[beatchef]

I've just come back to a game that I started but never really got into. That game is Syberia. Only just before this I played through Day of the Tentacle and Monkey Island again, and Shadowgate for the first time. The Scumm system had something like 12 commands I believe, meanwhile Syberia has.. one. I think that very much limits puzzles as the game does a lot of the work for you. I think it worked in Longest Jorney and Grim Fandango (didn't they have 3 things you could do at least?), but not in Syberia. Don't get me wrong, i'm enjoying Syberia somewhat because of the locations and plot but I never feel like i'm actually doing anything but clicking rather than solving anything. There's no descriptions of any of the inventory objects or objects in the playing field, and if you can't do something, theres an X next to the action icon, as if Kate has The Force and knows before she does something that it won't work. Not even a "What you expected has not happened." (cookie for remembering what thats from)

The point I'm slowly getting to, is how.. streamlined does everyone here like their adventure games? I remember that Text adventure gamers complained back in the times of Scumm that everything was done for you and the choices were limited, what about now? Myself, i'll not miss the ambiguety of text adventures, but i'm very much missing the time of Scumm when you had lots of ways to manipulate each object. In recent games i've tried, you just throw objects at people and other objects on the screen hoping it'll work as the game does absolutely everything for you. Are there any recent games going back to the oldschool or is everything streamlend now? I think it might be a good discussion point, finding out what people prefer.