Adventure Gamers - Forums

Reviewers here most of the time become joke when reviewing games that aren’t traditional Adventures.
They do random short check on sites and then go crazy, reviews of Rain and FSR are laughable. They didn’t have any idea of what they were talking about, still have audacity to defend their follies.

I think this site started as site for traditional AGs, but with time started assimilating into other somewhat AGs to sustain its life. Now still in catch22 situation, where countless threads have been made on same topics of what is AG afterall.

Where some posters rephrasing same cynic feelings and some realizing maybe we should bend more.

A time will come when the process of assimilation will suck in all the other genres.

TimovieMan - 16 December 2014 11:43 AM

Meh, that happens all the time. The same happened when King’s Quest was first released, and again when Myst was released, for instance. Continually challenging one’s understanding of something is not a bad thing, you know. It’s what leads to enlightenment. Stagnation would be worse.

But MYST was very controversial for vey long time. In fact, i think it didn’t stop beeing controversial, after heyday of MYST clones nobody just cares about wheter MYST clones are real adventures. And one of ares where MYST is streamlined is item puzzles/quests, very same thing that Telltale later games are streamlined. Another similarity is that in MYST clones player interacts mostly with one kind of objects -machines. In Telltale choice games most interaction is also directed at one kind of “objects” -people. Solving true adventure puzzle, or maybe i should rather say when solving problem in adventure game, player looks for best objects to interact with and best ways to do it. Player could operate with machine he/she encounters. But player also could short circuit that machine, could find someone to operate machine for him/her, could dismantle machine and get some inventory items from it etc. Even if player operates machine, he/she could use it for purpose it is not meant for. Before challenging players with new gameplay mechanics, we should be challenged by all new possible puzzles/solutions to problems.

If I were to write a textbook definition, I’d say that an adventure game is a game that is derivative of Will Crowther’s Adventure.

In more practical terms, I’d say it’s a narrative or exploration based game that eschews action elements in favor of puzzles that are a part of the game’s world and story.

I’d exclude stuff where the puzzles are wholly abstract and not connected to the game world or story (like Catherine), as well as stuff where the puzzles are of the real-time actiony sort (like Portal, Another World, Limbo, etc).

Jackal - 16 December 2014 01:07 AM

Any reviewer who gives anything more than superficial credence to imaginary genre boxes should be fired on the spot. That would be one of the worst forms of bias to bring to a critique.

An archivist would know better than anyone that attempting to turn art into a science is a fool’s errand. It’s not about definition, it’s about application, and it ALWAYS comes down to a subjective matter of degree. Always.

And on that note, adventure games should go in every direction they conceivably can. More specifically, they should move in whatever direction inspires the artists creating them. The worst thing that could possibly happen is to force them all into some predetermined formula. Fortunately for us all, plenty of developers seem to know that. Diversity has always been the genre’s greatest strength.

I don’t see anything wrong with defining genres, identifying influence, and grouping works that share common ideas, concepts, and themes. I think this is actually an important part of journalism, and the notion of genre is usually one that originates with the critical community rather than the artist themselves (notable exception to survival horror).

But by that same token, you’re right; creators shouldn’t concern themselves with these sorts of labels. I think it’s great to see the genre branch out, and we’ve seen a lot of great attempt to take the genre fundamentals in new directions lately. Stuff like Dreamfall Chapters is a great example of a game that is absolutely an adventure, while managing to look and control more like its contemporaries than a relic of a bygone era.

I think Oculus Rift is where the future of AGs is at.