Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes - 5/20 hours

I don't want to play this game any more - waaggh!

Okay, now that I got that out of my system, I can talk about my last three hours with Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. I've been trying to do the right thing and diligently improve my skills by attempting the advanced bombs. It went fairly well for awhile, but I think I hit a wall in the second-to-last difficulty tier.

A couple of bombs back they introduced a new mechanic called "needy modules" - bomb parts that could not be permanently disarmed, but which you had to interact with every 40-50 seconds or so to keep the bomb from blowing up. With bombs like that, you have to be constantly mindful of the needy modules, even while you are working through the regular puzzles. Splitting my attention like this is pretty much my nightmare.

I will give it this, though - after awhile, the repeated failures start to blur together.  I've spent an hour on my most recent bomb and as a result avoided that repetitive malaise I was so worried about in my last post. The price for that is, of course, the frustration and mental fatigue that comes with an intractable problem.

I don't know whether I'm going to keep it up. Going after the achievement is an obvious goal, and that can help keep me motivated, but these higher level bombs are overwhelming and if I have to try and speed my way through the deliberately obscure bomb defusal manual another 300 times I'm going to explode in a tantrum the likes of which this blog has never seen.

But then, what's the alternative? Just play hundreds of easy bombs, learning nothing and killing time for another 15 hours?

Hmmm . . .

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