Hugo 2: Whodun(n)it? - Part 2
Following on as you would expect from Part 1, here's the second half of Hugo 2, where we attempt to get back to the house and finally do something relevant.
Things aren't really starting off well.
Well, that didn't work, but across the road there appears to be some writing on the wall...
Will do! Red telephone box, English countryside, American telephone number... this game's just from everywhere.
You know, if I was just describing this game without the screenshots to prove it, I don't think anyone would believe me.
This is a moment where you definitely have to be from the East side of the Atlantic, though.
Well, thanks a lot. I'm sure you were a lot more help when you were Tom Baker.
The worst part of this, of course, is that if you follow his advice you'll miss a vital item and not be able to complete the game, the Sierra adventurer's idea of a good time.
Unless it catches you first, that is. It's surprisingly fast for an alien entirely constructed of odds and ends from the local DIY shop.
And while I'm on the subject, I frankly find the game a bit condescending, on top of everything else.
I tried everything I could think of on this screen, dying multiple times, until I finally remembered a little item in my inventory...
Actually on second thoughts it might help you more to be from America on this screen, because if you're in Britain you will have had it ingrained into your mind that this obviously won't work. Shooting a Dalek with a pixellated little pistol is comparable to trying to deflect a damburst with a fork.
But with that done, the Doctor thanks you for being the unexpected rescue of the week and gives you his signature tool in return. He could at least have got the name right.
What were we doing? Oh yes - dynamite. Hello, snake.
This pile of suspiciously loose-looking rocks looks like a decent place to set it up.
Oh, fine, then.
And this is a better place, is it? My knowledge of explosives is admittedly limited, but placing a stick of dynamite two feet away from a pile of rocks isn't going to shift it. The best you're going to get out of that is making a small dent in the soil.
Well, I'll try anyway. What happens n...
I should have guessed, really. All right, time to restore the game, and let's try to climb the rope during the generous two seconds of time that you've got to walk over to it and type the command, then.
Done it. I don't know about you, but do you remember a murder we were meant to be trying to solve? Anyway, let's press on...
Three passages - it's like Hunt the Wumpus in here. I'll take them from left to right.
Ah - a lamp. Maybe I can wish for a quicker way out of this dodgy game.
No such luck. Never mind, we'll press on...
This screen! Oh, it's all coming back to me now. This was where I got completely stuck the first time that I played the game - that crack in the floor appears totally impassable, and even though it doesn't look like you exactly need to be the Prince of Persia to jump over it, there's no way to convince luminous-heels here to make the short hop across. And you can't lay anything down to walk over, either. Watch.
"How careless" is how you react to falling down a chasm? This is like reading Enid Blyton without the incredible racism.
Of course, I remember the solution, but I can't remember how I first found out how to do it. If you move to the bottom of the screen, behind the rock foreground, then you're below the lower reaches of the chasm and can walk across safely. Simple when you know how, isn't it?
...Balls. Let me try that again.
(Many tries later...)
I have to wonder how anyone solved this, to be honest. You have to ram yourself into the wall repeatedly to get low enough to walk along the pixel-wide path that's safe, and for your effort, you're rewarded with a mouldy banana. Great. I wonder if it'll let me back.
Quick, into the third cave. It can't possibly be any worse.
A ladder - you can't go wrong with that. How difficult can it be?
You know, David Gray, I think you're starting to do this on purpose. Very well.
All right, I think it's safe to say that you can ignore my previous comment now. There's nothing useful in the caves, and a check of the inventory doesn't reveal anything that looks useful, except... oh, I don't know. Maybe the lamp miraculously works now.
How dare you.
Well, it did. And as it happens I have the extremely arbitrary item that you happen to be craving right here.
You know, you look like the gardener jumped in a tub of red paint and put a purple sausage on his head.
And you don't even get to see it animated. You're the most useless genie ever.
All right, it looks like we're back in the house (I can tell from the horrific wallpaper visible through there), but don't mistake this for any sort of pretence at normality. Let's try looking in the least useful-looking place first.
Further evidence that this community can't go through a single entry without mentioning the word. I'll just let you make up your own joke here.
The safe actually does prompt you for a combination if you try to open it by conventional means, which would count as yet another gigantic red herring if there wasn't such blatant hinting at the bottom of this window.
And usefully I retrieved the item that I needed to open it from somewhere near Gallifrey earlier.
And since that didn't work, let's use the name the game uses for the item... (I believe simply "screwdriver" also works - it's not as bad as it seems here, for the first time in quite a while)
Good - let's move into the hallway...
You know things are surprising when they require two exclamation marks.
All right, so we're back to having a load of doors to try.
This room's through the top door on the screen. Like most of the house it seems to be depressingly blank, and I couldn't be bothered to look around much.
Going to the left gets us to the hall where we started the game.
And in a bit of an Escher moment, going through the top door in the hall or the top passageway on the previous screen leads us here with the entrances at right-angles to each other.
The last door we hadn't tried from the previous room goes to here, where we finally meet up with the maid again.
Keeping up with the theme of characters in this game, she's going to be entirely unhelpful and block us from getting into that interesting-looking cupboard. Well, I say "interesting-looking" - it looks as if it could conceivably require us to get into it to complete the game, let's put it that way.
Through the door on the right, we have a cat and a pole.
Only one of which is apparently useful.
The cook's standing around holding a bloody knife through in the kitchen. I took screenshots of the entire conversation, but I'm not going to display them because there's no point.
Our exploration of the house is nearly over - Hester (this family likes H-names, doesn't it?) stars in one of the more irritating scenes.
"Knock you off your feet" in a house full of potential murderers? Sounds like a terrible idea. Thanks for suggesting it.
Bye.
Except, of course, that if you sensibly answer "no" to this question, you unknowingly miss out on a vital detail and can't complete the game. Let's try that again...
When you say "yes", Penelope takes the drink, falls over flat on the floor, then ricochets right back up again. After that, you've got a couple of seconds to read the envelope on the table (only "get envelope" works). If you don't... you unknowingly miss out on a vital detail and can't complete the game.
For a vital detail, it certainly doesn't seem to contain much useful information. Oh well - on to the last room we haven't explored.
This is Harry's organ room. Let's tap him on the shoulder and see what he has to say.
All right - moving swiftly back out again... that's the laugh of a killer if ever I heard one.
Well, I don't know about you but I've absolutely no idea what to do now. The only remotely puzzley-looking thing in the house is that cat, and all attempts to coerce it into doing something useful have failed. It's time to give up and consult a guide (rustle, rustle).
All right. Apparently there's some catnip on the worst screen in the game, here.
In a remarkably generous move, you're not completely stuck if you haven't got it by this point in the game - you can wander out the door from the kitchen again and get back there easily. If you ever think to "look" at all the blank-seeming locations that you've been to so far and then interpret a herbaceous detail as a gettable item. In other words, you're pretty much completely stuck if you haven't got it by this point in the game.
All right. Obvious now you say this, isn't it?
Now let's leave it here and hope that the cat blunders into it.
Well, that apparently didn't work. Let's try a more direct approach.
Seems happy enough.
Good, go and take your silly accent with you.
Trying to speed things up a bit here, you can look in the cupboard while she's away wresting a bell from a cat, and find a photo album inside. What revealing secrets will that contain?
Great. Another helpful dose of complete unabashed irrelevance.
Once you've done that, Dixon of Dock Green over here suddenly appears and wanders into the front room or drawing-room or study or whatever it's meant to be.
Quite frankly, I don't feel quite ready for a moment of truth just yet. Our list of suspects has been narrowed down to everyone in the entire game, including a snake, a genie and Doctor Who.
How on earth can you have any possible notion that you think you know who the murderer is? Since you saw Horace getting stabbed you've been wandering around the grounds miles away from the house, and then sneaking about collecting documents that don't tell us anything.
I don't know. Isn't that your job?
Nevertheless, I chose Harry here, because he was the one with the most suspicious reaction to the news and he was playing an organ when I met him - an instrument second only to a xylophone made out of human bones on the range of instruments played by people who are up to no good.
Hugo apparently managed to stumble down the laundry chute at the beginning of the game...
...and has been starting at a newspaper, a pencil and a door for about an hour wondering if any possible combination of them could lead to the way out. I don't think you need to have been exactly raised on puzzle books to see your way past this one...
There we go. Now I'll stop my commentary as you watch the thrilling finale!
Everything you did in this game has been irrelevant, your protagonist couldn't tell the difference between someone being murdered and being poked with a butterknife, you've been messing about the grounds and occasionally dying meeting all kinds of hazards like snakes, Daleks, dynamite and match-destroying bridges, have wasted the time of Officer Higgins when he's been busy catching people going 31mph in built-up areas, and you've been generally interrupting people's lives for no reason at all. In other words, everyone would have been a bit better off if you hadn't started the game in the first place, you interfering busybody.
I'll get you, David Gray.