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CharophyceanLady Kestrel

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Controversial adventure game preferences and opinions?

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Hi D, here’s my response to your interesting list:

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Gabriel Knight would kick George Stobbart’s ass in a fist fight. I have no idea if this is controversial, but I’m putting it out there.

I can’t remember whether I’ve seen either of them in a fist fight with anyone but I ‘d prefer bad ass & nice guy not to fight - they both have pleasing attributes.

Full Throttle is, by far, the worst LucasArts game of the 90s.

I must play more Lucas Arts games.

LSL4 is the best Leisure Suit Larry game.

The missing one? I tried a few but not that one Laughing, but I liked the last one Wet Dreams Don’t Dry

Tex Murphy is a better character than Guybrush Threepwood.

Mmm…....one is solid real man & the other is fantasy pixellated pirate ....it’s a difficult choice.

An adventure game, no matter how well liked at the time of its release, can only be considered a “classic” if it meaningfully transcends generations. If kids 20 or more years later try it and as a whole don’t like it, it fails the test. If you disagree, you’re probably blinded by nostalgia.

Nah, if that’s the case your kids & grandkids know absolutely nothing & don’t know the difference between Oliver Twist & Harry Potter .

Puzzles are more important for an adventure game than story.

Don’t bother with playing a game then & just do puzzles - there’s lots of options but here’s a couple of suggestions: crosswords & scrabble

Exploration is more important for an adventure game than story.

It doesn’t matter how much you pressurize me I don’t want to play one of those walking sims.

Art design is more important for an adventure game than story.

No, have you tried e.g. The White Door? The game needed the concept to make the graphics work. So no, for me, the art design is not more important than the story - for me a good story can bring a game with simple/subpar graphics/artwork to life.

Music is more important for an adventure game than story.

No. But the music can certainly evoke an atmosphere within a game & possibly make a game more memorable e.g. The Gabriel Knight games?

All characters in adventure games should be objectified because they are, in fact, just objects. You are suffering from some level of psychosis if you think otherwise.

Surely only the NPC’s & the playable protagonist when you can do something to them….........excuse me while I make a doctor’s appointment.

Logic puzzles are vastly superior to inventory puzzles.


Agreed but I prefer inventory puzzles because I quite often find the logic ones too difficult.

Grace Nakimura would be a better mud wrestler than Kate Walker.

I decline to answer that & leave that to the imaginations of the male & female orientated females to comment on.

Sierra didn’t make a single good adventure game until the 1990s when they were dragged, kicking and screaming, into meeting the quality standards set by the rest of the industry.

I’m an Adventure game baby - I know nothing.

If LeChuck were a dog, he’d be a Chihuahua.

He looked a little bit bigger than that to me.

Laverne is the best playable character in Day of the Tentacle.

I’m so ashamed I haven’t played Day of the Tentacle yet.

Adventure games are best played on Tuesdays, preferably after eating cheeseburgers.

I’m with Lady Kestrel on this one.

1st person games are vastly superior to 3rd person games.

Both have their merits. 3rd person games seem to require a little more skill with portrayal & animation of the main character so I would say they are superior but it really does depend on what’s best to get across the dev’s concept.

FMV is great, even if most of the games are not.

Of the few games I’ve played that use FMV I love it! I haven’t played enough to come across a really bad one….yet.

Video walkthroughs are an abomination. They are the worst possible format there is if you need a hint or are stuck in a game. Unless the game is completely linear, you’ll be exposed to massive spoilers and waste a ton of your time searching for what you are looking for (not to mention the bandwidth tragedy of the commons this creates through such waste), whereas with a text walkthrough you simply search for a key word, find what you want in a few seconds, and move on with your life.

I mostly agree with all of that but occasionally you come across a stealth/timed puzzle which is easier to watch to work out rather than read a description. Also, a nice trend which I hope is catching,  is that there are one or two video game presenters who label their clips in such a way that you can pinpoint the bit you need.

Walking Simulators aren’t games (but I still enjoy some of them).

As long as they’re not promoted as games.

Adventure games need more nudity.

There’s plenty of far eastern games to choose from.

The characters in adventure games should always speak their native languages. To clarify, if a game takes place in Germany, the voice actors should be speaking German and translations should be limited to subtitles. Dubbing into other languages for localization in such a case is pure evil.

That’s a must for me if I’m watching a non-English film. But does it matter in a game unless it’s FMV with live actors speaking in their native tongue?

All true adventure gamers go commando under their kilts.

As far as I know all true kilt wearers go commando - how many of those play adventure games I couldn’t say.

D, please come back with some dastardly quiz!

     

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D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Gabriel Knight would kick George Stobbart’s ass in a fist fight. I have no idea if this is controversial, but I’m putting it out there.

Bad ass vs. smart ass.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Full Throttle is, by far, the worst LucasArts game of the 90s.

If you are limiting this to adventure games, then maybe. If you are including LucasArts games that aren’t adventures, then no.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Tex Murphy is a better character than Guybrush Threepwood.

Each is suited to their game. I’m sure there are some people who’d like to see Tex in Guybrush’s world and Guybrush in Tex’s world—for about 5 minutes, but I think they’re at their best in their own game worlds.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Puzzles are more important for an adventure game than story.

chrissie - 18 June 2020 01:24 PM

Don’t bother with playing a game then & just do puzzles - there’s lots of options but here’s a couple of suggestions: crosswords & scrabble

That’s a bit like telling someone who likes stories to read the same story over and over, changing only the names of characters and places between readings. A pen and paper puzzle is no substitute for an environmental puzzle and not everyone who likes puzzles likes the same type of puzzles, just as not everyone who likes stories likes the same type of story. Adventure games used to offer a variety of puzzle types, most of which would be ill suited for pen-and-paper.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Exploration is more important for an adventure game than story.

chrissie - 18 June 2020 01:24 PM

It doesn’t matter how much you pressurize me I don’t want to play one of those walking sims.

It’s my understanding that the so-called “walking simulators” are story + exploration without any puzzles. The only one I liked was “What Remained of Edith Finch” because it’s the only one I’ve played where I hadn’t already read the story at some time in the past.

That’s the trouble with having read a lot in the past. You’ve already read the stories in the games before, and nearly all of them are nothing new and not told in a new and interesting way. I think that’s why some of us place less emphasis on “story” and more on other qualities of a game. We’ve already read the stories. We’ve already seen all the variants on the stories and their endings.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

All characters in adventure games should be objectified because they are, in fact, just objects. You are suffering from some level of psychosis if you think otherwise.

I don’t know what this means.
If I’m expected to play as a character, and I don’t like the character or at least enjoy watching them, I won’t play the game.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Grace Nakimura would be a better mud wrestler than Kate Walker.

Maybe. At least I think Grace would enjoy it more.
I can see Kate going off the deep end though and turning into a mud maniac.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Sierra didn’t make a single good adventure game until the 1990s when they were dragged, kicking and screaming, into meeting the quality standards set by the rest of the industry.

I disagree. IMO they were a leader. They continued to push technology throughout the 1980’s. I did not own a computer back in the 1980’s, but I still enjoy playing some (not all) of Sierra’s games from the 1980’s and imagining what it was like back when this was new technology.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Laverne is the best playable character in Day of the Tentacle.

I think everyone likes Laverne best.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

1st person games are vastly superior to 3rd person games.


Most 1st person games these days have 3D movement, which means you can go to hell if 3D movement gives you motion sickness. If you complain, at best you get a lot of suggestions you already tried years ago. Mostly it’s just “go to hell, we don’t need you” from the developers though. This leaves me with either very old 1st person games or casual adventures or 3rd person games that don’t produce motion sickness.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

FMV is great, even if most of the games are not.

chrissie - 18 June 2020 01:24 PM

Of the few games I’ve played that use FMV I love it! I haven’t played enough to come across a really bad one….yet.

That’s what I thought until I played one of the really bad ones from the 1990’s. The whole thing was choosing which cut scene to play next, based on a brief text description. Choose one cut scene after the other with no other interaction allowed. It lasted about half an hour and then you were supposed to replay using different choices. I didn’t. I uninstalled it instead. However it was a “learning experience” because before that I’d though FMV meant something like Gabriel Knight 2 or Tex Murphy: Pandora Directive, both of which are good games.

D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Video walkthroughs are an abomination. They are the worst possible format there is if you need a hint or are stuck in a game. Unless the game is completely linear, you’ll be exposed to massive spoilers and waste a ton of your time searching for what you are looking for (not to mention the bandwidth tragedy of the commons this creates through such waste), whereas with a text walkthrough you simply search for a key word, find what you want in a few seconds, and move on with your life.

They are poor compared to text walkthroughs, but they are better than nothing.
Many of them are actually “Let’s Plays” rather than real walkthroughs.

     
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crabapple - 19 June 2020 07:09 PM
D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Gabriel Knight would kick George Stobbart’s ass in a fist fight. I have no idea if this is controversial, but I’m putting it out there.

Bad ass vs. smart ass.

The way that Gabriel Knight speaks in the first game he seems mentally not-quite-there so if I were George Stobbart I’d just stand in front of a street lamp, wait for him to come at me, and then get out of the way. Easy!  Grin

     

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Lobster Cop isn’t even in the top 100 best adventure game characters. Frankly, I’d be surprised if he made the top 1000.

     

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crabapple - 19 June 2020 07:09 PM
D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Laverne is the best playable character in Day of the Tentacle.

I think everyone likes Laverne best.

I don’t. I think she’s the least interesting character in the game, including NPCs.

crabapple - 19 June 2020 07:09 PM
D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

1st person games are vastly superior to 3rd person games.


Most 1st person games these days have 3D movement, which means you can go to hell if 3D movement gives you motion sickness. If you complain, at best you get a lot of suggestions you already tried years ago. Mostly it’s just “go to hell, we don’t need you” from the developers though. This leaves me with either very old 1st person games or casual adventures or 3rd person games that don’t produce motion sickness.

Try adjusting the graphics settings.
I know cases where installing a 3D graphics patch helped to play classic FPS games, it wasn’t the movement itself that was the problem, it was too crude graphics which wasn’t easy enough for the brain to absorb.

As simple thing as switching from fullscreen to window or vice versa can also help.

Because you aren’t really moving while playing (presumably), it really isn’t the motion that is the problem, it’s something else. If you can watch racing on TV, then it’s with 99,9% certainty something related to graphics settings.

crabapple - 19 June 2020 07:09 PM
D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

Video walkthroughs are an abomination. They are the worst possible format there is if you need a hint or are stuck in a game. Unless the game is completely linear, you’ll be exposed to massive spoilers and waste a ton of your time searching for what you are looking for (not to mention the bandwidth tragedy of the commons this creates through such waste), whereas with a text walkthrough you simply search for a key word, find what you want in a few seconds, and move on with your life.

They are poor compared to text walkthroughs, but they are better than nothing.
Many of them are actually “Let’s Plays” rather than real walkthroughs.

Let’s play videos are rabbits, if Internet is Australia.
If I need the solution for a puzzle, I don’t get anything out of a random guy trying to figure out that solution for 30 minutes with some lame commentary.

     
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I think you missed the

If you complain, at best you get a lot of suggestions you already tried years ago. Mostly it’s just “go to hell, we don’t need you” from the developers though. This leaves me with either very old 1st person games or casual adventures or 3rd person games that don’t produce motion sickness.

part.

That’s the one where you give ways to avoid vertigo/motion sickness that he’s already tried years ago.

     

For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.

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Jabod - 17 June 2020 05:08 PM
D - 16 June 2020 05:30 PM

13. Sierra didn’t make a single good adventure game

You should have stopped 13 right there Naughty

Now watch as Advie goes into an apoplectic meltdown Smile

No way, Bastich is an expert but not that much here. Laughing

LSL3 (1989) is the best of the series
PQ2 1988 also
The Colonel’s Bequest maybe the best detective adventure made
QfG1 1989 is on Par with QfG 2 and 4
Space Quest III 1989 is the 2nd best and the best in many other books

 

     
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rtrooney - 20 June 2020 07:17 PM

I think you missed the

If you complain, at best you get a lot of suggestions you already tried years ago. Mostly it’s just “go to hell, we don’t need you” from the developers though. This leaves me with either very old 1st person games or casual adventures or 3rd person games that don’t produce motion sickness.

part.

That’s the one where you give ways to avoid vertigo/motion sickness that he’s already tried years ago.

Really didn’t miss that, but commented anyway.  Laughing

If it’s something he tried years ago, then it could be something related to CRT displays that wouldn’t happen with LCDs for example.

And going on a guess here, I don’t think he’s actually tried everything. For instance, maybe he didn’t try to set the monitor to black and white to reduce colours which would reduce the amount of information the brain has to intake?
But whatever, you can always ignore me.

     

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GateKeeper - 21 June 2020 02:19 AM
rtrooney - 20 June 2020 07:17 PM

I think you missed the

If you complain, at best you get a lot of suggestions you already tried years ago. Mostly it’s just “go to hell, we don’t need you” from the developers though. This leaves me with either very old 1st person games or casual adventures or 3rd person games that don’t produce motion sickness.

part.

That’s the one where you give ways to avoid vertigo/motion sickness that he’s already tried years ago.

Really didn’t miss that, but commented anyway.  Laughing

If it’s something he tried years ago, then it could be something related to CRT displays that wouldn’t happen with LCDs for example.

Not just 20 years ago, but continually since then, every month or so, every time I was interested in a game that used 3D movement and either bought the game or tried a demo. Certainly 20 years ago there were very few adventure games using 3D movement. Some had panning, but that’s not 3D movement—panning in QuickTime or in Cryo’s Atlantis games is looking around the inside of a bubble that extends beyond the edges of the monitor. As long as the speed of panning could be controlled, it wasn’t usually a problem.

GateKeeper - 21 June 2020 02:19 AM

And going on a guess here, I don’t think he’s actually tried everything. For instance, maybe he didn’t try to set the monitor to black and white to reduce colours which would reduce the amount of information the brain has to intake?
But whatever, you can always ignore me.

No, rtrooney is right in that I’ve tried everything reasonable—everything that would get rid of the motion/simulation sickness and still allow me to play. I could probably come up with 2 pages of different strategies I’ve tried—different things that were suggested to me at some time in the past 20 years —different drugs, different drivers, those pressure things you put around your wrists, different settings, expensive video card that is more than capable of playing the games, adjusting field of view, different monitors.

Here’s what “works”:

Look away from the screen whenever there is movement.
Take enough drugs to put me to sleep.

Of course neither of those “solutions” works if I actually want to play a game because I have to be awake and I have to be able to see where I’m going when I’m moving. Even with adventure games, where you’re not in danger of being attacked by enemies, you need to see the screen and can’t be looking away all the time.

Since I got motion/simulation sickness from Obra Dinn, I don’t see the need to experiment with reducing colors to black and white in other games. Even without color there is still the disconnect between what my eyes are telling me and what my stomach/inner ear is telling me. It’s not a matter of “how much” information my brain is getting, it’s that it’s getting conflicting information.

Modern LCD monitors are worse than CRT monitors, not because of LCD technology but because widescreen is worse than the more squarish 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratio. I’ve only tried this with one game, playing the GOG version on a modern PC with widescreen vs. playing the disc version on an old Socket 7 PC from 1995. It was playable on the old computer, with only minor queasiness. It was impossible on the modern PC. I think this is because of the monitor though I could be wrong and there could be other reasons.

There is one other thing that seems to “work” but it’s not something many game developers seem interested in implementing. If the screen is pulled back high enough and far enough there doesn’t seem to be a problem. I haven’t really seen this in adventure games though. The closest is the 3rd person view in Myst: Uru vs. the 1st person view. The 3rd person view is higher up and pulled back relative to the 1st person view—it’s not just a matter of there not being a character on the screen in the 1st person mode—the view is different and when I move around in the game the movement of parts of the screen relative to each other is different. One produces motion sickness while the other doesn’t. That makes me think that being able to adjust the view in a 1st person game to be similar to the 3rd person view in Myst: Uru would fix the problem. There are some non-adventure games that use a similar view by default. Certainly isometric view in some RPG’s doesn’t cause a problem, but the view wouldn’t have to be pulled as far back as that.

I’m sure people who don’t get motion/simulation sickness, or who’ve only ever had very mild motion/simulation sickness, think I’m just wasting space here. But the title of this thread is “Controversial adventure game preferences and opinions” and this is one of mine.
I don’t see why not wanting to play games that make me feel like I’m going to hurl should be controversial, but it’s always been that way. If someone’s solution doesn’t work for me, it’s always my fault. I appreciate that people want to help. If I weren’t cursed with this problem, I’d want to help too. But by now I think it’s a lost cause.

I don’t know how many people have the same problem I do because people with the same problem would not play games and would not post to game forums.

     
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The Neverhood aged like milk and is actually quite terrible barring the visual style.

Sierra’s best game was Larry 7. As in, better than Half-Life and Homeworld. The best one. For me, best Sierra games goes something like 1) Larry 7, 2) The Incredible Toon Machine, 3) Lode Runner Returns, 4) Larry 6, 5) Half-Life, 6) Space Quest IV.

I wish Phil Fish was back and I was playing Fez 2 right now.

And now, something positive:

Later Alligator is magical and deserves a place on the shelf. I hope it’s ported to every system and gets a physical release. One of the finest titles I’ve played.

     
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crabapple - 21 June 2020 02:11 PM


I’m sure people who don’t get motion/simulation sickness, or who’ve only ever had very mild motion/simulation sickness, think I’m just wasting space here.

I don’t know how many people have the same problem I do because people with the same problem would not play games and would not post to game forums.

There are plenty of players who experience ‘motion sickness’ including myself.

Usually, for me, it’s caused by the navigation in a game being controlled by movement of the mouse rather with wasd keys or point & click directions. (For me it doesn’t even have to be a 3D game.)

Yes, there is a lot of ‘helpful’ advice to ‘overcome this’ but actually most of it doesn’t make sense let alone work. (For me e.g. the colour-absent hue in Obra Dinn was probably more confusing to the ‘eye-brain’ process.)

The only thing that works is a different interface.
Frogwares picked-up on this way back after releasing their Sherlock Holmes games: The Awakened & Nemesis when they realised that many players were having difficulty enjoying the game due to motion sickness (were possibly missing out on sales?) & re-mastered the games to incorporate a 3rd person perspective.
Frogwares at the time was a high profile developer with a budget, I’m sure, that current developers can only dream about.

I don’t know how this works for you crabapple? but to reiterate it’s not the 3D views of the world that are the problem for me but how they’re accessed.

Another unrelated controversial view might be that for the sake of a game NOT being a point & click adventure - i.e when you move around environments to get maybe a small very subtle label with a description you get instead, to not be point & click, a very big very unsubtle high-lighted area around every hotspot when you get near it (which can hardly be called a spot Laughing) that in my mind upsets the integrity of the scene.  Smile
   

     
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chrissie - 22 June 2020 02:43 PM

Usually, for me, it’s caused by the navigation in a game being controlled by movement of the mouse rather with wasd keys or point & click directions. (For me it doesn’t even have to be a 3D game.)

The only thing that works is a different interface.

I think that’s an oversimplified take on the issue, although I must say that is an interesting opinion, and one that I have never heard before.

Fortunately, that is also one of the easiest problems to fix. There are special mouse replacements like trackballs, and you can even find mouse-to-keys accessibility features in many operating systems, so basically every game should be easily fixed for that problem.

chrissie - 22 June 2020 02:43 PM

Yes, there is a lot of ‘helpful’ advice to ‘overcome this’ but actually most of it doesn’t make sense let alone work. (For me e.g. the colour-absent hue in Obra Dinn was probably more confusing to the ‘eye-brain’ process.)

The graphical style in that game is confusing as is, and it’s an artistic choice, it’s not a very good example.

But colours do put more strain on the brain, which can be easily proven by an everyday counter-example.

Emergency vehicles flash blue or red lights.
Road construction vehicles flash orange or yellow lights.
Traffic lights are red, yellow, and green.

Why? Because flashing colours stand out from the rest of the environment.

Flashing colours are also used as a stimulus for the brain, like in nightclubs where there are lots of colourful spotlights.

It reportedly works the other way round too. For instance, descriptions of LSD trips often involve very strange and vivid colours.

tea_tree - 22 June 2020 07:01 AM

Sierra’s best game was Larry 7. As in, better than Half-Life and Homeworld.

Labelling Half-Life as a Sierra game might be the most controversial statement we have had in this thread so far…

     
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GateKeeper - 22 June 2020 04:22 PM
chrissie - 22 June 2020 02:43 PM

Usually, for me, it’s caused by the navigation in a game being controlled by movement of the mouse rather with wasd keys or point & click directions. (For me it doesn’t even have to be a 3D game.)

The only thing that works is a different interface.

I think that’s an oversimplified take on the issue, although I must say that is an interesting opinion, and one that I have never heard before.

It’s not an opinion, not over-simplified in the least & a fact based on direct experience.
So you know 1st hand yourself what motion sickness feels like? I think not otherwise you’d understand that a trackball is just a different peripheral to manipulate the same interface.


     
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1. Text adventures are STILL better than graphic adventures.

2. Legend of Kyrandia 2: Hand of Fate is the HAPPIEST graphical adventure game ever made.

     
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Grue22 - 22 June 2020 11:38 PM

1. Text adventures are STILL better than graphic adventures.

I don’t know about that. But I most certainly still love text adventures. There are so many really great ones.

     

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