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Questioning my love of adventure games

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Joined 2013-10-29

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I was going to put this in the confessions thread but it turned into more of a rant.

It’s been 34 years since I first tried Zork and fell in love with adventure games. I’ve played so many over the years. Sadly I’m beginning to wonder if I enjoy them any more. I picked up a handful of AGs in the last Steam sale and the first three I tried (Broken Age, Cognition, The Night of the Rabbit) have ranged from disappointing to rage-inducing.

There are 10 things that will severely put me off an adventure game:

1. An unlikable protagonist
If the main character is whiny, annoying or complains a lot it will KILL most of the fun of the game. Probably the worst case is Sadwick from the Whispered World. Ten minutes into the game and I hated him with a passion. Jerry from the TNOTR is in this category, although nowhere near as bad as Sadwick.

2. Excessive dialogue
Dialogue in a game is fine. I get really annoyed when a character runs through a 3 second animation clip before or after saying something, or when the main character insists on lengthy comments every time you click on something or after every extended conversation. By the time I’d finished the first area of TNOTR I was skipping ALL conversations because I just couldn’t take it any more. That lead to confusion over what to do next and having to slog through the dialogues again or look up the answer because I’d stopped having fun.

3. Lengthy cut scenes
This goes hand-in-hand with #2. Unskippable cut scenes are worse. Skippable cut scenes that you have to watch or you won’t know what to do next are worst of all. Parts of TNOTR were torturous.

4. Timed puzzles
A timed puzzle will often make me quit the second I see it. Before Cognition I’ve never played any of the Erica Reed games. It started right in the middle of a story but seemed interesting enough with some unusual game mechanics. Twenty minutes in I hit a timed puzzle with an actual ticking clock and I was done.

5. Idiotic puzzles
If a puzzle involves using inventory items in a completely random way with no discernible logic I’m going to be annoyed. This happens a LOT. It’s a lazy way for the devs to artificially increase the difficulty of a game. The Deponia games are full of these. TNOTR has a few as well.

6. Poorly programmed games
I hate games that make you follow 1 path and if you miss a step or did something out of order you fail. You know what to do, you know how to do it but it won’t work. In TNOTR lighting up the tree limb requires you to talk to the Leprechaun. If you don’t, even though you want to explore the limb and you know how to light it up, you can’t.

7. Dexterity-based puzzles
This includes combat. Especially combat. I play these games to relax and think, not to twitch. I think I hit one of these with Dreamfall and quit playing.

8. Linear games
Way too many games have this problem. I don’t expect every game to be Rhem or Zork Zero, but I want some degree of non-linearity. I hate games that only give you one puzzle at a time or stick you in small area after small area. Broken Age suffers from this. After the first area TNOTR did a good job of making the game non-linear with lots of inventory items.

9. Too short
I don’t expect every game to take months to solve, but I don’t want to be able to finish a game in 1 sitting. The all-time worst example of this is Gone Home (and no, the story didn’t make up for the length). I won’t generally buy adventure games that are listed as short. There are exceptions, notably The Room and The Room 2.

10. Too easy
Probably the least important complaint. I’m usually fairly good with puzzles so games can often feel easy. Unless the game violates one of the above issues, I’ll put up with an easy game.

I thought I loved adventure games. Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety. Or maybe it’s time to load up The Lost Crown and remember why I enjoy AGs.

     
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you are not alone

     
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Joined 2012-09-28

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You aren’t exactly picking the cream of the last few years crop. If those 3 games were the best AGs had to offer I would agree with you, but they aren’t.

It’s like listening to U2 and Coldplay and questioning your love of music. Be more careful with your game choices.

     

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Joined 2004-08-01

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Try Resonance.

     
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Total Posts: 932

Joined 2004-03-23

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I concur that you’ve maybe been playing the wrong games. Sounds like you should simply stay away from Daedalic games Wink (I’ve never been too impressed by them myself, I haven’t understood the praise - the ones I’ve played have seemed mediocre at best).

Of course, the quality of AGs has gone down from when they were #1 (which is pretty natural), even if they have been starting to get a bit better again recently.

Of course, sometimes you might need a little patience. I know I hate timed puzzles and combat etc., but it’s not that rare that a game has only one and if you just fight through it, you won’t have to mind them anymore.

     
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Total Posts: 268

Joined 2008-07-05

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UPtimist - 30 July 2014 11:20 AM

I concur that you’ve maybe been playing the wrong games. Sounds like you should simply stay away from Daedalic games Wink (I’ve never been too impressed by them myself, I haven’t understood the praise - the ones I’ve played have seemed mediocre at best).

Agree with UPtimist fundamentally there, although I would say “Edna & Harvey - The Breakout” (or whatever the English title is) is something of an exception. Also agree that Resonance is a very good recommendation - excellent puzzle design and certainly not too short. Other recent-ish ones would be Gemini Rue, Tesla Effect, and Machinarium. But the OP might well already know all these.

But I’d also say the original poster is a bit over-optimistic and more than a tad demanding. No timed puzzles? (Why not? So long as excessive dexterity isn’t demanded) No convoluted inventory puzzles? No dexterity-based puzzles? (Though I don’t necessarily disagree with that one) Yet the game shouldn’t be too short?!? I’d be interested to know which games in the past apparantly fit all his/her expectations. As for skipping dialogue or cut scenes - no idea why you’d want to! (unless you’ve already heard it before - that’s another matter! Lost Crown? Pan )If the game and story are good enough, there should be no need. Admittedly, I do understand the feeling with “The Whispered World” (yawn)...hence I never finished it Wink)

But then I guess (s)he’s got a different taste in games to me? The lost Crown?!? Bluurrrggghhh. If ever there was a game with long, badly-written and acted dialogues, which repeated and were NON-SKIPPABLE, then that’s got to be it! Plus artifical blocks to exploring the whole town. Not sure how it’s the one to go back to   Wink .

     

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Joined 2013-10-29

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DaveyB - 30 July 2014 02:13 PM

Agree with UPtimist fundamentally there, although I would say “Edna & Harvey - The Breakout” (or whatever the English title is) is something of an exception. Also agree that Resonance is a very good recommendation - excellent puzzle design and certainly not too short. Other recent-ish ones would be Gemini Rue, Tesla Effect, and Machinarium. But the OP might well already know all these.

I enjoyed Resonance and thought Machinarium was brilliant. I was sure I’d played Gemini Rue but the screenshots on their website aren’t ringing any bells. I haven’t played Tesla Effect.

DaveyB - 30 July 2014 02:13 PM

But I’d also say the original poster is a bit over-optimistic and more than a tad demanding. No timed puzzles? (Why not? So long as excessive dexterity isn’t demanded) No convoluted inventory puzzles? No dexterity-based puzzles? (Though I don’t necessarily disagree with that one) Yet the game shouldn’t be too short?!?

I guess it depends what the timed puzzle is. Anything with a ticking clock will stress me out WAY too much. I remember a game that had a timed event where you had to run very fast to a dead end where a message was briefly revealed on a wall. One of the Rhems, maybe? That puzzle was fine. Generally speaking, I hate puzzles that give you X amount of time to do something complicated or you’ll have to redo the whole thing. It’s purely a stress thing for me, and I don’t find it fun at all. I won’t even play Sudoku games unless I can hide the timer.

Grim Fandango is one of the best adventure games I’ve ever played and I never finished it because I couldn’t get off the elevator (timing + dexterity).

I love Myst-style games that are heavy on exploration and observation. While I couldn’t get into Rhem 1, I quite enjoyed Rhem 2-4. They’re dry and brutally hard at times, but the thrill you get when you solve one of the difficult puzzles is in part why I play these games.

 

     
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Joined 2013-12-19

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Adventure games come in all ahapes and forms. So being subjectively disappointed in many, or even most, current offerings isn’t really shocking. The issue isn’t quality. Its actually quantity. There aren’t enough games of varying types to satiate all tastes.

Me personally? I’ve generally been happy with the high profile adventure games of the last 5 years. But I’ve been completely unimpressed with the Telltale Walking Dead style games. As I’m more about the Puzzles. (though, interestingly, I’ve been enjoying the heavy narrative driven super-short games like Gone Home lately. Complaining about Gone Home and its ilk’s length is largely missing the point of these games IMO)

     

Adventure Gamer Since 1992

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hamsterzen - 30 July 2014 02:49 PM

I enjoyed Resonance and thought Machinarium was brilliant. I was sure I’d played Gemini Rue but the screenshots on their website aren’t ringing any bells. I haven’t played Tesla Effect.

If you enjoyed Resonance, then excessive dialogue can’t bother you all that much. It’s one of the talkiest games of the last few years along with the other Wadjet Eye games. (This isn’t a criticism.)

Tesla Effect is a very good game, and it sounds like you might enjoy something like The Inner World too.

     
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Devs should avoid making PnCs if they cannot hire good writers and Voiceactors.

     

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nomadsoul - 30 July 2014 08:39 PM

Devs should avoid making PnCs if they cannot hire good writers and Voiceactors.

That’s not something that’s unique to point-and-clicks.

     
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nomadsoul - 30 July 2014 08:39 PM

Devs should avoid making PnCs if they cannot hire good writers and Voiceactors.

Yeah, because Machinarium had such great voiceactors… Wink

     
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hamsterzen - 30 July 2014 10:09 AM

I was going to put this in the confessions thread but it turned into more of a rant.

It’s been 34 years since I first tried Zork and fell in love with adventure games. I’ve played so many over the years. Sadly I’m beginning to wonder if I enjoy them any more. I picked up a handful of AGs in the last Steam sale and the first three I tried (Broken Age, Cognition, The Night of the Rabbit) have ranged from disappointing to rage-inducing.

There are 10 things that will severely put me off an adventure game:

1. An unlikable protagonist
If the main character is whiny, annoying or complains a lot it will KILL most of the fun of the game. Probably the worst case is Sadwick from the Whispered World. Ten minutes into the game and I hated him with a passion. Jerry from the TNOTR is in this category, although nowhere near as bad as Sadwick.

2. Excessive dialogue
Dialogue in a game is fine. I get really annoyed when a character runs through a 3 second animation clip before or after saying something, or when the main character insists on lengthy comments every time you click on something or after every extended conversation. By the time I’d finished the first area of TNOTR I was skipping ALL conversations because I just couldn’t take it any more. That lead to confusion over what to do next and having to slog through the dialogues again or look up the answer because I’d stopped having fun.

3. Lengthy cut scenes
This goes hand-in-hand with #2. Unskippable cut scenes are worse. Skippable cut scenes that you have to watch or you won’t know what to do next are worst of all. Parts of TNOTR were torturous.

4. Timed puzzles
A timed puzzle will often make me quit the second I see it. Before Cognition I’ve never played any of the Erica Reed games. It started right in the middle of a story but seemed interesting enough with some unusual game mechanics. Twenty minutes in I hit a timed puzzle with an actual ticking clock and I was done.

5. Idiotic puzzles
If a puzzle involves using inventory items in a completely random way with no discernible logic I’m going to be annoyed. This happens a LOT. It’s a lazy way for the devs to artificially increase the difficulty of a game. The Deponia games are full of these. TNOTR has a few as well.

6. Poorly programmed games
I hate games that make you follow 1 path and if you miss a step or did something out of order you fail. You know what to do, you know how to do it but it won’t work. In TNOTR lighting up the tree limb requires you to talk to the Leprechaun. If you don’t, even though you want to explore the limb and you know how to light it up, you can’t.

7. Dexterity-based puzzles
This includes combat. Especially combat. I play these games to relax and think, not to twitch. I think I hit one of these with Dreamfall and quit playing.

8. Linear games
Way too many games have this problem. I don’t expect every game to be Rhem or Zork Zero, but I want some degree of non-linearity. I hate games that only give you one puzzle at a time or stick you in small area after small area. Broken Age suffers from this. After the first area TNOTR did a good job of making the game non-linear with lots of inventory items.

9. Too short
I don’t expect every game to take months to solve, but I don’t want to be able to finish a game in 1 sitting. The all-time worst example of this is Gone Home (and no, the story didn’t make up for the length). I won’t generally buy adventure games that are listed as short. There are exceptions, notably The Room and The Room 2.

10. Too easy
Probably the least important complaint. I’m usually fairly good with puzzles so games can often feel easy. Unless the game violates one of the above issues, I’ll put up with an easy game.

I thought I loved adventure games. Maybe I’m just getting old and crotchety. Or maybe it’s time to load up The Lost Crown and remember why I enjoy AGs.

Hi hamsterzen,

Part of your feelings are probably that you got older, and gaming in general has evolved in other genres. As I got older, I too have had problems with some of these tropes you mentioned, although these same tropes were core parts of some of my favorite games of all times. Idiotic puzzles for example were part of Monkey Island 2 (like the infamous Monkey wrench puzzle), yet I still remember it fondly.

That being said, among the games you mentioned, I really did enjoy Broken Age a lot more than I thought I would. Wonder what you didn’t like about it?

     
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Sefir - 31 July 2014 12:43 PM
nomadsoul - 30 July 2014 08:39 PM

Devs should avoid making PnCs if they cannot hire good writers and Voiceactors.

Yeah, because Machinarium had such great voiceactors… Wink


Oh comeon Amanita design is an exceptional case, you know it as well as i do.
I was making a general statement.

     

Total Posts: 127

Joined 2012-02-10

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Devs should avoid making PnCs if they cannot hire good writers and Voiceactors.

Or devs should leave out the voice acting if they can’t get good voice actors, and design puzzle-heavy, plot/dialogue-light games if they can’t hire good writers. I wouldn’t object to an ADVENT-style dungeon crawl with lots of good puzzles that bar the way to lots of treasure, and no plot to speak of besides “get all the treasure.”

1. An unlikable protagonist

Agree, but I have different criteria for “unlikable.”

I don’t object to protagonists who whine if they show some kind of character growth, or if they’ve got something worth complaining about. “The villain killed my entire village” can merit a bit of complaint. But yes, I agree that if the protagonist isn’t pleasant to be around, then the game will be unpleasant to play.

I find pointlessly nasty and stupid protagonists more unpleasant than whiny ones, unless they’re funny enough to justify it. Most are not funny enough to justify it.

2. Excessive dialogue

Disagree in principle, agree in practice.

I love good dialogue. I love having lots and LOTS of good dialogue. I hate bad dialogue.

Most adventure game dialogue is bad dialogue, and should be trimmed ruthlessly. Most authors think they write dialogue that’s SO GOOD we want to hear more and more and more of it, and that’s… not true unless I’m playing one of the better LucasArts adventures, a well-written visual novel (not the norm), or possibly a Discworld game.

3. Lengthy cut scenes

Agreed.

Didn’t Half-Life teach people anything? It IS possible to keep a plot moving without resorting to cutscenes! “Play, don’t show” is the game design equivalent of “show, don’t tell.”

4. Timed puzzles

Agree in general, disagree when they’re done well.

I enjoy these when:

1) They’re justified by circumstances.

2) The game’s interface doesn’t get in the way.

3) The answer is workable in the time frame, and not just clear in hindsight upon repeated failures.

They’re usually done badly, but the Logic Chess puzzles in Ace Attorney Investigations 2 did it well. So did the final confrontations of some of the Quest for Glory games.

5. Idiotic puzzles

Agree, but not a recent problem.

This has been a universal gripe with adventure games since they first existed. Custard pie yeti from KQV, anyone? Hope you didn’t eat that pie. And what about the bridle in KQ2?

My rule is: “Could a clever person in the protagonist’s situation and gameworld, without outside knowledge, be reasonably expected to take the right action?” (The King’s Quest Companion hintbook had to invent goofy explanations for many of Graham’s actions. He threw the bridle at the snake by ACCIDENT, duh - he meant to throw a weapon!)

6. Poorly programmed games

Disagree with wording, agree with sentiment.

That’s not bad programming, that’s thoughtless design. Someone didn’t take into account all the possibilities and provide cues to the right steps to take. Again, not a strictly modern problem.

King’s Quest 2’s bridge may be the single worst case of “If you do things in a slightly different order, the game becomes unwinnable.”

7. Dexterity-based puzzles

Mostly agree, partial disagreement; depends on genre.

Acceptable if they can be skipped or an alternate solution is available. The final sequence in Tesla Effect is rage-inducing if you try to actually do it properly.

8. Linear games

Mild disagreement, with caveats.

Linear games are fantastic if you have a strong linear narrative and plenty of things to do and poke at. They only become a problem when the player hits a specific roadblock that keeps them from moving on, or begins to realize that they’re being led by the hand and really want to go somewhere else. If a linear game is well-written, the player will have a reasonably good chance of being in agreement with the game over where the story should go next.

(Alternatively, the player may be frustrated at the game for forcing a plot development, but also be aware that the game designer was deliberately aiming for that. Bioshock did this. It’s a risky move.)

That said, when a linear game goes wrong, it goes VERY wrong.

9. Too short

Strong disagreement. Games are getting cheaper, at least where I live, especially when you take inflation into account.

I much prefer a game that gets to the point to one that meanders, uses filler, and gets most of its length from watching a walkcycle repeat over and over. How much of Syberia’s play time consisted of doing interesting things?

When Full Throttle came out, some critics panned it for its short length. I disagreed then, because it was more packed with cool stuff for its length than any other game. It was a full length game with (most of) the boring bits cut out!

I want to see more of that - games that demand no more of my time than a movie or two, but develop their worlds and characters fully in that time. At the moment, I mostly rely on very good text adventures to maximize my puzzle-solving/storytelling:boredom ratio.

If a game isn’t giving me something to reflect on or otherwise react to and act upon, it needs trimming. I’m not averse to big maps in principle, as I loved Heroine’s Quest, but HQ gave me a resource puzzle in the form of food, cold, stamina, and money, at least as an early game sorceress. Haven’t played other classes yet.)

10. Too easy

Games may also seem easier when we get better at them. The stock puzzles now hold no challenge. In addition, many have become less grotesquely unfair.

That said, some games really DO make puzzles absolutely pointless by walking us through every step. Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies is a bad offender. This is what difficulty levels and hint systems are for.

     
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Watch this:

That’s my view of the genre. Story comes first, not puzzles.

     

Recently completed: Game of Thrones (decent), Tales from the borderlands (great!), Life is Strange (great!), Stasis (good), Annas Quest (great!); Broken Age (poor)

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