#failed games

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Ve Stínu Havrana (longplay): Part 4of 4 - Not Grand Finale 

Part four. Grand finale! Oh well, maybe not so grand… Maybe not grand at all… But it’s a finale all right. Some things will be explained (so, that’s what that raven was!), but some things will become a complete mess. Did I tell you that Rainbow Rhino planned a sequel? That's probably why. Anyway, here’s the finale for you.

Mini-game note: Another infamous episode of the game. The idea of this mini-game is to kill the Chief. But you can’t do it at the beginning. That’s the most common mistake – people try to shoot the Chief from the very beginning and then say «Hey, I can’t kill him!». Yes, you can’t kill him from the very start. You need to shoot anywhere three times (I found it more logical to shoot the target) , so, the Chief will scream about your failure and call his henchmen to kill you. And that’s the point where you need to shoot the Chief. You can’t just point your cursor on him and shoot though. Check out the video to find out where you need to shoot to kill him.

Interesting fact: It may looks like there’re multiple endings in this game. Shaman’s words, multiple doors in the final movie, etc. But actually, there’s only one ending. So, don’t bother to search for others.

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Ve Stínu Havrana (longplay): Part 3of 4 - The Monkey Island

Part three. In this part Severin will need to save Elaine from LeChuck. Wait… forget about it, it’s just me. But well, there will be a ghost of the pirate captain, a word battle, a treasure chest, etc.

Interesting fact: The music in the part where our hero is climbing up the underwater rope is a  reference to a popular Russian cartoon Nu, Pogodi! (can be translated as Just You Wait! or I’ll Get You!). It’s some sort of Tom & Jerry analogue, just with wolf and hare instead of cat and mouse. There was a classic episode (first one actually) where the wolf climbed up the rope to get the hare, you can see this episode here (check it from 1:20). The music itself is actually a song by a popular Russian bard Vladimir Vysotsky. It’s called Pesnya o druge (Song about a friend). The reason I told you all this? There’s none.

Mini-game note: The controls in the arcade event are completely messed up. You are controlling the ray of light with your mouse, but directions where you need to move it are wrong. To get the light moving up and down, you need to move the mouse left and right, and to get the light moving left and right, you need to move your mouse up and down… That’s why I’m doing it so slowly, I'm just not good enough with such things.

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 Ve Stínu Havrana (longplay): Part 2of 4 - The Town

Part two. The town called… Town. Well, OK, whatever. At least it’s a town. But it looks like there’s a lot more problems inside the town than outside of it. There was no proper reason for Severin to enter the town in the first place, but now, when he knows that the bridge across the river on the other side of the town is broken, he has a proper goal – now he absolutely must cross the river. Somehow…

Technical note: There’s an infamous bug in this part of the game because of which it’s hard to get to the windmill. You may use my method that I’ll show you in this video, or you may just try to enter, wait till Severin is stuck, minimize the game to the tray and then bring it back. When the game will be active on the screen again, Severin will be in the mill area. Kinda useful trick for everyone who just wants to enter the mill, but it won’t look great in the videos, so, I didn’t use it.

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Ve Stínu Havrana (longplay): Part 1of 4 - The Wood

Ve Stínu Havrana (also known as In the Shadow of the Raven) is a classical point-and-click adventure by Czech developers Rainbow Rhino. They even planned the sequel (you may find some screenshots from it if you google for it), but it was never released. In Ve Stínu Havrana you play as a young monk Severin and your goal is… well... there’s no proper goal actually. But still, you can collect everything and use it randomly. It’s a point-and-click game anyway. Note that this game is incredibly buggy though, so, sorry for all the problems in the videos (character can easily get stuck for example). Check my notes in the description for each part for more info.

Version info: In these videos I’m playing the Czech CD re-release with Czech sound and English subtitles. Original 1999 version has only Czech language, so, I’ve decided to record the re-release, because this way everyone may understand what’s going on. Or maybe not, since this game is… well, you’ll see for yourself. The only other version I know was completely in Russian. So, let’s stay with this one. Even though original dub is incredibly cheap. Actually, the whole game was dubbed by only one person - Jiří Lábus. Even female characters. As Severin likes to say – «No Comments».

Gameplay info: This is a longplay. To learn about the term, check the article on Wikipedia. You can use these videos as a walkthrough, but most of the actions here aren't necessary to beat the game. The goal is to show you as much stuff as possible.

Part one.  After a series of unfortunate events, Severin woke up in the wood. Now he has no idea what to do next. But there’s a town nearby, so, maybe it’s a good idea to get there. People to talk to, food to eat... Sounds much better than deserted wood. But it looks like the guardian at the gates has his own opinion about all this… 

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Dráscula: The Vampire Strikes Back - Longplay Freeware Version (FLAC Music Addon)

In 2008, Spanish point-and-click adventure Dráscula: The Vampire Strikes Back (aka Dráscula: El Vampiro) by Alcachofa Soft was re-released as a completely freeware game on ScummVM website. You can officially download it for free here. ScummVM team did a great job on this one, freeware version works like a charm and there are all the voices and music included. Since it's hard to set up the original CD version properly, I've decided to record the longplay of this one. Honestly, it's the full version of the original game, nothing missed. English translation is fixed a little in freeware version though (you can compare it with the original one from the CD version), so, there is a differences, but I don't think it's that important. Especially since dub is still the same (that's why the text that the actors read and the text of the subtitles is different). The only thing I'm missing in this version is a built-in screensaver that was completely removed. Well, not like it was deleted, it's jut not showing, because ScummVM is not using the executable files. But I won't stand still to show you the screensaver in these videos anyway, so, it's not a big deal.

Technical note: It's an English version of the freeware edition of the game with FLAC music addon. You can listen to the soundtrack without playing the game BTW, so, it's really nice that all of this is officially free now.

Gameplay note: I'm using graphical interface in this playthrough. There're hotkeys for all the commands in this game, but it won't be nice to watch if I use them. That's why.

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There're some videos with rough playthroughs on my HDD too. Sometimes, it's hard to set up the game; sometimes, I just don't like the game enough and don't feel excited enough to record it properly, etc. This one is a nice example. Dráscula: The Vampire Strikesis a Spanish point-and-click adventure game by Alcachofa Soft, which is short, buggy, has a horrible English translation, and stupid as hell. There's only one good thing about it - nice CDDA music. Which is glitching on me for some unknown reason. Also, it's hard to set it up in DOSBox (it's either too slow, or gives me glitching voices), and there's no sound under any versions of Windows... Since I don't like the game at all... Well, I've given up on this one. But I thought that it's a nice idea to share my playthrough anyway (there're no playthroughs of this game on YouTube at the moment). It's at least watchable, it covers the entire game (it's like a rough longplay of sorts), etc. I just didn't play it good enough and there're some sound glitches, so, I'm not proud about this one (if I make this game work as it should someday, I may record a proper longplay. For now that's enough). But still, here it is, complete playthrough of the game. You can also use it as a walkthrough if you want, but I honestly don't think that someone has problems with this game. It's so-o-o-o easy...

P.S. Note that it's a CD version, not a freeware one.

P.P.S. There're some seconds from Michael Jackson's Billie Jean in the very beginning of the video. Obviously, I don't have the rights for this song, all rights go to SONY (I think it's them who have Michael's songs), but since it's just a few seconds from the song, I think no one will be mad at me. There's a reason for that, just watch the videos.