Quote:
|
Originally Posted by squarejawhero
As for this review, well, there's really not much wrong with it. Judging from comments on this board, people are fairly evenly split between ecstatic from those who really dig this style of adventure, to disappointed for various reasons. The guy sounds more concerned with the fact AG's aren't progressing, much like Trepsie, rather than dedicated to towing a line. Most of the references to the games technical problems are justified from what I've played of it.
|
Tha's what I've been trying to point out. The reviewer has a valid argument. He seems to point out how the formulaic gameplay in Still Life is
indicative of the redundancies sprawling across many adventure games to come out in the past several years, due to the lack of exploration and experimentation in concepts and design:
Quote:
Its slavish dedication to convention will scratch the methodical, cerebral itch all diehard adventure game fans have. As a genre exercise, though, it exerts little energy to draw in new players.
...it's hard to believe that anyone who is still devoted to this style of gaming will find a lot in Still Life that they haven't experienced already.
|
Whatever exceptions, like Missing/In Memoriam, are pretty blatant in context. How many adventure games made rely on the Internet as a crucial part of its experience? How many take advantage of artificial intelligence in problem solving? Many of us are perfectly fine with the status quo and want the genre to keep producing the same fundamental stuff over and over and over. But whereas we scream for more of the same (and YES, more of the same will be made ad infitum), how fair is that to people like the reviewer, squaresie, me, and others who want very rich story driven games but without action and new ways to challenge us intellectually beyond the typical puzzle-cutscene-puzzle-cutscene approach? The same exact things you want but with a new exciting mechanic and architecture?
Conversely, Still Life IS a 'tradtional' adventure game, thus it should be reviewed in that context as well, with the pinpoint emphasis not on innovation (because the game never set out to do that), but on
how well the game refines and makes better and better the tried-and-true formula it adheres to. Because once the formula has crystallized, you can basically rehash it many times with barely a variation here and there. The only significant thing to do is to improve it more and more, refine it more and more, to the point where things like sloppy coding, redundant narrative conventions, and floating cigarettes should never be a problem anymore.
