Speech simon the sorcerer series#

Like the first game, the music is spellbindingly accurate. But it's all harmless fun and you have to admire Adventuresoft for doing a puzzle so ridiculous that it can have you tearing your hair out with frustration. There's one puzzle involving a dog on the tropical island that had me flummoxed for about a week and really wound me up, however once I discovered how blatantly obvious the solution was, I don't think I've ever been so close to throwing my computer out the window. Thankfully there are no conundrums involving small rocks, but the same bizarre nature is inherent throughout. Often I'd get really frustrated by a puzzle but I never gave up, I kept going back and back until it was solved. Yet it never once seems laborious or tedious. The longevity of Simon 2 is definitely a credit to the game a seasoned adventure gamer that had never seen it before would have trouble finishing this in under 20 hours of play. There are at least three points where this game could finish, but instead whisks Simon off to a new location with more hotspots and more puzzles. Simon 2 is exceedingly tough at some points, largely due to the often incomprehensible puzzles, and there's plenty of them as well. But that's not to say that this game is any easier or shorter quite the opposite. Locations operate like 'Acts' splitting the action up into manageable chunks rather than the vast array of locations dished out to us at the start of the first game. Although you lose some of the characteristics that the woodland brought to the game (like the animated creatures and the rocks with faces), it makes the game a lot easier to navigate.ДЄnother noticeable improvement is that there is a far more coherent plotline to the second game. Also, once you step out of a location, no longer do you have to wander through endless 'filler' woodland, instead you get the familiar adventure game map with hotspots where you can choose straight away where you wish to go to. It's more a cosmetic change, as it functions like the interface in the first game, and I do think Adventuresoft would have done better to use a system like that of Sam & Max whereby you right click on the mouse to scroll through the icons, but it does look a lot better than the first game's. For example, gone is the silly interface that had ridiculous verbs in it like 'consume' and 'remove' and in its place, a bright shiny new interface that utilizes pictures in the place of written words. Once you actually start playing, you quickly realize that this is not the game you played two years ago. These are not the only things that give this game an air of maturity. By the time we see Runt and Sordid in the new improved fortress of evil, already the animators have added some impressive perspective shots to the usual flat 2D animations with Sordid leering over a balcony at Runt standing by a pool. Immediately we meet a new character by the name of Runt, who manages to resurrect Simon's old nemesis Sordid. The images you are greeted with seem to resemble a full-blown prologue rather than a few small animations interspersed with credits to set the scene as was seen in the first installment. Yet despite all these recognizable elements, there's something more grown-up about what you see. The music that made Simon 1 what it was strikes up and the same 256 colors fade onto the screen. Within a second of starting Simon 2, you know where you are. My firm belief in life is that 'if it ain't broke don't fix it.' Don't get me wrong I realize that change can be a good thing - after all, we wouldn't have the SCUMM engine if someone hadn't thought 'typing in verbs is such a waste of time,' and just look at Day Of The Tentacle compared to Maniac Mansion, But I have to say I was most relieved back in 1995 to fire up my copy of Simon the Sorcerer 2: The Lion, The Wizard and The Wardrobe and be greeted with something very familiar. I like the 'Golden Age of Point & Click' and I like the fact that Linkin Park's second album is just Hybrid Theory part 2. Well, you pretty much have two options: either make something cutting edge and supremely different, but run the risk of it being a crashing failure or, stick with what you know and do an almost exact replica.

Speech simon the sorcerer series#

So if you were Adventuresoft, what would you do? You have a successful first part of a series that has become popular with people all over the world, you have already hyped up the sequel with the end sequence of the first game, and you probably have a far more impressive budget for production.