Adventure Gamers - Forums

How’s this for an argument? All opinion aside, it’s a poor game. Any veteran adventurer should know that, and if they don’t they shouldn’t be reviewing games.

Zifnab - 03 August 2013 01:32 PM

All opinion aside, it’s a poor game.

If you look up “contradiction” in the dictionary, it should list this statement as its example.

Any veteran adventurer should know that, and if they don’t they shouldn’t be reviewing games.

Or designing them, apparently, as Al Lowe and Josh Mandel seem to disagree with your “argument”. But hey, we should all bow to your superior wisdom, I guess, as totally unsubstantiated as it may be.

Advie - 03 August 2013 01:28 PM

I do have that argument in more than 20 pages at this thread ... i have nothing more to add for LSL1 Reloaded, Sir. the review was a new content added to the argument and sorry i had to pick on it , thanks all .

Maybe I missed it. All I saw was a rant about how much you disliked it, not offering any actual reasoning. Not that you’re required to, but the reviewer at least supported his opinion.

And you didn’t “pick on” the review, you took a cheap shot at the reviewer (or the site’s integrity; can’t tell which).

I’ve just always considered LSL1 to be one of the least well-designed adventure games in the early Sierra catalog.  Your mileage may vary, of course, but I feel like I saw all the negative reviews of this remake coming from a mile away, especially when it became apparent that many of the most tedious parts of the original game were going to remain intact.  To call LSL1 “one of the finest adventure games out there” is the kind of hyperbole that I wouldn’t expect in a serious review, especially when all of the design flaws in the original have been pointed out and discussed to death by fans over the past 20 years.

That said, I don’t have a problem with the positivity of this review.  The reviewer is judging the game based on its faithfulness and entertainment value as a remake, and doesn’t seem concerned with holding the design flaws of the original against it.  That’s his prerogative, of course, and I’m okay with it.  It’s basically a case of—if you can enjoy and accept the original game, warts and all, then you’ll enjoy the remake.

That’s perfectly reasonable. But I’m genuinely curious, because I’ve never played the original or the remake: outside of the money grinding, which I can already agree should have never existed, let alone repeated, what makes the LSL1’s gameplay “tedious”. If it’s been discussed to death, I’ve not seen it. I mean, running around clicking on things for amusing commentary, collecting items, and talking to people are pretty typical genre staples, and this game even updated the interface in case that was a sticking point. So what makes this game’s design worse than the vast majority of others, including genre favourites?

One of the things I generally do when editing reviews here is read through a few negative ones elsewhere (if posted before ours) just so I can question my reviewers about things they may have overlooked. Not to change their minds, just to ensure that they’ve at least considered everything. And I must say, aside from the kvetching about the sexism, I really didn’t see much legitimate criticism that went beyond “it’s an old school adventure, and those suck!” (And this is coming from someone who routinely defends mainstream reviewers from bias claims, so I’m not offering that as an easy excuse.)

Jackal - 03 August 2013 02:45 PM

So what makes this game’s design worse than the vast majority of others, including genre favourites?

Well, off the top of my head, and aside from the gambling grind, LSL1 is one of the worst contenders for “Gotcha deaths.”  The original also had no way of continuing if you lost all your money.  Granted, both of these things were addressed in the remake, so that’s not a huge deal anymore.  The other thing that always irked me about LSL1 is that, of all the early Sierra games, it was one of the most directionless in terms of what you were supposed to do and where you needed to go to do it.  On the other hand, it’s not a very big game, but still, it always felt a lot more aimless to me than Space Quest or King’s Quest.  Now granted, KQ1 had a lot of wandering in it, but in LSL1, wandering is punished because you quickly run out of money for cab fare.  So, exploration itself becomes more tedious because you have to continually stop and replenish your financial reserves (via the gambling save-scum grind.)  And you have to keep exploring to meet women and figure out what you’re supposed to do in order to advance the game.  There’s also a ton of backtracking that is required in order to complete the game (especially on a first playthrough), which in turn requires MORE money and more grinding.  Honestly, I really think that if the money were removed from LSL as a whole, or made unlimited, it’d be a much more enjoyable experience.

If you think about the original game, and combine all of those factors, you have a short, relatively directionless game, with tons of surprise deaths, an excruciating money system that makes exploring the game world a chore, dead ends, save-scum grinding, etc.  That’s a lot of issues for one little game that really hamper enjoyment and playability.  I’ve just never understood the love it receives.  And lastly (and this is certainly a matter of opinion), because of its “real-world” contemporary (for the 80s) setting, it doesn’t have near the amount of escapism that allows some of the other games, like KQ and SQ, to overcome similar design issues.  It’s just not a very fun game, in my opinion. 

Somebody seems to troll paul trowe by user reviewing the game under his name for 5 stars…

I found the quality of the art mixed, game short, driving the taxi and earning money tedious, interface interfering with pacing, buffet ‘puzzle’ baffled me (why did they do it that way?), sex jokes sometimes a bit too easy/much and some other little things where they could’ve polished a bit more. Overall 3 or 3.5 stars. Larry 7 was a lot more consistent in quality for me and gets 4 or 4.5 stars.

Lambonius - 03 August 2013 03:40 PM

Jackal - 03 August 2013 02:45 PM

So what makes this game’s design worse than the vast majority of others, including genre favourites?

Well, off the top of my head, and aside from the gambling grind, LSL1 is one of the worst contenders for “Gotcha deaths.”  The original also had no way of continuing if you lost all your money.  Granted, both of these things were addressed in the remake, so that’s not a huge deal anymore.  The other thing that always irked me about LSL1 is that, of all the early Sierra games, it was one of the most directionless in terms of what you were supposed to do and where you needed to go to do it.  On the other hand, it’s not a very big game, but still, it always felt a lot more aimless to me than Space Quest or King’s Quest.  Now granted, KQ1 had a lot of wandering in it, but in LSL1, wandering is punished because you quickly run out of money for cab fare.  So, exploration itself becomes more tedious because you have to continually stop and replenish your financial reserves (via the gambling save-scum grind.)  And you have to keep exploring to meet women and figure out what you’re supposed to do in order to advance the game.  There’s also a ton of backtracking that is required in order to complete the game (especially on a first playthrough), which in turn requires MORE money and more grinding.  Honestly, I really think that if the money were removed from LSL as a whole, or made unlimited, it’d be a much more enjoyable experience.

If you think about the original game, and combine all of those factors, you have a short, relatively directionless game, with tons of surprise deaths, an excruciating money system that makes exploring the game world a chore, dead ends, save-scum grinding, etc.  That’s a lot of issues for one little game that really hamper enjoyment and playability.  I’ve just never understood the love it receives.  And lastly (and this is certainly a matter of opinion), because of its “real-world” contemporary (for the 80s) setting, it doesn’t have near the amount of escapism that allows some of the other games, like KQ and SQ, to overcome similar design issues.  It’s just not a very fun game, in my opinion. 

That’s exactly what made it so legendary. Notice I didn’t say “fun”. It gave us a world (our own) which was meant to be concerned with pleasure, fun, and gave us nothing but pain. That’s possibly closest to an artistic statement as you’ll get in a game. And that’s why it shouldn’t have been remade. It is something you hang on the wall and appreciate for what it did, not recreate “better” “prettier” and “longer”, in HD.

It amazes me people keep talking about game “innovation”, moving forward and originality, and they don’t even appreciate what some of the old games did for us. No, it’s escapism we want…

I haven’t played LSL: Reloaded (only the LSL1 VGA remake many years ago) so I have no opinion on the quality of the remake.

But whatever anyone may personally believe is the cause, the discrepancy between the critic and user scores on Metacritic for LSL: Reloaded is abnormally high.

LSL:Reloaded (PC) - critics 58/100, users 8.8/10
LSL:Reloaded (iOS) - critics 73/100, users 9.8/10

I don’t know the what the standard deviation is between critic and user scores on Metacritic, but try looking up some other games on Metacritic and compare them to the above.

To me this suggests that most critics are at least as out of touch with LSL:R’s audience as LSL:R allegedly is with modern times.

AdventureGamers is an exception to this, and actually more in line with Metacritic users, since 4/5 is not too far off from 8.8/10.

I also find it interesting that the iOS audience (both critics and users) seem more receptive to the game—especially interesting since one of the main reasons for the remake was to bring the games to the mobile audience. I would guess that a game like LSL:R looks very different competing against other games in the mobile space than it looks competing on PC. But the sample size for iOS ratings on Metacritic is so small (only 5 critics and 9 users) that there’s really not enough to say if the edge of iOS over PC is legitimate or not.

The app store rating of 4.5/5 from 75 users may also be of interest.

Caveats:
1) The opinions of those users who take the time to rate things on Metacritic and the app store may not conform to the opinions of the broader public, but then again neither may those of critics or forum members. This is by no means a scientific survey.
2) No one knows how Metacritic weights its critic scores.
3) The score of a review cannot reflect the full nuance of the substance.

Zifnab - 03 August 2013 06:43 PM

That’s exactly what made it so legendary. Notice I didn’t say “fun”. It gave us a world (our own) which was meant to be concerned with pleasure, fun, and gave us nothing but pain. That’s possibly closest to an artistic statement as you’ll get in a game. And that’s why it shouldn’t have been remade. It is something you hang on the wall and appreciate for what it did, not recreate “better” “prettier” and “longer”, in HD.

It amazes me people keep talking about game “innovation”, moving forward and originality, and they don’t even appreciate what some of the old games did for us. No, it’s escapism we want…

I think the artistic merits you’re talking about are more accidental than intentional. Somehow I doubt Al Lowe wanted to express some deep thought in a comedic game all about sex. I think he just didn’t knew any better than to make the original LSL as not fun as it was and is.
That’s my impression, at least. Yet the intention of the artist doesn’t necessarily matter for the consumer anyway.

I agree, and I also agree intention doesn’t matter, for the consumer OR the artist. I don’t think intention is what we believe it is anyway, especially in the non-traditional arts. I prefer to think of art as making itself, using us as tools. LSL is a game looking back you couldn’t imagine not being made. It just had to. All the conditions were there (rise of personal computing, 80s pleasure culture, etc), it just took someone to do it. And I don’t care about Al Lowe or what he thinks.

Zifnab - 03 August 2013 06:43 PM

It amazes me people keep talking about game “innovation”, moving forward and originality, and they don’t even appreciate what some of the old games did for us. No, it’s escapism we want…

I WAS talking about the escapism of the old games, not contemporary stuff.  LSL never did it for me the way KQ, SQ, QFG, and even GK did.  I just never found LSL to be enjoyable.  I’ve always enjoyed even the most punishingly difficult games from the other series, and even some of the later LSL games managed to grab me enough to want to play them again.  But LSL1 has always felt just tedious to me.  If you’re trying to say I should put it up on a pedestal and appreciate it BECAUSE of its tedium, then I’m sorry—I just don’t follow.