I dislike Myst-like puzzles whereas I've more of a fondness of inventory based ones but not games where you need to pixel-hunt for the objects you want and pick up everything including the kitchen sink. Actually, I think my favourite puzzles are magic-based ones, like in Loom and Kyrandia (mostly loom).
I suppose I'm a hypocrite because the one big puzzle in Dreamfall where there was that underground chamber with all those monsters that you had to try and avoid I ended up reading the walkthrough in order to find the solution to it and using a map. I just couldn't be done with the stress of sneaking and avoiding the enemy as well as working out the puzzle solution on how to open up the gate.
Maybe it's not puzzles as such that it needs. I think I'd have liked choice. I'd have liked interactivity that amounted to more than run from A to B and I'd have liked my choices to matter.
Yes, give me an interactive story instead of a game but let me interact with that story. Let me become a participant as opposed to an observer. With so many conversations in the game I'd have liked to have been able to change character's opinions towards me. I'd have liked that choosing the rude conversation choices would have had different results from being nice, and that those results would have had repercussions. That I couldn't just then go back and be nice, that I'd have to live with the consequences of my past choices. Not for any choice to result in a dead end, just for it to cause differences. Maybe not differences in the over-arching plot, but differences in the little things.
I did like Dreamfall, the first half of the game was good and had a decent dash of interactivity, the second half it just felt like they'd given up on the player in order to tell the story.
I think more of the game should have run like the Borderhouse/Hotel area did.
Spoiler:I liked the Borderhouse section. I'd have liked it more if I could pick up that axe and use it on the dog as an option. I liked how once you got in you had three choices, that you could talk your way past the guard, sneak by him or fight. I didn't like how it ended up with me having to fight him on the top floor since I just couldn't get by the guy upstairs. I liked how you had to do the lock puzzles to get in and then once you were inside that you had to explore, then work out the whole making a rope with sheets tied together to get out.
I didn't like that you could die and all you got was a 'dead' screen especially since the game had already started with Zoe telling the story, so how could that happen if she died because some monster killed her? So the deaths were a bit frustrating since they didn't fit with the plot. They seemed there for the gamer and not for the story but there's no fun in dying. I kinda wish that if they had insisted on the deaths then maybe they'd done the broken sword thing of giving us a screen showing what happened after we'd died.
