Love your taste in games, and the Viper reference

That's...well, I'm not entirely surprised you can do that, actually.

I'm totally on board with a game that guarantees you'll win no matter what, even if you get more points and a better ending for solving all the puzzles correctly. My problem is that (a) they never tell you that in the instruction manual or anywhere in the game, so there's no reason to think LSL5 will be any different from its predecessors, and (b) YOU CAN STILL GET STUCK (as you pointed out).

The worst part is that you don't really DO anything. Find the code. Enter the code. Click on the same object five times in a row until something different happens. Repeat. And I wouldn't mind the poker if it weren't the ONLY way to make money. What about the slot machines and the roulette table? At least give me some options if you're going to force me to gamble!

If it were a standalone game or the first in the series, maybe I'd cut the game some slack, but the game is hardly a fifth (or fourth, technically) installment, and it's hardly a Larry game. Way too late for a tutorial.

To be fair, Sierra was making hint books before the likes of Prima Games and other third parties were founded, so in-house was pretty much the only option. And the death message for the unstable ordinance in SQ4 DOES tell you it's a lousy idea to carry around unstable ordinance. (For that matter, the spinach dip death in LSL2 does the same, but the notion of throwing it overboard instead of losing a point for eating it is obtuse.) Still, I would agree—these guys knew what they were doing.

Interesting thought...I'd heard about the Game Genie conspiracy—making games intentionally impossible to drive up Game Genie sales—but I never thought about the hint book angle. I did like the barber scenes, and the last area of the game starts to make up for the rest of it (but not nearly enough).