Medium Detective: Fright from the Past Collector's Edition - New HOPA on Big Fish

Today's game for Club Members, tomorrow's game for all.

You can download Medium Detective: Fright from the Past Collector's Edition here.



As always, please remember to come back and tell us what you think.

Happy gaming!

Thanks, Marian.

Ana

Thank you, Marian. Sounds very tempting .... yet again !!!!

I am writing this review because I like Exorcist III and Tales of Terror: Estate of the Heart, which had a few good puzzles—some difficult at least for me--mixed with pleasant silliness.

I bought and am playing Medium Darkness only because I enjoyed those two games, as a result I respect Deep Shadows as a developer and want to see the failures in Medium Darkness corrected in the next game.

During the demo of Medium Darkness, I was enthralled by an elegant little puzzle moving blocks which could push each other and whose direction could only change by movement onto fixed arrows. However, I noticed the following downsides in the demo as a whole:

1. Blue outlines indicate where inventory items must go on an evidence table, and I had turned off everything I could in options to avoid that. Such hand holding devices turn what is billed as a detective story into the equivalent of a digital coloring book. Please, Deep Shadows, give us more whodunits, not whodumbits.

2. Early illogic annoyed me before I could get hooked/immersed/willing to suspend disbelief. Later in any game I like, I am more willing to cross similar perimeters of rationality in a single bound, not endlessly but I’ll accept two or three game padding broad jumps to find a locked up allen wrench, bejeweled ham radio, or key to a secret hide-out conveniently dropped mid-bombast then left behind by a threatening, rather careless villain. Illogical padding at the beginning usually is a deal breaker because it’s boring and because if the game can’t get rolling before poorly constructed narrative takes over, I can be pretty sure story telling will only get worse.

Thanks for all of that, 8dognight. Let us know how you feel overall after you have finished the game. I would be interested in hearing about the bonus chapter as well.

I've gotten to a conceptually pleasing little jigsaw with only 5, count'em 5, pieces that rotate and slide along fixed tracks governed by cosmically decreed rules I have not yet quite mastered. I'm surprised there is a jigsaw puzzle whose construction is ingenious. The puzzle is not difficult by any measure, just clever. To a limited extent, I enjoy figuring out puzzle rules so long as they aren't entirely opaque and impenetrable.

mentioned in my previous post may be a logical hole reaching down "to caverns measureless to man." If the victim was a porch pirate who went around town stealing bell clappers and other items left unsecured (rather like, I'm chagrined to say, every HOPA player-protagonist), I am hard pressed not to side with the avenging black smoke.

It's really neat when you come across a puzzle design that you haven't encountered before. That happened to me when I played Phantasmat: Insidious Dreams - there were a few really interesting puzzles that I don't recall ever having seen before.

LOL! That's funny.

I played much of the demo, and had decided to pass on this game, but your description of a "different" jigsaw puzzle has my curiosity piqued. It's on sale, so I think I will ante-up and buy it. I'll (maybe) be back with more to say - - -

I've gotten to what appears to be a deviously clever checkers puzzle, not the usual jump until there's only one tile left. If complex enough, those always take me a while because I am a dreadful checkers player. But this one is different from that. The goal is to fill the center nine squares on a larger grid where tiles have a limited number of moves available and jumping a tile does not remove that tile, rather the tile doing the jumping seems to get at least some of the victim tile's moves either way leaving that without any at that point.

Don't buy Medium Detective for the story, and if you care about game length, you may or may not be disappointed. I don't know yet.

I intend to figure out the weird checkers puzzle but right now I have a book to read.

I will stay tuned for more info about the checkers puzzle.

Enjoy the game, Tally Ho.

Thanks Marian - I am liking it so far.

I am also trying to figure out the "checkers" puzzle; which isn't checkers at all as 8dog implied, and the rules aren't obvious. It says to drag the tiles to the correct highlighted spot, but figuring out what's correct is the question.

You can see it here: Tile Puzzle

The curious thing is that when you move a tile, it goes down in 'value' that is, a four becomes a three . . and a one goes blank. And when you jump a piece the jumper gains one and the jumpee loses one.

This may take a while! I am trying real hard not to click on the strategy guide. Give me strength LOL

Interesting. Thank you for the visual of the puzzle.

I haven't figured this puzzle out yet either. As far as I can tell, the jumpee gains all of the jumper's remaining moves.

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Edited to Add: But in one case that didn't happen. Tally Ho, don't you think the correct highlighted spots are have to be the dark-lighted center 9 squares?

In any case, I am stymied for the moment by Deep Shadows' diabolical puzzle designer, so I decided to replay Inception of Darkness: Exorcist III, and I had completely forgotten that the game starts with what is for me a stinker of a puzzle that I skipped the first time and may have to again. It's an arrow alignment puzzle to make squares travel and disappear into stone squares that are not just in the corners which makes the correct starting point difficult to ascertain.

I like those stinkers of puzzles which is why I like and respect Deep Shadows as a developer.

Well, I finished the tile puzzle, mostly by luck rather than by any brainpower. Wish I had written down the steps. I suspect the symmetry of the starting layout means that there are at least two, and probably four or more correct paths to the solution. It took all afternoon, so I wasn't in any mood to take notes LOL! What a demonic puzzle.

I think the puzzle we called a 'jigsaw' is really quite elegant, and wasn't difficult; just needed some planning to solve. It gets high marks for being different.

I have gotten down to one out of the square at the end several times in several different ways. Not giving up yet.

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Okay, I did it but in the middle row I had three tiles, each with one dot, meaning one move remaining. Guess what? That didn't count. I must be on the right track though. This puzzle is closer to three dimensional chess than I ever wanted to get.

8dognight, "Blue Outlines" are horrible! If we can't block this kind of thing in the game's Options, count me out, too. And illogic, whether early or late, is sloppy and drives me nuts as well. I used to snort derisively at the HO scenes in an ice-bound world that had me searching for a tennis racket, scuba gear and a beach chair. Most game designers have improved on that. The latest game I played had advanced to letting the player turn off the Pop-Ups. Added to turning off ALL sparkles, and they are going in the right direction.

Hearing that a game started using Blue Outlines? Nope! Not going there. Thanks for the heads up. There are plenty of other games from which to chose.

The puzzles are excellent, however.

The blue tile code is about 25% of the game in, and I don't remember any blue outlines beyond the evidence table. I will have my eyes peeled for them after I crack the blue tile puzzle.

Tally Ho, Marian, Reenie, Mad: Inception of Darkness: Exorcist III is a good game. If you have it or haven't tried it, please, download the demo and tell me how that first puzzle works. It's a lock on a chest in a cart.

And now I'm going back to the blue tile puzzle. I was so disappointed that all tiles must be both in the center squares and have used all moves that I quit trying yesterday. I shouldn't have. This is a puzzle whose inner workings take time to coalesce with my mental faculties, such as they are. That does not mean I want easier puzzles. Hard puzzles are what I'm paying money for.

After yet again getting all nine in the center but with even more extra moves remaining, I realized that rushing the end game of the puzzle was self-defeating and made myself slow down and think about it. I still am hazy on the rules but I did get all nine in the center and blank.

I have downloaded Inception of darkness and had a look at that chest puzzle. I have to go out for the day, but will play it this evening and see what gives.

That chest puzzle is, in your words, a Stinker! I ran out of patience and went back to playing Medium Detective for a while. It's likely I will use up the whole demo time without figuring it out.

Tales of Terror: Crimson Dawn and Tales of Terror: House on the Hill also have excellent puzzles. The plot in the latter is almost identical to Tales of Terror: Estate of the Heart, in House on the Hill life-like tentacles in a meanie of a house and in Estate of the Heart metal "optical" cables with actual eyes on the end. The puzzles are by no means identical. House on the Hill has, for me, some very tough puzzles, a couple of them trickier than the blue tile locked compartment in Medium Detective but they are far into the game. Come to think of it, I like House on the Hill better than Estate of the Heart.

ETA: Tales of Terror: Crimson Dawn has clever puzzles, too; none, at least none that I remember, are as mind boggling as in Exorcist III or a few of the others. The skull puzzle to get inside the house in Crimson Dawn is clever and took me around 10 or 15 minutes, clearly only a fraction as difficult as the tile code in Medium Detective.

Reenie said, "And illogic, whether early or late, is sloppy and drives me nuts as well. I used to snort derisively at the HO scenes in an ice-bound world that had me searching for a tennis racket, scuba gear and a beach chair. Most game designers have improved on that."

I think that Reenie was the person who, on having to pick through an HO screen of crashed helicopter that included an anvil, remarked that it was no wonder the chopper crashed. I remember that because it made me laugh out loud.

Edited to Add: Back to Medium Detective, I have gotten to a difficult version of a move the buttons puzzle, the kind in which a pattern must be completed with this constraint, a button can only move to a space where it is touching two other buttons. There is an almost identical one in Estate of the Heart which took me some time on first playing and has halted me the second time as well because I remembered how long I stumbled around before. Unlike Estate of the Heart, Medium Detective's button puzzle starts right out a the hard one.

Guilty!

Oh no!!

I am in the "Expert House" (I think it's called) and there is a puzzle that looks just like the chest puzzle in Exorcist III that I did not solve. Arrgh. there's no escape. Oh well, back at it.

Oy! Got it. Once I figured out the 'rules' it wasn't so bad. (Smacks head)

In the presence of such genius, I salaam, bow, curtsy, and kow-tow.

I got a look at the puzzle last night. My response? I decided to shut off the computer until this morning.

ETA: I have started replaying Family Tales: The Sisters, which is challenging for me in terms of both puzzles and in an adventure game sense. The rascal does not give up its pixels without a fight. On reflection, that's not true. I forgot I was carrying around a broom and thought it was a seedy looking paintbrush to go with all the tubes of oil paint I was picking up.

There is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between these two puzzles - - -

The chest puzzle resets to its original state after every attempt.
This means you must either make notes, draw diagrams, or take screenshots each time you make it go.

Waay easier is the one in medium detective, which retains your changes; meaning you only need to keep tweaking it until it works.

So - thanks for bowing and scraping, but I don't deserve a lot of credit for solving the friendly one.
Whether I go back to the chest puzzle remains to be seen.

I dread those "resetting" puzzles. Thanks for the warning.

I was just getting ready to post the same comment. The puzzle in Medium Detective is doable. After I realized it didn't reset on every try like the one in Exorcist III, I could experiment and make mental notes along with only a few on paper about how the pieces moved. Good puzzle. With more moving parts, it would be excellent.

I still like Exorcist III. I'll just go right on pretending the first puzzle isn't there and skip it.

That sounds like a plan. I'll be starting Cadenza: The Eternal Dance tonight.

Just got around to playing this one. It's a very nicely done game. Artwork and graphics are beautifully done. The story is a bit familiar, but with a few twists. Hidden object scenes are interactive, and not too difficult. Objects are very clear. If you're a puzzle/mini-game lover, this game is for you. Puzzles are unique and quite challenging. I have to confess, I skipped most of them since I'm not very patient about moving forward in the game. A nice long game with a decent bonus game.

That sounds well worth a look, Sparkle. Thanks so much for taking the time to tell us about the game.

What is Exorcist III? I tried a search for it on BF and did not find it.

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Update: Duh! I looked back at the text and got the rest of the title (Inception of Darkness) and found it. Thanks.