Tex without hints?

Through my first playthrough, I played without using the hints because I was on gamer mode. But I remember that I ended up using a hint eventually, and got knocked back to entertainment mode. Afterwards it made me angry, because I missed out on a lot of stuff that wasn't there, so I had to go back and replay the game on gamer mode again. Where did I use the hint? I do believe I got stuck not knowing where to go ... come to find out there was a badge in sandras apartment to get you into autotech.

So, some people actually do have the patience to go through every location, every room and every character when they don't know what to do next any more. Maybe I should just use my brains more, but often I'm just at a loss where to go and part of me believes that I'm ruining it for myself by giving up too soon. I mean, there's two ways of playing adventure games: for the story and for the puzzles. I lean more towards the story part and just want to move it forward already!

But the actual puzzles (disarming the bomb, putting back torn letters, etc.) are great fun.

I can't even imagine how long this game would take without using hints.

I've tried but there's always been that one puzzle that has just stumped me and i've had no choice but to resort to it. However, on about the fifth replay, I have actually managed without it.

Thaurin wrote:So, some people actually do have the patience to go through every location, every room and every character when they don't know what to do next any more. Maybe I should just use my brains more, but often I'm just at a loss where to go and part of me believes that I'm ruining it for myself by giving up too soon. I mean, there's two ways of playing adventure games: for the story and for the puzzles. I lean more towards the story part and just want to move it forward already!

But the actual puzzles (disarming the bomb, putting back torn letters, etc.) are great fun.

I can't even imagine how long this game would take without using hints.

I'm the same really. Mainly in it for the story so not really bothered about the puzzles. When I say puzzles though I mean the actual puzzles. Simple stuff like putting together the note I can do but advanced stuff that take more time and consideration I get bored of and decide to just have the game solve it for me so I can get on with the story. Stuff like collect this item before you can go there or combine this item with that to do this, for the most part I do since it feels like part of the story I guess finding out the reason for this or that or what you need for here or there, whereas with the purely puzzle-based stuff I feel is more of an aside. You could probably round them up and put them in a puzzle compilation for example but the item/location etc. finding based stuff feels like more of a narratuve. But again if I get really stuck I just take a hint, because I have too many games I got stuck on and never completed because I didnt have the time to figure it out and moved on and now would have to replay from the start to remember where I was... So I feel its better to just take the hint and get to the end and enjoy it than stay stuck.

Yeah, but it's a fine balance. I always run into this when playing an adventure game. On the one hand it's fun trying to solve it all by yourself. On the other, you're right about time and the tons of games that I never finished for various reasons.

Tex Murphy is great because it has hints built in with a point system, so "cheating" is still part of the game. It also uses the same kind of system that sites like uhs-hints.com uses, where you can get one small hint at a time instead of reading through a walkthrough that describes it all.

But to me, playing The Pandora Directive, it seemed that sometimes the next step was really not obvious, but a necessary step to advance the story. As in: ask this character about this subject type of thing.

Yeah I always appreciated that about the Tex games, the hint system was very thorough. Allowing you to take a hint every now and again without risk of spoilers is essential. Its good that it gave plenty of options, small steps of hints for those who just want a tip in the right direction, or quick 'solve all' buttons for those wanting to just move on quicker.
Although (thinking about the comment above about 1 hint taking you permanently down to Entertainment level) maybe they could add a feature so that if you solve the next puzzle/part on your own it gets promoted back up to Gamer mode (or gives you the option to set it back). Just with a different title like 'Sub-Gamer" or something. Separating it title-wise from those who went through Gamer Mode 100% without booting those wanting to play the tougher level out totally.

the hint system gave it a lot of long term appeal, even after the books had sold out and new games were about you could always buy the game second hand and know that you had a guide to get you through even if you got stuck.

Though I do remember getting frustrated first time round on one of the games where you had to press the shift key to crouch down to find something, and it was the only time in the game you had to use that key. I didn't even know you could crouch. It was something like that anyway and I think the thing was under a desk.

I am guilty of being one of those chrisnic hint users for first play. I guess I was too young to appreciate the thinking components, and just wanted to get to the next pretty cutscene!

But once I got the gist of the game it was easy enough to play with patience. More fun too!

-Cub. =o)

Don't you ever feel the desire to look up a few hints when you just started a new game, just to, ah, "get a feel" for it? Yeah. I hate it when you start a new adventure game and you're having to look for a clue to get to the next screen within the first 5 minutes. You don't even know what puzzle style the game employs yet!!

Off-topic, kinda, but I'm playing Curse of Monkey Island again, so this is all pertinent.

I don't think I've ever gone the way through without some tip here or there. My rule of thumb for the Tex games is, if a real P.I. would be able to figure it out (generally who-to-ask/where-to-look), I try to figure it out myself. If it's more busy-work (the sliding puzzle-box in PD), I don't feel so bad about following a walkthrough, but I usually won't skip the whole thing.

I think I tried playing through without hints once but never made it. Next time I will though, I'm feeling antsy for another romp with the Tex.

Well, I admit that I did play in Entertainment mode when I played the games the first time. I enjoyed the fact that I could get a quick hint here and there in order to advance in the story. But I did play the game in Gamer mode afterwards since I, of course, got curious as for what would be different from Entertainment mode to Gamer mode. As for PD I was also very anxious to know how to get to the different endings, but for that I had to check for walkthroughs in order to get to a specific ending since I couldn't quite figure out what I had to do right and wrong to get to the right ending

Kinda like Curse of Monkey Island as you say, Thaurin. There's also the opportunity to choose the normal game or Mega Monkey with more puzzles and such.

I love the fact that they even made that option available

I finished the game in Gamer mode every time, though when I needed a hint, I would save my game, switch to Entertainment mode, get my hint, then reload my savegame - back in Gamer mode ~ I'm awesome

Bests, Rockefeller

Rockefeller,

Same here!