[Jackal]

Originally Posted by Ariel Type

Syberia can be easly called "modern standart". Games, that try to attract people with beautiful graphics and simplified puzzles. And the auditory it aims also differs from the hardcore gamers.

That's not what I meant. Aside from a few refinements, adventures are fundamentally the same as they were fifteen years ago. Same control schemes, same challenges, same basic structure. I don't say that as a bad thing (as some certainly do), just as a fact. But it does mean that older games can still compare favourably to current ones without too much compromise.

As I said, production values are one area where we obviously do take a game's historical context into consideration. We won't hold a game's technical limitations against it, for obvious reasons. Any old game will, by necessity, require a gamer to overlook those things. So no one reading a new review of an old game will be using modern production values as a criterion, so nor do we. They will, on the other hand, want to know what DOES stand the test of time. The great games will have a lot, the not-great games won't.

Incidentally, there's a key difference between technical and artistic graphic quality. I'm sure Syberia will still be highly regarded visually ten years down the road, long after other nice looking games have been forgotten. The same is true for the graphics of older games. Sure, they're all pixelated messes now, but the better ones have retained their artistic value even after the technical merits have become outdated. The gaudy, jarring ones haven't.

All the games are different. Myst has no story nor characters. Is it usually judged today by those standarts? It is always discussed in the context of "what it turned out in 1994".

I was just giving examples (hence the "etc."). Not every game must have all the same qualities. Replace story and characters with exploration and imaginative worlds for Myst, then. They still stand the test of time. And of course, gameplay remains king for any game. Any new review of Myst now would certainly note its historical relevance, but it would only be rated highly (assuming it would be) on the basis of what was still good about it.

It wasn't in the review. It was some points in Kurufinwe's comment that I answered to.

I know how it came up in conversation. I just wanted to know if you considered it an issue in this particular review. Okay, then, back to Ween!