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Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: DaveHT] #835749
09/16/12 03:24 AM
09/16/12 03:24 AM
Joined: Jan 2007
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oldmariner Offline
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Traveler

After defending this thing without seeing it, I bought it at Gog's fire sale last week for five bucks.

I played at it for a week on and off. Let me put it to you this way. I do not ever agree with Gamespot but this time for different reasons I came to a similar conclusion. Gripe number one, once installed when I click on the icon I get the no go message suggesting I run the game as an administrator. That Win 7 64 bit can be picky.

All well and good. I right click on the icon choosing run as administrator. A setup box pops up requiring I set various things and when done there are four choices.

Save
Save and Run
Cancel
Advanced

What does save mean to you guys? To me it means save your selected options.

Save and run should be obvious as well as cancel.

Advanced adds two options, that is the literal view. There is only one option really. The first selection is a drop down box offering one choice. "Don't Run a Replay" Whatever that means. "Don't run a replay" is the only option offered. There is no unselect/select checkbox meaning no matter what you are not going to run a replay. The second box allows you to limit the maximum amount of cache memory. At least there you can have your pick of four preselected values.

I make my selections, none of it is rocket science then click Save. I next attempt to start the game to receive the same message "you must run as an administrator." My response sarcastically is, "what do you think I just did?"

Which begs the question, what was it I saved? Certainly the instruction to run as administrator fell on deaf ears.

I again right click telling it to run as administrator to find the same box. Inside that box I find Save not only failed to retain run as administrator, it failed to retain the setup. I setup again and this time I choose option two, Save and Run.

Imagine that the game loads up and runs just fine. Fine is subjective at best. You see the developer told us how clever he was with his inventory tweaking. I like innovation. Except there is no manual included with the Gog release. Nothing personal but when you change operating procedure you should describe how the changes work. It is called a manual.

only a developer's diary is included with the Gog files. There you get a very short video where the developer tells you how clever he is with his innovations to the use of your inventory. Vince 12 also discussed his addition of short and long term memory. Perhaps more than a three minute video with less self promotion and more operation detail would have helped.

It was Chrissy in her walkthrough that actually described how to navigate the game. Thank you Chrissy.

I found myself struggling to get into this game discovering there is really nothing to generate my interest. Yes I managed to manipulate the "clever" inventory, short and long term memory operations. Note to the developer, they are clever but cumbersome at best. Sometimes you should leave things alone.

Now that I managed to get past the first few scenes it was time to save and quit.

Again I visit the dreaded desktop icon. Save and Run, like its brethren Save, failed to retain the set up. You think Cancel is the correct option? The result is every time I restart the game I have to right click, run as administrator, setup, save and run because nothing is saved when you tell the program to save. That is a minor frustration, except the joke goes flat really fast. Some will say I am being unreasonable to expect a computer program to retain simple instructions. I think not. I have had other programs that only needed to be told once to "Run as administrator."

Upon completion of the opening fifteen percent of the game I have had enough. The above rhetorical question is answered, Cancel is the only sensible option. We wave goodbye as this little gem is dissolving into cyberspace long gone by the time you read this.

So Traveler we have agreement this game is not top shelf material. It has achieved what precious few other games have accomplished. That is causing this gamer to throw the thing out long before reaching the end. Clearly, I could have made a better choice of how I spent my five bucks. Happily it was only five bucks. I regret not spending it on a gallon of gas. It is fair to say you will not be reading a review of Resonance from me. Well perhaps, this diatribe might be considered a review. Naw, it is simply a rant. A review is supposed to be a subjective unbiased description. I doubt this qualifies or sounds anything like subjective or unbiased.

Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: oldmariner] #835753
09/16/12 05:09 AM
09/16/12 05:09 AM
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Rivellon
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traveler Offline
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Oldmariner,

I feel for you and I'm really surprised that they managed to screw things up so badly you can't save! Every free game I've played made with the AGS engine, including one of Wadjet Eye's earliest games, The Shivah (free then, not now), was quite easy to set up and run. In fact, I seldom had to change the defaults.

But those appear to have been made with an older version of AGS. There's a newer version which Wadjet Eye upgraded to, according to a reviewer at Forbes (yes, Forbes !), because of "the later version’s compatibility with Valve Corporations Steamworks, and thus the possibility of a smoother path to Valve’s dominant PC digital download store". (No comment.)

Well, maybe it wasn't this updated antique that was the problem for you, but Forbes' reviewer, who loved the graphics and said they were beautiful, making me wonder just how thick a bottle-bottom he looks through, also said "The graphics are similarly retro, in part a conscious artistic choice and in part a response to the limitations of the game engine.

So maybe it was the game engine. Or someone messing around with it. What do I know. But the earlier AGS games run on my 7/64 bit without tweaking. And no need to Run as Administrator.

Whether the engine was the trouble or not, in my opinion a developer who is selling games shouldn't be using AGS since it's getting fairly old by now, has "limitations" and there are newer, better ones out there. Free, too.

As far as ranting goes, rant away. That may not have been a review but it surely should give fair warning to those thinking of playing Resonance that they might run into trouble and, if the developers come by here, to let them know that someone who is always fair and very informative and helpful in his reviews is just a tad unhappy with the mechanics of Resonance as well (I think?) as the game itself.

Gas is $5 a gallon? Aaack! It was bad enough at 4 bucks the last time I downloaded...er, filled up with gas. eek

Trav


"Best not to think about it. I don't want to fall to bits 'cos of excess existential thought."
Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: oldmariner] #835773
09/16/12 06:17 AM
09/16/12 06:17 AM
Joined: Dec 2006
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I had exactly the same difficulties with game settings on my windows 7 computer, annoying yes, but I learned the procedure. You have to repeat the same run as admin every time you start the game, just as you describe it above.
Other things made me quit the game. An example; if you know that a person has an desired object in his pocket and the only way of retrieving it is through a tedious use of game mechanics and you sense this is what can be expected from the game also further on you become bored.)
The first game from Wad Jet Eye having this effect on me.
Well every game can't be for eveyone.

Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: traveler] #835926
09/16/12 06:56 PM
09/16/12 06:56 PM
Joined: Dec 2002
Posts: 4,216
Virginia's wetland dimension
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I hadn't played all the Blackwell games yet, so I went for those and took a pass on Resonance for now. I don't mind playing retro-style games if the story and gameplay itself are fun.

Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: DaveHT] #835992
09/17/12 02:55 AM
09/17/12 02:55 AM
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oldmariner Offline
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Traveler you could make game saves. It was when you clicked on the icon to start the game. Not only did you have to right click to select run as administrator but each time you did the game setup page loaded. You had to fill in the proper setup boxes and click save to remember the setup. If you clicked save in setup, the box would close and again the game would not start. You then right click choose run as admin then get the stupid box only to fill it in again. If you click save and run. The game would run but every time you restarted you went through all the previous garbage over again. What I meant was the stupid thing would not save the setup details or remember you repeatedly told it to run as admin.

You could save games. After a few dozen times of entering set up game saves no longer mattered.

Last edited by oldmariner; 09/17/12 02:59 AM.
Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: oldmariner] #836086
09/17/12 11:14 AM
09/17/12 11:14 AM
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southeast USA
Jenny100 Offline
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Originally Posted By: oldmariner
I make my selections, none of it is rocket science then click Save. I next attempt to start the game to receive the same message "you must run as an administrator." My response sarcastically is, "what do you think I just did?"

Which begs the question, what was it I saved? Certainly the instruction to run as administrator fell on deaf ears.

Unless you change the "Run as Administrator" option in the game shortcut (or the game exe itself) to "Always run as administrator" through the compatibility tab (instructions ***here***), I don't think you'll get any different result from what you got. I don't think a game settings configurator has the Windows permissions to set itself to always run as administrator -- at least not if it's installed in C:\Program Files or C:\Program Files(x86). And even if Windows itself allowed the change, an antivirus may block it.

There may be a game file that you could manually edit to save the rest of your settings preferences. No, you shouldn't have to do that, but if you wanted to continue the game and having to reset the settings each time you was driving you crazy...

Quote:
Nothing personal but when you change operating procedure you should describe how the changes work. It is called a manual.

Or a tutorial, which is what Big Fish games usually do.

Quote:
Yes I managed to manipulate the "clever" inventory, short and long term memory operations. Note to the developer, they are clever but cumbersome at best. Sometimes you should leave things alone.

Agreed! Newer and "clever" isn't always better. Sometimes there's good reason for doing things the old-fashioned way.


Quote:
Upon completion of the opening fifteen percent of the game I have had enough. The above rhetorical question is answered, Cancel is the only sensible option. We wave goodbye as this little gem is dissolving into cyberspace long gone by the time you read this.

I'm sorry to hear it wasn't any good. I also bought it from GOG, though I think I paid $10 and I haven't had time to play it yet. I'll see if it saves the settings in XP (not every game does) any better than it did in your Win7.

Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: oldmariner] #836115
09/17/12 01:04 PM
09/17/12 01:04 PM
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chrissie Offline
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Hi old mariner I'm so sorry you got so frustrated with starting the game & also thank you that something in my walkthrough was helpful!

I played the game on Win 7 64 bit. Yes, each time I launched it I had to right-click on the icon & Run as Administrator - I only ever after that clicked on Save & Run for the game to run. I never changed the settings as it seemed to work ok on the default ones so never realised that they weren't saved if you needed to alter them & that there were problems if you needed to!

I know traveler your feelings on the AGS graphics! lol but oldmariner - the game's not perfect but I thought it was very good for an Indie with such an interesting story & would love to read your take on it! smile

Re: Yikes! Resonance review on Gamespot [Re: chrissie] #836128
09/17/12 02:27 PM
09/17/12 02:27 PM
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Netherlands
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Originally Posted By: chrissie
I know traveler your feelings on the AGS graphics!
This is not at all my area of expertise (I don't even have one), but I don't think there's such a thing as AGS graphics. You can make a high res game just as well with AGS, it's just much more work. If Resonance had used Wintermute or something else the result wouldn't have been different I think (although I'm not sure where the problem with the settings comes from).

AGS is created for 2D graphics though so I don't know what it can do with 3D if that's what you mean.


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