Adventure Gamers - Forums

Casual Friday

Sorry for the somewhat squished imnage. I was using good old Paint, and just couldn’t get the resolution I wanted.

If you’ve followed the reviews and conversations in the Casual Games thread, as well as some comments made here on the AGSotD thread, you know I’m not the greatest fan of ERS Games. Again, if you’ve followed the Casual Games thread since its beginning, which probably needs to include the archives as well, you know that was not always the case.

With eager anticipation I looked forward to playing the next release coming from ERS Games. Then things started to change. ERS created great franchises. Grim Facade, Haunted Legends, Resurrection Cemetery, and perhaps one of the most popular, Puppetshow.

But by the time each franchise reached its third game, it was obvious that ERS was going to beat them into the ground. By the time Puppetshow 6 came around we knew that Puppetshow, just like the Rocky movies, had become a parody of itself.

And it got worse. Eventually ERS started developing games with cliffhanger endings. Not the kind that would be resolved if you purchased the CE version. More the kind of the legendary movie cliffhangers such as Flash Gordon, where you would have to return to the theater for the following Saturday matinee in order to see the continuation of the adventure.

Only, in this case, ERS requires you to purchase the next game in the series in order to find out how the last game ended. And some of those series are in their fifth or sixth game.

So I have gone from being a staunch supporter of ERS games to being a fairly harsh critic.

With one exception.

The above screenshot is from ERS’ Dark Tales series. Specifically it’s from Dark Tales - Edgar Allen Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. The games have covered Rue Morgue through, what I think is the latest, Marie Roget.

The earlier the game, the more HO scenes it contains. The games don’t purport to be accurate to Poe’s story. But they are just accurate enough to allow comparison to his written word. And since they are individual stories, each must stand on its own. A franchise by title, perhaps. But not a francise by theme.

If you are interested, I think Black Cat was the best.

Several of the Shadow Wolf Mystery games fall into that category. But that is only my opinion.

I’ve not played Song of the Phoenix. Another ERS game in the style of Azada, (i.e. no hidden objects,) is Dark Alley: Penumbra Hotel. Not one of my favorites, but a nice attempt to do something different.

Becky - 31 October 2015 01:49 PM

Different is good. Penumbra Hotel is now on my list. I just googled “penumbra”—which means “the partially shaded outer region of the shadow cast by an opaque object.” I wonder what I can expect when checking into Hotel Partially Shaded Outer Region of a Shadow? Sounds…ambiguous. 

Interesting. Somehow I thought it was the Spanish word for ‘twilight’. Which is actually kinda close.

Tim - Maybe you can cull the recent non-related posts and append them to the end of Casual Games thread. Don’t know how we got off on this track. That’s where they should have been from the start.

If you can, thanks. If not, I’ll try to copy/paste quotes.

Other Tim

rtrooney - 01 November 2015 09:19 PM

Tim - Maybe you can cull the recent non-related posts and append them to the end of Casual Games thread. Don’t know how we got off on this track. That’s where they should have been from the start.

If you can, thanks. If not, I’ll try to copy/paste quotes.

Other Tim

Actually, going off on a side-track is one of the possible outcomes of an AGSotD - and not knowing what will happen after the first post gets made is part of the fun (and the appeal, imo).

This is one of those cases where, instead of “moving” posts, it would have been handy to be able to “copy” them (so the same posts are in BOTH the Casual Games thread and here)...