I finished up October with a few games from the current Challenge Me!
The Stanley Parable was a unique and interesting experience. It’s a relatively short exploration game with awesome narration. I went into it blindly, and it was a fun game to chill and unwind with.
Although the Neighbours from Hell games get a lot of praise, mostly by nostalgic reviewers, I didn’t particularly enjoy them. They’re essentially puzzle games where you gather items to pull pranks on your neighbor while timing it to avoid getting caught, but the pranks are linear and repetitive, and the slapstick humor just isn’t funny (ie. you grab a bar of soap from the bathroom and leave it on the kitchen floor so that your neighbor will slip and fall on it and curse at the camera). The games are done in a sitcom TV setting, and I suppose they succeeded, because playing them felt like I was watching a dumb, unfunny sitcom.
Having loved Botanicula, I was looking forward to playing Machinarium as it was also by Amanita Design, but this one didn’t really click with me. The animations are cute, the illustrations are gorgeous, and I really enjoyed some of the quirky, funky music, but half of the puzzles just didn’t feel intuitive to me, which brought down the fun factor of the game.
Little late reply :)
The Stanley Parable is a great game and it is best to start blindly, so glad you liked it :)
Neighbours from Hell is an old game and when it came out it was different and unique, TV setting was nice way to present different puzzle levels. While pranks were repetitive combing them to get maximum stars was fun back in a day. Humor changes over time, some things that our parents thought was funny we didn’t and vice versa, also as you grow up you don’t find same things funny.
I didn’t play Machinarium, but i saw you played Botanicula and thought this one is great too, since i heard many good things about it.
No worries, and please don’t feel like my criticisms of the games above are in any way a reflection on you, just because you picked them for me.
Reading back over my comments, I think they sound a bit harsher than I had intended. I actually enjoyed Neighbours from Hell at first when I had to figure out what to do with the items I’d find, but the more I played, the less I enjoyed it, partly because they reused a lot of the pranks and also because I was too busy running around setting them up that I usually didn’t even get to see the end result. (I think that part would have been better had they been able to fit the entire “map” on the screen.) Also, like you had mentioned, our tastes change over time, and if I had played this as a kid, I’m sure that I would have found it to be funnier. :)
With Machinarium, there’s still a lot to love and it’s a well made game. I just found some of the puzzles to be too cryptic, and that made it a little less enjoyable.
I am aware that reading something can seem little different, since there are no facial and body expressions. Also since English is not my first language it is possible that i don’t express myself precisely etc :) And i didn’t mean anything bad with my reply :D
It has been more then a decade since i played Neighbours from Hell, so maybe even i had those problems with not seeing whole screen while rushing to setup all the traps but don’t remember. Maybe there should have been a replay of each level in the end if player wanted to see it :)
Unfortunately p&c games often have some illogical puzzles and people in different ages can’t interpret them well. I remember playing some of the games with my 4 years older brother and it was common that i see “logic” in one puzzle and he doesn’t and vice versa. And i can only agree with you that Machinarium does look great and that is one of the reasons i put it on my WL :D
Hi Kappy!
Well hello there, my Christmassy welcoming committee. ^_^