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Originally Posted by daniel_beck_90
Unfortunately I can not totally agree with you because we have seen insignificant yet notable differences and improvements in some of the more recent adventure games. Tendency towards faster pace , new mini-games , better use of 3D models , hint systems and hotspot revealers are among those little differences that some may forget to mention .
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I think the perceived faster pace is because a lot of hints have been removed, many even ‘dumbed down’ also because of the hints you mention.
I haven't noticed many mini games but I'd agree that it's an insignificant change. I don't particularly like it when certain mini games become mandatory to the game you're playing, like the surfing game in Sam & Max: Moai Better Blues. (I didn't mind the game itself, I just wanted to be solving the puzzles instead).
Many adventure game fans still don't like the introduction of 3D. (Personally I don't mind, I like both the 2D/hand drawn models as well as most of the 3D ones). I don't see why you're counting this in a list of things that have improved in Adventure Games because almost all games use 3D modelling so they've only come as far, in this sense, as any other games that use it. I'm sure a lot of people might even say that AGs haven't come quite as far as other games in terms this.
The hint systems are hit and miss. Some of them just give far too much away. I like the hints from TMI because they gave just enough away, I didn't like the ones in SMI: SE because if you needed to see a hint again you wouldn't get it, you'd get another hint (more clearer) and hitting it a third time just tells you what to do. (If I needed to be told what to do I'd admit defeat and look for a walkthrough, I don't need the game to tell me I'm stupid before I even get there!)
Hot Spot revealers have been around since Simon the Sorcerer 1 (or at least in the version I downloaded, somebody may have added this feature onto the original game).
The biggest differences I can think of has been that certain games have made use of direct control, which some people (not including myself) don't like and episodic distribution (which I do like but isn't unique to AGs. It is, however, the only genre that seems to have had much success with episodic games to my knowledge).
Aside from those the concept of the way we interact with the characters' environment, the objects within it and the people encountered and the puzzles affected by what we gain from these items has remained pretty static. I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, though.
I think that many of the changes perceived in other games aren't really as big as most people think they are. Racing games haven't changed much (or at all?), 'Beat 'em ups’ (tournament style) have mostly benefitted from changing (and custom) camera angels (they did make changes to the special moves, gradually making the combos necessary longer and longer until they made them far too longer and had to significantly trim them down). RTSs have made few or no innovative changes except for a subtle amalgamation with RTTs, basically taking emphasis from resource management to tactical game play (unless you count multi layered maps). (It'll go back to resource management if there's ever a Warcraft 4
) (The only really huge change in the RTS has been in the evolution of the micromanagement sub-genre, specifically with the sims and second life, both of which have a huge creative dimension. Well, I assume this is the case with second life, I've never played it). Apparently FPSs have only recently added the option to destroy obstacles behind which opponents might be hiding which... seemed kind of late coming, to me.
I'm not saying that innovations in these games are any less innovative, just that they haven't come as far as some people might think.
I'm also not saying that AGs don't need to move with the times, I'm just suggesting that they don't have to 'catch up' as some people might think they do.
