The most difficult adventure game ever

[J T]

um, I didn't really play many adventure games on the Amiga, but I do rememebr getting hella stuck on Monkey Island and refusing to use a guide.

Oddly, someone I got chatting to at a Michael Jackson concert (at Wembley stadium, the 'Dangerous' tour) gave me a big hint. Strange world.

[burns flipper]

Maniac Mansion was difficult as there were so many variables. I never finished it.

I finished Zak McKracken without help - WHODAMAN??

Future Wars was moderately difficult due to timed sequences, using the mouse.

I've consulted my master list of what adventures I played on the Amiga and there weren't any I couldn't beat other than MM.

[Buleste]

Bloodnet. Only because it was so frustrating i gave up on it. Even with walkthoughs.

[Tiago]

There some parts in "Operation sealth" were very difficult to guess what to do next.
I remember that i spend a lot of time in the game.

[burns flipper]

There some parts in "Operation sealth" were very difficult to guess what to do next.
I remember that i spend a lot of time in the game.

Yeah, that was a real f**ker.

I remember getting right to the end, I'm talking second-to-last screen here, and it turns out I needed the elastic band hidden in the men's toilet at the airport at the start of the game. HHHNGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Also, the bit at the end of Indy & Last Crusade, where you have to 'leap from the Lion's Head'. I'd click on the other side of the chasm and, lo and behold, Indy would take one cautious step and fall into the abyss EVERY SINGLE TIME, before sending me back to start all the trials again. And I never did finish it. Sometimes game developers just need shooting in the head.

[Harrison]

For me it was always bad game design like this that ruined an otherwise great game for me. In such adventure games they should never require an item that cannot be obtained from within the current area (or one that is something the player will automatically always gain possession of at some point during).

The use of items obtained from previous (now inaccessible) areas should only ever be for bonus non critical additional elements in an area, not a key factor in the completion of a game.

Games that required you to traverse back though about 50 screens to pick up an object were nearly as bad.

[Teho]

Of the ones mentioned I have to agree with Zak, Maniac Mansion and Bloodnet. Way too hard for me. Allthough in Bloodnet's case it may be because I didn't understand it fully back then. I tried it several times, but maybe I ought to give it a go again one of these days.

Can't think of others that were too hard for me. Well, most of Infocom's text-adventures was frustrating but that was more of a language-barrier between me and the parser. Back then I could allready understand english reasonably well, but still had trouble finding the right words when wanting to say something myself. So left most of those due to getting too frustrated with the parser. But on the topic of Infocom and difficult games, isn't their Hitch-hiker's Guide To The Galaxy game supposed to be one of the hardest adventure games ever made? I think I've heard that it is so because true to form, a lot of the solutions are so absurd that the likelyhood of you thinking of them is just about zero.

And I agree about the adventures that allow you to get stuck if you miss something earlier on. Sierra's early games were criminal like that. In Space Quest for example, you have to get an object at the beginning and use it somewhere halfway through or you won't learn a combination required at the end. And it isn't obvious that you have to do this either. And Space Quest 2 was full of such things, if you don't rescue an alien from a trap early on you'll get stuck later. And this trap isn't in an obvious location and is easy to miss. And if you didn't dive in the deep section of the swamp and got that glow-in-the-dark gem, you'd be stuck in some dark tunnels later on. And that deep section was tucked away in a corner of the swamp and was also pretty easy to miss. Forgetting to post that order form for that whistle would also put you in a dead end. Maddening. And still I managed to complete that eventually.

[Harrison]

Hitch Hiker's Galaxy follows the books closely and many of the puzzle solutions require you to have a good knowledge of the story. Luckily when I played the game I had already read them a few times so it wasn't too hard.