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."

Comments

Defining the genre

[NetDanzr]

I consider myself to be a big adventure game fan. The kind of a fan who plays upwards to 30 adventures per month: one or two big-budget games, a whole bunch of new independent adventures and a dozen or so interactive fiction games on my Sony Clie while sitting in the bathroom.

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.

Not quite dead yet

[LKM]

The 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.