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A Critique of The State of Adventure Gaming
Erwin Broekhuis writes "The fourth and last installment of Beiddie Rafól's The Cold Hotspot: A Critique of the State of Adventure Games, has been published at Adventure Developers. The series explores some of the key points and contradictions of the stagnation and lack of direction within the adventure game genre." From the first article: "The truth is, the adventure game genre, as we all know it, has long been suffering from obscurity, lack of progress, sheer banality, isolation (surprise!), and, simply, from the garden variety of dullness. And everyone - developers, publishers, the media, and yes, we gamers ourselves - is guilty of creating and fueling this suffering."
Not being much of an adventure gamer myself(or maybe I am, its so hard to tell whats an adventure game these days) its hard to describe whats right or wrong with the genre in particular.
Frankly, I don't think there's much of a problem in the idea department, aside from technical hurdles (shinier, longer, faster, bigger adventures, you know the drill), people will design what they think is cool, and if it works, then cool, maybe it will get picked up.
But then again I could be wrong, and in the interest of consistency, I'll go ahead and deny that possibility.
I like adventure games a lot, specially those with a bit of action in them (usually called Action\Adventure games).
One of the things that disturbes me most is the incorrect labeling of games as adventure games. Way to often games are labeled as adventure games while they are really just action games. Flipping switches doesn't make an game an adventure game (i.e. tomb Raider).
Besides this most gamers don't want to break a sweat by doing some brain activity. Or so it looks. It's not like there are a lot of good adventure games. Maybe it's because of the popularity of online gaming, adventure games don't work well for online games (hint hint, a new area to explore, e.g. true gaming inovation).
Almost 10 years have past since the popularity of adventure games (or at least that's my opinion), maybe it's time for a true revival of that genre.
I'm specially looking for to good action\adventure games like Little Big Adventure, Dark Earth, Beyond Good & Evil (although the end of that game was rushed).
I skimmed the article, but like half of it was simply waffling over the definition of an adventure game, rather than a critique. Personally, I just always figured aventure games to be character/story-driven puzzle-games that gave you oodles of time to solve the puzzles, rather than twitch through them, and that provide you with a wide variety of different puzzles (rather than one main puzzle like Tetris).
In any case, I think the underlying problem is not adventure games, but that cerebral puzzle games in general are dead. Modern puzzle games are fast-action puzzles like Tetris and Chu-Chu rocket. While these have tactics and tricks, they don't have the sheer mind-bending problem-solving that classic puzzle-solver games had.
Of course, some adventure games were just obsurd - Sam & Max's puzzles were thoroughly opaque because of the cartoony wierdness of the solutions tp the problems. That one quickly turned into a guessing game.
There was no better time in PC gaming than when Sierra was actively developing their Quest games.
Kings Quest (at least KQ 1 - 7)
Space Quest (This NEEDS a 7)
Quest for Glory
These are what made gaming great. I absolutely loved their Robin Hood game, Conquests of the Longbow.
The only other game that was remotely as fun (though perhaps not as involving) as these was Grim Fandango from LucasArts.
Wonder what the Williams' (Ken & Roberta, the founders of Sierra) are up to these days, anyway. They need to get the old team back together and remind people why they were the powerhouse of PC gaming in its day.
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]
I'm also one of the people guilty of a certain degree of snobishness, when it comes to defining the adventure genre. In addition to the usual "story- and character-driven" requirements, my definition also includes interface and game mechanics-related things, such as an absolute lack of action or timed sequences in adventure games. Why? Because when I go to the store and approach the adventure section, I want to be sure that I'll enjoy the game I pick. I don't enjoy any real-time games, and only two genres can guarantee that I'll be spared of those: turn-based strategies and adventures. Please note that turn-based strategies already have a qualifier in their name; the entire strategy genre split into real-time and turn-based, precisely to offer a guarantee to people like me. Unfortunately, I don't see this happening with adventures.
That said, I acknowledge that there are adventure games that don't fit my definition. As the article said, I recognize an adventure game when I see it. However, instead of calling some games action/adventures, as I should, I tend to severly downrate them in my reviews for their violations of my definition. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon is a prime example. As good as the character development, writing and the majority of puzzles were, I gave it only 75%, courtesy of the action sequences.
I'm not planing to change my approach, though. There are so many good adventure games being released every month, thanks to a very strong and dedicated independent fan community, that I can afford to remain stubborn.
The state of adventure gaming is that it is dead. When was the last high-profile adventure game? Grim Fandango or something years ago? As far as I am aware, the only adventure games getting made these days are crappy shareware titles by part-time programmers. It's a shame because I used to love playing them, but after about 1998, all the developers seemed uninterested in making any more.
For me, it's all about the story, and so for me, GTA: San Andreas is an adventure game. It's got everything the old adventure games had, except for the puzzle solving. I would like to see more games like GTA, that gives you the freedom to do "anything*, but which also includes more stuff to do outside the predefined missions. It's a huge task for the programmers though. :)
I whole heartedly support the author's definition of an adventure game. Paraphrasing:
Point and click is dead, long live the adventure genreThe newest somewhat-high-profile adventure game is probably Another Code/Trace Memory by Cing/Nintendo.
Hopefully, this won't be the last good adventure game for the DS. I think the DS with its touchscreen might kind of start a new trend towards adventure-ish games.
Adventure gaming is dead. Editorialists speculate it killed itself.
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The articles (I read all four parts) mention how story and character development is one of the greatest strengths of adventure games. It then completely ignores that and says the way to save adventure games is to experiment more and take things from other generes. He praises adding things like real time 3D engines and direct character movement.
His recommendations actually impede the development of good stories, however. I stopped playing Final Fantasy games because it got boring as hell walking through those huge 3D scenes. They just slow down getting on with something interesting. Similarly, adding useless crap like that will just make an adventure game boring.
A far worse effect, however, is that the more options you add, the less story you can have. The more branches there are in your game, the smaller the amount of time story writers can spend on each. This means less will happen and characters will tend to stay the same on all branches so that more common material can be used.
Japanese adventure games are hugely, enormously popular. They have whole animated series produced following the same story lines as the games. It's not just erotic content, either, because many of these games get put on consoles with the erotic content removed and are still successful.
These games tend to have very few options or puzzles, though. It's not uncommon for walkthroughs to like 10-20 decision points and that's it. The huge benefit here, though, is that your story writers can write very detailed, dramatic story lines that take place in these branches.
The articles claim adventure games aren't dead. But the writer is the one recommending killing them.
Maybe something that would help the genre is a consistent definition... What I previously thought was "adventure game" would be categorized as "Action" by the people here it would seem. Really, any game nowadays could be classified as action. I always thought the Oddworld series was considered an adventure game. The same with most platforming games. All except the newest, "Stranger's Wrath" which I quite obviously categorized as full fledged action game (you are in first person shooting a crossbow most of the time).
I then popped over to GameSpot to see what they categorized them as. "Action"... okay... and Stranger's Wrath? ADVENTURE! What?
IGN has some listed as Platformer, some as Adventure, some as Action/Adventure... okay I'm completely confused now.
What is an Adventure game? One of those point and click games such as Day of the Tentacle? Is that all is considered "Adventure"?
...how it's my fault that LucasArts cancelled development on Full Throttle 2, claiming that "the market isn't right for adventure games right now" (or somesuch)? I really have to point the finger at the publishers - if not the developers themselves - for being locked in some faulty mindsets about which kinds of games consumers (for lack of a better word) would be willing to buy in sufficient quantities.
On the other hand, I'm willing to admit (if not bet money) that it could be myself who has a faulty mindset regarding which kinds of games will make the most money these days.
Still, diversity can be a healthy thing. Large publishers should consider the extra money they could make by reaching segments of the gamer audience that would be interested in a resurgense of good, original, and of course fun adventure games.
(P.S. I didn't RTFA)
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
You know, one of the worst things about adventure games was the inane logic. In some games, it was alright. Mostly the LucasArts and DiscWorld games, because they were set in pretty wacky premises to begin with. The Dig is a notable exception from LucasArts' other games, as the puzzles are much more realistic in terms of solvability.
I remember in Day of the Tentacle there was a point where you had to wash a wagon (in the late 1700s) to make it rain so that you could get Ben Franklin struck by lightning. Why would washing a wagon make it rain? Because if you have Bernard Bernouli look at the car parked outside the mansion in the present, he says it always rains when he washes his car.
That's the kind of weird logic I'm talking about. And one of the other comments had a link to something even more stupid and drawn out, in Gabriel Knight 3 (a game that is supposed to be relatively realistic) where you have to make a fake mustache so that you can disguise yourself as a person who doesn't even HAVE a mustache. You steal his passport and draw the mustache on with a marker. WTF? Why did I bother doing all that crap with the cat, the spray bottle, the candy, the syrup, and the masking tape when he doesn't have a mustache to begin with?
If developers could figure out that shit like that isn't fun, then maybe adventure games would come back.
It apparently injected the subject of a topic I posted in earlier. Mai bad.
I remember that puzzle! But inane as these puzzles were, you always got hints to solve them. Many times I slapped my forehead, exclaiming: 'Oh, of course!'. It's part of the charm, I think.
You'll see that commercial games are not needed. A strong crossplatform engine and game creation tools is all that is needed. It would also be nice to see the IF and Adventure communities to drop their snobism (we are just like books, just interactive -- pah, just text, look at our sweet graphics) and start working together or at least exchange some ideas, at the moment they seem to be pretending that the other does not exist.
KQ had 8 games.
King's Quest 8: Mask of EternitySome people didn't like it, others loved it, I was one of the people that loved this game. It was probably moreso an action game, but there were still some adventure elements left in (some puzzle stuff). However I believe for the time, the graphics were decent and the landscapes and music were quite good!
I loved Beyond Good and Evil. The Zelda series also qualifies as action/adventure.
I really miss the old Sierra/Lucasarts games though.
I actually still play them. Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, Space Quest, The Dig, etc. etc.
Have you checked out Psychonauts? It's by Tim Shafer's studio, Double Fine, and is very much a hybrid platformer/adventure. It's available for Xbox, PS2, and PC. (Tim Shafer was the director of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango.)
(Full disclosure: I'm one of the game's developers.)
While playing the game, I noticed differences, such as the fact that I never had to take a side-track from the story for the exclusive purpose of boosting stats. I cruised along at a relatively quick pace through the story. But I did notice the culmination of a trend in my reactions to RPGs over the years. Random encounters have become increasingly annoying to me, because they slow down progression of the story. If FFX had had many more random encounters than it did, or if I'd had to go on stat-boosting side-tracks from the story, I would probably not have finished the game. Furthermore, the game felt short. It wasn't particularly short, but it felt like it was. In a way this was nice, because I knew the missing time was just the annoying grinding. But it left me wishing there had been a bit "more", though more of what, I didn't know.
I ruminated on this for a while after finishing the game. I liked it a lot, but I knew it wasn't as good as it could have been. So I thought to myself, "What would have made this more enjoyable for me?" I decided that random encounters could probably be removed from the game. Monsters provide a nice story element, but let's face it-- In most every RPG every made, the use of monsters causes a trade-off between reliable plot-driver and a consistent world. If these worlds really had as many monsters as random battles would imply, then there'd be no way a regular person could survive in it.
With random encounters removed, a lot of what makes an RPG an RPG is gone. So I thought this idea was a failure. But what I didn't realize is that what we have left is much closer to "Adventure". With a few more modifications, we'd have a full-fledged Adventure game.
In short, I think that if the Adventure genre and the RPG genre took a look at each other they could learn a few good lessons from each other and join to become an improved amalgamation genre that would be even better than the originals. RPG, ease back on the stat-obsession, and cut the random encounters. Adventure, get used to 3D, develop more robust motion control, and don't shy away from multi- or many-use items and abilities.
Imagine how great it would be. A truly dynamic, interactive, maybe even open-ended, player-driven story. At the same time it could be audiovisually immersive (not just pretty), and avoid unrealistic grinding and stat-obsession that require constant "suspension of disbelief".
I heard thay playboy and hustler are coming out with new adult games for this christmas I cant wait it has been awhile since another great adult game has come ouy the last great ofcourse being grand thefy auto 4 anyways found that information here http://www.adultgamesadultgames.com/
I know it did, that's why I said (at least 1 - 7) ;)
[DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of satire and should not be misconstrued as a holy text upon which to base a religion.]