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Why First Person Shooters Beat Text Adventure Games
einstein writes "Old Man Murray has this commentary on why the adventure game genre lost out to titles like Doom, Quake, and why players would "rather run around in short shorts raiding tombs than experience real stories..." also provides an interesting look into the eyes of an adventure game writer." Ah, Old Man Murray - some of the funniest reading out there, in my book.
Actually, IIRC, if you follow step by step (this happened, block it with this, now this happens, block it with this), the dispenser runs out of fish just before the last one. You have to think ahead a bit.
Teach your kids: "C++ made baby Jesus cry."
Its got guns, action, good graphics, a storyline, and perhaps most importantly, a hot babe in tight clothes...
What more does a male need?
Ok, this is probably worthy of some flames....
Text adventures are not games; they are puzzles. Games cannot be solved, only won.
Single-player FPSes are puzzles that are so intricately molded that you can't tell they are puzzles. There is typically one solution ("kill the boss!"), but hundreds of ways to get to that solution ("Let's just use the pea-shooter this time!"). The more interesting single-player FPSes hide the nature of the puzzle by improving the AI to the point where you can't see any obvious patterns.
Other single-player games become too puzzle-like when the AI is crap. In various incarnations of EA Sports' NHL series, for example, the game is fun until you find one type of shot that always works for a goal. At that point, you have "solved" the "game" because the goalie bites on your deke move (or whatever) every time.
Multi-player computer games are GAMES. And in my very extremely humble opinion, gamers graduate to the point where computer AI is no longer interesting and the only solution is to add humans.
This is why the consoles must eventually be netted; not because the net will become utterly ubiquitous, but because AIs will always be harder to make interesting than other humans.
--
>look
You are in a texture-mapped, shadow-mapped, Bezier curved hallway. There are obviously a lot of polygons being pushed here. Through the volumetric fog you see a pink monster.
>i
You are carrying:
a brass lantern
a shotgun
a pile of junk mail
The pink monster attacks!
>kill monster with all
brass lantern: The pink monster howls with pain!
shotgun: The pink monster howls with pain!
pile of junk mail: Your thrust is blocked, and the pile of junk mail breaks in two!
>hi, monster
The pink monster tips his hat to you.
The pink monster emits a hideous scream, and ends your life with one fell swoop of his gigantic claw!
-- END OF SESSION --
Imagine that you had never heard of a babel fish, or what it does -- how the hell are you supposed to know that, in order to advance in the game, you have to enter the command 'PUT FISH IN EAR'?
(spoiler ahead)
You never have to enter that command. There's a babel fish dispenser in the room and not much else of interest. You're sitting around with nothing to do, so you try pushing the "Dispense" button.. It shoots out a fish and it goes right into a hole in the wall. So you put your gown on a hook on the wall and try again, and the fish hits the gown, goes down its sleeve, and into a drain. This continues, and eventually, the fish ends up in your ear as the result of a huge Rube Goldberg-style chain reaction. You never have to know it belongs in your ear; it just ends up there.
Plus, your character is carrying a copy of the hitchhikers' guide itself, and you can type
> LOOK UP BABELFISH IN GUIDE
and it will tell you all about them.
You really shouldn't have taken such an authoritative tone with such blatantly incorrect information.
--
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Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Rather than type
"turn left", "open door", "blow motherfuckers' heads off"
Most of us would rather , ,
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I have loved playing Zork, and all of the Monkey series, Day of the Tentacle, along with Grim Fandago. Some of the best computer games around and definately some of my most favorites. (Gee most Lucasart's games ;-)
;-)
:-)
But there are reasons WHY I play Quake TeamFortress, (now Quake 3 CTF) every weekend.
a) Adventure games are linear. Everything is brand new the first time through. Replaying the game again is like re-reading a favorite book. You know exactly what is going to happen. (And yes, FPS are repetitive, no argument here.)
Adventure: 0, FPS: 0
b) Adventure games are usually solo. (Allthough I had one of my best friends over when playing the Monkey Island and Grim Fandago. It was like watching a good movie together.)
Adventure: N (lots of fun to play) FPS: N (where n = # of players in game
c) There isn't any teamwork in an adventure game. I'd say this is the only reason I keep playing FPS's. Deathmatch gets boring pretty fast (Doom/Quake junkie) so team play is what keeps things fresh. Diablo 2 single player is awfully repetitive, but hardcore co-op is certainly a blast (pun intended.)
Adventure: 0, FPS: 1
d) FPS can be played for just a few minutes. Only have 5 minutes for a quick game? No prob. Adventure games take a "while" to get into the mood. I remember playing Thief ONLY late at nite, whereas Quake3 most of sundays
Adventure: 0, FPS: 1
So on a purely articial scale, FPS's "win" - just barely. Doesn't mean adventure games aren't just as good. FPS just happen to be more "convenient" to the mass-gamers.
I would say the social settings is the main reason FPS's are more popular. Massive Multiplayer games (like UO, EQ, Diablo 2), and FPSs clearly show that people just want to "virtually hang-out"
Here's an interesting thought: that Thief 1/2 is a FPS "adventure game", but yet I still enjoyed it. Maybe today's adventure games are morphing?
Aside: Woohoo, Monkey Island 4 is in development.
Cheers
A guy dressed in green with the handle "WrathMonkey" stands ten yards in front of you with a large shot gun.
>:Change weapons
I don't know what you mean.
>:Inventory
In your sack of plenty you have:
1. Pointed Stick
2. Nail Gun - 100 Rounds
3. BFG - 1 round
>:2
You are now holding the Nail Gun
>:Gib the green guy.
I don't know what you mean.
>:Shoot the green guy with the Nail Gun
That won't work. Try something else.
>: Load ammunition.
OK.
>:Shoot the green guy with the Nail Gun.
OK. The green guy is now dead. I hope you feel good about yourself.
www.ridiculopathy.com
copyright ridiculopathy.com!
/. does not own this
I know that I still miss playing the Zork series, and other classic text games like that. One of my favourites, however, was The HitchHiker's Guide To The Galaxy, based on the novel by the same name. It was a great game that followed the story faithfully, while leaving some new things to do for people who weren't familiar with the story.
Unfortunately, this caused a lot of problems. Why? H2G gave birth to what is referred to as the most difficult puzzle ever: the babel fish.
Imagine that you had never heard of a babel fish, or what it does -- how the hell are you supposed to know that, in order to advance in the game, you have to enter the command 'PUT FISH IN EAR'?
That's the problem with text-based games -- unline games such as Monkey Island, there aren't any visual clues as to what you do next. You have to rely on your wit to get you through to the next puzzle.
--
CitizenC
You are in a musty cellar. To your north a hole in the floor reveals a secret passage
GO NORTH
You are standing on the edge of a hole which leads down to a secret passage
GO DOWN
You enter the passage. As you proceed along it, a blade suddenly leaps out of the wall at you.
DUCK
Do not understand DUCK
GET DOWN
I Can't do that
CROUCH
You crouch, but your reactions were to slow, and the blade severs your head from your body. In your dying moments you see a large-breasted girl in tight shorts somersault over your headless body and on into the Tomb. She's quite athletic. You begin to feel that progress is catching up with you.
Game Over
Imagine trying to play an excellent game like Sam n' Max with somebody who's never played an adventure game before...
And so on. While most adventure games aren't quite as bad as the Gabriel Knight example, they do rely on a bunch of arbitrary rules that, while somewhat logical to anybody who's played an adventure game before, would make absolutely no sense to anybody who hasn't been trained to the way of adventure games.
And that, I believe, is why adventure games (at least the old-style ones) are dying. At least with an FPS, you can figure out the rules within the first 30 seconds (Shoot something and it dies!)
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
Ideally, the adventure would have to have multiple plots and storylines, the main characters should be 'configurable' to your own wishes, etc..
I do play FPS games from time to time, and I do admire the graphics and all, but those games tend to be very boring, because the levels are too easy to solve. The level writers seek complexitiy in just adding more and more opponents in a level, instead of adding more story and more puzzles to solve.
So in my opinion, the FPS is *not* the right way to go, it should be combined with the good elements from the 'old' adventure games.
How to make a sig
without having an idea
People need to realize that action games and puzzle games (the ones listed above) are two different genres that have yet to compete with each other except in a few isolated titles [*]. For every puzzle game that is put out, there are easily 3 if not more quake-like clones, the action market gets that much more visibility.
Additionally, at this point in time with technology, it's very hard to do a truely complete puzzle game that is completely free-form, as the mustache example tries to emphasize. You'd have to create a small subset of the Grand Unified Theory in order to deal with every sitution that the player may attempt. This, of course, is impractical, so there is a very limited subset of actions that you can do.
But my biggest beef is the choice of example. Gabriel Knight's not very good as a puzzle game. Better examples tend to be anything from LucasArts, including the Monkey Island triology and Grim Fandango. The objects that you collect tend to have very unique properties, that fit in the game at only one place, but generally have good, funny responses if you try to use them elsewhere that are a near match. To that extent, it shows that the game designs tried to anticipate all actions the users might want to do, and add appropriate actions or responses for flavoring. They also drop more than enough hints, but you have to make sure you talk to everyone and look at everything.
Puzzle gaming is far from dead. It's just that there's a vast difference for most players of puzzle genre and fps genre.
[*] Some of the recent FPS/RPG combos (System Shock 2, Deus Ex) come somewhat close, while Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine is more puzzle that FPS, even though it is a FPS.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
This month's Atlantic Monthly has a piece written by Jose Luis Borges in 1967. He puts forward the argument that the novel - which is centered around the intricacies of original plots - is dying. Instead people are "hungering and thirsting for epic" - and the plots of epic are few and simple, but far more powerful.
I think we are seeing something similar in gaming. Adventure games based upon dizzyingly intricate and confusing puzzle-games are dying, replaced by simple, but far more powerful game-plots based - like epics - upon the travails and victories of heroes.
Borges writes in the piece: "I think that the novel is breaking down. I think that all those very daring and interesting experiments with the novel - for example, the idea of shifting time, the idea of the story's being told by different characters - all those are leading to the moment when we will feel that the novel is no longer with us." It isn't hard to substitute "adventure game" for "novel" in this sentence.