I voted for 'Yes, immediately whenever I'm stuck' because I hadrly ever play adventures, and when I do, I'm hopless at them. So after some trying I get stuck and eighter stop playing or I take a shortcut.

I voted "Only when I don't care much about the game" because it describes my opinion about this tpoic best. In most cases I used a walkthrough, I was stuck in a mediocre game short before finishing it. I didn't want to spent hours and hours with it, so I read what I had to do.
Altogether, playing is more important to me than fininshing a game, too. That's mainly because I've hardly seen an ending that was worth waiting for.

"Explore exotic places"

Edited by Mr Creosote at 12:28 on September, 23rd 2002

I can imagine the blurbs on the game box: "Hundreds of exciting locations!"; "Over 50 hours of gameplay!".

Edited by Dizzy at 12:32 on September, 23rd 2002

The 'best' part of that series is certainly King's Quest 7. At the very beginning, I immediately got lost in a desert which seemed to consist of several hundred identical looking screens and never started it again since then

I started out with Quest for Glory and Gabriel Knight, both of which I liked very much. Then I moved "down" to older titles. Space Quest was hillarious, so I tried King's Quest, in the vain hope I'd find it as amusing .

You actually played King's Quest? Wow, with such lame stories, these games could never hold me on the screen for more than 5 minutes

Actually, the reason was their engine. The graphics were poor enough for me not to be able to distinguish a water busket from a dragon, which made the text parser interface quite hard to use, considering you didn't know what the item you wanted to use was called...

How subtle

I'm with Mr Creosote on this one. I enjoy playing games much more than finishing them. As such, if I enjoy the game, I'll grab a walkthrough pretty quickly when I am stuck; I don't need hours of frustration, only to feel great about finishing a game without a walkthrough. Of course, it all depends on the game. For example, recently I've played two adventures: Gabriel Knight 3 was so intuitive that I didn't have to use a walkthrough at all. On the other hand, The Watchmaker had such inept puzzles, that I was burried in a walkthrough most of the time. As for older games, I rarely needed a walkthrough for Lucasarts adventures, but almost always for Sierra adventures, for some reason...

I voted "only when I've been stuck for a very long time", though I should add "except when playing Sierra adventures". You see, after dying for the 20th time in the most unforseeable and ridiculous manner, or playing the game for ages only to discover you can't finish it because your forgot to pick up a two-pixel object in the second screen, it just isn't fun anymore. I usually can't be bothered, so if I find the storyline mildly interesting, I cheat. On the other hand, when playing, for instance, LucasArts adventures, I know that when I'm stuck it's a lot more likely to be because I'm not approaching the puzzle correctly than because of poor game design, so I try to avoid walkthrus as much as I can (and usually succeed ).

It depends on how stuck I am. If it seems that I can solve the problem with enough effort, I'll keep trying. If I've exhausted every option, gone over the same areas a dozen times trying to find the answer and still can't find it, I'll go to a walkthrough. What I really hate is when the problem is that I didn't notice a coin lying on the floor 6 levels ago, or something equally stupid and seemingly unrelated.

As far as whether or not the game is good, being stuck bugs me no matter the quality of the game. If the game REALLY sucked, I won't bother with a walkthrough, but then again I wouldn't spend more than 2.5 mins trying to figure it out either. If a game is moderately good or better, then I'll use a walkthrough when I need it. The only thing the quality of the game changes is how long I'll wait. I'll resort a walkthrough for a mediocre game much sooner than I would for a good game.

Ok, my view: The reason why I put up these strange choices saying "only when I care enough about the game" and "only when I don't care much about the game" is that the quality of a game is very important to me for that question! If a game is really bad, I stop playing it when I'm stuck. When a game is mediocre, but I'm not fully fed up with it yet, I'm a lot more willing to use walkthroughs. The better the quality, the less I will do it. That is mainly referring to the quality of puzzles: if I know a game is fair and logical (because it has been so far), I assume so will be the next step and I don't look it up. Really. I've been stuck in a few Infocom Adventures for several years now, and I'm still resisting the temptation to look up the solution In mildly entertaining games like Dark Seed for example though, I did use a solution because the puzzles weren't fun.

It's actually funny how this has developed. One of the first Adventures I seriously played was Monkey Island. I found the treasure (big deal) and beat the Sword Master (only a question of patience), but then I was stuck. Played almost the complete rest of the game with a walkthrough. Yes, I regret that now But I just wasn't used to this genre! Starting with Monkey Island 2, I really tried solving the games myself, first in the easy mode, then the real one. And I saw it worked. Since then, I didn't have any real problems with games of Lucas Arts - difficulty anymore (apart from The Dig - horrible game )...

Edited by Mr Creosote at 10:30 on September, 22nd 2002

I also only use walkthroughs when I'm really stuck (which doesn't happen all that often ) because I think that using walkthroughs with adventures kinda defeats the point of an adventure-game which is seeing if you can figure the puzzles out... Anyone can read a walkthrough but only those with a certain amount of brains can do it without... When I usually use a walkthrough is in cases like delos described, when the key to a puzzle is about 4 pixels large... those are the annoying ones...

I'm going with The Mole on this one, only when I can't figured it out, usually I'll spend up to two days trying to figure it out, then I usually cheat just to get me past that part.

With Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers, I ended up cheating because I got stuck, I was walking around all the game trying to get to the next step, and once I looked in the book it all came down to 4 pixels I can missed at the very start of the game, stupid things like that piss me off as it makes me feel like I'm not good at these games, though I know it's not true!

Unfortunately, once I start reading a walkthrough I find it hard to put it down and try to figure the game out without any help.

I voted for "Yes, immediately." Because I cannot lie. Once, when I was very small, I played an adventured along with the book, basically reading the pages then doing it. I have to say I really didn't get the idea then.

Tuss

I voted 'only if I've been stuck for a really long time'... If I don't care for a game, I'll just stop playing if I get stuck, and if I do care I'll feel bad about cheating so I'd have to be stuck for a really really long time...

Of course the best option is still to finish a game without a walkthrough, but that's not always possible... for me at least...

The question says it all. If you like, give reasons for your vote!