Shadowcat on 11/10/2011 at 12:31

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Let's have a dedicated thread. If there's any justice in the world, people will want to play and discuss it :)







Thirith: Controls are okay, with a couple of caveats:

1) The isometric perspective makes some jumps quite tricky.

2) When you're running around in 'athletic' mode to get places quickly, running into walls hurts you, which kinda sucks.

LBA2 eliminated both of those complaints, and Sébastien Viannay's Windows-native "LbaWin" port actually provides an option to deal with (2), but unfortunately that doesn't appear to work with GOG's version of the game. Hopefully someone will figure out how to make the two play together.

Regardless of those niggles, the game is pure joy in digitised form. Yes I'm wearing rose-tinted glasses, but time can't do too much to a game that exudes as much character as LBA. The technical aspects may not blow your mind in 2011 (those 3D character models and animations were jaw-dropping when this first came out :) but I refuse to believe that anyone could play this game through to completion and not be glad of the experience.

edit: or as I put it in an old thread:

Shadowcat on 11/10/2011 at 13:32

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(http://www.gog.com/en/forum/little_big_adventure_series/lbas_unusual_confusing_game_save_system_how_it_works) LBA's unusual/confusing game save system: How it works

henke on 11/10/2011 at 14:29

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That's no reason not to play LBA2! I never played the first one but I remember being home from vocational school for a weekend ~14 years ago spending almost the entire weekend playing LBA2. I didn't manage to finish it and the next week was just pain, being away from home and my computer and unable to play it. Needless to say I traveled back to my hometown again the next weekend and finished it. I remember the PC GAMER UK review said that LBA2 is like a giant barrel of candy, and as you start wolfing it down pretty soon you'll be so deep down in the barrel you won't be able to climb back out but it doesn't matter because there's nowhere else you'd rather be. I can agree with that 100%. For a first-time player I'm not sure it'll deliver the same thrills today as it did in 1997, but you should at least give it a try if you've got it. :)

gunsmoke on 11/10/2011 at 18:45

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I never played it. How does it stack up to the insanely cute sequel? That elephant was awesome.

Shadowcat on 12/10/2011 at 08:54

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A couple of things:

(1) If the installer you downloaded was smaller than 400MB, go back to your GOG shelf and download the updated version.

They have responded to complaints about the quality of the audio by ditching the compressed .ogg versions, and instead using the CD ISO.

(2) This has the happy side-effect that you can now also use the Windows-native LbaWin port I mentioned earlier.

(http://www.magicball.net/downloads/programs/lbawin)

For LbaWin to work, you will need to mount the file LBA.GOG (which is the CD ISO image) in a virtual CD-ROM drive.

(edit: ah hell, I'm not sure this is correct after all. It's mountable, and LbaWin runs when it's mounted, but I can't see any audio tracks in there, and I don't think LbaWin does either. Which confuses me no end, because I thought this is what it was there for. Does anyone know what I'm missing here?)

(edit 2: okay, I now know what I was missing. You actually need to mount the file LBA.DAT which is a CUE file for the LBA.GOG data. Mounting the CUE file provides the necessary information about the audio tracks.)

I recommend playing the game via LbaWin primarily for a couple of user-friendly LBA2-style options to (a) disable damage when running into walls, and (b) enable the 'use' action in every mode, rather than always having to switch to 'normal'. (Of course it will also require fewer resources to run compared to using DOSBox, but that's unlikely to be an issue for very many people with this game.)