Could you elaborate on what was so horrible about it? I've only played Atlantis Evolution and though it was nth to write home about it wasn't a bad one either.

Thanks for the clarification.

Thanks for the promo. One step closer to having my game colection switch fully from physical/drm versions to gaming the gog way. Sadly, rougly 99 steps more to go.

If I remember correctly there were a pair of Ubisoft promos that were closer in time to each other than the Anuman ones. I'm sure people would have appreciated a promo featuring another publisher (or even developer), but...

Either way, Hagemonia and Syberia 2 were games I really wanted, and lo! They appear. So thanks, GOG. Two awesome promos in one week cements this customer's loyalty. (Although the lower base prices debate does have value for some of those pricey indies.)

Sometimes it gets worse and even the walkthrough cannot help you. I think it was in Atlantis 2... you are suppose to use some stones (you start with 3 of them) to teleport to different locations, solve puzzles there and eventually receive next stone, 6 of them in total I think. And than, close to the end of the game you are suppose to arrange those stones in order which you used them before. Madness! First: you usually cannot remember it exactly, second: you don't remember which stone teleported you to which location (they are very similar). Since it was up to you how to use them, the walkthrough will not help. I ended up trying all different possibilities, one by one. It was just terrible...


So I just picked up Syberia 2 to complete the series.

I hope more good Anuman games comes here.

I completed the game without a walkthough so I don't remember that at all. I can guess which puzzles you mean though. Probably the constellation puzzle early on in the game? The game actually gives a hint in a conversation on how to complete that though. Than there's the puzzle on the back of the throne. The game gave a hint for that too (remember the drawer with those colours that opens for 2 seconds after you put that orb in a hole? that was the hint, and you only get to see it ones). Those are the only puzzle I can recall being pretty hard, and the one at the end in the Iglo perhaps, but I don't remember that (really bad) part of the game all that well, it's been such a long time since I played this. All other puzzles made sense IMO, so I'm really interested to know what impossible puzzles you are refering to.

The only real trouble I encountered was shooting the boar. That was an unpleasant ordeal allready, and sometimes the nosering didn't spawn and you had to restart the chapter, such a pain. The crabgame was completely stupid too.

I really like the first game, but that's mostly sentimental value. Compared to other adventuregames it isn't that good, but I allways thought it had it's own feel to it; mixing mysts presentation of the world (in "full"motion) with a more customary form of storytelling and full speach. I played a lot of games like this back in those days. They were weird, but good weird IMO.

There were several poorly designed sequences, but I don't remember much of the game, only my opinion of it at the time, and the one puzzle that made me quit it.

The one puzzle that killed the game for me was the orrery puzzle (I've also seen it referred to as the Planetarium puzzle). There was a cryptic hint which didn't really help me. After messing around with it for a long time, I gave up and went to the Cryo website, where they'd put a walkthrough. You want to know what the solution they gave was?

*** SPOILER START ***



Pull the left handle 46 times, then pull the right handle 47 times.



*** SPOILER END ***

I shit you not. That was the official explanation in the official walkthrough written by the developers. This indicated quite clearly to me that:

1) The puzzle was staggeringly badly designed.
2) The developers couldn't explain the logic behind it.

At that point, I uninstalled the game.

Edit: Vote for adding spoiler tags to the forum. We need them!

Hehe, I agree that's one bullshit explanation. As a walkthrough it's probably ok, albeit very minimal, but some explanation would have been nice. I can explain the logic of the puzzle if you'd like.


*** SPOILER ALERT ***


There's two parts to the puzzle, the hint and the puzzle. The cryptic hint (recieved somewhere else on the island) tells to block the light, or something like that, so that indicates at an eclipse. There's only one way to manipulate the puzzle so that there is an eclipse, one way to solve the puzzle. I think that's pretty good design to be honest, if you pick up on th hint you'll see very quickly what needs to be done. The first time I solved the puzzle was pure luck though, and I just memorized the solution. In later playthroughs (yes I played this game a bunch of times :D ) I realized there was a hint. That might be bad design, but maybe I just wan't that attentive a gamer.


*** SPOILER END ***

Edit: too bad you ended the game there, this puzzle was way at the beginning of the game.