Apes, Witches, Zombies OH MY - Let's Play Ben Jordans 1-8

Probably because KQ2 was a mess (the fan remake expanded upon its story considerably just so it would make sense), and because KQ3 is pretty much surpassed by every KQ that came after it save 5 and post-7. And is also a bit of a mess plot-wise. Also, those spellbook puzzles. Where the correct spell incantations have typographical errors in the manual, and the manual is the only source of those incantations. Do the math.

My own personal top picks for the 80s/90s adventure game era are (in no particular order) Hand of Fate, King's Quest VI, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Space Quest IV, Malcolm's Revenge, Full Throttle, Gabriel Knight, Riddle of Master Lu, and The Misadventures of Willy Beamish.

Ah, I misunderstood the question. The developer of the 9th game went through the trouble of getting Activision Blizzard's permission to use the KQ name and characters. In my book that's a close to an official sequel and ending to the series we're going to get. And it is certainly a lot better than how Sierra left it with Mask of Eternity...

KQ2 is a mess. There's barely a story there, and the one we get doesn't make any sense in the context of the game we got. Early KQs are just fairy tales mashed together without any rhyme, reason, or intent to build up a setting. Also the puzzles are shit. Bridle on snake? Really? magic sugar cube against poison brambles really? KQ3 is less of a game with copy protection and more of copy protection with some game attached. At least there is an attempt to start building up the world of KQ in it... I can't imagine how opaque these games were to people unfamiliar with western european culture...

I agree with you on KQ2. That bridle puzzle... But I have a bit of a soft spot for KQ3. At least if you had the manual you knew what to do, and unlike the first two games, you have a decent hook to do something: you're not searching for something at the far corners of the earth for no apparent reason, you're just trying to continue living.

No Monkey Island?

Amazingly, I didn't even get introduced to Monkey Island until the late 90s and early 2000s with Curse of Monkey Island. I do like the games (CoMI in particular, which seems to irk long-time series fans for some reason), but they don't come to mind as readily since I didn't really play them during their heyday.

I had pretty much the same experience with that series, though admittedly, I was more of a console gamer overall and my experience with adventure games was fairly limited (Maniac Mansion for the NES, and I think playing a couple of the KQ games at friend's houses).

How to Corner Yourself into a Hole in Three Simple Steps:
1. Promise something will be done by a certain date.
2. Be incredibly lazy.
3. Ignore blatant problems with your computer until you get an almost unsolvable hardware failure.

I don't know what, but something with my computer is being screwy. So yeah.

The thread will be here whenever you get back to it

UGH

So it turns out the "problem" was that my password drive, possibly my entire hard drive, has been corrupted. Thankfully I happen to have a deus ex machina (that I won't explain) but I need to wait because I can't exactly use it yet. I may or may not record something at my friend's house, but I can't at mine because my one copy of Camtasia was on my desktop PC (I am currently using my laptop) and I lost the access codes long ago. I would (and probably should) rebuy it but it costs $300.

But enough about that. Any suggestions? The big thing I'm angry about is not having anything to do. My school let out on Tuesday, and I can't really work on any of my projects. If you guys suggest something you want, I'll do as much as I can to work on it. I don't care if it's related to this series or not, as I've pretty much given up on this thread. If you want to see something else I'll probably just delete or abandon this thread. Thanks.

You mentioned before that the second game was the only one that had all voice acting and only voice acting. You could just skip to the third one and carry on from there, and only bother with the second one if you get your recording issues worked out (and if you still feel like doing it.)

This is a good idea.

Yeah, I don't see why computer troubles should translate into complete abandonment.

Or deletion! Geez!

The hard drive came back from repairs a couple of days ago, but it doesn't matter because I have to leave for Los Angeles tomorrow. I'm going to be there for about two weeks, maybe more. I'm guessing the very earliest I can get the next part up is early August, but it may be later. But I swear, as soon as I get my computer back together, I WILL GET PART 4 ONLINE.

Ha! Hahhahaha! This is a GREAT LP. What?!?! this game?!(s)?!

I mean just what coke bigfoot and decapitation and what?!

Great commentary.

Ok, all I need to do is take their last city and then I can eat away a little bit of Prussia, and Prussia's not that bad anyways.



GodDAMMIT Britain, you always wreck my plans!

Oh, yeah, wasn't there an LP I had to do a while ago? Alright fine...







Ben Jordan, always the charmer.







(The phone rings.)

















And thus the adventure begins.

I can't promise an ideal uploading schedule, but I can promise I'll upload when I can.

A shower scene! Swoon!

Wait...did he manage to get dry and get dressed before answering the phone?

I can understand why you'd be confused, but if you look again, you'll notice he was never wet to begin with.

He was merely standing in the shower shirtless, collecting his thoughts.

Part 4: Mirror Image

Explaining the title - consider Ben Jordan 1 & 2 twins - they look completely different, and are set on opposite ends of a large country in completely different settings - but they're really pretty similar.

Anyway, on with the actual LP.



Am I the only one who thinks that the Annie sprite in the background looks really uncharacteristically angry?



I know this image seems kind of useless, but look closer - Ben is walking behind the sky! So much for all your base are belong to us - why can't this be a meme?









*five minutes later the house explodes*











Dun dun DUN.







It should also be noted that this is a cleverly disguised wild west story.









FREEDOM!

Although we still need one last item.



*cough* steal *cough*



And with that, we venture into a new world...

At least this game has more than three screens for its opening act.



(This screen is to the left of the last screen.)

Also? At no point in the game will you go either south of this screen or in the abandoned mine shaft (the latter realization for me the first time I played this game was... disheartening, to say the least).



Until he detonates it even closer to the populated areas of the town.



Onward! To the medicine man!



Who has only one necessary item! (As of yet, that is.)









Onward! To the grocery store!



Which has only one necessary item!





Onward! To... the bar?



Which has several necessary items... huh.

This... feels wrong somehow.















This is going smoothly already.

...thanks, really appreciate it.



















WELL YOU'RE CERTAINLY BEING HELPFUL.















But then wouldn't it automatically target the beer behind the bar?

(Also, Case 2 Deluxe is pretty good and has a few extra puzzles, for those curious)

That's my line!

(Actually it isn't - I really don't like the Deluxe Edition of this game.)

And our final stop before our big puzzle: the coffee shop.















There's a way around this: Buy some pure caffeine, and put a tiny bit in your water. It's ridiculously cheap.

Oh yeah, I'm an LPer, not a cost-cutting advisor, never mind.





Then what do Annie and her husband do for a living? Unless the medicine man is one of their fathers or something.









This is the one red herring conversation in the game that I'm leaving in, mainly because of how much I like it.

















Thanks, Ben. Now every time I get coffee I'm going to want to get that.

I kind of like the spooky abandoned house area...

It was good, but it didn't go anywhere. How is a ghost stuck at the bottom of a lake supposed to turn some guy on the other end of town insane?

This is the large building I skipped earlier, and it's the location of the solution to the biggest puzzle in this game.









I actually kind of like the dynamite-exploding animation.







Cornmeal...





Yeast...



Sugar...



And ma-

Oh. Crap. How are we supposed to get malt?

This puzzle had me stuck for a while. I knew I had to use the beer on the still, but it needed something flammable to create a fire, and nothing in my inventory was flammable.

Nothing, that is, except...





This is the one puzzle in the game that I have qualms with. The game told us that the stick would lead us to the moonshine, not that it would be an ingredient to create the moonshine. For the longest time I thought I had to hold on to the stick because it was important. The text earlier in the game definitely needs to be rephrased.









And our mixture is complete. The mixture is, anyway.





HOORAH!

Continuing soon...

Was that the implication?

I just sort of thought it was a random spooky one-off. The fact that it wasn't really resolved and you didn't learn much always made it even more effective to me. I was always super on edge when I was there.