Your backlog of SHAME

[froghawk]

Yeah same, a friend gave me the disks back in high school with the strategy guide, telling me the game was literally impossible to finish without said guide. I've started reading the guide, so I may be crossing that one off the list soon!

[demagogue]

I finished off an old C64 game called Shogun that, if you look it up, people will say it's impossible to finish. I don't think I saw another person reporting having finished it. And it didn't have any guide that I've ever seen. (It released with a manual that explained a lot, just going by faint memory, but I've never seen a scan of it, so I don't remember how useful it was. My memory from the '80s was that it wasn't very useful.)

But I just figured it out playing it again, knowing what I know now about game systems, then made a guide and a recording of finishing it that I think is still out there on some forum somewhere. I can't even remember where that is now. But that's an example of coming back to a game ~40 years later to finish off without even being sure it could be finished.

[Thirith]

Was it also based on the James Clavell novel? I think there was an Infocom text adventure of that title, and that one was an adaptation of the novel, as far as I know.

[demagogue]

Not really no. It was a game purely about gathering followers, and you get to be Shogun when you get 20 of them. Some of the characters were named after characters in the Clavell novel, but that's the extent of the connection to the novel.

[PigLick]

Ah Shogun, that was a great game. I think I got to 20 followers but memory is hazy. It was quite a cool exploration game for its time.

[froghawk]

That's probably the longest running game in my PC backlog. I bought it when it came out and I don't know if I've ever even gotten past the opening area.

Well, it is finally off my backlog. Even as a Douglas Adams fan, I can't recommend taking the time to finish it, despite its brevity. It's impossible without the strategy guide (which luckily I had), but with it it's a surprisingly insubstantial sub-5hr adventure that is strikingly unfunny and lacking in story. Given that Adams said that he was trying to make Myst with an actual story, and that the starship is 'really, REALLY big', this is surprising. Ok, it is technically quite large, but over 90% of that is just copy-pasted floors that the game gives you zero reason to ever visit. The biggest issue, though, is the speech engine. They recorded 16hrs of dialogue, but good luck finding the right thing to say to access even an eighth of that.

[Tomi]

Psychonauts

Psychonauts is/was a fun game! Because of the bizarre art style it's probably still enjoyable today, unlike most action games from that era. I'll have to add the sequel to my Backlog of Shame.

I'm happy to report that I've been playing Psychonauts 2 for the last three days, and it's great! It looks amazing, the gameplay feels old-school in a good way, and the characters and the story are funny. Not hahahaLOL kind of funny, but Psychonauts 2 will keep a smile on your face throughout the game, and there can never be too many games like that. I don't think that I'm even halfway through it yet, but so far I've been really impressed.