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What game should I buy?


VampireNaomi

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The Dig was the first lucasarts game I ever played. If it wasn't for that game, I wouldn't have gone to look for hints at the lucasarts website and stumble upon this game "grim fandango" coming out in november. You know, the voice of the lead guy on the Dig is T-2000.

 

I actually didn't like the Monkey Island games that much. Too silly.

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Yeah. I read lots of reviews of the dig that said it wasn't good, and that it was probably the worst LucasArts adventure. But I didn't think that a LucasArts adventure could be bad, so I bought it :D .

 

I suppose some people might like it... but I don't ;), and same with a lot of the reviews.

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Here are the first 3 written reviews from mobygames:

 

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One-line Summary:

Waste of time.

 

The Good:

The art design, while not breathtaking, was actually quite good. The early segments of the game set up some suspense and hinted at a great game ahead.

 

The Bad:

While the early portion of the game set things up well (and "killed" off one of the most annoying characters) the middle and final segments of the game were a complete letdown. With a plot that seemed to have been hacked out of mediocre pulp SF films of the mid-50's, ridiculous dialogue, and characters that seemed to have been stereotyped from the same era as the plot. Oh, and the annoying character comes back as some sort of Undead Bavarian Lingust From Hell.

 

The puzzles were only average, and some of them were patently absurd and/or obtuse in the extreme. The turtle-thing skeleton puzzle comes to mind.

 

And I just wonder why so many writers and art directors seem to think that -any- dead civilization would have built with stone in a vaguely Egyptian style, regardless of technical advances. Like they were building their cities with prior knowledge that one day they would vanish and so they should design everything to look sufficiently "ruined". Sure, whatever.

 

The Bottom Line:

If you really like adventure games of the SCUMM variety you might want to check it out. It's not so much a bad game, as a game that isn't a fraction of what it could have been. The story would have been excusable 50 years ago, but today it is just trite and insulting.

 

Well, ok, it is pretty bad.

 

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One-line Summary:

Semi-good(ish)

 

The Good:

This came out at an odd time for Lucasarts - after 'The Secret of Monkey Island 2' had been criticised for being too easy, they released this and 'Full Throttle', two solid adventures that, whilst pleasant enough, seemed to add little to the genre, and were not particularly hard. 'The Dig' is less cartoony and more 'serious' than their other games - it's a pulpy sci-fi adventure with the voice of Robert Patrick, the evil Terminator from 'Terminator 2'. It scores highly in terms of presentation - the animated intro is highly professional, and there's a constant, impressive score ('Wagnerian' according to the box) too.

 

The Bad:

The puzzles veer from being utterly, utterly obscure (a sequence in which you manipulate a hovering drone in order to reactivate a power plant), to dull 'try every object with every other object' fests. Furthermore, what appeared to be a bug in my version of the the game rendered it unfinishable. Nonetheless, it's typically competent, and even when it's being dull there's the music to listen to.

 

The Bottom Line:

Decent, solid adventure that won't tax you for more than a few days. With Robert Patrick!

 

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One-line Summary:

It's OK...

 

The Good:

I played a demo for this way back when I first got my sound card and it blew me away (the demo ended just when things were getting interesting). A few months later, I picked up a LucasArts value pack that had this game and a few others in it. I did my typical thing -- I played 'em for awhile, then put 'em back in the box and moved on.

 

Then a couple days ago, I played Full Throttle through to the end. It was awesome, so I figured I'd give 'The Dig' a whirl.

 

To appreciate the game, you have to put your brain into retro-mode -- the graphics are VGA (or maybe SVGA), so you're gonna see pixels the size of golf balls. It's an old game, made when Voodoo was still a religion.

 

Once your brain learns to adapt to the the pixel signals that your eyeballs are sending it (hey, it happens...) you'll see that the graphics are actually pretty cool, and the cut-scenes ain't bad either.

 

The characters in the story are sort of two-dimensional, but I really liked the main character -- he's a regular joe like me. He's no genius, and some of the things he says in the game are just laugh-out-loud funny (click on the dead guard beasts in the tomb and you'll see what I mean ^_^).

 

As far as gameplay goes, the interface is pretty basic and doesn't get in the way of the game. And then there's the music -- a great cinematic score that really set the mood for a great game.

 

BUT.....

 

The Bad:

....Even though things started out pretty interesting, it got to a point where I had to revisit some of the areas *over and over again*. And again. And again. And again. To be honest, I ended up printing out a walkthrough of the game just so I could find out where to go next instead of searching the whole place. Again.

 

Most of the puzzles weren't too hard to figure out, but there were a few that turned the game into a full-scale clickfest when trying to figure out what object to use with what area. Then there were a few that were too hard for my tiny little mind to process. But then again, I had my handy little walkthrough.... heh heh.

 

The worst thing about 'The Dig', though, was the lack of suspense. There was no sense of urgency, and nothing that *really* drove me to keep playing other than hoping that something would happen. Nothing did.... not really.

 

There really was no plot, no big surprises, no interesting twists. The only goal was to get pixel-boy and his buddies back home.

 

I found a couple of possible bugs -- sometimes (well, a lot of times) I had to double-click on things since the game didn't register the first click for some reason. And I had to save, quit, and restart the game a few times when the game slowed wa-a-ay down. Maybe it was just my machine.

 

The Bottom Line:

Bottom line, huh? Bo-o-oring. Pass it up unless you don't have anything better to do... and get a walkthrough.

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Oh my... Those reviews really killed my desire to have that game. But I think I'll buy it anyway so that if it turns out to be like that I can buy something else later...

 

They say the worst should be got over with before moving to good stuff, right? ;)

 

Edit: I take my words back. I just found an online store that sells Day of the Tentacle/Sam and Max double pack for 16,95€! Wuppidoo!

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Originally posted by James Isaac

Mmmm no. I bought it, then played it for about 10 minutes, but it wasn't very good, so I never played it again sicne :(

 

Wow, our opinions really differ. My brother bought The Dig for me and I am hooked. I must know what is the secret behind all the mysteries. I love that game, I just love it!

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