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The Death of Adventure Games

oldmanmurray.com

51–60 of 90 posts

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#51
post #18

Syberia I & II, The Longest Journey/Dreamfall are a couple of amazing adventure game series. Neither are exactly recent (2004 and 2007 respectively), but they're still full of atmosphere and enjoyable to play.

I've started playing adventure games in late 80's/early 90's with King's Quest and Gobliiins, and I've seen pretty much all of it, but for my money, there's no better adventure game than Longest Journey

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Crate Review System is a true classic that's worth reading even though a few of the jokes are outdated: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/39.html

This one's timeless though: Kevin: This shot reminds me: You'll see games with forklifts and crates, but you won't see one goddamn pallet. You know what a pallet is right? Yeah, you worked at the warehouse, you know. But all these whiny bitches who go to college on their parents' money and then design games have never been inside a real fucking warehouse and have no fucking clue that in order to move a fucking crate,…

I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back. Then cover-based shooters became popular. For those who don't know, a "cover-based shooter" is a shooting game in which the game explicitly has a concept of taking cover, such that your character can actually duck behind things and has explicit support for popping up and shooting things. As opposed to simply ducking behind a wall in Doom or something, which has always been good strategy but never actually been part of the engine.

Sadly, there are only two forms of cover level designers seem to be able to work into games now: crates, and in a true sign of giving up, completely unmotivated chest-high walls, which apparently on the battlefields of the past, present, and future are just sort of treated like a basic decoration tool, like an "arch" or "window". ("Hey, hon, I cleared a space in the backyard, what should we do with it?" "Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of having a white picket fence, a dog, and a small maze of chesthigh walls in the backyard. Grab a shovel.") Now we're back to a TTC of approximately "whenever the first firefight" occurs, so, yeah, few seconds tops.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#53

I used to be a humongous fan of 2D adventure games. Most notably the Space Quest series. If you've never played them start out with Space Quest 4 and then play SQ6. The audio dialog in the game is unrivaled humor. Full Throttle was also one of the mega-classics of 2D adventure games. I think the downfall of these games came when the studios tried to go the 3D route.

[deleted]

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#54
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one's timeless though: Kevin: This shot reminds me: You'll see games with forklifts and crates, but you won't see one goddamn pallet. You know what a pallet is right? Yeah, you worked at the warehouse, you know. But all these whiny bitches who go to college on their parents' money and then design games have never been inside a real fucking warehouse and have no fucking clue that in order to move a fucking crate,…

I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back. Then cover-based shooters became popular. For those who don't know, a "cover-based shooter" is a shooting game in which the game explicitly has a concept of taking cover, such that your character can actually duck behind things and has explicit support for popping up and shooting things. As opposed to simply ducking behind a wall in Doom or something,…

> I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back.

Ironically I think crates went out faster IRL than in game. I haven't seen crates in forever, barrels yes but not a true crate. Most things now are placed on a pallet and shrink wrapped like crazy. They'll stack a couple of these on top of each other and they remain intact.

The strange thing in games is that crates manage to get themselves into places where it just doesn't make sense. Like in Kingpin, they managed to get down an alley way with a small area for the buildings back doors. It was like some hobo was wheeling crates around the city with a dolly cart.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#56
post #13

The article's over ten years old, and since then there's been a sorta revival of the genre. There are all the Telltale games, the Monkey Island remakes, and more recently the brilliant Machinarium. Digital distribution services like Steam have helped, of course.

Problem is that games like Machinarium are still just "hunt the live pixel". You have to hope you get close enough to the active object in order to notice it/grab it/operate it. On a larger resolution, this can be quite maddening. Game Designers: How about making the useable objects more noticeable (like a glimmer or something). Also having the puzzles make sense goes a long way.

I rather liked the Grim Fandango's mechanism for solving this problem; Manny would turn to look at an interesting object when he walked past it.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#57
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might not be as popular percentage-wise, but what are the sales totals and revenue like compared directly to those titles, I wonder? The total market must be a lot larger than it was back then.

Myst is still one of the biggest sellers (in units total) even today, IIRC it sold 6 million units.

Layton's sold 9.5 million, and Phoenix Wright is not far off with 3.9 million.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#58
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back. Then cover-based shooters became popular. For those who don't know, a "cover-based shooter" is a shooting game in which the game explicitly has a concept of taking cover, such that your character can actually duck behind things and has explicit support for popping up and shooting things. As opposed to simply ducking behind a wall in Doom or something,…

> I thought crates were actually on their way out a few years back. Ironically I think crates went out faster IRL than in game. I haven't seen crates in forever, barrels yes but not a true crate. Most things now are placed on a pallet and shrink wrapped like crazy. They'll stack a couple of these on top of each other and they remain intact. The strange thing in games is that crates manage to get themselves into place…

On (working) military bases, and some industrial sites, you will still see plenty of crates (often reusable), pallets with built-up storage things for liquids or special purpose parts, and 10', 20', and 40' containers. Plus, barrels. I was surprised just how much bases in Iraq and Afghanistan looked like video game levels.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#59
post #8

Oh, wow. OMM, talk about memories (the linked article is from 2000.) Among other things Chet and Erik were famous for the Time To Crate system of reviewing games by how long it took from starting the game until you saw a crate. Since this was the late 90s/early 2ks, it was generally zero seconds. This was in comparison to real life, where I frequently go years at a time without seeing a single crate, but then again,…

Chet and Eric got jobs at Valve, where they helped design a game that has an inanimate crate as one of its most memorable characters.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#60
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