Let's Play Broken Sword 2 #19: Besting the Jungle Maze
92Mazes have been a part of video games since the early days of the medium and are found in many genres of game, though in most games they're in they fill the same purpose. Often certain items need to be found in them and sometimes you need to find your way out of through it but they're always designed to be confusing. Video games can achieve levels of complexity that real life mazes cannot, turning an incorrect path taken into a route that diverts you all the way back to the beginning. Hazards within mazes are rife, be they timed puzzles, light mechanics or enemies that constantly respawn. A larger foe hunting you as you try to navigate it is also a common theme, presenting an urgency which can make the player act in error. Done well, a maze can enhance whatever game it's in. Done poorly, they present a frustrating roadblock that can only be bested with trial and error and that's if you have all the items you needed to complete it being entering - I'm looking at you King's Quest VI.
The maze George has to tangle with here isn't half as bad as some of the ones I've seen in other point and click adventure games, though it does lose points for having exits that aren't very clear unless you methodically scan your mouse over everywhere on the screen. A map system like the one in Shadowgate would be fantastic for solving that problem but we don't have that luxury. At least nothing on Zombie Island has tried to kill us so far, which is nice. In fact there haven't been many death scenes at all in this game compared to the first and while that does make the game fairer, a small part of me misses them. Revolution Software put a lot of effort into the death scenes in their games, Beneath a Steel Sky being a wonderful example of that, but I can understand why they're not as prevalent due to the frustration they can cause, especially with the unfair ones - I'm looking at you, King's Quest and Space Quest. I couldn't pick between them for the singular worst offender, so I decided to put them all together.
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