If you don't mind the looks and the JRPG combat it's one of the best written games out there. Also one of the funniest.
Yeah, the voice acting is really good, too. And like mentioned, they do some amazing things with the direction, like the silences that are just hilarious. They pull a lot of nuance out of those blocky character models. There was a machinima made of the game that's pretty good, but it loses something you get from actually playing and exploring. The game universe is batshit insane, and I love it.
I haven't played it in many years myself. I didn't know about any fan patches, only the patch released by one of the programmers a while after they were all laid off, that he did on his own time. I'll have to see what's available now.
I also own Thief and Thief 2, but it's awesome for those that have been looking for them. I still need to pick up Thief 3, though.
Yeah I only ever briefly played Thief 2 and loved it. Looking forward to when it pops up on gog.
Also, that's not a fake. Atleast, the '9 surprises unlocked' button tells me it might not be. Its from two days into the future! If the surprise event started on the 1st and it's been one unlock per day then.... Well, you can work it out. So between now and Friday we'll get Thief AND Anachronox.
Seriously, this game has some real effort put into its storytelling. Like Carcass said, they get a ton of mileage out of the old character models, and you have to see the cutscenes in action to believe how well it works. It comes across less like scripts pushing polygons around and actors in a booth, and more like a legit film production. Just really, really good stuff.
Depends on why you play games. If you play them for story, then definitely, as Anachronox is hillarious. If you play them for gameplay, then no, because Anachronox is one of the worst playing RPGs of all time.
Seriously, this game has some real effort put into its storytelling. Like Carcass said, they get a ton of mileage out of the old character models, and you have to see the cutscenes in action to believe how well it works. It comes across less like scripts pushing polygons around and actors in a booth, and more like a legit film production. Just really, really good stuff.
Eddie knows.
I should also point out that:
1) The environments are frequently really well constructed, and give you motivation to explore them - admittedly usually in the form of pickups (Bag o' Glodents, anyone?). I remember that one character's ability was to throw coins at hidden targets in the gameworld for rewards.
2) The combat is very much the western approach to the JRPG - you get a mouse pointer, enemies are finite, and you really don't need to grind. It honestly doesn't get in the way much. And you can crank the difficulty right down if you don't care about it, which you probably shouldn't.
3) It's content-rich, and surprisingly long. Lots of areas, lots of unique NPCs with interesting dialogue, plenty of sidequests, and very little wandering around caves twatting things.
4) The names. Sly Boots. Stiletto Anyway. Grumpos Matavastros.
5) It runs on the Quake II engine. In 2001, this was horrifying. In 2010, it's less noticeable since everything from a decade ago looks like a lumpen mess. But they obviously never redid any of the character models or levels as development dragged on, and the upside of that is the sheer amount of stuff that's in there.
The game engine lipsyncs to the character speech, which is very nice in comparison to many of its peers. Also, with the fanpatch they put in a lot of little QoL improvements, like a taxi system on Anachronox to make getting around faster, and the ability to speed up combat animations if you just want to get it over with; the latter seems to break character animations on certain machines though, use with caution.
Glal on
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DrakeEdgelord TrashBelow the ecliptic plane.Registered Userregular
edited December 2010
The boxy character models just became another expression of the game world's weirdness.
I'm reinstalling right now.
Anyone who loves an RPG for story (sounds like Planescape fans fit this description) and isn't a humorless bastard will probably have a really good time with Anachronox.
There's this amazing cutscene in Ana. The group is stuck, drifting in space. The days countdown. Characters begin going insane, start sharing life stories with each other. You know, I'll them tell you
The under his breath "bitch" from the robot fucking murders me.
Medium Dave on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
There's this amazing cutscene in Ana. The group is stuck, drifting in space. The days countdown. Characters begin going insane, start sharing life stories with each other. You know, I'll them tell you
The under his breath "bitch" from the robot fucking murders me.
I was going to post about that being my favorite scene. It's still hilarious.
1) The environments are frequently really well constructed, and give you motivation to explore them - admittedly usually in the form of pickups (Bag o' Glodents, anyone?). I remember that one character's ability was to throw coins at hidden targets in the gameworld for rewards.
Ah, one of the game's many strengths. Anachronox's environments were places that just called out to be explored; even the most boring of the game's worlds, the dreary Bricks, had all manner of odd detours and nooks that may not have had any gameplay value at all, but contributed loads to the atmosphere, whether it was an NPC with an offbeat personal remark or just a weird sign hanging on the wall.
You know what it really came down to? Beyond the game merely "having a story," everything and everyone in Anachronox had its own story. It takes a rare kind of imagination to pull that off.
By the way. Does anyone know where one can still get the Anachronox patches? PlanetAnachronox seems to be down since a while and I don't find any other source.
C2B on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
1) The environments are frequently really well constructed, and give you motivation to explore them - admittedly usually in the form of pickups (Bag o' Glodents, anyone?). I remember that one character's ability was to throw coins at hidden targets in the gameworld for rewards.
Ah, one of the game's many strengths. Anachronox's environments were places that just called out to be explored; even the most boring of the game's worlds, the dreary Bricks, had all manner of odd detours and nooks that may not have had any gameplay value at all, but contributed loads to the atmosphere, whether it was an NPC with an offbeat personal remark or just a weird sign hanging on the wall.
You know what it really came down to? Beyond the game merely "having a story," everything and everyone in Anachronox had its own story. It takes a rare kind of imagination to pull that off.
Bingo. The world itself had character, and it was always either entertaining or interesting. The Bricks was basically Blade Runner directed by M.C. Escher; you've got people walking up walls and on ceilings and nobody bats an eye. A scientific haven has capital punishment for misdemeanors, has a caste system, and requires a pop quiz in advanced astrophysics to get in. Hephaestus was a tourist trap built around a cult and it's clear that not everybody in said cult was on the same page. Democratus tries way too hard to be fair and it has more than a few skeletons in its closet.
And yet it never got too silly to take seriously when it really wanted you to. Paco is a literal comic book superhero, cape and all, he says all of eight words in his dialogue, yet he has one of the best scenes in the game. The world, the characters, the cutscenes... Anachronox just nailed it. I'm jonesing to replay it just thinking about it.
It really isn't, it's just a very run of the mill JRPG with adventure game elements. I'd much rather play that than most D&D-setting games.
Except it's like they took the worst parts of a JRPG and the worst parts of an adventure game and mixed them into some sort of unholy union. Boring, horribly slow combat, combined with a bunch of adventure game fetch quests (made worse by the fact that you have to run across the map to get anywhere). To be honest, the whole game would have been drastically better if they had completely ditched any sort of RPG element and just made it a straight adventure game (and this is coming from someone who loves RPGs and doesn't really care for adventure games).
If you must play it, make sure you download the unofficial fan patch, because if I remember correctly, it added some stuff that makes it more bearable like a fast forward button for combat.
If I'm not mistaken, didn't the developer make a movie out of the game using the cutscenes? Watching that is probably preferable to actually suffering through playing the thing.
Anachronox is a lot like Alpha Protocol in that regard. You really have to be willing to look past what it does poorly to see that it does a lot of things incredibly well. I recall the combat has a feature where you can operate things in the environment during a fight. This feature is utilized I believe twice in the game, and one of those is during the tutorial.
l337CrappyJack on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
If I'm not mistaken, didn't the developer make a movie out of the game using the cutscenes? Watching that is probably preferable to actually suffering through playing the thing.
Yeah, the Cinematic Director did, and it's good, but it loses something because you don't see most of the weird stuff you would from exploring and talking to random people.
It really isn't, it's just a very run of the mill JRPG with adventure game elements. I'd much rather play that than most D&D-setting games.
Except it's like they took the worst parts of a JRPG and the worst parts of an adventure game and mixed them into some sort of unholy union. Boring, horribly slow combat, combined with a bunch of adventure game fetch quests (made worse by the fact that you have to run across the map to get anywhere). To be honest, the whole game would have been drastically better if they had completely ditched any sort of RPG element and just made it a straight adventure game (and this is coming from someone who loves RPGs and doesn't really care for adventure games).
Combat may have been slow, but there are no random encounters and only a handful of combat spawns on any one map, so you never, ever, ever fight as many things as you do during the course of your average JRPG. The large majority of the game is spent outside of combat, running around and talking to people.
The adventure game is apparently YMMV, because I enjoyed it, there were enough rewards for exploration there to make collection quests just something you did on the side while exploring, rather than the driving force. And the really annoying ones are optional anyway, I think the 'take a photo of every Anachronox logo' was the only obligatory one I even remember as actually having to pay attention to.
But yeah, if you don't like exploration and play RPGs for the combat this game may not be for you.
Glal on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
So... unless they release Anachronox and Thief on the same day I'm not seeing that screenshot being legit.
Consensus is that it's a fake. Some of the fonts are off, and apparently the '9' star is actually just the '6' star flipped rather than the actual '9' star.
Xaviar on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
: (
august on
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Sir CarcassI have been shown the end of my worldRound Rock, TXRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
Well, good thing I still have my Anachronox disc. 8-)
I keep meaning to go down to the basement to look for mine. But I just got AC:B the other day, and my onlive microconsole just showed up as well, along with a free month of their unlimited gaming plan.. So.. y'know..
Holy Hell! That's a good deal for the Broken Sword series - $2.39 for each game if you buy all 3! And the first one is the 'Director's Cut' edition that's currently selling for $10 on Steam. The second one's also getting the 'director's cut' treatment early next year, but it's well worth experiencing in original form too.
If you have even a passing interest in adventure games, I'd pick those up in a flash.
Bioptic on
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freakish lightbutterdick jonesand his heavenly asshole machineRegistered Userregular
edited December 2010
Actually the first one is $5 on Steam, at least in the US. I bought the other two when they were on holiday sale last year, now either I get the first one for my steam collection or I save $0.80 and get it on GOG.
Actually the first one is $5 on Steam, at least in the US. I bought the other two when they were on holiday sale last year, now either I get the first one for my steam collection or I save $0.80 and get it on GOG.
Hm.
It's £5 right now on Steam, but could've sworn it was £7 at release. Personally, I'm actually placing a large value-premium on the GoG versions due to their DRM-free nature - it's hard to evangelise a game you own on Steam because you can't lend it out. I do wish there was a way to lend DD PC games to people nowadays that wasn't functionally equivalent to piracy, or identity fraud (giving them access to your account).
Holy Hell! That's a good deal for the Broken Sword series - $2.39 for each game if you buy all 3! And the first one is the 'Director's Cut' edition that's currently selling for $10 on Steam. The second one's also getting the 'director's cut' treatment early next year, but it's well worth experiencing in original form too.
If you have even a passing interest in adventure games, I'd pick those up in a flash.
Man, I own all of these.
I have 3 copies of the first one even. original pc, original Gba and directors cut Ds.
Posts
Man I walked into my local EB today and they had Planescape Torment on the goddamn shelf.
For $30.
Yeah, the voice acting is really good, too. And like mentioned, they do some amazing things with the direction, like the silences that are just hilarious. They pull a lot of nuance out of those blocky character models. There was a machinima made of the game that's pretty good, but it loses something you get from actually playing and exploring. The game universe is batshit insane, and I love it.
I haven't played it in many years myself. I didn't know about any fan patches, only the patch released by one of the programmers a while after they were all laid off, that he did on his own time. I'll have to see what's available now.
I also own Thief and Thief 2, but it's awesome for those that have been looking for them. I still need to pick up Thief 3, though.
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
Also, that's not a fake. Atleast, the '9 surprises unlocked' button tells me it might not be. Its from two days into the future! If the surprise event started on the 1st and it's been one unlock per day then.... Well, you can work it out. So between now and Friday we'll get Thief AND Anachronox.
If it ain't a fake :P
The Democratus theme got a higher playcount on my mp3 player than just about any other song. And normally I only listen to regular-type musics.
Hell yes. Anachronox has some excellent music, especially the Democratus council loop.
Seriously, this game has some real effort put into its storytelling. Like Carcass said, they get a ton of mileage out of the old character models, and you have to see the cutscenes in action to believe how well it works. It comes across less like scripts pushing polygons around and actors in a booth, and more like a legit film production. Just really, really good stuff.
Eddie knows.
Depends on why you play games. If you play them for story, then definitely, as Anachronox is hillarious. If you play them for gameplay, then no, because Anachronox is one of the worst playing RPGs of all time.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
I should also point out that:
1) The environments are frequently really well constructed, and give you motivation to explore them - admittedly usually in the form of pickups (Bag o' Glodents, anyone?). I remember that one character's ability was to throw coins at hidden targets in the gameworld for rewards.
2) The combat is very much the western approach to the JRPG - you get a mouse pointer, enemies are finite, and you really don't need to grind. It honestly doesn't get in the way much. And you can crank the difficulty right down if you don't care about it, which you probably shouldn't.
3) It's content-rich, and surprisingly long. Lots of areas, lots of unique NPCs with interesting dialogue, plenty of sidequests, and very little wandering around caves twatting things.
4) The names. Sly Boots. Stiletto Anyway. Grumpos Matavastros.
5) It runs on the Quake II engine. In 2001, this was horrifying. In 2010, it's less noticeable since everything from a decade ago looks like a lumpen mess. But they obviously never redid any of the character models or levels as development dragged on, and the upside of that is the sheer amount of stuff that's in there.
I'm reinstalling right now.
Anyone who loves an RPG for story (sounds like Planescape fans fit this description) and isn't a humorless bastard will probably have a really good time with Anachronox.
I was going to post about that being my favorite scene. It's still hilarious.
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
Ah, one of the game's many strengths. Anachronox's environments were places that just called out to be explored; even the most boring of the game's worlds, the dreary Bricks, had all manner of odd detours and nooks that may not have had any gameplay value at all, but contributed loads to the atmosphere, whether it was an NPC with an offbeat personal remark or just a weird sign hanging on the wall.
You know what it really came down to? Beyond the game merely "having a story," everything and everyone in Anachronox had its own story. It takes a rare kind of imagination to pull that off.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
http://www.fileplanet.com/124622/120000/fileinfo/Anachronox-Unofficial-Patch
http://www.fileplanet.com/129921/120000/fileinfo/Anachronox-Unofficial-Patch-Update
http://www.fileplanet.com/138812/130000/fileinfo/Anachronox-Patch-v1.02-Build-46
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
Bingo. The world itself had character, and it was always either entertaining or interesting. The Bricks was basically Blade Runner directed by M.C. Escher; you've got people walking up walls and on ceilings and nobody bats an eye. A scientific haven has capital punishment for misdemeanors, has a caste system, and requires a pop quiz in advanced astrophysics to get in. Hephaestus was a tourist trap built around a cult and it's clear that not everybody in said cult was on the same page. Democratus tries way too hard to be fair and it has more than a few skeletons in its closet.
And yet it never got too silly to take seriously when it really wanted you to. Paco is a literal comic book superhero, cape and all, he says all of eight words in his dialogue, yet he has one of the best scenes in the game. The world, the characters, the cutscenes... Anachronox just nailed it. I'm jonesing to replay it just thinking about it.
Man, this better not be a hoax
One of the best decisions I ever made. CDs are still in near-mint condition.
Except it's like they took the worst parts of a JRPG and the worst parts of an adventure game and mixed them into some sort of unholy union. Boring, horribly slow combat, combined with a bunch of adventure game fetch quests (made worse by the fact that you have to run across the map to get anywhere). To be honest, the whole game would have been drastically better if they had completely ditched any sort of RPG element and just made it a straight adventure game (and this is coming from someone who loves RPGs and doesn't really care for adventure games).
If you must play it, make sure you download the unofficial fan patch, because if I remember correctly, it added some stuff that makes it more bearable like a fast forward button for combat.
If I'm not mistaken, didn't the developer make a movie out of the game using the cutscenes? Watching that is probably preferable to actually suffering through playing the thing.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Yeah, the Cinematic Director did, and it's good, but it loses something because you don't see most of the weird stuff you would from exploring and talking to random people.
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
The adventure game is apparently YMMV, because I enjoyed it, there were enough rewards for exploration there to make collection quests just something you did on the side while exploring, rather than the driving force. And the really annoying ones are optional anyway, I think the 'take a photo of every Anachronox logo' was the only obligatory one I even remember as actually having to pay attention to.
But yeah, if you don't like exploration and play RPGs for the combat this game may not be for you.
Steam Support is the worst. Seriously, the worst
Two new releases: Broken Sword 1: Directors Cut and Dream Pinball 3D
More promo: Broken Sword series 60% off (or 30% off for individual titles)
Holy Hell! That's a good deal for the Broken Sword series - $2.39 for each game if you buy all 3! And the first one is the 'Director's Cut' edition that's currently selling for $10 on Steam. The second one's also getting the 'director's cut' treatment early next year, but it's well worth experiencing in original form too.
If you have even a passing interest in adventure games, I'd pick those up in a flash.
Hm.
It's £5 right now on Steam, but could've sworn it was £7 at release. Personally, I'm actually placing a large value-premium on the GoG versions due to their DRM-free nature - it's hard to evangelise a game you own on Steam because you can't lend it out. I do wish there was a way to lend DD PC games to people nowadays that wasn't functionally equivalent to piracy, or identity fraud (giving them access to your account).
Man, I own all of these.
I have 3 copies of the first one even. original pc, original Gba and directors cut Ds.
Still, So bought.
If anyone buys Dream Pinball 3D at all I will still seriously cut you.
Haha, one of my favorite games from long ago. Can't say no to nostalgia at that price.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)