Jonesy89: The game's failed pretensions at maturity was just one problem. The fact that he seemed hell bent on including more non-puzzle challenges a la the 11th Hour, despite those being the worst parts of the game, was a giant red flag on the gameplay front.
pimpmonkey2382: non puzzle challenges? Sorry haven't been through 11th hour yet. Only had 7th for years and just got 11th hour recently.
Ok, how do I put this... You know how 7th Guest revolves around solving self contained puzzles? 11th Hour had those as well, including more maddening AI games. Those, while frustrating, at least had precedent via the microscope in 7th Guest. The worst part of the game were riddles that the player would be given, and by "riddles", I mean cryptograms, number ciphers, and all sorts of whacked out stuff that just wasn't in line with what made the first game fun. I can see and totally understand somebody liking that sort of thing in its own niche, but it didn't belong in the 11th Hour, as it didn't mesh well with what I (and, from what I gather, others) wanted out of the game; as a result, we got surprised with a new gameplay addition that at best you lucked out with by either liking it from the get go or warming up to it, and at worst completely lacking the skills and thought processes needed to solve them.
It was the equivalent of buying a car and having the car fall apart until it's revealed you are actually riding a unicycle; it might be a perfectly good one for people who know how to ride them, but (1) I'm not one of them, and (2) I bought the car expecting it be a car that I knew how to bloody drive.