Games I Played Last Week 7/21-7/27

Last week, I finally completed Escape from Monkey Island! I'm so glad to have that behind me...

I also played the fourth episode of The Walking Dead: Season Two.

And the new game I'm playing is Murdered: Soul Suspect.

My Week in Gaming 7/21-7/27

Escape from Monkey Island

My wife and I finally finished it!!! I have to admit that the last couple hours of the game were good and sent me out feeling much better about the whole experience, though there are still some pretty bad parts of the game that can be very frustrating due to some bad puzzles and unclear direction. I'll take a few months off from this series before paying through Tales and finishing it all. (I honestly hope they don't announce a new MI game for at least another year or two...)

Murdered: Soul Suspect

Yes, this is a mediocre game. However, I'm having some fun with it. I am not regretting the money I spent on it or the time I'm spending with it, yet... I'll have more thoughts after I complete it. I hear it is only about six hours long.

The Walking Dead: Season Two

The fourth episode may be the one I like the least, this season. There is one character I'd like to just let die, but the game is making me hang on to him/her...while forcing me to make decisions to make that relationship work. It's the first time that I've felt such a strong disconnect between the choice mechanic and the actual extent of choice. I've always known the game was very restrictive, but I've never had a problem with my options until now. So, I'm really anxious to see how episode five ends up.

If you've already played this episode... you can see my spoiler below on the character and action I'm specifically talking about.

Oh geez, I've still got Secret of Monkey Island on hold indefinitely. Can't bring myself to play season 2 of Walking Dead. I really really really liked season 1, but the decision they made to have you play as Clementine never sat well with me. I've heard good things about it nonetheless, so maybe I'll check it out.

Murdered seems like the most difficult to place of those. It seems like the sort of game that could get a dedicated though small following with some of the stuff it tries to do, or it could just be completely flat with shades of those neat ideas.

@theht: In my opinion, the Monkey Island games are very flawed but amusing adventure games. Unless you played them when they came out (which I didn't, as I was into other adventure games, at that time), they are hard to go back to. My wife and I are playing them together, which makes them more fun, and we aren't afraid to use hints or walkthroughs, if we need them. It's hard for me to say I'd recommend playing through the series, at this point, but I lot of people love them, and I just felt I needed to have them under my belt.

I think Walking Dead: Season Two is worth playing, but I don't like it as much as the first season. There are some parts I like better, but I personally think the characters are weaker, and I think it is getting to an extreme with the amount of people that die or get serious injured constantly. In my opinion, there is "gritty," and then there is just excessive to almost a comical extent. Can the worst things really happen 90% of the time? :P

There are two reasons I want to finish Murdered before I talk about it. The first is because it is short, and I expect to finish this week, anyway. The second is that it really is very mediocre. I am 2-3 hours in, and I have no strong opinion of it, yet, because it is really so middle-of-the-road. The good part of that is that I feel fine with playing it or spending money on it. The bad part of that is that I don't think I'll remember much about it after completing it and moving on. I hope the last half of the game turns that around. It very well could.

@fakekisser: I finished Murdered pretty quickly after it came out. I enjoyed the game quite a bit more than I thought. I believe the harsh reviews of the game are largely unwarranted and heavily influenced by the mechanic of killing and hiding from the demons. If you don't get a good handle on taking those guys out, it can be a frustrating stop gap in the game. I think if they took the demons out of the game completely, it would have been received much more favorably.

I don't like to live and die by Metacritic, but the honest truth is that games certainly do. Bad word spreads quickly and I'm sure that all the negative buzz around the game really hurt it and Airtight (they did just shut down). This game is sitting at like a 55 on MC and I think its deserving of something closer to a 75.

I don't want to spoil anything or talk in too much detail, but I really liked the main character Ronan and thought the plot was interesting most of the time and had a satisfying conclusion.

Also, I knew who you were talking about in TWD without even clicking the spolier tag. I feel the same way haha.

I haven't played Tales of MI either, but I've long thought Escape from MI is the weakest in the series.

It's a good series so that's not much of a diss.

I see your point about playing them in context though. I played most of the originals near release, so that definitely helped... Honestly I think guides kinda ruin what made those games fun. Some of those old P&C adventure games it took me weeks-months to beat as a kid.

But the temptation of easy answers is often too hard to pass up these days.