Adventure Gamers - Forums

Confession:

I enjoyed playing Myst on my friend’s Mac back in 1993.  It seemed so cool at the time.

Also, whenever I hear a “wild eep”, I can’t help but smile.

Bt

I thought Season 3 was awful. I guess the difference is I never read the original comics

Antrax - 14 January 2014 12:11 AM

I thought Season 3 was awful. I guess the difference is I never read the original comics

The tighter narrative and just the overall tone felt a bit truer—although to be fair, by the time Season 3 came out, my expectations were already pretty low.    Season 2 wasn’t terrible either, though admittedly I got bored before I ever finished it.  That should say something about how much the humor missed the mark for me though.    They’re not TERRIBLE games; they just don’t scratch my itch like the original comics or Hit the Road.

I liked Season 3 a lot on PS3. I like playing on consoles because I find it more relaxing than hunching over a screen, and trophies are fun.

I really liked the Twilight Zone presentation, and loved that each episode introduced something new to an incredibly stale genre. Max’s powers for example, or the episode that you play out of order.

I’m generally not looking for humor or good writing in games because I think it exists almost never, including in the classics. To me it’s more important to keep things pithy and have fun with what there is by using good (preferably recognizable) voice actors. It’s also important that a game know its place. For example, when the Telltale Sam & Max games had very long back-and-forth dialogue that was trying really hard to be funny, I found it grating. Just keep it short - I’m not going to penalize you for not trying to shoe-horn long punchlines in at every opportunity.

Lambonius - 12 January 2014 07:09 PM

Detective Mosely - 12 January 2014 06:50 PM

And the complaint someone had about Gabe moving to slow across the screen wasn’t a problem at all, because Gabe would always appear right behind the camera when you moved it.

This mechanic only goes so far though; whenever you have to exit a screen, particularly in large outdoor areas, you still have to wait for Gabriel or Grace to slowly walk to the predetermined point to initiate the screen change.  In general the environments are just not ergonomically designed at all.  They’re far too large and open given the limited amount of things to do and look at in them, and the slow movement speed only further compounds the sense of tedium when trying to explore them.

Now granted, the problem of large, empty environments was a common issue in a lot of early 3D era games, but in an adventure game in particular, which is already a genre known for slow-paced gameplay, it felt especially problematic and annoying.

Did you know that you can make Gabe/Grace teleport to their destination by hitting the ESC key while they’re walking? Once you’ve discovered this trick (along with the camera trick Detective Mosely mentioned), moving Gabe and Grace from scene to scene is very quick and easy, with no waiting for them to walk around—better that in most adventure games, I think.

Allow me to join the “GK3 character models, interface and camera are awesome and the game is da’ bomb” crowd. Howdy!

Also, I’ll mingle with the “Broken Sword just isn’t my cup of tea” party. I’ve only played the first two, and I really can’t say I find the characters of George and Nico interesting enough to warrant further adventures.

Oh, one more confession: I’m a huge Monkey Island fan, played every single one, and MI2 is my least favorite of the bunch! While a lot of people here have mentioned its non-linearity as its strength, I found that the 3-island puzzle design required so much tedious back-tracking that solving puzzles became a chore. Especially frustrating considering that the puzzles were quite challenging, which meant a lot of experimenting with newly found inventory items, and walking back and forth.

DustCropper - 14 January 2014 02:38 AM

Oh, one more confession: I’m a huge Monkey Island fan, played every single one, and MI2 is my least favorite of the bunch! While a lot of people here have mentioned its non-linearity as its strength, I found that the 3-island puzzle design required so much tedious back-tracking that solving puzzles became a chore. Especially frustrating considering that the puzzles were quite challenging, which meant a lot of experimenting with newly found inventory items, and walking back and forth.

Did you play the games out of sequence, and after they’d all been out for years, by chance?

I’m genuinely curious, because as one who played Monkey Island first, when it was new, and then played Monkey Island 2 shortly after it came out—that game felt like an absolute revelation.  It didn’t QUITE reach the heights of Fate of Atlantis (for me), but at the time it was probably the most tightly designed adventure game ever.  I mean, it was just GLORIOUS. 

Lambonius - 14 January 2014 02:45 AM

Did you play the games out of sequence, and after they’d all been out for years, by chance?

I’m genuinely curious, because as one who played Monkey Island first, when it was new, and then played Monkey Island 2 shortly after it came out—that game felt like an absolute revelation.  It didn’t QUITE reach the heights of Fate of Atlantis (for me), but at the time it was probably the most tightly designed adventure game ever.  I mean, it was just GLORIOUS. 

Yes, I did play them out of sequence. MI3 introduced me to the series when I first played it upon its release. That was followed by MI1 and then later 2 (played them in the Monkey Madness bundle that was included in one of those big LucasArts collection boxes). So yes, my experience of playing MI2 would have certainly been different from yours and others who played it when it was first released. MI1 is my favorite by the way.

Antrax - 13 January 2014 11:50 PM

Detective Mosely - 13 January 2014 07:36 PM

I was a huge fan of Sam and Max Hit the Road back in the day, but Telltale’s season 1 of that series disappointed me and I never finished it.

That’s really surprising. Can you put into words what was missing? I was simply in love with Telltale when I saw what a good job (I thought) they did resurrecting the franchise.

I just didn’t find it near as funny or interesting.  Plus weak puzzles and very few places to go, most of which weren’t that exciting.

It did seem to be getting much better as it went along, but the first few episodes of season 1 in particular were pretty much a snooze fest for me.  With occasional funny moments.  Then I really enjoyed Abe Lincoln Must Die, and then I had some technical problem during Reality 2.0 that caused me to stop playing.

And I never read the comics, but I’m guessing part of what Lamb is referring to is that the humor didn’t have the same bite as Hit the Road.  Like the very first scene after the intro, Max throws a bomb out the window and it explodes.

Sam: I hope no one was on that bus.
Max: No one we know, anyway.

Most of the humor in the Telltale games seemed to play it much safer.  Which made it less surprising and less funny.

diego - 14 January 2014 02:35 AM

Detective Mosely - 13 January 2014 07:19 PM

And as soon as I see a review for an adventure game and it mentions it’s similar to Myst I close the page.  No matter how well reviewed it is.

I consider Myst and similar games to be a different genre than the adventure games I like.

I urge you to play The Journeyman Project (hey, JP3 is a playthrough candidate! ) - you may change your opinion, it’s not that typical “solitary exploration”

It looks interesting.  I’ll keep it in mind.

I am playing Gone Hone.  I guess that qualifies as Myst like, eh?  But at least it’s character driven, even if we aren’t meeting the characters.

Detective Mosely - 14 January 2014 08:10 AM

I’m guessing part of what Lamb is referring to is that the humor didn’t have the same bite as Hit the Road.  Like the very first scene after the intro, Max throws a bomb out the window and it explodes.

Sam: I hope no one was on that bus.
Max: No one we know, anyway.

Most of the humor in the Telltale games seemed to play it much safer.  Which made it less surprising and less funny.

Yeah, that’s definitely part of it.  If you’ve ever seen the short-lived Saturday morning cartoon, Telltale’s is a LOT like that.  They had to play the humor safer, cleaner, and less sophisticated (more silly cartoon gags, a little less cerebral and less in the realm of social satire than some of the comics stuff) to appeal to children.  The characterization of Max in particular is noticeably different in the Saturday morning cartoon compared to the earlier comics or Hit the Road.  They made him a lot more zany, like one of the then-popular Animaniacs.  In fact, I think the cartoon in many ways modeled itself after that show (which was also on Fox Kids at the time.)  Telltale seems to have almost directly copied the characterizations from the show as opposed to the comics, and their games suffer as a result, in my opinion.

The less-good (I won’t say terrible, because it’s still better than a lot of games) voice acting doesn’t help either, as some of the jokes fall flat due to poor delivery.

I just could never get into it, and commonly found myself getting bored while playing those games, particularly Seasons 1 and 2.

Detective Mosely - 14 January 2014 08:15 AM

I am playing Gone Hone.  I guess that qualifies as Myst like, eh?  But at least it’s character driven, even if we aren’t meeting the characters.

I didn’t find Gone Home similar to Myst but I never got any feel for the characters in Myst, didn’t get far enough.  Gone Home surprised me, liked it much better than I expected to.