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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."
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.
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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...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.
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".