The Silver Lining

After playing Diablo it was time to play something happier. Coincidentally episode 4 of The Silver Lining came out during the Sunday. Unfortunately my internet seemed to screw up so I had to wait until yesterday to get it. Then I played it until the end. Yes, I finished it in one day... or at least till 2 AM this morning so technically it would be two days. Well, it wasn't that much happier story, people seemed really depressed and who would blame them. There is some serious business going on in that game. And yet for some reason I was able to finish it. I don't know how I was able to finish that game (well, I do since I know what to do now). I ended up having a lot of luck when it came to playing this game. First I just stumbled through the castle in the beginning and just happened to touch items from the earlier parts that I now was able to take. Pure coincidence. Then the game float on like normal and I picked up some small hints here and there and could guess fairly well what they was supposed to do. It might have to be my King's Quest marathon earlier this year so I had trained my brain to recognize those small hints and solutions. One puzzle in particular was the same as in the ADG Interactive King's Quest II: Romancing the Stones. Then I get stuck trying to get an instrument to get the first ingredient, so I just stands near it since I know that it's that thing I need, but I don't know how to get it. So I look in my inventory and look on those things I haven't used (everyone knows that if an item is picked up it gotta be used). I have no clue on what to do, but then my mind turns into a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. This is gonna be spoilers so here goes. I needed a horn, it existed in a 3D-picture, but the game wouldn't allow me to take it. I had found a gold baton and some beast hair and my mind just said, "what if we make it look like a horn and switch them around?". You see how ridicules that is? It didn't work, how could it? Although it wasn't completely wrong, the game told me I was missing some thing to glue (subtle is it not?) it together so I went where I knew it was and suddenly I had a painters brush. No idea what that was for, it was actually an answer to another puzzle which I hadn't found yet, so I basically found the answer before I knew what it was for so I figured the puzzles out backwards just by mistake. Wish life would be that easy, having all the solution, you just need to find the problems to solve them.

Either this was a much easier than the earlier episodes or my luck was just fantastic... it ended pretty much with the second to last puzzle. Not because it was hard to figure out what to do (took me 5 seconds), no, because they decided to make the puzzle harder and harder. The puzzle is to solve 12  combinations with 4 spinning wheels with different images that together form one of the zodiacs. After solving the first ones the wheels spin faster, then they blink in and out, then they change places (you start to see the problem?) and after combining 10 they start moving around the screen, still spinning and phasing in and out. This was on the normal difficulty and it was after 1 AM so I decided to chicken (tired as hell with a headache is not the best mood to play a game of patience and memorization) out after an hour so I could finish it before I went to bed so I quit and restored my earlier game. Somehow I glitch it, always present was the spinning wheel of the Pandoras Box and my clue in the Druid's parchment was the Druid himself instead of Shamir the Genie that I was supposed to see at that point. Anyway, I played the puzzle again, but on easy this time (meaning they cut of the changing places and swirling all around the screen) and thus beating it... and the next puzzle following: Magic Duel with the Big Bad of the game. Oh Yeah, it was epic. Unfortunately it will probably be another half year or something before the conclusion is payable. Oh well.