No, he's right, they were. Examples of needing an item you had no indication you should have picked up earlier:
Space Quest 2, the Labion Terror Beast whistle. You needed the order form from your locker (on the second screen in!) to put into the mailbox (on the tenth screen) to obtain the whistle. Otherwise, a large number of hours, several very difficult insta-death sequences later, you'd come across a rock that you couldn't get past. You needed to blow the whistle to summon the Taz-esque beast who'd grind through it.
Codename Iceman, the microfilm. In order to get this, you needed to pull the girl in the hotel bar at the beginning. The following day, after you've had the holy trinity off her, you needed to spot the ONE PIXEL flashing on the ground that was her dropped earring. Which contains a microfilm. Which later on you were able to read with a microfilm reader to obtain part of a vital combination to a briefcase or safe or something.
Codename Iceman, the ID card. When you visit the Pentagon, an overzealous security guard takes your ID card off you. When you leave the briefing, you need to remember to ask for it back. You also need to remember to check it, as he accidentally gives you the wrong one. And naturally, several hours of play later you'll need to insert the card into something to access some crucial info.
Codename Iceman, cycling the weapons equipment. You are given ONE chance to explore the sub before the story takes over and puts you into battle. During this time, you need to visit the torpedo room and 'cycle the equipment'. This causes the utterly ridiculous automatic weapon loading equipment to break (a large claw places a torpedo or missile atop a conveyor belt, which then rolls it into the tube) and you need to dredge up all your memories of metal shop class to make accurate measurements and use the various power tools in the sub's huge machine shop to make a new cylinder and cotter pin to repair the conveyor belt. As otherwise, when you encounter the Russian destroyer, you try to fire your weapons and THEN the equipment breaks, and you die.
Codename Iceman, the diver. You have a diving vehicle (you wear scuba equipment, and it propels you). Unless you think to test it before leaving the sub on your secret mission (and, in all honesty, the episode with the weapons system should have warned you) you'll not notice the vibration until you're out at sea, and the propellor falls off.
Police Quest, the nightstick. Unless you think to look around your car and realize that your department keeps the nightstick with the patrol car, in a holder on the door, you'll get kicked in by the bikers in the biker bar as you have no means of defending yourself (your gun isn't allowed as a solution)
Police Quest 2, resighting your gun. During the siege on the motel, you are nearly killed by a boobytrapped door. Jumping out of the way, you whack your gun on the wall and knock the sight out of alignment (you needed to have painstakingly sighted the gun earlier in the game or you'd be killed in a gun battle). You need to realize the gun's sights are off and go resight them before going to the airport for your flight to Steelton. Otherwise, when the Ey-rab hijackers take over, you won't be able to shoot them dead (even though they're three feet away).
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