Ratings and Reviews by Audiart

I found this game a lot denser than other Ned Yompus games. It is almost a sequel to Shuffling Around in format and gameplay. The main sequence is exploring the environment to figure out what the wordplay is, then adapting your command to that scene.

Ultimately I found the solutions increasingly illogical and farfetched and ended up resorting to the walkthrough constantly. Even while following the author's walkthrough directly, the solutions just stopped making any sense to me pretty early into the game.

Since Buck the Past has essentially no plot or character development, everything boils down to whether or not the wordplay makes sense and is funny. In most cases, the solutions are so unintuitive that it is hard to enjoy the more clever moments.

I enjoyed Shuffling Around quite a bit, but Buck the Past, while based with a good premise, was ultimately too untamed and illogical for me to complete.

This game was not for me. I found the intro monotonous and the second part of the game was incredibly frustrating to interact with. I liked where the philosophy was heading but I was fighting the "controls" too hard to enjoy it. However the uniqueness of the game and the surprise element make it worth going over to see it's your bag.

Bobby and Bonnie was more challenging than I expected, but never frustrating. You play a rabbit in a magical setting which although sparsely implemented more than made up for it in imagination. An intersting narration device: the narrator is your sibling, so they speak in the second person, like most parser games, but they are also right there next to you.

This game would be great for older kids but they might need some help with a few of the puzzles. The built in hints but they are not that helpful. There are a few stumper moments but the solutions are logical and can be derived from experimentation and exploration. Also required is some familiarity with Peter Paul and Mary.

Not only is Detective virtually unplayable on its own, but the commentary so annoying that it actually detracted from the original game, making it even more unplayable than it already is. The intro is so tedious and unfunny as to be truly unbearable. The in-game jokes and asides are so obvious that they do not need to be said, and like much humour, it is much funnier to leave the obvious unsaid.

The original game is worth playing just for its infuriating unplayability, and at least has the excuse that it was made by a kid who put a minimal amount of work into this under-implemented and poorly constructed game. MST3k:Detective, on the other hand, is made by competent adults with obvious coding experience, so there is no excuse for it being as awful as it is.

If you feel like getting a kick out of playing Detective, just play the original and shake your head in wonder at its badness while inserting your own frustrated exclamations in the necessary places. You will have a much better laugh if you experience Detective firsthand and run the commentary in your own mind.

Admiral Jota delivers again in what is easily the best game in this set of SpeedIF. While remaining true to the theme of the comp, 2604 is in no way lacking for having been made under a time constraint.

2604 has a lot of replay value and indeed encourages you to do so, as there are some nice subtleties in the timed events that clue you into what is really going on. The replay is painless and allows one to watch the timed events more closely. In fact, I would recommend NOT reading the theme before playing (as I did) because it is much more fun to figure out what is going on by yourself.

The solution is simple but satisfying and echoes the old-school method of trying to get at an obvious solution by puzzling out sparse rooms and a few well-hidden objects.

It is almost a pity that 2604 is associated with the otherwise pretty rotten collection of SpeedIF games in this theme, because it stands so brilliantly on its own. A must-play quickie.