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Old 03-01-2010, 08:13 AM   #81
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Originally Posted by Jannik View Post
While I see your point, I think comments from the player-avatar can function as an important narrative device. E.g. Tex makes sarcastic, sometimes funny, comments on stuff in his office, his marriage to his ex-wife, other characters, the game world, etc.

All that info add texture and depth to the story and the characters. While some of that could have been told differently, I think comments from the player-avatar is a valid narrative device, and not necessarily dated. It depends on the game and/or story.

To get the same info without those comments, would mean more interactive dialog and/or cutscenes in the game. Sometimes that works, but in some games it tends to have a bad impact on the pacing.

In an adventure where the player-avatar is meant to be a blank slate, it's probably better to leave out the avatar-comments. But in games where the player-avatar has back-story in the game world/story, I think comments can add to a game in a positive way.

EDIT: I was referring to the Tex Murphy games. Especially Pandora Directive, as I haven't played the other games
But, see, those comments aren't inane, they are interesting and purposeful. The problem isn't that there is a comment when clicking something, it's that that comment is boring.

It was once important, when graphics were low res or missing entirely, but today these inane, emphasis on inane, comments and descriptors are superfluous. They are also a hindrance to the current core gamer. It's nice that they might tickle your nostalgia button, or that you've grown numb to the convention, but it's definitely a hindrance to current gamers and an example of why outsiders feel adventure games are dated.
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Old 03-01-2010, 02:45 PM   #82
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I don't get what you mean that there's an emphasis on such comments, since they, as I guess it's the case with Hotel Dusk, only pop up when you tap on insignificant objects, ones that are not important for progress. Of course, you might not know what those might be.
Interaction of the player character, not just observation, might be a better alternative, like turning the light on/off. It would probably create more a sense of exploration. In the ideal case both should be possible, examining and interacting.
But don't forget, in third person adventures you control intelligent beings with a conscience of their own, so they're not willing to do everything you say. Sometimes adventures use this too often as an artificial excuse why you can't do certain actions. Your character doesn't want to do it, no arguing.
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Old 03-01-2010, 04:33 PM   #83
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In an ideal world, you would be able to do anything with that lamp that you would like, turn it on, turn it off, chuck it against a wall, whatever floats your boat. Of course, that creates problems in terms of story, but we definitely have the technology to do all that and more.

But, of course, that's beside the point. What's at issue is that a lot of times adventure games do things, not because it's the best way or the most interesting way, but because it's just the way things are done.

Oh, and I think you misunderstand, I didn't say there was an emphasis on these comments, I was just emphasizing the inane quality of these quips. Also, you don't have to click on everything, but 9 times out of 10 that's the only way to progress through a game.
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Old 03-01-2010, 04:49 PM   #84
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Well, I understand the complaint that the comments are badly, lazily written, but not that they're there in the first place. Anyway, it's superfluous to argue about it since I haven't played the game.
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Old 03-01-2010, 09:55 PM   #85
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It's nice that they might tickle your nostalgia button, or that you've grown numb to the convention, but it's definitely a hindrance to current gamers and an example of why outsiders feel adventure games are dated.
I haven't grown numb to uninteresting hotspot comments - of course those comments have to make sense in one way or the other. It's just that from your post it sounded like you don't think hotspot comments are valid today, no matter how good they are

EDIT: Or, that's how I perceived your post. Others may see it differently

Last edited by Jannik; 03-02-2010 at 09:10 PM.
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Old 03-02-2010, 02:44 PM   #86
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I sometimes find these comments are a great place for designers and writers to give the protagonist some personality or to give the game/story some additional depth.

Also, if you've played A Vampyre Story, this also seems like the best place for bad puns and references to DOTT. Kind of broke the immersion for me a couple of times, but when some of the jokes were funny I didn't mind.
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Old 03-03-2010, 06:53 PM   #87
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I've been playing AGs since the early 80's and think the genre's pretty dated. Sorry. There's a lot of factors involved, but largely I think it's that adventure game makers aren't making the kind of interactive experience I want to play. If they did, I'd love it, but 90% of the adventure game community would have a fit.
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Old 03-03-2010, 07:21 PM   #88
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Originally Posted by courderoy guy View Post
I've been playing AGs since the early 80's and think the genre's pretty dated. Sorry. There's a lot of factors involved, but largely I think it's that adventure game makers aren't making the kind of interactive experience I want to play. If they did, I'd love it, but 90% of the adventure game community would have a fit.
Ok... but nothing to back that up with? I appreciate that others here have said it's dated and given reasons, but you're not making a very persuasive argument there.

EDIT: To elaborate, I've previously made a point on a weakness in the writing, but not necessarily the mechanics. Are you disagreeing then that a well written and original story for a game using conventional adventure game mechanics would then be uninteresting?
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Old 03-03-2010, 08:45 PM   #89
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Uninteresting, IMO, is too much of an absolute. I don't mean to speak for anyone else, but to me it's come to the point where all these conventions, all these cliches, have become a chore.

What it comes down to is there are so many ways to experience a story, so many great stories out there and only so many hours in a day. Do you spend that time with a new experience and a good story, or a tired experience and a good story? Personally, I am going to lean towards the Heavy Rains, the LA Noires, the Uncharteds, the Mafias, the Fallouts, the Dragon Ages, the Metal Gear Solids, the Infamouses, etc before the point and click adventure.
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Old 03-03-2010, 08:58 PM   #90
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What it comes down to is there are so many ways to experience a story, so many great stories out there and only so many hours in a day. Do you spend that time with a new experience and a good story, or a tired experience and a good story? Personally, I am going to lean towards the Heavy Rains, the LA Noires, the Uncharteds, the Mafias, the Fallouts, the Dragon Ages, the Metal Gear Solids, the Infamouses, etc before the point and click adventure.
Amen to that, Burns.

Oh, and you forgot the Jade Empires and the Mass Effects.
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Old 03-03-2010, 09:44 PM   #91
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Do you spend that time with a new experience and a good story, or a tired experience and a good story? Personally, I am going to lean towards the Heavy Rains, the LA Noires, the Uncharteds, the Mafias, the Fallouts, the Dragon Ages, the Metal Gear Solids, the Infamouses, etc before the point and click adventure.
Is a game like Uncharted though (which I love) really creating new mechanics? To me it was a third person action-shooter with very basic puzzles comparible to most other action-shooters. The difference was in it's writing. What makes that so different from a potential adventure point and click with the same level of writing? Again with Fallout, a first person RPG with better story and characters than others. They don't really offer new mechanics, just better writing within their genres.
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Old 03-03-2010, 10:50 PM   #92
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i agree with you guys, in adventure game STORY/writing is the king, if the story is not compelling enough everything else usually falls apart.
(please note that i'm not saying other aspect is not important)

btw I also play Mass Effect, and i enjoy it very much.
I suck at the shooting action part though, but watching how the story unfold, and making decision here and there in the dialog tree, exploring the world & completing all the quests, it feels awesome.

Same as adventure game like Dreamfall, Monkey Island, etc... the story is what makes me keep playing because i want to know what's gonna happen next, and how it will reach the end.

However once in a while i also want to play adventure game that focus more on the inventory puzzle, that's why as quirky as it is i also love Touch Detective series (for my inventory puzzle fix) and also "escape the room" game.
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Old 03-04-2010, 01:01 AM   #93
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All this whining about "leaning towards other genres, so change adventures in order not to" seems like a ridiculous blackmail.
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Old 03-04-2010, 02:51 AM   #94
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All this whining about "leaning towards other genres, so change adventures in order not to" seems like a ridiculous blackmail.
Sorry dekaneas but I'm not really sure - what argument are you referring to?
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Old 03-04-2010, 04:50 AM   #95
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The problem with those other genres is, they're largely action games. That's great if you like action games, but there are lots of people who would like to experience a story in video game format who aren't twitch gamers, and get frustrated trying to play them.

Like my Mom. As predicted, she couldn't finish Dreamfall because the action sequences and such were too difficult for her to work out. And yes, I know the action sequences in that game were not a good example of what action games have to offer, but that misses the point. More responsive action isn't the solution for people who simply aren't that dexterous, or who have arthritis and such.

Finally, though, and most importantly, Adventure Games have a pedestrian pace, which suits certain personality types much better than high octane action games and shooters.

I say all of this because I'm beginning to detect a bit of an elitist tone to these arguments in favour of other genres. Fine. They tell stories too. Some of them very well. But they all involve button mashing or complex combinations of buttons in timed sequences. Again, fine if you're into that, but it doesn't make the game better for people who don't get off on such things.

My point is, Adventure Games are the closest you come to playing a genre where the story pace is very much like reading a book, which is quite acceptable, so long as it doesn't crawl from inactivity.

As for the argument against hotspot comments, well, I can see where the notion that the convention is merely nostalgic and obsolete might come from, but I think the key factor being missed there is that those comments, when written well, are a form of communication between the protagonist and the player, sharing character traits. It's a way of getting to know the person you're playing.

This might not seem relevant to someone accustomed to playing action games or shooters or such, as those games are largely plot-driven, and superfluous comments tend to be throwaway, having no meaning, like James Bond's famous quips after he kills someone. In the original novels, those comments were very telling of the man's mental state, but on the lips of Roger Moore, they just sound silly. That's where the problem lies. If the comments tell us something about the object, that's nice. but it's what they tell us about the person we're playing that makes them indispensable.

And personally, I enjoy a combination of close-ups with comments, when possible.
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Old 03-04-2010, 05:59 AM   #96
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Ah, *sigh of relief*, thank you Lee. Well put.
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Old 03-04-2010, 07:41 AM   #97
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Is a game like Uncharted though (which I love) really creating new mechanics? To me it was a third person action-shooter with very basic puzzles comparible to most other action-shooters. The difference was in it's writing. What makes that so different from a potential adventure point and click with the same level of writing? Again with Fallout, a first person RPG with better story and characters than others. They don't really offer new mechanics, just better writing within their genres.
I never said new mechanics, I said a new experience. In the case of Uncharted specifically, the storytelling techniques (yes, including the incredible graphics and motion capture work), the gameplay was on another level in terms of smoothness and playability and the story itself created an engrossing and fresh experience.

As far as Fallout 3 goes, I would call VATS a new mechanic, even if it was just an attempt to connect the games to their turn based past. But even beyond that, it was still a refining step in the genre and the experience was fresh even if the broad defining mechanics weren't necissarily revolutionarily new.

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The problem with those other genres is, they're largely action games. That's great if you like action games, but there are lots of people who would like to experience a story in video game format who aren't twitch gamers, and get frustrated trying to play them.

Like my Mom. As predicted, she couldn't finish Dreamfall because the action sequences and such were too difficult for her to work out. And yes, I know the action sequences in that game were not a good example of what action games have to offer, but that misses the point. More responsive action isn't the solution for people who simply aren't that dexterous, or who have arthritis and such.

Finally, though, and most importantly, Adventure Games have a pedestrian pace, which suits certain personality types much better than high octane action games and shooters.

I say all of this because I'm beginning to detect a bit of an elitist tone to these arguments in favour of other genres. Fine. They tell stories too. Some of them very well. But they all involve button mashing or complex combinations of buttons in timed sequences. Again, fine if you're into that, but it doesn't make the game better for people who don't get off on such things.
The only comments I see elitist here are these types of comments, these "action pfft" type of comments. Nobody is saying that the adventure genre needs action, but it's just ludicrous to dismiss these other genres as relevant to the conversation just because they have action.

I have considered myself an adventure game fan for 22 years, ever since in Grade school I found a copy of the original Zork behind all the regularly used copies of Oregon Trail in the school's computer lab. The thing is that, for the past decade, I feel like the genre has done nothing but let me down. They keep taking the same game, scraping off a superficial layer of icing and slather on a new layer. That's fine, but the cake underneath is so stale that, no matter how good the icing may seem, it's still dry and dusty underneath.

Before I became disillusioned with the genre, I would have considered adventure games by far my favorite, and while I still call it and consider it a favorite I find less and less to get excited about. It's not that my tastes have changed, it's that the genre hasn't. It's stale and stagnant.

The whole hotspot thing wasn't brought up by me, it was brought up by someone else and I just tried to explain why they had become emblematic of the problems with both the stagnation of the genre and the outsiders negative view of the genre, which I thought would be especially poingant given the outsider's negative view of Hotel Dusk.
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Old 03-04-2010, 09:53 AM   #98
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Is a game like Uncharted though (which I love) really creating new mechanics? To me it was a third person action-shooter with very basic puzzles comparible to most other action-shooters. The difference was in it's writing. What makes that so different from a potential adventure point and click with the same level of writing?
Uncharted or Uncharted 2? Because the second game really nailed the "Freedom of Movement" and "Throwaway Voice Comments" aspects which adventures desperately need to utilize (the latter seems to be used by Tales of Monkey Island a bit though, from my understanding).
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Old 03-04-2010, 01:49 PM   #99
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Uncharted or Uncharted 2? Because the second game really nailed the "Freedom of Movement" and "Throwaway Voice Comments" aspects which adventures desperately need to utilize (the latter seems to be used by Tales of Monkey Island a bit though, from my understanding).
Well, I've played both so for the sake of the debate I'd say Uncharted 2 seeing as it's by far the better of the two. But 'Freedom of movement'? Is this meant to be a reference to the ability to choose different ways of attacking a scene? I mean, that's about as much freedom as that game has. When you're platforming there's the impression there's freedom to explore but you'll find quick enough they're all dead ends and that it's largely a set out path prettied up.

Ok I don't want to put down other games from other genres, and as I've said before I've played some of them and in the case of Uncharted I've loved them, but I'm just pointing out the fact that if the Uncharted's and the Fallout's came out with lacklustre stories do you really think everyone would still be praising them as they have? Most definately they would not. The idea of a well written story and character seems to muddy peoples perception of a good game. I'm not saying the gameplay is that bad, just that good writing often carries these titles above the sea of other action or shooter games that get barely a fraction of the popularity.

@Burns - you mention (like someone else before you) that adventure titles are the same thing over and over. I agree with you. But my point is that repetition lies in the lackllustre writing (as someone else also pointed out in the reusing of conspiracy plots, murder plots etc etc). If these other named games from other genres such as Mass Effect, Fallout, Uncharted (etc) DIDN'T have the great writing they had, then what would make them so much better as a gaming experience than that of adventure games? If those exact same stories were put into adventure gaming contexts, would you still prefer their genre counterparts? Would you prefer (for example) running around, levelling up your team in Mass Effect or would you prefer to go into the planets and go about solving solutions with a more puzzle based interaction? I hope you get my meaning...
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Old 03-04-2010, 02:47 PM   #100
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Ok... but nothing to back that up with? I appreciate that others here have said it's dated and given reasons, but you're not making a very persuasive argument there.

EDIT: To elaborate, I've previously made a point on a weakness in the writing, but not necessarily the mechanics. Are you disagreeing then that a well written and original story for a game using conventional adventure game mechanics would then be uninteresting?
If it's a good game it wouldn't be uninteresting! I just think the market holds developers back, both because of the size of the budgets required to make a profit and because there's a significant resistance to change.

Personally, I want the genre to move toward something like Mass Effect - not necessarily in combat and such, but the "real-time" large world to explore and a dialogue and story development system like BioWare uses. I also would love it if I never had to see another game-stopping "puzzle" element ever again! To me, adventure games are best when they offer good stories and a more relaxed gameplay experience that you can go through at your own pace. But static graphics in which you point and click your way screen by screen through the use of "hot spots" doesn't cut it any more for me. Especially when you are forced to stop at certain points to combine bike handles with bubble gum and that sort of stuff.
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