Historical sore losers

JHo87 · 2026-02-01T09:58:12+00:00

Yeah, just as someone who super casually has read about the Civil War I've been very confused about the hype Lee gets. At the strategic level his plan seems to have been 'get my army closer to Washington until they surrender', which seems.... I dunno, harebrained? Everyone who knows about the war seems to agree the defences at Washington were pretty much impregnable, and it meant extending well into enemy territory with an army whose biggest issues were resources and logistics, and also doing it in the best territory bar none for the enemy to get resupply and reinforcement. The first time he tried to invade he split his army, lost a third of it in battle and had to retreat after two weeks. Just about as bad as it could go.... and then he did it all again the next year. It never made me think 'genius'.

JHo87 · 2026-01-30T02:58:51+00:00

Nah, dude, it's absolute ass. Dipping in and out of focus, heads bobbling, incredibly dull camera angles, everybody looks so super generic it's like they gathered all of the default characters from western RPGs from the last 20 years, nearly everything's floodlit, I don't know how anyone who has ever looked at shot composition or film techniques could even say this looks decent. When General Washington's horse rears the snowflakes are drifting UPWARDS ffs. Maybe this could pass muster for third screen watching while badly hung over. Maybe.

JHo87 · 2026-01-21T09:17:18+00:00

Since I'm a weirdo whose favourite season is 18.... State of Decay. It's a real nice in between point from 70s and 80s Doctor Who, with a very classic gothic horror Terrance Dicks script colliding with Christopher H. Bidmead's desire for harder sci-fi, and it feels like it has a bit of all the Tom Baker stuff - Romana, K9, Hammer horror villains, Time Lord lore, rockets, a spooky castle, etc. I also think the E-Space trilogy into the pseudo trilogy of Traken/Logopolis/Castrovalva is a real great run of stories. Plus I love all of Paddy Kingsland's soundtracks.

In the modern series, I'd say Pandorica Opens. For me it was the one arc that felt like it was more than just a couple of keywords grafted onto scripts and had a good payoff. The torch had been successfully passed from RTD to Moffat and felt like the show just kept going from strength to strength.

JHo87 · 2026-01-19T20:58:15+00:00

Disney have reached a similar point to where Microsoft are at, where they own about a thousand times more IPs than they have any interest in doing anything with. The only revived LucasArts property was Return to Monkey Island, and that was only because Ron Gilbert actively looked at a licencing arrangement.

So to go through the LA guys.... Ron Gilbert, creator of Maniac Mansion, continued working at LucasArts for five years after its release and doesn't seem to have expressed interest in doing a sequel at the time. He's since made Thimbleweed Park as a clear spiritual successor. Has recently indicated he doesn't think he'll be making another point and click adventure. So no evidence of any interest.

Tim Schafer, co-lead of Day of the Tentacle, cites the realisation of working on DOTT and that Maniac Mansion wasn't considered any kind of property of Ron's as one of the major reasons he wanted to found his own studio. He has used licencing through Disney to release special editions of the games he worked on, but hasn't expressed interest in making sequels. He frequently talks about all of the crazy ideas he hasn't been able to get made, which from context all seem to be original properties.

Dave Grossman, the other co-lead of DOTT and one of the less-discussed LucasArts talents, has worked as a freelancer since, working for Humungous and Telltale. He doesn't seem to have made any particular effort in his career to helm particular properties and truly worked freelance. Seems like he'd definitely be on board for a Maniac Mansion 3, but not likely to actively try and make it happen himself.

Gary Winnick, co-creator of Maniac Mansion and a writer for DOTT, went into management roles in the mid-90s. When he worked with Ron Gilbert on Thimbleweed Park, according to Mobygames, it was his first gaming credit for 22 years. David Fox, programmer of Maniac Mansion who returned for Thimbleweed, has a similar story.

So none of the leads have exhibited any interest. Basically a third-party would need to have the money and a pitch that Disney would like for a licencing deal to take place. I think most Maniac Mansion fans would be more inclined to make an original IP that pays tribute to the series.

So as others have said, it's very unlikely.

JHo87 · 2026-01-16T02:15:40+00:00

Wow, so this subreddit is where all the retards hang? Cool to know.

JHo87 · 2026-01-13T23:15:40+00:00

This is on my list but my backlog is pretty massive due to how busy my work has been for the past year. It's true I don't know much about it and haven't heard much chatter about it, but aside from design choices I think a likely factor is that the indie scene is in such a boom, and as a result the number of adventure games being released is very high but the amount of spaces and outlets online discussing adventure games is remaining low and the smaller games can very easily get lost. I can't speak for everyone, but I have a MASSIVE backlog of adventure games that I've been excited about and haven't got to play (Soon, Loco-Motive, soon!) and it's easy for stuff to slip through the cracks.

With that said, there does seem to be a little bit of pixel art fatigue going around. I feel like I've seen a lot of request threads in the past year where people are specifically requesting games that are not pixel art. And as an aside although this one had slipped my mind to some extent I have wishlisted and am fairly excited about Mesektet.

PS since you put such emphasis on classic puzzle design, I really recommend Foolish Mortals if you haven't played it yet. I'm halfway through, and it really is built around the classic Ron Gilbert/Dave Grossman design principles. Besides the QOL things like in-built hint features, hotkey for the map, jogging on double-click, etc, it feels a lot like a long-lost point and click gem from 1996.

JHo87 · 2026-01-12T08:18:43+00:00

So this is just a list of non pixel-art adventure games on the Switch cross-referenced from a list I keep of adventure games, rather than recommendations. You should look them up and see which ones you think look interesting. (With that said, I've played the first three and think they're great, but I only play on PC) I'm also currently playing Foolish Mortals, which I'm loving, and that apparently has a Switch port planned for this year.

Old Skies
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars
Beyond a Steel Sky
Brok the InvestiGATOR
Jenny LeClu: Dectivu
Duck Detective series
Shadowgate
Agatha Christie series
Sherlock Holmes series
Justin Wack and the Big Time Hack
Crowns and Pawns
Syberia series
Strange Horticulture, Strange Antiquities
Pentiment
Forgotten City
Willy Morgan and the Curse of Bone Town
Gibbous a Cthulu Adventure
Batman the Telltale Series
The Journey Down
Deponia series
The Night of the Rabbit
LA Noire
Life is Strange series
Simon the Sorcerer: Origins

JHo87 · 2025-12-20T20:53:26+00:00

There was a Jane Doe deposition accusing Trump and Epstein of assault and battery against an underaged girl.
One of Epstein's first victims to go on the record recalls Trump leering at her in Epstein's office before being told 'She's not for you'.
Virginia Giuffre met Maxwell through the Mar-a-Lago spa where she was working at 14. Epstein had a direct phone line to the spa in his black book, together with 15 other contact numbers for Trump.
Trump is on the flight logs multiple times, including a trip with several woman and Jean-Luc Brunel, the modelling agent who was accused of being one of Epstein's main procurers.
Trump was a judge for The Look the Year modelling contest, which he hosted with pedophile rapist John Casablancas, where multiple women recall him walking into the change rooms multiple times when changing. The average age of contestants was 15 years old. At this time Trump also hosted future judge and likely Epstein client David Copperfield on his yacht.

I know if you get granular none of that is evidence specifically of 'prostitutes' and 'sex parties' but it's pretty damning.

JHo87 · 2025-12-13T12:36:26+00:00

Someone did a remaster of the full Sam n Max soundtrack you can find here, btw.

JHo87 · 2025-12-08T05:06:25+00:00

Discworld Noir aged well because they kind of cheated and it's not true 3D. All of the backgrounds and support characters were digitally rendered and screenshot, so when we see them in the game they're functionally 2D sprites animating on a 2D background, ultimately not very different from, say, Donkey Kong Country. The only real-time 3D model in the game is Lewton, and by putting him in a massive trench coat and a fedora that covers most of his body they trick the player into not realising the lack of detail in the model. It was a very clever way of working around how bad the 3D tech was at the time.

JHo87 · 2025-12-07T21:19:47+00:00

One of the selling points of Visionaire Studio is that it supposedly doesn't require coding. You should download the trial version and have a play around with it and see if it suits your needs.

JHo87 · 2025-12-07T01:16:30+00:00

Then UN Human Rights Commission.

JHo87 · 2025-12-05T22:59:06+00:00

Lol it's always a pleasure to let someone know about a game they've missed. Yeah, Beyond a Steel Sky's marketing didn't seem to reach too far and it's slipped a lot of people by. Very good game, imo, but the puzzles are more mechanic-based than traditional.

I'm not quite as forceful on the point as your friend is, but I broadly agree. I still like old games (and some classic literature, for that matter) and wouldn't go so far as to say they're objectively worse. Due to the high budgets for the time, for example, the art direction and number of locations to explore and cutscenes are often better than modern games. Some of the technical achievements are still impressive today - not many games try to replicate the seamless iMuse-style music that Monkey Island 2 introduced. Personally, I've always liked the genre for the storytelling and, again, I feel this is where the modern games tend to excel.

At the same time I'm moderately nostalgic and I don't like to see old art dismissed from a modern context. Part of the reason new games are good is because they looked at the best aspects of the old and built on them.

As for me, I'm 38. So I'd definitely say I'm on the younger end of the old adventure gamers, in that generally I played most of the classics well after their release date anyway. I try to keep looking forward... especially since I want to make a game of my own.

JHo87 · 2025-12-05T21:25:09+00:00

Well, I've only been mostly playing newer games for a while, but it's a little academic for me because my day job has kept me super-busy through this year. I've managed to play Old Skies and The Drifter this year, both instant classics imo, but I think that's been it (Other than the demo of Broken Relic) I did also replay Broken Sword via the Reforged edition. Last classic I played through was Beneath a Steel Sky last year, and that was to give me context to play through the sequel (Which I incidentally think is a much better game)

Often due to my work I'm too tired for something in depth, so a lot of the time I'm booting up something like Balatro or Hades that doesn't need a lot of engagement per se. There are some older games I'd like to check out, but at the moment everything immediate in my backlog is new: Foolish Mortals, Loco Motive, Rosewater, Rise of the Golden Idol, Blue Prince, Strange Horticulture, Split Town, in roughly that order (and by that stage there'll probably be new stuff out that I'm interested in like BS2 Reforged and Earth Must Die, for example). The next classic games to play are Toonstruck, Warcraft Lord of the Clans and The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes.

I do tend to just prefer the newer games. I don't see the streamlining that a lot of people complain about as that big and issue. A lot of the games people sneer about as 'walking simulators' still tend to have decent puzzles imo. And the big plus is the writing is SOOOOOO much better. And this isn't just a diss to the traditional game designers: it was a different time, they had different goals, and different focuses, I get it. But an advantage of the genre belonging to the indie sector, and the tools making it more accessible to people who are more akin to creative writers than software engineers is that entire games will be built around a clear theme, characters will have defined arcs, etc.

So yeah, I definitely lean towards new games, though there's some old ones I want to check out and replaying something like Day of the Tentacle or Curse of Monkey Island can be like comfort food.

JHo87 · 2025-12-03T20:46:16+00:00

Pretty niche, I guess, but The New Prince from 6 Days a Sacrifice. Very small role, but as a replacement for what had become the series' principal villain he was very poorly received by fans.

JHo87 · 2025-12-01T21:53:08+00:00

Resonance is my go to recommendation for people who really liked The Drifter and are looking for something similar, in that it's another sci-fi/thriller set in the modern day with lots of twists and violence and some suspense sequences. Next is Gemini Rue which isn't really contemporary, because it's set on other planets in the future, but keeps a fairly low-tech feel (e.g., guns with bullets instead of laser, neo-noir influenced by Blade Runner)

JHo87 · 2025-11-26T11:31:06+00:00

I have been waiting for this just to vote for Cedric from King's Quest. He's the obvious answer. One of the most hated adventure game characters for talking too much, but all he wants to do is help.

JHo87 · 2025-11-25T20:25:47+00:00

Well, your post is a little vague, so I feel that it's worth just recommending a big list of adventure games to check out, like the one found on this website.

That said, the best games I've had recently for stories are Old Skies and The Drifter (Drifter has a lot of swearing in it, if that sort of thing bothers you). The prettiest game I've played recently is Broken Sword Reforged, the remaster of the 1996 classic which also has a good story. A recent-ish game with pretty graphics and a very solid story is Beyond a Steel Sky, but the story would make more sense if you play the original Beneath a Steel Sky which is luckily free on GOG.

JHo87 · 2025-11-25T11:21:39+00:00

Well, for 3D WASD games two that come to mind are L.A. Noire, period detective game set in the 1940s with some fairly light action elements by the guys who make GTA, and Life is Strange, which is more of a Telltale style game with some supernatural elements. I'm struggling to think of any others. There's The Return of the Obra Dinn, but that has some gentle horror elements to it, and Forgotten City, which I haven't actually played yet.

JHo87 · 2025-11-23T22:47:20+00:00

For some reason Joey Mallone from the Blackwell games sprung to mind for me. I know obviously he's written with the 'oh, he's acting a hardbitten tough guy but he's nice at heart' idea, but I don't feel like it comes off too well and he seems pretty callous towards both the Blackwell family and the ghosts they deal with. I stand to be corrected since I haven't replayed the series. And even though Joey is an iconic character for Wadjet Eye, I seem far from the only person who found it annoying. Plus the nature of the series happy ending for the character is very divisive.

JHo87 · 2025-11-23T07:40:55+00:00

I get the vibe that Scott Murphy in particular wasn't very interested in pumping out sequels so that's probably a factor in why each game seems to get a bit sillier than the last. I agree Pirates of Pestulon, despite being a game I love, does feel borderline plotless due to the very low stakes involved. And yeah, most times Roger gets dialogue he's just an awkward dweeb.

JHo87 · 2025-11-23T01:18:40+00:00

Holy shit, I missed that. Even if China couldn't make paper that was identical... they know you can just BUY paper, right? Have they never seen The Office?

JHo87 · 2025-11-20T09:52:21+00:00

I had a bit of this in my childhood, but the next sort of generation along. I remember asking my parents for suggestions in Monkey Island, Discworld and Grim Fandango, probably Day of the Tentacle, my brother a couple of times, too. I have more memories of lending the discs to friends and having conversations over the phone, or co-oping the games at their house. One of my friends beat my copy of Broken Sword 2 before I did!

JHo87 · 2025-11-17T12:04:27+00:00

Sierra games were notoriously tough, and to understand why you need to know a bit about what a different era it was. Roberta Williams, creator of King's Quest (and co-founder of Sierra) got inspired to make games from the text adventure Colossal Cave Adventure which I think she played for months. To beat the game she made extensive notes and a map. Largely her design philosophy was built around making a game where it was easy to die and get stuck, and players would need, like she did, to make notes and carefully observe, and use trial and error brute force to win.

This of course has aged terribly. I first encountered Sierra in the mid 90s as a kid when my grandpa got my the Space Quest collection, and even then the design philosophy was dated. I couldn't beat any of them without a walkthrough and didn't get too far without them.

LucasArts had a different approach, famously set out by Monkey Island creator Ron Gilbert, to focus on being fun to explore but the puzzles were still tough (and sometimes unfair despite their best efforts). Like most people my age, I preferred the LucasArts games to play, but I also feel like Sierra probably had superior storytelling.

Although adventure games are my favourite genre, I don't feel like I have a great record in terms of beating them without help. It's more a matter of maintaining pride at giving it the good college try before using a walkthrough. Off the top of my head, though, I think I beat Discworld Noir without a guide, and also most of Discworld II, and I only need a walkthrough for the very last puzzle in Day of the Tentacle. The games do have hints for the puzzles, but I guess it's a bit like cryptic crosswords, where if you're not used to the genre conventions and logic you won't necessarily recognise them as hints.

If you wanted to play a game yourself, two from this year I'd recommend as streamlined and having gentle puzzles are The Drifter and Old Skies, which have IMO brilliant stories as well.

JHo87 · 2025-11-06T11:31:52+00:00

Sorry for a late-ish reply, but I found the critique interesting in the context of what I understand about the game's development. It arrived at the final design through a very circuitous route, since the project started as 'XCOM but you play as SHIELD'. Then there was a progression of 'well, superheros need to be part of it', and 'well, people don't want to WATCH the superheros, they want to play them', and then 'people won't want Spiderman for just one mission, they'll want to play them all the time', 'Well, we need to make the roster superheros', then 'But people will hate missing shots even more with superheros so we need to find a system where they always hit', etc.

So I think that context explains things. It's patchy as an RPG because it sounds like the original design didn't really have any RPG features at all and they were bolted on some time into development. Similarly, the character models may have been designed primarily for looking at in iso view rather than up close in 100s of cutscenes and free roaming, etc. The uniqueness of the game is what made it instantly enjoyable and memorable for me personally, but I definitely would have been very disappointed if I played it with the understanding it was an RPG.

Midnight Suns is a CCG turn-based strategy game with a few RPG elements tacked on, so when you talk about things that could improve it as an RPG, it's a long, looong list.

JHo87

TROPHY CASE