Monkey Island 1. It unlocks an achivement, but apart from the reference that's all it's for. @discoalucard I believe the killer of the German is Chuck, based on one of his diary entries. Although, what with the big twist of the game, it's possible the answer to "Who was the Killer" is "Nobody" and it was just a murder to kickstart the whole game's plot.
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Post by Discoalucard on Apr 13, 2017 15:08:28 GMT -5
@discoalucard I believe the killer of the German is Chuck, based on one of his diary entries. Although, what with the big twist of the game, it's possible the answer to "Who was the Killer" is "Nobody" and it was just a murder to kickstart the whole game's plot. Wasn't Chuck already dead by this point? I don't think there's that long of a time span between when the German guy is murdered and when the agents show up, and by that point Chuck is already dead and buried. And yeah, some of the other material I saw being floated around suggested there were multiple endings but I don't think that's the case in the final version.
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Post by GamerL on Apr 13, 2017 16:08:16 GMT -5
@discoalucard I believe the killer of the German is Chuck, based on one of his diary entries. Although, what with the big twist of the game, it's possible the answer to "Who was the Killer" is "Nobody" and it was just a murder to kickstart the whole game's plot. Wasn't Chuck already dead by this point? I don't think there's that long of a time span between when the German guy is murdered and when the agents show up, and by that point Chuck is already dead and buried. See, this is the one aspect of the story that really needed to be explained better, if I have one legit problem with the game it's that. I'm pretty positive Chuck is the German guy's killer, but it doesn't make a ton of sense, all we know is Chuck "uploaded his consciousness" into the Pillow-tronics AI, which seems to imply he faked his death, but the timeline of when he supposedly died to when he murdered the German to guy to when he uploaded his consciousness is pretty unclear. I get the gist of what happened but it could have been explained a little better.
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Post by nerdybat on Apr 15, 2017 5:17:23 GMT -5
Does it run in ScummVM though?
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Post by magic89 on Feb 21, 2019 14:54:46 GMT -5
Game can be downloaded for free until 7 march in Epic games launcher.
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Post by eatersthemanfool on Feb 21, 2019 23:21:40 GMT -5
Oh crap I need to get that then.
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Post by GamerL on Feb 23, 2019 18:12:15 GMT -5
Good memories of this game, it's weird to think it's been less than two years since I played because it feels like it should be longer.
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