First impressions

[TigerQuoll]

#10838

So I’ve put in about half an hour (after about the same amount of time getting high-res graphics to work), and I’m not sure what I think yet.
The graphics and presentation are definitely impressive. It’s actually kind of surreal to see something so slick and movie-like (including the likes of Christopher Lloyd) in high-definition in DOS.

Buuut… I dunno. It isn’t grabbing me yet.
It feels so far like one of those products where every creative decision started with the question “what are consumers going to like?” rather than “is this good?” or even better “would *I* enjoy this?”

But that’s just my initial impression. I’ll give it a bit longer before I settle on my opinion.

Am I imagining it? Does the game hook you in later? Or is the first 30 minutes a good indication of the rest of the game?

[fastwinstondoom]

#10841

It has been many years since I played it last and I must admit the start is way slower than I remember. So many conversations to get through in the Cutopia.

My recollection is that it gets more fun when you get out of town, collect alot of items and can tackle puzzles in whichever order you feel like. Guess we’ll see if I change my mind 😛

[Tijn]

#10842

I started playing this on stream today and someone in the chat described the game as “exhausting” which I think is pretty apt hahah

I’m not disliking it though!

[Pix]

#10843

I just got finished with it. The game was quite a bit shorter than I remembered but I had a great time revisiting it myself. You have to appreciate dumb humour for sure and it doesn’t all hit but there is plenty to enjoy here. The game and puzzle design is well above average with no dead ends and it looks fantastic for a game this old. I honestly would rate this up there with some of the best 90’s adventure games. I just wish we got the sequel.

Speaking of which, it was supposed to all be one game originally, the rest was about 3/4 complete when the decision was made to just release what they had instead of waiting the extra couple of months and stick the rest out as a sequel. The marketing for the game we did get was near non-existent and the box for Europe didn’t exactly do much to sell the game either so sales were terrible and the sequel never happened. I’ve always hoped someone would get their hands on the assets and finish the story off one of these years.

[TigerQuoll]

#10847

Yeah, exhausting sums it up! Sometimes I just want to have a normal conversation with a character, get some clues, make a little progress. But so far every single character is just dialled up to 11 for every single line they deliver!

Getting a bit meta here, I’m wondering if my previous criticism is part of the point – Cutopia is supposed to be the cynical executive’s idea of what audiences will like. It should be no surprise that every character feels forced and trying a little too hard.

I think I’ll definitely wait until I’m out of Cutopia before I form my opinion.

[red.hexapus]

#10851

I’ve finished it recently and I’ve much preferred the first part of the game (hunting for the items for the Cutifier), than the second one. The was a bit too much Moon Logic puzzles and pixel hunting for my taste.

On the other hand, Christopher Lloyd’s acting and facial expressions were great (e.g. his reaction to the pitbull ballerina bowling scene.)

[Tijn]

#10858

I must say I was pretty overwhelmed at first, but I’ve now done a second stream and I’m really into the game now!

Knowing what I was getting into really helped I feel. I can see how it might not be for everyone, but idk I think it’s well made for the most part. The voice cast is incredible, the game looks good, the puzzles are pretty good too. There’s a lot to like here imho!

[firefyte]

#10861

Not just first, but last impressions.

I remember this game being harder as a kid, but now I realize it’s just because I didn’t have enough command of the English language at that time (especially the main collectathon that is most of the game).
Now I sort of breezed through it after about 5 hours of gameplay.

Here’s some points:
The whole game is an homage to 90s cartoon humor, maybe in the more teen-adult category (e.g. Ren and Stimpy).
It’s a constant stream of gags, puns and just (sometimes) bad humor.
The Animations and interplay between live action were pretty good, you can get into some pretty funny situations if you fail on purpose.
As said before, some parts just require a bit more knowledge of English and especially English idioms to progress, which can be tedious.
Some minigames were just meh, and felt more like wastes of time rather than actual puzzles.
Logic was required, sometimes a bit more than expected. I agree with the pixel hunt, I missed a hotspot and it was annoying.

Overall not bad, but it does require a bit more nostalgic-glasses to enjoy it.

[TigerQuoll]

#10862

Now I’ve played a bit more I’m starting to see the artistic direction and the passion of the creators, and I’m actually getting into it. Some of the humour and characters still feel a bit forced, but there’s a lot to like. I’m not sure I’d put it on par with Day of the Tentacle, but it’s pretty good.

I still can’t believe the cast. Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta AND Tim Curry? Not to mention half a dozen seasoned voice actors you’ve heard a million times but don’t know the name of. That could have been the cast for the biggest kids film of the year! But it’s a videogame? For DOS??? That is legit bonkers.

But I would like to expand on firefyte’s point about requiring a native grasp of English by saying it’s not accessible to colourblind people either.
I have red/green colour blindness (one of those poorly named conditions, because it affects other colours as well), and the telephone “puzzle” was practically impossible. I had to look up a guide AND ask my partner for help for puzzles which I feel would have been trivial for other people.

[firefyte]

#10863

Yeah, being red/green colorblind I can see the colors, but yes I had points wondering did I have to dial orange or red for the ‘phone number’.

[jan0sch]

#10866

Having trouble with colours myself I totally agree.

Apart from that I had big issues with the sitting in the stew part (wolf cave) because I no longer have a mouse and clicking that thing to turn over with a trackball was quite a challenge.

Otherwise I mostly enjoyed the game very much but was grabbing a hint book for some of the riddles. The second part is way harder in my opinion.

[Tijn]

#10869

> I still can’t believe the cast. Christopher Lloyd, Dan Castellaneta AND Tim Curry? Not to mention half a dozen seasoned voice actors you’ve heard a million times but don’t know the name of. That could have been the cast for the biggest kids film of the year! But it’s a videogame? For DOS??? That is legit bonkers.

This is really the surprise and highlight of this game for me. The cast is out of this world. This is a production like no other.

Dom Deluise is in there too! And Ben Stein of course, prominently featured in the intro, famous from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Mask, among other things.

Rob Paulsen is also an absolute giant in the cartoon voice acting world by the way. He did, among other things, Raphael from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Yakko from Animaniacs.

And speaking of Animaniacs, Tress MacNeille (who does Fluffy Bun Bun) is also known for doing the voice of Dot in that show.

What a cast! This is nuts!

[Zacktorial]

#10871

I thought I heard Tress MacNeille in there!

My first impression? Wow, what an obnoxious Virgin Interactive logo. But after that my impression is quite positive. I’ve played maybe an hour and a half, collected a bag full of nonsense cartoon items. I’ve figured out what to do with a few of them, and it’s getting late enough at night that my puzzle solving ability has deteriorated beyond my ability to keep making progress. I have been both delighted with a successful application of cartoon logic and unsuccessful applications of cartoon logic so far.

The presentation of course is insane, and other than the resolution being garbage for a modern display, it holds up quite well! I think it holds up stylistically as well, but having been a child in the early 90s, this style of animation is both familiar and nostalgic to me. I wonder if younger people would get as much out of it. I feel by 1996 this style of animation and the whole Roger Rabbit “man in a cartoon” thing was already making its way out of the zeitgeist. The nail in the coffin was probably Space Jam.

[Martli]

#10887

Well, I don’t have too much to add to this. Agree with all points made – great production, dialogue’s a bit slow, puzzles are interesting sucks a bit if you’re colourblind (like me)

…but my wife’s first impression was along the lines of “what the hell are you playing?!?”. My 90s childhood encapsulated in a game I guess…

[Martli]

#10888

Also, did I hear a homage to Day of the Tentacle and Loom with the music in the meadow and the king’s bedroom respectively, or is that just a coincidence?

[Tijn]

#10891

I feel there are a lot of references in this, to other games and other things in general. Like that plank puzzle in the castle at the beginning, surely that’s a reference to Monkey Island?

[firefyte]

#10892

There’s a lot of classical music used in the game (which is coincidentally probably free), I should look into the game files and see what they have.

[Tijn]

#10897

Played it again on stream just now. I’ve now been told made it to the halfway point (after building the cutifier).

Honestly when people said the game’s not very long, I expected it to be much shorter than it’s turning out to be!

[TigerQuoll]

#10900

You’re at the same point as me now, Tijn.
I’m guessing you’re playing on DOSBox, but this is a 2 disc game. You have just entered the 2nd disc!
But if this is anything like other multi-disc games of the era, the 1st one is usually longer by far, but the others will have more cutscenes (in my experience anyway).

[Tijn]

#10906

I’m playing in ScummVM, so I’m even less aware of the disc situation lol

[Zacktorial]

#10915

As for the music in the game, it’s a lot of classical music, but more crucially, it’s all pieces that were used in some cartoon or another.

I’m sure The Barber of Seville overture is a wonderful piece on its own, but I will always associate it with Bugs Bunny.

[Evil Taco]

#10920

My first impressions:

I launched it by accident, it took over the full screen before I managed to turn it off and

MAN I WAS BACK IN THE NINETIES! 😀 😀 😀 😀

I mean just the Virgin intro. You have to imagine, I was a little bit jumpscared by it – I wasn’t prepared!

I think I’ll try to set this up in DOSBox Staging instead of the GOG install, just for that sweet sweet VGA display filter. See if it makes it feel even more 90s.

edit: ahh, it looks like GOG runs it on top of ScummVM and not DOSBox, so I can’t just run the files in DOSBox Staging like I hoped.

[Evil Taco]

#10921

Ok, I played the first twenty minutes. I actually feel right at home! No need to play more before “getting it” at all. What a nice feeling.

[whimsy_afoot]

#10926

That was a trip. It took me a while to calibrate to the zaniness and humor (especially once I reached the point where it definitively wasn’t kid-oriented), and as much as I appreciated the quality of the acting, I ended up zipping through the dialog (reading the subtitles instead) to try to tone the intensity down. But once I adjusted to the ridiculosity, things started to click in terms of the story and puzzles.

The bit about the plans for the sequel is interesting — I don’t know if I’d feel compelled to pick it up to continue the adventure, but the direction they went could’ve led to some interesting new mechanics. (Although I already leaned a fair amount on hints, lol.)

[Evil Taco]

#10947

All right, I’ve finished the game! This turned out to be one of those games where I played the whole thing through over the weekend. I clocked 11.5 hours in GOG.

Do you also have the impression this is considered one of the better games of the “Silliwood” era?

It’s a unique game in many senses, and I thought it was largely very well made, even if it didn’t quite manage to be greater than the sum of its parts. I think it hit me at the right time, I got a lot of enjoyment out of it from the beginning to the end.

I could’ve stomached just a _little_ bit of less pixel hunting and/or a tiny bit more signaling towards the solution here and there – and I could’ve done without the sliding tile puzzle – but having played _not that many_ adventure games, it was at a very pleasant difficulty level for me. I’m thankful red.hexapus brought up Universal Hint System, it fit in very well for me playing this game.

[firefyte]

#10960

This might also be the reason why later games came up with ‘press button to highlight objects’, which would have made this game easier in that respect.

[ainmosni]

#10961

I played this on SCUMMVM on my iPad while traveling back and forth to Amsterdam, finishing it very early on my way back, so I’m guessing it took me about 6ish hours to finish.

My thoughts:

– I’m not sure if my childhood memory of this game seeped into my subconscious, I’m too used to 90s cartoon logic, or if this was just a very easy adventure game, but I almost never got stuck.
– I would hate to live in cutopia.
– Some of the puzzles that required a bit more precision clicking were harder than needed on my setup, but that’s more because a touch screen is not as precise as a mouse.
– The character work is great, so many characters are just fun.
– I think I lucked out on the sliding puzzle, although I know it’s an optional puzzle.
– I must admit I was deflecting my screen a bit when I was in the post-malevolated, not wanting my fellow passengers to see that.
– I remember this being much harder as a kid, but I’m guessing that was because the idiom-driven cutifier puzzle.

All in all, it was great to revisit it, I enjoyed it a lot, although for me it felt a bit too shallow to be named in the same breath as Monkey Island, Sam & Max, and other greats of the genre.

[fastwinstondoom]

#10983

So, I finished the game several weeks ago but I totally forgot to come back here and make a post about it!

Really glad the game was picked, I had alot of fun revisiting it and even though it didn’t quite live up to the image I had in my mind I still think it was well worth the time invested.

[fastwinstondoom]

#10984

Some random thoughts:
-This is definitely HEAVILY inspired by, almost to the point of ripping off, mid-90’s cartoons. I’m especially getting Animaniacs-vibes.
-This goes for some of the game mechanics aswell, using your npc companion as a tool to solve puzzles? And the dialogue system reminded me quite a bit of how dialogue was handled in the Discworld games.
-Much shorter game than I remembered, but as others have stated: many of the puzzles become far more obvious if you have a solid grasp of english.
-Speaking of the puzzles, I feel like some of them don’t fit the tone of the game at all. The phone quiz and the book puzzle in Nefarious’ castle in particular felt tedious and designed to just pad out the playtime by forcing you to backtrack / write down information. And don’t get me started on the damn fish required for the Cutifier xD
-I wish they’d used the Malevolator-world change more, that was a pretty interesting idea I think.

[TigerQuoll]

#10986

I have to admit I’m running out of steam now that I’m into the 2nd disc. After building to a climax and resolution with the cutifier, it’s a bit exhausting to find there’s a whole lot more game.
And besides that, the castle all has the same gloomy theme – not nearly as fun as cutopia and zanydu, and we don’t even have Flux with us. It just feels like a slog at the moment.

[Tijn]

#10987

The 2nd disc is definitely quite different from the opening of the game. But I don’t mind it really! It feels more like a “normal” adventure game, rather than the fever dream that was the opening haha

Also I don’t know why people say this game is so short. I’m got about 10 hours into this now and I’m still not done. I don’t know how much more there is, but so far it feels pretty packed to me!

[Tijn]

#10988

As for the puzzle design, I absolutely agree it’s all over the place. Most of them are fine and I don’t mind one or two that require a bit more effort, but putting in a sliding tile puzzle or an overly long Simon Says… come on, that’s bottom tier stuff.

What surprises me though is the lack of moon logic! There is some of it, but I expected way more given the cartoon theme. To me, the actual adventure gaming stuff is all perfectly fine. It’s just those off-the-shelf type puzzles they sometimes throw in I’m not a fan of.

[Evil Taco]

#10990

Yeah! It’s “cartoon logic” which is kind of brilliant, it’s zany but fits the theme right on.

[Tijn]

#11024

Finished the game yesterday. Turns out I was quite close to the end when I stopped playing last time.

The end is probably not the best part of the game, although I quite liked the bit where you get to control Miss Fortune.

Is there any logic to the crystal placement and how the switches are supposed to be toggled in the end? I just clicked around randomly until it worked. Is that the intention or is there a trick to it?

It’s a bit of a shame the ending is a big setup for a sequel that never came. But all in all I had a good time with this game! What a production!

[fastwinstondoom]

#11031

Well, the month is drawing to a close and I must say I am very happy that so many of you seem to have (mostly) enjoyed this game! Childhood validation and such! I reckon this’ll lead to some good discussions on the podcast 😀

[Dreamkid]

#11043

I didn’t take my time as much as I usually do with adventure games since I’ve already played through this more than once, but I really liked it when I first tried it. It’s a shame it wasn’t developed a bit more, and an even greater shame we may never see the sequel 🙁

[dr_st]

#11137

>> The marketing for the game we did get was near
>> non-existent and the box for Europe didn’t exactly
>> do much to sell the game either so sales were
>> terrible and the sequel never happened.

I thought (lack of) marketing had something to do with it. I don’t think I’ve even heard of the game until it was chosen as Game of the Month here. And it’s a totally worthy game.

>> I have red/green colour blindness (one of those
>> poorly named conditions, because it affects other
>> colours as well), and the telephone “puzzle” was
>> practically impossible.

Interesting, never thought of it! Apparently there are different levels of red/green color blindness. I have a weak form of it (I find the famous 74/21 test image somewhat difficult, whereas most people I know see it clearly), but I never had any problems with things like this telephone puzzle, and generally red and green are very distinct to me.

>> Like that plank puzzle in the castle at the
>> beginning, surely that’s a reference to Monkey
>> Island?

Could be! There is also a similar loose plank puzzle in Simon the Sorcerer.

>> Most of them are fine and I don’t mind one or two
>> that require a bit more effort, but putting in a
>> sliding tile puzzle or an overly long Simon Says…
>> come on, that’s bottom tier stuff.

Agreed. I believe the sliding tile puzzle is optional, and the stupid clown door puzzle I just wrote down.

[Evil Taco]

#11143

The slider puzzle I could have just done without. Even the Simon Says I was fine with.