Cruise for a Corpse - some questions....

[Overdoc]

Hi,

I am thinking about playing Cruise for a Corpse, since I have played a couple of Lucasarts (Monkey Island 1 & 2, Loom, Day of Tentacle,..) and other good adventures (Legend of Kyrandia, Flight of Amazon Queen, Curse of Enchantia, Erben der Erde, Lure of the Temptress,...) on the Amiga before.

But, there is this time dependency which I have read about, which is putting me off a little bit?

Can anyone tell mw how serious this is? Are there at least some hints to be found about when you need to be on which location? or is it completely trial & error?

Or is it even possible to run into any deadends, because of not having been on the right spot and the right time, and when you missed, you can then later never get that needed item or meet that needed person again?

Apart from this 'timing issues' I have read it should be a good adventure/detective game?

[dlfrsilver]

You need to use all the questions available when talking to a character. Otherwise, the time trigger does not operate.

[TCD]

I've never completed it, but I remember that the timing was quite important. I'd just give it a try and see if you like it and not worry too much about that one aspect of the game

[Overdoc]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

You need to use all the questions available when talking to a character. Otherwise, the time trigger does not operate.

Ok, that wouldn't be an issue for me since I have the habit of always selecting all available questions in an adventure or RPG.

I think I will give it a try anyway, but I hate games with deadends, which is also the reason why I never bothered to play any of the Sierra point'n'click adventures, although they as well might not be that bad?

I also wouldn't be too happy of having to search each location and person of the game again for 60 times...?
(because that's the number of 10 minute time progresses until time reaches 6pm in the game)

[manossg]

Unfortunately this time thing is quite important and you can soft-lock yourself without even knowing it. A pity.

[alain.treesong]

In fact there is not really any time that passes.
Each time you make an action / discovery, you move on to the next step and at that moment the clock advances by 15 min if I remember correctly.
The authors tried to make it flexible so you can do some actions/discoveries out of order but overall you have to follow the big ones.
I don't think you have to do all the dialogues, at least not at every stage.

Cruise is really an excellent game. Technically it's fabulous and there's a great atmosphere.
The scenario is good (Hercule Poirot...). There are just a few passages that are a little painful, such as looking through a window (in the middle of the game) for example.
We can only die in one place it seems to me, towards the end but we can save at any time.
I had it in original and I had a great time at the time. One of the best Amiga point'n'click in my opinion.

[Aardvark]

Opinion from a twitch streamer, who has played through hundreds of adventure games. He rates this one very low.
Timestamp 1:36:32 [ Show youtube player ]

[alkis21]

It was quite an experience at the time, and I enjoyed it, but I don't believe it has aged well. There aren't that many puzzles to solve, it relies mostly on the dialogue and the 'triggers' and the writing (translation?) isn't very good, there are even some typos.

Unlike manossg, I don't remember any dead ends. I don't think it has any. What I DO remember is being stuck for ages because the next timeslot needed to be triggered by me entering a location say, from the bottom of the screen, and I would only use the map to access it which entered me from the top of the screen!

I'm not saying you shouldn't play it, but don't except a masterpiece, as it's overrated.

[manossg]

Originally Posted by alkis21

Unlike manossg, I don't remember any dead ends. I don't think it has any.

I might not remember well, it's been decades since I played this game. I remember having to restore to a previous save, so as to be able to progress, but I might be mixing it up with some other game with time mechanics, so I guess it is a good time for a revisit.

[Overdoc]

Ok, so I played Cruise for a Corpse for a while.
However, I gave up since it is not what I am expecting from a point'n cick adventure game.

Whenever you achieve something (like for instance finding and talking to a person on the ship), time advances by 10 minutes.

Now, the main thing which has been putting me off this game is that whenever this 10 minute time advance happens, you need to re-visit every place where you have already been before, and re-search the whole ship again for something which might have changed.
This is particularly annoying because objects are sometimes quite hard to see/find, and there is tons of them (but you cannot do anything with 99% of them)

So, in the end it turns out to be a quite boring task of re-searching in every place for possible changes?

I think I will better play Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis or Maddog Williams next?
Or maybe some PD game like The Experiment ?

[Fiery Phoenix]

Massive fan of point & clicks but never completed this or really re-visited it. Was the time thing for me too - may hve mis-heard but always thought was one of those games where you have to be in a certain place at a certain time or you cannot complete it (sure DarkSeed has these elements too)

Looked fantastic though for the time