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Sam and Max 2: Reloaded
CamelToes writes "Sam and Max 2 is not dead! According to a Gamespot article, the team that was working on bringing the new Sam n' Max adventure game 'has formed a new studio called Telltale Games. The San Rafael-based developer will concentrate on re-energizing the adventure game market.' Amazing what an on-line petition will do these days."
GS: When do you expect to announce a publishing partner?
DC: We may not. The proliferation of broadband has opened a direct channel to fans of these types of games...
Sounds like they may anticipate doing online distribution not unlike Valve with Steam, albeit hopefully less painful.
LucasFan Games Maniac Mansion Deluxe. 200,000 downloads. Multilingual. 256 color VGA graphics, digital audio effects and a full MIDI score. Windows only. Free-as-in-beer.
A long time ago, Gremlin released a game called "Normality, Inc." (http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?name=Normal ity), which was just what you described: an adventure game with an FPS engine. The game is an hillarious adventure in a totalitarian futurustic world a-la-1984, and sadly was grossly overlooked by many. If you're on the mood, try it on DOSBox. Recommended.
I think i'll always preffer 2d action adventures, but this has been done before, very well, and it actually worked. Imagine a terrror adventure a-la-Gabriel Knight using the Doom 3 engine...
For those that don't know, those were fully 3-D adventure games. Not only that, but they managed to be interactive movies at the same time, right about all the time all the 'interactive movies' were failing. (Think CD-I, if that rings a bell.) The last one, Overseer, had a DVD with DVD quality video.
It's interesting that one of the first, and only, adventure games that managed to get 3-D enviroments right was also one of the first, and only, adventure games that managed to get full motion video right. They managed to combine DOOM quality movement (This is when we were all trying to get those fancy new VESA video cards, or running Sci-Tech if we didn't have one.) with quake quality once you stopped for a second, and a somewhat crappy actual recorded video obviously done on a bluescreen and pasted in front of the background. Rounded objects tended to be non-rotatable...
But, seriously, while the quality of the video sucked, the very first game in the series was for DOS and required a 386/25 SX and 4 megs of RAM. You don't need all these new 3-D engines to make an adventure game. Access Software did it on a shoestring budget, using programmers and company executives as actors.
But then damn Microsoft bought Access Software for their golf game and stopped the series.
I own the second, The Pandora Directive and third, Overseer, and I hope that one day I can find the first cheap, Under a Killing Moon.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?