11–20 of 108 posts
I so desperately want to like adventure games. I love the visual styles, I love the storytelling opportunities, but the idea of being defeated by an opaque puzzle infuriates me.
Interesting and amusing read. Of course Ron Gilbert is a well-known authority on Adventure Games, but the original Old Man Murray article is even better (and funnier). In case anyone hasn't read it yet: "Who Killed Adventure Games?" http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html (As an amusing aside, point-and-click adventure games were considered to be for "clever" gamers in 90s Spain and Latin America; gamers who moc…
Interesting thing about life in the 90s without internet is that we were able to consume something without being part of any larger culture around it. I loved and played a lot of adventure games. All LucasArts' and a few others. I never even heard of this cultural trace of adventure gamers thinking of themselves as more clever and looking down to action games players. For me it just something easier to play because i…
It wasn't a vicious sentiment, like you would have nowadays, just a feeling of superiority from adventure gamers. They also reacted fiercely when game designers started introducing action gameplay in adventure games, creating action/adventure hybrids. The feeling was that they were "dumbing down" adventure games. Which, if you read the Old Man Murray article, is of course a hilarious notion.
I loved adventure games too! As I said, I cut my teeth with the original (and punishing) Space Quest series, and to this day I have fond memories of it. I also learned quite a bit of English from the series :)
I so desperately want to like adventure games. I love the visual styles, I love the storytelling opportunities, but the idea of being defeated by an opaque puzzle infuriates me.
I'm gonna react to the 2004 date instead of the original 1989 publication date. Runaway was released in 2001, Myst in 1993 and the sequel in 1997, Lucasfilm Indiana Jone in 1992 (a game of such quality that fans demanded a movie based on it), Broken Sword 1996, etc. These are just the few I bothered looking up. There has been a good amount of adventure game masterpieces between 1989 and 2004. Lots of bad ones, but al…
Even so, there were still a lot of attempts made at overcoming an obstacle, using normal logic, that failed because they required a joke punchline instead, such as... finding a straw in a needle stack.
Modern I.F. games are a lot better in that respect, because you can code in a half-dozen solutions for the same puzzle, without creating new voice and graphic resources for all those alternate solutions.
There did seem to be a huge gap for many years in the existence of good adventure games. I have fond memories of many ones from yesteryear, but then it largely felt that anything that was out was pretty boring or just trying to copy them. And last week I started playing Disco Elysium, and it's everything I ever wanted from something like an adventure/rpg and more.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting thing about life in the 90s without internet is that we were able to consume something without being part of any larger culture around it. I loved and played a lot of adventure games. All LucasArts' and a few others. I never even heard of this cultural trace of adventure gamers thinking of themselves as more clever and looking down to action games players. For me it just something easier to play because i…
I learned about this phenomenon (looking down I mean) from the forums of Home of the Underdogs, which gathered people from all over the world. This was 2004 I believe. But also from magazines we got from Spain. For some reason adventure and text adventures were really big in Spain, and along with it the notion (in their subcommunities) that action games were for the "dumber" crowd. It wasn't a vicious sentiment, like…
I remember taking hours in one of the first King Quests, that used typed text input, that the right verb was to "pick-up' a cup. Not take, not get, which were the only ones I knew at the time for picking up things.
"If I could have my way, I'd design games that were meant to be played in four to five hours. The games would be of the same scope that I currently design, I'd just remove the silly time-wasting puzzles and take the player for an intense ride. The experience they would leave with would be much more entertaining and a lot less frustrating. The games would still be challenging, but not at the expense of the players pat…
I couldn't go past the first few scenes of Thimbleweed Park either. I think I would have loved it when I was a teenager, but the point-and-click genre is just not for me anymore. (Also, and I know this is heresy, I couldn't finish the much lauded Psychonauts back then either). I think I simply had more patience for this kind of games when I was younger. I'm more willing to give experimental Interactive Fiction a go t…
I finished Psychonauts. Once. I have tried to replay it and I just cannot, there is so much of it and I really do not want to slog through the tutorial area just so I can re-experience the Milkman Conspiracy.
Thimbleweed might have been better if I'd played it on the "light" version; the "full" version is mostly "lots of extra 'jokes' about how adventure games were better back in 1993".
I'm gonna react to the 2004 date instead of the original 1989 publication date. Runaway was released in 2001, Myst in 1993 and the sequel in 1997, Lucasfilm Indiana Jone in 1992 (a game of such quality that fans demanded a movie based on it), Broken Sword 1996, etc. These are just the few I bothered looking up. There has been a good amount of adventure game masterpieces between 1989 and 2004. Lots of bad ones, but al…