Game 41: Les Manley 1 - Final Rating
I'm super keen to move onto something enjoyable, so let's get on with it and see just how poorly Les Manley rates.
Puzzles and Solvability
Well this isn’t going to be pretty! The puzzles in Les Manley are by far and away the most ridiculous that I’ve ever had to endure. It was difficult enough when I rarely had any motivation to try anything at all (To what purpose am I helping everyone at the circus? Why am I collecting items of clothing in the style of Elvis?), but the solutions to each puzzle were often bordering on impossible. Why would anyone try looking at someone’s dream, let alone try picking it up? Why would anyone randomly try touching Madame Zarmooska, let alone the lizard statue on her desk? Why would anyone try to pick the floss back up after using it, particularly when there was no reason they shouldn’t still have it in their inventory in the first place? Then there were the culturally specific solutions, such as asking for a raise at the very start, and having to type “ask for soda” (I happened to get away with “cola”) at Bobbi’s. I did much better in the second half of the game, but I’m not really certain whether that was due to the solutions becoming more logical or me becoming more illogical. I really do think I'm a bit stupider after playing this pile of excrement! I haven’t even mentioned the dead ends yet, which are absolutely everywhere. I may have only been caught out by a few, but I could see the potential for stacks more. Even with all the flaws I’ve mentioned here, it’s actually difficult to put a rating down for this category. I think I have to put it above the likes of Psycho, Captain Blood and Emmanuelle, for those games had either no real puzzles to solve at all, or were simply broken. I don't like it, but 2 it is.
Rating: 2
Interface and Inventory
Let’s start this category with a little bit of positivity. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the movement in the game! Watching Les move around doesn’t look pretty, but the visuals are to be covered elsewhere, so...well, there you have it. Something positive! No-one can say I didn’t say anything nice! However, I certainly can’t say anything remotely positive about the parser technology spluttering beneath the game. It’s simply unacceptable for an adventure game, and particularly one that relies upon it as much as this one did, to have such a horrible parser. Not only did it fail to accept legitimate commands regularly, therefore putting me off what often turned out to be absolutely correct solutions, I also managed to break it several times. I received complete gibberish responses on several occasions, and at other times was given what was clearly a response meant for a completely different question. The most noteworthy of these was the response “I don’t see the resurrection card here”, which I received after trying to look at the water fountain in the office, but that certainly wasn’t the only example. As for the inventory, well it was a replica of the one I disliked so much in Police Quest 2, meaning it was nothing more than a list with no way to interact with anything in it. As the game went on the inventory grew in length and became really difficult to look at. For a 1990 game, the interface technology on show in Les Manley just wasn’t good enough.
Rating: 2
Story and Setting
If you were going to make a clone of a Leisure Suit Larry game, you could do a lot worse than making a loser protagonist go in search of Elvis Presley with a million dollar prize up for grabs. Setting the game in a circus in New York, then a casino in Las Vegas, and then finally a theme-town dedicated to The King in Texas would also be a pretty inspired idea. Throw in a bunch of busty, suggestive babes and some juvenile silliness and you’ve got a winner! Right?! Well the truth is that the vast majority of reasons why the outcome of the above plan turned out to be shite have been and will be covered elsewhere in this post. If I really think about what went on here, and I'm trying not to put too much thought into it, it was the puzzle solutions and the parser that should take most of the blame. The story and setting are by no means great, but in some ways they could be considered a missed opportunity rather than a failure themselves. That being said, a lot of the humour in the game falls completely flat, and some parts of the plot make absolutely no sense. The climax in particular didn't stick since it could have been achieved as soon as Les got his hands on the resurrection card, which occurs pretty early on (well it does if the player uses a walkthrough or is extremely lucky). Everything that took place after that time had no bearing on the outcome of events. I guess the lack of motivation should also be punished here, so I still have to go pretty low.
Rating: 3
Sound and Graphics
The sound and graphics in Les Manley are pretty comparable to a Sierra game in around late 1988 to early 1989. There’s not much in the way of sound effects, but plenty of music. Some of that music is reasonably memorable, but that probably has more to do with how repetitive it is rather than how enjoyable. I was actually forced to turn it off while in the circus, as the repeating tune was destroying my brain cells. On the graphics front things are a cross between the first sequels to Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, with some really bland screens of light blue and grey (think the office hallways and Bobbi's house) dividing others containing a wide range of more attractive bright colours (the mansion for example). I guess when I consider that only Mean Streets and Accolade have scored more than 4 in this category out of non-Sierra/LucasArts games, this is really not a bad one. The girls (which let’s face it, are a pretty important part of the game’s attraction for its target audience) are easy on the eyes, the animation isn’t too bad (a bit stilted though), and I can’t recall not being able to figure out what an important item on screen was by sight (the parser had other ideas though). This category is probably the best thing about the game, so I'll dish out a 4.
Rating: 4
Environment and Atmosphere
The environment in Les Manley is a bit of a mixed bag. In some ways it feels really incomplete, with each of the three main sections (New York, Las Vegas, Kingdom Gates) suggesting a large play area while delivering very little. The last of the three sections is the worst offender, showing a top-down view of an entire town while allowing the player to visit only two buildings, and Las Vegas contains a pool, two hotel rooms and a dry cleaner, with no sign of any gambling areas at all. The circus and the Kingdom mansion are probably the most fully realized parts of the game, but even they feel limited in their implementation. I really have to question why I wasn’t allowed to open the door leading from the dining room in to the kitchen, and the game’s only defence was that there was a “more interesting” way to get in. It’s hard to get a grip on the atmosphere too, as there seemed to be a bit of an anything goes attitude when designing it. Clearly things are not supposed to be taken seriously, but puzzles that involve putting a man the size of a mouse into a drainpipe to collect a receipt, a disappearing psychic, and being launched the entire way across the United States take things to a new level of silliness. This is probably a case where the frustration the game brings to the table pretty much takes away any opportunity for a positive atmosphere to be created.
Rating: 4
Dialogue and Acting
The dialogue in Les Manley can only be described as a poor imitation of the work of Al Lowe. There are lots and lots of jokes throughout, but they’re rarely funny due to being overly telegraphed or just eye-rollingly corny. There are other issues too, such as racial and sexual stereotypes (Sierra isn’t innocent on this front though) and some seriously misleading parser responses. I know I’ve already caned the parser in the interface category, but that was specifically focussing on its inability to function correctly. What I’m talking about here is actual responses to questions giving me reasons to focus on things that don’t mean anything. For example, Alona made a couple of comments suggesting she wanted me to bring Helmut to her, and then had nothing to say whatsoever when I did so. Worse than that were the occasions where I was specifically told something wasn’t possible, only to eventually find out that was exactly what I was supposed to do. Madame Zarmooska told me very specifically: “You can’t take the wax”, but guess what I ended up doing! Add to all this the various grammatical and spelling issues that popped up throughout and its difficult to understand how so many game designers with previous adventure game experience could possibly have produced this.
Rating: 3
Alright, so that's 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 3, which equals 18, divided by 60 equals 0.3, which is exactly 30 when multiplied by 100. 30!!!! That really is low! It's the same score I gave Uninvited and only a few marks higher than Captain Blood and Mortville Manor. Have I been too harsh? Maybe, but I really hated this game. There's no way I'm using my discretionary point to increase it, so 30 it is!
Did anyone predict that? Yep, Laukku absolutely nailed it! I don't feel so bad about the score now either, since many of you went even lower. I'm really happy to be done with it, but I'm also excited at the prospect of reading through all of your comments. I'll have to set aside about an hour of my time tomorrow to get through it all. Then it's onto the first remake on the list, Roberta Williams' King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown.
170 CAPs for Aperama
• Zarmooska Award – 60 CAPs - For betting I wouldn’t solve the resurrection card puzzle unassisted.
• Giant Keys Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding the keys
• Tangible Dream Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding the dream
• Luigi Vanity Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding Luigi’s moustache.
• Hitchhiking Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding hitchhiking
• Probation Explanation Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me about the in-game performance review hint
• Trade – 10 CAPs – Traded from Canageek for Crapshoot intro
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
85 CAPs for Laukku
• Dream Catcher Award – 60 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the dream puzzle unassisted.
• Touche Award – 30 CAPs – For solving my Touche riddle
• Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs - For correctly predicting what score I would give the game.
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
• Lovecraftian Spiral Into Madness Award – 5 CAPs – For visualising my descent into madness.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the soda puzzle and losing.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the Do Not Disturb puzzle and losing.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the spa bath puzzle and losing
60 CAPs for Lars-Erik
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Sponsor Award - 20 CAPs - For sponsoring the blog with free games
• Steakhouse Analogy Award – 10 CAPs – It really was awesomely done.
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
20 CAPs for Kenny McCormick
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Kickstarter Award – 10 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game project on Kickstarter
• Spinning Luchadore Power Bomb Award – 5 CAPs – I don’t know what it is, but it sounds painful!
• Honesty Award – 5 CAPs – “Me? I just enjoy watching him suffer...”
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
10 CAPs for Draconius
• Ultimate Optimism Award – 5 CAPs – For predicting the game would score 96!
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
10 CAPs for Ilmari
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Touchy Feely Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding Zarmooska
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the Helmut mailing puzzle and losing.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the sandwich puzzle and losing.
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
10 CAPs for TBD
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
20 CAPs for Charles
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Kickstarter Award – 10 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game project on Kickstarter
• Loyalty Award – 10 CAPs – I know he milking it for all it’s worth, but well, he’s just so good at it!
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
10 CAPs for xyzzysqrl
• Sleazy Phone Sex Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me of what the 976 thing was all about
5 CAPs for Canageek
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Trade - -10 CAPs – Traded to Aperama for Crapshoot intro
Puzzles and Solvability
Well this isn’t going to be pretty! The puzzles in Les Manley are by far and away the most ridiculous that I’ve ever had to endure. It was difficult enough when I rarely had any motivation to try anything at all (To what purpose am I helping everyone at the circus? Why am I collecting items of clothing in the style of Elvis?), but the solutions to each puzzle were often bordering on impossible. Why would anyone try looking at someone’s dream, let alone try picking it up? Why would anyone randomly try touching Madame Zarmooska, let alone the lizard statue on her desk? Why would anyone try to pick the floss back up after using it, particularly when there was no reason they shouldn’t still have it in their inventory in the first place? Then there were the culturally specific solutions, such as asking for a raise at the very start, and having to type “ask for soda” (I happened to get away with “cola”) at Bobbi’s. I did much better in the second half of the game, but I’m not really certain whether that was due to the solutions becoming more logical or me becoming more illogical. I really do think I'm a bit stupider after playing this pile of excrement! I haven’t even mentioned the dead ends yet, which are absolutely everywhere. I may have only been caught out by a few, but I could see the potential for stacks more. Even with all the flaws I’ve mentioned here, it’s actually difficult to put a rating down for this category. I think I have to put it above the likes of Psycho, Captain Blood and Emmanuelle, for those games had either no real puzzles to solve at all, or were simply broken. I don't like it, but 2 it is.
Rating: 2
I really hope this is the last time I type this...ever!
Interface and Inventory
Let’s start this category with a little bit of positivity. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the movement in the game! Watching Les move around doesn’t look pretty, but the visuals are to be covered elsewhere, so...well, there you have it. Something positive! No-one can say I didn’t say anything nice! However, I certainly can’t say anything remotely positive about the parser technology spluttering beneath the game. It’s simply unacceptable for an adventure game, and particularly one that relies upon it as much as this one did, to have such a horrible parser. Not only did it fail to accept legitimate commands regularly, therefore putting me off what often turned out to be absolutely correct solutions, I also managed to break it several times. I received complete gibberish responses on several occasions, and at other times was given what was clearly a response meant for a completely different question. The most noteworthy of these was the response “I don’t see the resurrection card here”, which I received after trying to look at the water fountain in the office, but that certainly wasn’t the only example. As for the inventory, well it was a replica of the one I disliked so much in Police Quest 2, meaning it was nothing more than a list with no way to interact with anything in it. As the game went on the inventory grew in length and became really difficult to look at. For a 1990 game, the interface technology on show in Les Manley just wasn’t good enough.
Rating: 2
A jar and a lunch bag walk into a bar...
Story and Setting
If you were going to make a clone of a Leisure Suit Larry game, you could do a lot worse than making a loser protagonist go in search of Elvis Presley with a million dollar prize up for grabs. Setting the game in a circus in New York, then a casino in Las Vegas, and then finally a theme-town dedicated to The King in Texas would also be a pretty inspired idea. Throw in a bunch of busty, suggestive babes and some juvenile silliness and you’ve got a winner! Right?! Well the truth is that the vast majority of reasons why the outcome of the above plan turned out to be shite have been and will be covered elsewhere in this post. If I really think about what went on here, and I'm trying not to put too much thought into it, it was the puzzle solutions and the parser that should take most of the blame. The story and setting are by no means great, but in some ways they could be considered a missed opportunity rather than a failure themselves. That being said, a lot of the humour in the game falls completely flat, and some parts of the plot make absolutely no sense. The climax in particular didn't stick since it could have been achieved as soon as Les got his hands on the resurrection card, which occurs pretty early on (well it does if the player uses a walkthrough or is extremely lucky). Everything that took place after that time had no bearing on the outcome of events. I guess the lack of motivation should also be punished here, so I still have to go pretty low.
Rating: 3
I'm glad I wasn't alone in feeling a bit perplexed by the ending.
Sound and Graphics
The sound and graphics in Les Manley are pretty comparable to a Sierra game in around late 1988 to early 1989. There’s not much in the way of sound effects, but plenty of music. Some of that music is reasonably memorable, but that probably has more to do with how repetitive it is rather than how enjoyable. I was actually forced to turn it off while in the circus, as the repeating tune was destroying my brain cells. On the graphics front things are a cross between the first sequels to Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, with some really bland screens of light blue and grey (think the office hallways and Bobbi's house) dividing others containing a wide range of more attractive bright colours (the mansion for example). I guess when I consider that only Mean Streets and Accolade have scored more than 4 in this category out of non-Sierra/LucasArts games, this is really not a bad one. The girls (which let’s face it, are a pretty important part of the game’s attraction for its target audience) are easy on the eyes, the animation isn’t too bad (a bit stilted though), and I can’t recall not being able to figure out what an important item on screen was by sight (the parser had other ideas though). This category is probably the best thing about the game, so I'll dish out a 4.
Rating: 4
The Elvis moves were pretty spot on too.
Environment and Atmosphere
The environment in Les Manley is a bit of a mixed bag. In some ways it feels really incomplete, with each of the three main sections (New York, Las Vegas, Kingdom Gates) suggesting a large play area while delivering very little. The last of the three sections is the worst offender, showing a top-down view of an entire town while allowing the player to visit only two buildings, and Las Vegas contains a pool, two hotel rooms and a dry cleaner, with no sign of any gambling areas at all. The circus and the Kingdom mansion are probably the most fully realized parts of the game, but even they feel limited in their implementation. I really have to question why I wasn’t allowed to open the door leading from the dining room in to the kitchen, and the game’s only defence was that there was a “more interesting” way to get in. It’s hard to get a grip on the atmosphere too, as there seemed to be a bit of an anything goes attitude when designing it. Clearly things are not supposed to be taken seriously, but puzzles that involve putting a man the size of a mouse into a drainpipe to collect a receipt, a disappearing psychic, and being launched the entire way across the United States take things to a new level of silliness. This is probably a case where the frustration the game brings to the table pretty much takes away any opportunity for a positive atmosphere to be created.
Rating: 4
It's like they ran out of time / money and therefore had to cut out the major parts of their plan (then made the remaining puzzles way too difficult to make it seem longer).
Dialogue and Acting
The dialogue in Les Manley can only be described as a poor imitation of the work of Al Lowe. There are lots and lots of jokes throughout, but they’re rarely funny due to being overly telegraphed or just eye-rollingly corny. There are other issues too, such as racial and sexual stereotypes (Sierra isn’t innocent on this front though) and some seriously misleading parser responses. I know I’ve already caned the parser in the interface category, but that was specifically focussing on its inability to function correctly. What I’m talking about here is actual responses to questions giving me reasons to focus on things that don’t mean anything. For example, Alona made a couple of comments suggesting she wanted me to bring Helmut to her, and then had nothing to say whatsoever when I did so. Worse than that were the occasions where I was specifically told something wasn’t possible, only to eventually find out that was exactly what I was supposed to do. Madame Zarmooska told me very specifically: “You can’t take the wax”, but guess what I ended up doing! Add to all this the various grammatical and spelling issues that popped up throughout and its difficult to understand how so many game designers with previous adventure game experience could possibly have produced this.
Rating: 3
Whoever was behind this stuff was just trying too hard. It was a chore to read and rarely raised a smile.
Alright, so that's 2 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 3, which equals 18, divided by 60 equals 0.3, which is exactly 30 when multiplied by 100. 30!!!! That really is low! It's the same score I gave Uninvited and only a few marks higher than Captain Blood and Mortville Manor. Have I been too harsh? Maybe, but I really hated this game. There's no way I'm using my discretionary point to increase it, so 30 it is!
Did anyone predict that? Yep, Laukku absolutely nailed it! I don't feel so bad about the score now either, since many of you went even lower. I'm really happy to be done with it, but I'm also excited at the prospect of reading through all of your comments. I'll have to set aside about an hour of my time tomorrow to get through it all. Then it's onto the first remake on the list, Roberta Williams' King's Quest I: Quest for the Crown.
170 CAPs for Aperama
• Zarmooska Award – 60 CAPs - For betting I wouldn’t solve the resurrection card puzzle unassisted.
• Giant Keys Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding the keys
• Tangible Dream Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding the dream
• Luigi Vanity Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding Luigi’s moustache.
• Hitchhiking Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding hitchhiking
• Probation Explanation Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me about the in-game performance review hint
• Trade – 10 CAPs – Traded from Canageek for Crapshoot intro
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
85 CAPs for Laukku
• Dream Catcher Award – 60 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the dream puzzle unassisted.
• Touche Award – 30 CAPs – For solving my Touche riddle
• Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs - For correctly predicting what score I would give the game.
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
• Lovecraftian Spiral Into Madness Award – 5 CAPs – For visualising my descent into madness.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the soda puzzle and losing.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the Do Not Disturb puzzle and losing.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the spa bath puzzle and losing
60 CAPs for Lars-Erik
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Sponsor Award - 20 CAPs - For sponsoring the blog with free games
• Steakhouse Analogy Award – 10 CAPs – It really was awesomely done.
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
20 CAPs for Kenny McCormick
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Kickstarter Award – 10 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game project on Kickstarter
• Spinning Luchadore Power Bomb Award – 5 CAPs – I don’t know what it is, but it sounds painful!
• Honesty Award – 5 CAPs – “Me? I just enjoy watching him suffer...”
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
10 CAPs for Draconius
• Ultimate Optimism Award – 5 CAPs – For predicting the game would score 96!
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
10 CAPs for Ilmari
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Touchy Feely Award – 20 CAPs – For answering my request for assistance regarding Zarmooska
• Community Assistance Award – 10 CAPs – For uniting the companions in one final push for victory
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the Helmut mailing puzzle and losing.
• Tricky Smackdown Fail - -10 CAPs – For betting I wouldn’t solve the sandwich puzzle and losing.
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
10 CAPs for TBD
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
20 CAPs for Charles
• Game Over Award - -1000 CAPs – For messing with me and getting caught!
• Kickstarter Award – 10 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game project on Kickstarter
• Loyalty Award – 10 CAPs – I know he milking it for all it’s worth, but well, he’s just so good at it!
• Resurrection Award – 1000 CAPs – For having the resurrection card at the time of getting caught.
10 CAPs for xyzzysqrl
• Sleazy Phone Sex Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me of what the 976 thing was all about
5 CAPs for Canageek
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Trade - -10 CAPs – Traded to Aperama for Crapshoot intro
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