The Death of Adventure Games • Hacker News Board

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#61

Post by jestar_jokin » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 2:33 AM UTC

zavulon wrote: post #50

I think the iOS platform is helping the revival of adventure games. Just the ones I've personally played on the iPhone over the last couple of years: - Monkey Island 1 & 2 Special Edition (remastered graphics) - Broken Sword special edition - Hector: Badge of Carnage: EXCELLENT original game (if somewhat short) - Flight of the Amazon Queen - Beneath the Steel Sky - Gobliins I'm sure I'm missing something... There's a…

Actually, I would say this is more thanks to ScummVM (an open source re-implementation of many adventure game engines), as well as the people who ported it to iOS. The last three games listed probably use ScummVM without modification (citation needed), and I would be surprised if the Broken Sword and Monkey Island remakes were not heavily inspired by the efforts of ScummVM to revitalize interest in the games.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#62

Post by jestar_jokin » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 2:38 AM UTC

dwc wrote: post #29

zandorg wrote: post #12

Before I clicked, I thought it meant text adventures. Clearly they're deader than corduroy if graphical ones are now 'old'.

The graphic ones took all the depth out of the text adventures, but offered eye candy. So the trend goes...

I disagree. Legend Entertainment managed to make some great "text & graphics" adventure games: Companions of Xanth, Deathgate, Shannara, and Callahan's Crosstime Saloon spring to mind. Perhaps it helped that they were all based on novels.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#63

Post by Fargren » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 2:49 AM UTC

sid0 wrote: 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.

I enjoyed Machinarium, but I have a hard time calling an adventure game without dialog brilliant. It's pretty and whimsical, and fun at times, but I just don't see what's so great about it. It's very much like those flash "room games" with high production values, and those aren't very good most of the time.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#64

Post by darthvivi » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 3:15 AM UTC

It's ironic to see this article just days after the release of Gemini Rue, which is an outstanding adventure game. But I agree with the general message.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#65

Post by JoeAltmaier » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 3:35 AM UTC

Sanitarium was weird, frustrating, surreal, fascinating. I loved when the boss tossed you out of the barn with a complimentary wrench, just what you needed to wire the tractor battery to the gas drum or whatever, and blow up the barn.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#66

Post by Stormbringer » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 3:41 AM UTC

bonzoesc wrote: post #59

pmcginn wrote: 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.

The companion crate?

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#67

Post by sid0 » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 4:54 AM UTC

Fargren wrote: post #63

sid0 wrote: 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.

I enjoyed Machinarium, but I have a hard time calling an adventure game without dialog brilliant. It's pretty and whimsical, and fun at times, but I just don't see what's so great about it. It's very much like those flash "room games" with high production values, and those aren't very good most of the time.

Machinarium does have dialog. There's no text, but there's still dialog.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#68

Post by athom » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 5:03 AM UTC

dwc wrote: post #29

zandorg wrote: post #12

Before I clicked, I thought it meant text adventures. Clearly they're deader than corduroy if graphical ones are now 'old'.

The graphic ones took all the depth out of the text adventures, but offered eye candy. So the trend goes...

Actually, much of the Myst series' "eye candy" provided considerable depth, with all the journals and their diagrams, video segments, and (sort of) interactive points. While the environments were largely static (read: empty, dead), the back story found in the journals and other elements was interesting enough to keep going, at least for a while.

Depth in graphic adventures may be tough, but it's doable.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#69

Post by irondavycole » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 5:27 AM UTC

pmcginn wrote: 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,…

Fans of OMM might be interested in the Wikipedia drama surrounding the OMM article deletion:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03/02/old-man-murray-de...

I have no dog in the fight, Wikipedia arguments are dizzyingly pedantic, but I found the conversation interesting.

Re: The Death of Adventure Games

#70

Post by rsheridan6 » Thu, Mar 03, 2011, 5:54 AM UTC

They trash Gabriel Knight III, but I would go back farther and trash Gabriel Knight II and other games of that era. That was when it first became technically possible to have a significant amount of multimedia in a game, so it did things like make you watch your avatar walk excruciatingly slowly from the car to the edge of the screen everytime you wanted to go anywhere, and you had to listen to a bunch of interminable bad acting.

I wouldn't know about Gabriel Knight III because I didn't bother to play it, or other Sierra games, after getting burnt by their earlier CD-ROM era games.