The Last Express |OT| 5.99 on GOG now Go Buy It!

(Copied from the other thread, heh.)

Painless Windows 7 play and bonus materials included. This game is one of the greats, real time adventure on the Orient Express at the cusp of World War I, incredible acting and writing, ingeniously executed. This being on GOG is a real boon.

lastexpress_shot2.jpg


the-last-express.png
thelastexpress2.jpg


lastexpress_shot6.jpg
 
Man, after buying game after game on Steam for 50 cents, or a dollar or two (maybe $5 for a really excellent title), I am really impressed with GOG's price points of 6 and 10 dollars for 15 and 20 year-old games.*

*
Sarcasm.
 
DeuceMojo said:
Man, after buying game after game on Steam for 50 cents, or a dollar or two (maybe $5 for a really excellent title), I am really impressed with GOG's price points of 6 and 10 dollars for 15 and 20 year-old games.*

*
Sarcasm.
Click to expand...

15-20 year old games that would be impossible to play otherwise.
 
DeuceMojo said:
Man, after buying game after game on Steam for 50 cents, or a dollar or two (maybe $5 for a really excellent title), I am really impressed with GOG's price points of 6 and 10 dollars for 15 and 20 year-old games.*

*
Sarcasm.
Click to expand...
GoG have regular sales just like Steam. The games that are on GoG worth buying are typically transcendent of age anyway, easily worth the $6, a steal at the $3 you'll get them for on offer.

I am led to believe The Last Express is one of those titles. Wishlisted for now, I'll buy it the first time it is on offer.
 
DeuceMojo said:
Man, after buying game after game on Steam for 50 cents, or a dollar or two (maybe $5 for a really excellent title), I am really impressed with GOG's price points of 6 and 10 dollars for 15 and 20 year-old games.*

*
Sarcasm.
Click to expand...
What do you want it for, 99 cents? Free?

Guess you don't place much value on good games/ease of use.
 
Awesome! I've heard many good things about this from adventure game lovers.
 
DeuceMojo said:
Man, after buying game after game on Steam for 50 cents, or a dollar or two (maybe $5 for a really excellent title), I am really impressed with GOG's price points of 6 and 10 dollars for 15 and 20 year-old games.*

*
Sarcasm.
Click to expand...

Own a console or handheld? You must think 360/PS3 owners are tools with that attitude, wasting their money on $40+ games when you can just buy it all from Steam for $1. How about you ignore the point that GOG's $6 is in fact cheaper than you can buy it elsewhere ($10 on DotEmu)?

You just admitted an excellent title you'd pay $5 for (on sale of course, you'd never buy anything that wasn't 75%+) and you won't pay $6 for an excellent title not on sale? Then just wait for it to go on sale. Most of the excellent titles on GOG have fallen to around/under $5, and plenty of $6 or $10 titles are packs containing multiple games, so you can sleep a little better having spent around 10 cents per hour of entertainment instead of 5 cents per hour of gaming.
 
Stumpokapow said:
I think the DotEmu version was 7 euro / $10 before today.
Click to expand...

It was $10 this morning when I checked actually (mentioned by someone else in the GOG thread), seems they dropped their price to match GOG's.
 
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
Anyone know if GOG is going to add the soundtrack that the DotEmu version has included with it?
Click to expand...

They made mention of more extras coming soon for it on the news item about it, I'd say the chances are pretty good, but you never know!
 
Minsc said:
They made mention of more extras coming soon for it on the news item about it, I'd say the chances are pretty good, but you never know!
Click to expand...

That's what I'm hoping for. Just got the game now and downloading it. I'm going to try and play with no hints and just accept dying and retrying for once. At least The Last Express had a system unlike Sierra that softens the blow of dying and allows one to be more comfortable trying new paths and not having the urge/need to save every five seconds.
 
Manos: The Hans of Fate said:
That's what I'm hoping for. Just got the game now and downloading it. I'm going to try and play with no hints and just accept dying and retrying for once. At least The Last Express had a system unlike Sierra that softens the blow of dying and allows one to be more comfortable trying new paths and not having the urge/need to save every five seconds.
Click to expand...

The game sounds pretty interesting to me the more I read people's comments. When I get around to playing it, as of now, I am expecting to constantly be dying and rewinding time, trying to look for additional clues I missed. As long as the system is there and works well, I'll hopefully even enjoy losing a couple times to uncover more stuff.
 
Minsc said:
The game sounds pretty interesting to me the more I read people's comments. When I get around to playing it, as of now, I am expecting to constantly be dying and rewinding time, trying to look for additional clues I missed. As long as the system is there and works well, I'll hopefully even enjoy losing a couple times to uncover more stuff.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I always HATED the fear of dying in adventures games (as I suck at figuring things out quickly to avoid death). Reading about the Area 51 level in The Pandora Directive used to scare the crap out of me as a kid. It's sort of silly now considering how often I die in action games, but we also have checkpoints now. In retrospect The Last Express was way ahead of it's time in it's save system. Still I've never been a fan of timed objectives. I think that aspect is more what drove me nuts.

I also expect to die a crap load......I mean a metric crap ton. I'll report dutifully on it.
 
Interesting notes in the manual.

Manual said:
Relax
This is not the kind of game where a scrap of paper or a chance
overheard remark contains a password that you will need two hours
later. There is a wealth of dialog to overhear and text to read on
the train. For the most part it is there to fill out your knowledge of
the characters and the story, and to add to your enjoyment. Just
concentrate on learning who the characters are and what they want,
and you’ll do fine.
Click to expand...

Rewinding
When you’re at the egg clock, you have the option of rewinding it. This lets
you “turn back the hands of time” to try a different course of action. To
rewind, click the red jewel on the left side of the clock. The game marks
rewind points every 5 to 15 minutes, and at major story points, all the way
from the beginning of the game. To fast forward, click the red jewel on the
right side of the clock. (You can only fast forward up to the point at which
you left the game. It is not possible to fast forward into the future.)
When you reach the point in time at which you want to reenter the game,
move the cursor to the center of the clock face. The words “Play Rewound
Game” will appear in the upper left corner of the screen. Click on the clock
face to resume play from this point.
Click to expand...

Grace Period
Whenever you reenter the game after rewinding to an earlier point, you will
have a short grace period of 15 to 30 seconds to decide if this is really what
you want to do. The small egg icon in the lower right corner of the screen
will be flashing to indicate that you are in the grace period.
As the grace period approaches its end, the egg icon flashes faster and faster,
until you begin to hear a loud mechanical sound. Finally, the grace period
expires with a loud hiss of steam, and the egg icon stops flashing. This
means that the rewind has become permanent. It is no longer possible to fast
forward past this point in time.

If, during the grace period, you determine that you did not wish to rewind to
this particular point, just click on the flashing egg icon with the left mouse
button. This will return you to the egg clock screen with your original game
restored. Any actions you have taken during the grace period will be
undone. You are now free to fast forward to a later point in time, up to the
point at which you left the original game.
Click to expand...

Game Endings
If you are killed or forced to leave the train, the entire screen will fade to
white. This means the end of the game. Sometimes, the fade to white is
followed by a brief voice-over narration. When the game ends, you are
returned to the egg clock screen. The clock is automatically rewound to an
earlier point in time, giving you a chance to replay the last part of the game
and avoid the game-ending outcome.
The auto-rewind is intelligent and tries to rewind you to the last possible
point in the game where it is still possible for you to change the outcome.
However, if you have a different idea, you are not obligated to enter the
game at exactly this point. If you wish, you can rewind or fast forward to a
different point in time. For example, if you want to view the game ending
again, just fast forward to the point at which the game ended, and click on
the clock face.

Help! It keeps sending me back to the same place!
(This may never happen to you, but if it does ...)
If, after getting killed, you resume from a rewound point, and
shortly thereafter get killed again, you may have the disconcerting
experience of finding yourself back where you were before the game
ended the first time. This is because you are still in the grace period.
In order for your actions to be recorded, you need to stay alive until
the small egg icon stops flashing and you hear the steam hiss
indicating the end of the grace period — normally, about 30 seconds.
Click to expand...
 
Wait, the GOG version uses DOSBox. I'm 95% sure that Macs can run DOSBox without a hitch. You might have to create your own shortcut to launch the game or something but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

...as long as you can get the GOG installer to extract the files on a Mac.

...and even if you can't, I bet you could extract it in Windows, then copy the extracted folder to a Mac and create a DOSBox launcher from that.
 
epmode said:
Wait, the GOG version uses DOSBox. I'm 95% sure that Macs can run DOSBox without a hitch. You might have to create your own shortcut to launch the game or something but I don't see why it wouldn't work.

...as long as you can get the GOG installer to extract the files on a Mac.

...and even if you can't, I bet you could extract it in Windows, then copy the extracted folder to a Mac and create a DOSBox launcher from that.
Click to expand...

That does seem like a logical idea to try.
 
I have a question. Sometimes it seems like the animation is so fluid, like, when passing the conductors in the hallways but other than that it seems like its missing loads of frames. Is this how the game is supposed to run?

Otherwise, I'm really loving it. I have a fascination with adventure games taking place on trains, especially the Orient Express.
 
INDIGO_CYCLOPS said:
I have a question. SOmetimes it seems like the animation is so fluid, like, when passing the conductors in the hallways but other than that it seems like its missing loads of frames. Is this how the game is supposed to run?

Otherwise, I'm really loving it. I have a fascination with adventure games taking place on trains, especially the Orient Express.
Click to expand...

Yep, that is normal. It's an odd switch between full rotoscoping animation to still images at times.
 
As a kid I really wanted the whole game to have fluid rotoscope motion in all the scenes, I was kind of disappointed in the still frames. Now though, I think the stills work much better than the motion, it would have been seriously distracting to have that through every scene.

Also, my CD copies say they're PC/Mac. So yeah, they do work on Macs. Good luck on getting classic os to work in Leopard though :(
 
DeuceMojo said:
Man, after buying game after game on Steam for 50 cents, or a dollar or two (maybe $5 for a really excellent title), I am really impressed with GOG's price points of 6 and 10 dollars for 15 and 20 year-old games.*

*
Sarcasm.
Click to expand...

Ima smack you silly.
 
AtlusAram said:
I think I'll buy this again. It's that good.
Click to expand...
Me too, I guess I'm forced to buy it again, since my discs don't install in Windows 7 and I never could find a fix.
 
I died like 7 times so far. lol

Still because of the save system, which is really an excellent checkpoint system (with rewind and fast forward) ahead of it's time, I'm not bothered and will to try new things. I just more adventure games had done checkpoints. It's preferable to the oh you didn't save....START IT OVER BITCH of a lot of old school adventure games....yeah I know just save all the time. Still the forget the item crap (which isn't in this game) get killed two hours later for it really sucked.
 
Excellent! Just bought and downloading. Reading the manual there are gameplay elements I haven't encountered in an adventure game before so I'm excited to start playing.
 
vazel said:
Excellent! Just bought and downloading. Reading the manual there are gameplay elements I haven't encountered in an adventure game before so I'm excited to start playing.
Click to expand...

It's pretty unique and revolutionary in a lot of it's ideas and concepts. A part of me wishes someone could mod the internal clock so you could adjust the time scale. It would be neat (if also admittedly really boring at times) to just experience the train ride and the game as if it was truly real.
 
The Last Express... It's an original, very unique game that really pushed a lot of new ideas, but as I'm sure I've said before, I got the game back in the late '90s (for not much more than this $5.99 too, I think) because of the widespread high praise it received, and just didn't like it all that much. It's probably worth trying anyway, because it is pretty original and interesting in both art and game design, but it's definitely not something everyone will like. I'm more on the dislike side.

First, I've never liked timed games much, and that's how this whole game works. The whole game's set on the train, so there are a very limited number of places to go. It's a living world of sorts, so each character follows specific movements and is at certain places at each time, irregardless of what you do. You often have to be in multiple places at once, or hear a conversation and then rewind and go somewhere else to hear some other conversation or do something you couldn't do until after hearing that conversation and figuring out what you're supposed to do next. As a result the puzzles definitely can get tricky, from what I remember. You have to keep going around the train following people, solving puzzles, etc, always with the tension of the ticking clock and the time limit there, and the challenge of where and when you need to be. There are also fight scenes with gamers who only play adventure games and such may find too hard.

The art style and design is great of course, and I did like going around the train, listening to the conversations, and stuff, but the time elements just make it so frustrating... back at the time it annoyed and frustrated me and didn't find it much fun, after a while. Too frustrating and annoying. I admit I haven't gone back to it in a long time, but my opinion of timed games isn't really changed (for instance Majora's Mask and (to perhaps a lesser extent) Pikmin are other games that I had big problems with because of the timer). I much prefer Lucasarts-style adventure games. The Last Express is original and unique and is worth trying, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's better than more traditional adventure gamers. Whether the game's fun or not is definitely going to be a matter of taste though.

I'm not sure if I want to try it again, it's always been one of those I've vaguely considered revisiting, but I've never quite wanted to actually do it...
 
Is there a consensus on what's better, this or Broken Sword? Which has the more engaging story? I maybe kinda sorta basically missed out on nearly all of these adventure games back in the day. It's not a genre that has really clicked for me yet, but I have a feeling that's because I haven't played the right ones. Both of these seem pretty cool, nice art. Wondering which I should start with.
 
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