The Messenger and China: The Forbidden City

Hi. someone is offering to give me these 2 games for free out of the goodness of her heart as they did her no good, and as a result I have to know if these games are right for me before I take her up on her offer because I have to be selective on which games I'll accept regarding if they're too hard for me to play/win since I've games in my give-away box that're too hard for me to play/win that I'm trading for easier games for me to play/win. So here are my questions about the Messanger & China: the forbidden city--Are there:

Are there any bugs or glitches in the games?

Is there any dying/fighting/self defense or are fast reflexes required? My reflexes are slow.

Are there any slider puzzles involving sound/listening puzzles? I'm hearing impaired, with about 70% of my hearing gone, even with 2 hearing aids.

Are there any timed puzzles, or having to have perfect timing when sneaking past guards?

If these 2 games have none of the above in them, then they'll be right for me to accept.

Please let me know so I can tell her either "yes, I'll take these games," or "no, I don't want them, thanks." She's waiting to hear from me. Thank you.

Hi Kelly, both of these games I have for PS1 so couldn't say about problems/bugs on PC. Both of them are point & click & as far as I can remember for the most part inventory based. China may have something timed right at the end (very annoying!) & The Messenger - can't remember there being any difficult challenges there (I may just have forgotten). Both worth trying!

Hi Kelly,

I have played The Messenger and it was a good game. If you want to know about the game go to the walkthroughs and read about it. I don't think there is any fighting but I don't remember as it was awhile ago that I played it. It played well on my XP windows no patches needed

Also check the reviews and see if there is one for the games and you will get a lot of information there!!

I haven't played the China one though.


Nan

I didn't play Messenger -- got partway into China and then literally couldn't figure out how to move around. All the buildings look the same. The game is beautiful, though.

There were a lot of opportunities to die in Messenger, and I found them. I can remember getting angry because I was trying to look around a room and a certain hotspot took me outside where I was summarily dispatched, even though its location didn't look like it was an exit. And I loaded from a save and the same thing happened again. Sneaky hotspot. Even with a walkthrough it was hard not to accidentally click on something that would get my character killed.

I played China: Forbidden City 7 or 8 years ago on a Pentium II 400 MHz and it was SO much faster than the game had been designed for. It was hard to control. I'd move the cursor to turn and it would spin me around like greased lightning. And that was on what was supposed to be the slowest panning speed. Unless you find a version of the game has been updated for new computers, you'll have to use a PC slowdown program. Of course if you have an old 200 MHz Pentium computer, it would probably work perfectly.

I don't remember a lot of timed puzzles in China, though there may have been one at the end. However navigation was tricky and not really well described in the manual. You kind of had to think of navigation as one of the puzzles. It wasn't hard to move around within locations, like when you'd click around a room. But moving between locations and using that weird map they had... I found it very confusing.

So Jenny100, are you telling me that these 2 games would be kind of frustrating for me to play, and aren't really worth all the trouble? And when you said you "got dispatched," in The Messenger, did this mean you got killed?

I'd say both games had their problems. If you have an older computer, and are willing to try and figure out the navigation, China may be worth a try. If you don't, I don't know how much you can slow the game down on a modern computer.


Yup. Happened a lot. You go outside, or somewhere where a guard sees you, and it's back to the save/load menu. And because of the nature of the interface, it can be hard to tell where a click will take you or where there will be a guard lurking. There were plenty of places I thought were dangerous that weren't and objects or hotspots I clicked on that didn't look dangerous but were. That meant I had to be saving the game all the time, and reloading from a save often. I got fed up with it. The game advertised being able to explore the Louvre in 5 different time periods, but that turned out to be a gross exaggeration. I could only explore parts of the Louvre, sometimes only very small parts, per time period.

Thanks. Then I'll just tell that person, "no, thank you these games aren't right for me."