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Old 05-01-2006, 01:27 PM   #28
After a brisk nap
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Join Date: Jan 2005
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I do play a lot of "Tomb Raider style" games (in fact, the last few commercial games I played were Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, POP: Two Thrones, Beyond Good & Evil, Psychonauts, Fahrenheit, Dreamfall and the Tomb Raider Legends demo, so I guess lately I only play that type of games), but I agree that direct control is a bit micro-managey for adventure games. In the best 3rd-person 3D games, moving around is a thrill. It's just plain fun to run along walls, jump, twist, skid, zigzag, climb, crouch and dive (and sometimes fly, float, bounce and roll, depending on the game); throwing the camera around to inspect every angle, or just to admire the view.

I haven't seen an adventure game that offers that thrill (to any great degree), and I'm not sure it's possible while remaining a real adventure (though improving the camera controls would do a great deal to help). That leaves guiding every step of my character as essentially a chore.

I played Dreamfall pretty much all day yesterday, and it certainly did occur to me that I had better things to do than making sure Zoe could cross the street without getting stuck behind a crate. Or, rather, that I wish there were better things to do in the game than making sure Zoe didn't get stuck behind crates.
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