Adventure Gamers - Forums

millenia - 27 January 2015 01:51 AM

to me the beginning of Fahrenheit was one of the best beginnings of games (even though it’s totally ripped off from Dark City). Not only what actually happens but having a logical and quite well implemented timed sequence(!) and making you learn the controls really fast cleaning yourself up. Then you can investigate the same crime scene as a police. It was awesome.

Agreed totally Millenia. What was also well-done was that there were a number of ways your character could escape from the murder scene - there wasn’t just one “correct” solution. Unfortunately, the story did rather collapse in the 2nd half, and as has been commented, the action elements weren’t only very difficult, but also boringly repetitive, but the start was one of the best I can think of from ANY adventure game. Maybe the best.

Zifnab - 26 January 2015 06:33 AM

If I woke up after killing someone I’d turn myself in to the police, not try and hide the body and run away like I was guilty.

If I remember rightly, you could just wait & let yourself get caught by the police. The result? Put in prison for life and game over. Sounds reasonabe enough to me - the defence that my brain’s been taken over and I had no control over my own actions is unlikely to be one to work with police or a court of law. There’s a lot Fahrenheit can be criticised about (and has been) but your attitude, Zifnab, is certainly one of the more unusual criticisms of it, that’s for sure.

Sorry to continue off-topic, but it certainly wasn’t me that started it

Spell out the name Cage and haters won’t loose opportunity, to turn it into QTE, story debate.

Coming back to graphics and how bad and generic BW games look, if you want to MAKE some style, you can learn alot from Games like Ghost Trick and Framed.

I recently got around it and finally played Framed(Kojima’s GoTY), and its indeed amazing to say the least.

Clever stylish game, you play out story boards by sequencing them in order to continue journey of 3 characters,with refreshing puzzles like Ghost Trick.

Any AdvGamer could learn alot from Framed.
Both this and GT are not so demanding games, shows that you can have your way with good Minimalist style, but style should be able to sell people out there , not just this community( depending upon your scope ).

nomadsoul - 27 January 2015 10:28 AM

Coming back to graphics and how bad and generic BW games look, if you want to MAKE some style, you can learn alot from Games like Ghost Trick and Framed.

 

YES!

(Don’t know how demanding these animations are thought)

wilco - 27 January 2015 10:44 AM

nomadsoul - 27 January 2015 10:28 AM

Coming back to graphics and how bad and generic BW games look, if you want to MAKE some style, you can learn alot from Games like Ghost Trick and Framed.

 

YES!

(Don’t know how demanding these animations are thought)

@milenia

You are missing out big time.

@wilco

Didn’t know its out on iOS too, will grab it down the line.
Shu takumi should already give Ace a break and make GT2.

BW looks much much better to me, and I don’t have such high opinion about BW gfx

Bogi - 27 January 2015 12:05 PM

BW looks much much better to me, and I don’t have such high opinion about BW gfx

This Sir, right here , exactly the reason why AG genre is in such a state.

nomadsoul - 27 January 2015 10:28 AM

Coming back to graphics and how bad and generic BW games look, if you want to MAKE some style, you can learn alot from Games like Ghost Trick and Framed.

Yes, the style in GT is quite distinctive & the animation seems impressive but as a game made for the Nintendo DS it’s obviously had a lot more resources poured into it than those available to Indie developers WadgetEye games. 

Any AdvGamer could learn alot from Framed.

I play games for entertainment & not to be educated (unless I choose otherwise) but what exactly is the ‘a lot’ I would learn? I’m sure there’s gamers here that have played far more than the 400++ games I’ve played & are far more knowledgeable about what there is to learn? Do you need to? For me I just need to know what elements in a game rock my boat & what doesn’t - as much as I love great graphics it does depend on the game whether they’re important or not!

Both this and GT are not so demanding games, shows that you can have your way with good Minimalist style, but style should be able to sell people out there , not just this community( depending upon your scope ).

Here I will agree with you to a point - yes if the game looks nice it will appeal to you more but there’s got to be more than that to sell a game! Personally what sells a game to me is anything but the graphical style which is basically the story, interface & puzzles. To the Moon had a distinctive graphical style that I really disliked but I liked it in every other respect & was grabbed from the beginning because it started well which is important I think if the graphics don’t appeal to you. I’ve played a few games recently where the graphics, although indistinctive, are lovely but the game is sorely lacking in other respects. 

millenia - 27 January 2015 11:09 AM

Well I agree that Blackwell’s graphics aren’t especially stylized but has anyone said they were? I think the graphics are fine, pretty even. A good example of how you can make nice graphics with low res. Nothing more. The “soul” of the game is in its main characters.

The main aspect of the BW graphics I really liked, despite them being basic, was the ‘down to earth’ realness of the environments which in my mind wouldn’t have worked with ‘fancy pants’ stylised graphics. But never mind that the strength of the BW series was in the story, wonderful characters, witty dialogue, great voice acting & fairly challenging puzzles which involved the co-operation of 2 characters - brilliant!   

nomadsoul - 27 January 2015 12:10 PM

Bogi - 27 January 2015 12:05 PM

BW looks much much better to me, and I don’t have such high opinion about BW gfx

This Sir, right here , exactly the reason why AG genre is in such a state.

The AG genre seems fine to me & also it seems, to those fans that aren’t constantly trying to trip it up with comparisons to other genres but none-the -less embrace new approaches to the genre that don’t involve going down the rpg/action route!   

Ghost Trick is an absolutely fantastic game, can’t recommend it enough, but I actually loved it more for the story/game blend than for the graphics; while the animations are definitely stunning, I never got used to that extremely pointless body overreaction. =P

Detective Mosely - 27 January 2015 09:32 AM

This is ridiculous, and kind of offensive that you suggest that anyone that plays a game that contains anything unethical wants to do those things in real life.  99% of people are able to separate reality from fiction.

But our enjoyment of fiction requires us precisely to NOT totally separate “reality” from “fiction”. Would the figure and actions of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness affect us as they do if our attitude was simply to dismiss it all off hand and say “oh, it’s only fiction”? Of course not. We happen to be shocked, disturbed, warmed, intrigued, and embraced by books, films and games for that reason, which would not happen if we took a robotic uncaring attitude towards it simply because it happens to be written on paper. This isn’t a discussion about some schizophrenic illness of not separating reality and fiction, it’s how normal functioning humans tend to behave.

Mr Underhill - 28 January 2015 03:26 AM

Goes to show if people associate you with a certain style, it almost becomes like typecasting -  your fans will hate the change, even if it’s (graphically) for the better.

How are you going to determine whether it’s for the better?

Speaking of Blackwell, I think they used Hi-Res portraits on the 4th game (Deception) and it looked much worse. The first game had the nicest looking portraits, I thought.

Mr Underhill - 28 January 2015 03:26 AM

Watched this Dave Gilbert talk recently, and somewhere in it he mentions how, after having released a game on Big Fish to great commercial success, he hired some pros to work on the backgrounds on his next game, and his audience HATED the new improved graphics and the game sold poorly, if I recall correctly. Goes to show if people associate you with a certain style, it almost becomes like typecasting -  your fans will hate the change, even if it’s (graphically) for the better. The talk itself is pretty interesting nonetheless… though I have to say I strongly disagree with some of the points he’s making and decisions he took along the way, even if financially they worked out for him.

Any spoilers in this talk? I’ve only played Blackwell 1 thus far.

nomadsoul - 23 January 2015 03:37 AM

And thats style, it should have something distinctive ,should not be bland , super basic,  colorful artwork like of kindergarten books(Resonance).
In resonance even body proportions are whacked, characters look like wobbleheads, like
some kindergarten kid gone amok.

Ironic how from one sentence to the next you go from saying a style should be distinctive to complaining about the distinctive look of the characters in Resonance. Guess what: That’s a style! (More specifically, it’s Shane Stevens’ style.)

It’s just that you don’t like the style. Which is fine (I think GR looks better too), but don’t try to pretend it’s because the art isn’t distinctive enough.

Similarly, each of the Blackwell games have fairly distinctive art styles. In particular, you can easily recognize Ian Schlaepfer’s portraits and animations in the first game (heavy on purple and green color schemes, clean cartoony character designs, realistic-looking animations), and Ben Chandler’s work on the last one is instantly familiar to those who’ve played other of his games (dramatic use of light and shadow, very straight arms and legs on the characters, etc.).

Mr Underhill - 28 January 2015 03:26 AM

Watched this Dave Gilbert talk recently, and somewhere in it he mentions how, after having released a game on Big Fish to great commercial success, he hired some pros to work on the backgrounds on his next game, and his audience HATED the new improved graphics and the game sold poorly, if I recall correctly. Goes to show if people associate you with a certain style, it almost becomes like typecasting -  your fans will hate the change, even if it’s (graphically) for the better.

It’s been a long time since I watched it, but that’s not quite how I remember it. Wasn’t he saying that for Blackwell Convergence he sunk a lot of money into the graphics, but even though adventure fans thought the graphics were pretty, they didn’t particularly care, and it didn’t sell any better? Meanwhile, “mainstream” players still thought it looked “ugly” simply because it was low-resolution.

IIRC, he speculates that because of the focus on graphics, he didn’t put enough focus on the puzzles and writing, and because redoing graphics was so expensive he didn’t have the flexibility to make as many changes during development, so therefore Convergence simply wasn’t as well designed as the others in the series, which pulled down review grades and sales.

Oh, just found the blog post I was thinking of where he says pretty much that (so if you prefer reading to watching a video…): http://nygamedev.blogspot.ch/2011/11/graphics-and-budget.html