The Rise, Fall and Rise of Adventure Games

[Shamus Young]

The Rise, Fall and Rise of Adventure Games

Take everything you knew about adventure games and throw it out the window - Telltale Games reinvents the genre, Monkey Island style.

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[Jared]

I feel adventure games did lost it on the release of the PS2...it seemed everything tunred to platformer, and, was nothing left of the old ways. And...It makes mme want to remembeer Abes Odessy

 

[Weaver]

I love telltale. They really capture the spirit of the old LucasArts and Sierra games of old but with lots of modern touches.

You should also check out Ceville, Shamus. That was a really great Point and Click adventure game!

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

I think over the years Adventure themes have subtly over taken action titles, Castlevina,Metroid,Quake 2,Quake 1,Hexen,Soul reaver,Onimusha to RE I mean lets take hard look at action RPGs I always considered them more adventure than RPG. Hell Metroid prime(System shock before it) and Call of cuthulu and Dead space are 3 of the most adventure centric FP games I have played to this date and what is Beyond good and evil if not a true FP adventure game... Now IMO there is a cut off point where adventure turns into a full blown RPG experience like Morrwind,Oblivoin,ect or has its knees blown off and becomes aa actiony mash up like Fallout of Bioshock.

Look deeper into what makes up a game and its mechanics and you can find more adventure elements.

 

[Megacherv]

I love the Strong Bad games so much.

"Whaaaat? Is that any way to address your ultimate dictator and racquet-ball partner?"

 

[Albino Boo]

I think one of the big things that killed the point and click was the FMV era, it massively pushed up production costs and at the same time ended up with bad acting and poor dialog. Some worked e.g Gabe knight 2 and phantasmagoria but most just sucked.

 

[Therumancer]

I read this article and the Syrup-Mustache thing linked to it, it's an interesting read but at the same time I think it misses the point that a lot of people DID enjoy those "Dream Logic/Acid Trip" puzzle solutions and found working on them to be fun. Adventure games were never my genere of choice, but there was a lot of satisfaction from figuring this stuff out, and also a lot of these games predicted things people were likely to try on the way to deciphering the solution and included jokes and easter eggs connected to them.

I think there actually IS some validity to the idea of games becoming simpler in proportion to a growing audience. Adventure Games, RPGS (which were arguably bigger), and other games have been dying out in proportion to the increasing influx of casual and "mainstream" gamers. Basically games that give instant gratification are preferred to those that don't, and increasingly few people can enjoy video gaming as an intellectual exercise.

Truthfully what I think killed Adventure games is not obtuse "Gabriel Knight 3" disguise building puzzles, but pixel hunting and the like. I think that to some extent developers began to feel that their games were too easy, and started doing things to make them harder. The adventure games that annoyed people were ones that had intentional (as opposed to accidental) one-use items that could be used in the wrong place, missables, and of course tightly timed sequences where you say had to click on a werewolf in exactly the right frame of animation in order to knock it into a furnace. One game I really enjoyed premise wise was a game by Origin called "Noctropolis" but that game was utterly destroyed by pixel hunting as many key items were nearly impossible to spot. I seem to remember that game had both a glass cutter and a screwdriver that pretty much nobody could find for the longest time, and that kind of deep-sixed the game before some people who probably called tip lines started to circulate the information.

That said, Telltale games has not produced any games that really floated my boat so far. As I said I am not a big adventure game player, but for whatever reason I'm not keen to re-visit "Monkey Island" and "Sam and Max" never really impressed me. Start doing some more serious games (horror for example) and they might interest me in revisiting the genere.

 

[npath]

There is still a small but healthy amateur community of text-based adventure game developers. Their annual Interactive Fiction Competition gets about 30 entries every year. The quality varies all over the place, but the best work is pretty damn good, and has definitely evolved past the old "guess-the-verb" frustration.

 

[ImBigBob]

Lara Croft and Sonic are relevant today?

 

[Stilt-Man]

I've heard of Telltale Games, but had no idea they were churning out adventure games. I grew up with Sierra adventures, and play them to this day, so I'll definitely be checking these cats out. Thanks!

As far as the death of adventure games goes... I blame Myst. Once that became a hit, everyone wanted to be the next Myst. Even Sierra released that horrible Lighthouse game (complete with its patented "find-the-pixel" puzzles). Perhaps Myst isn't wholly to blame, but I think it at least contributed to it.

 

[Fearzone]

Is it really that hard to make another Myst? Not even Cyan can do it, it seems. They came close with Riven and then it has been downhill since. Anyway thanks for exposing the strategy guide racket that pretty much killed the adventure game genre.

 

[snowman6251]

My gaming life started on N64 and never really ventured into the realm of the PC so I never really played any adventure games unless you count Pajama Sam in Kindergarten computer class.

Never really liked them much either. I like having a more active role when I play games than applying key to door.

 

[LadyRhian]

I got started in gaming with Infocom games. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Leather Goddesses of Phobos (with the "Scratch and Sniff" card impregnated with 7 or 8 different smells from Mothballs to Banana. LGoP also happened to be the first "Adult" text adventure game. Which is to say, your character could have sex in the game, described in all of about a paragraph, with 5 different characters.

And the dialogue options! Sparse, normal and verbose, and tame, suggestive (normal) and lewd. To give a hint of what this entailed, You get imprisoned on a spaceship and encounter Trent/Tiffany (which one depending on what sex you chose to be at the start of the game- the other character was the same sex as you and not interested in you.) If you enter your cell with them following, you got the following dialogue.

Tame: Wow, your cell is larger than mine. I probably shouldn't have attacked the guard when I got here.
Suggestive:Wow, your cell is larger than mine. I probably shouldn't have kicked the guard when I got here.
Lewd: Wow, your cell is larger than mine. I probably shouldn't have kicked the guard in the nuts when I got here.

And then there were the jokes. Funny jokes. In the game, you acquired something called a "T-remover". It actually removed the letter t from the name of objects and small things. One of the things you encountered was a rabbit. Put it in the T remover and use it, and you suddenly had a rabbi (who ran off, looking for a minyan). One of the best jokes was using it on the cotton balls you found in the game. If you looked at what resulted, it says, "Let's just say there's a raccoon running around with a VERY HIGH VOICE right now."

 

[Lissar]

I have to admit, even today point-and-click adventures remain my favorite genre (although I'll admit that a lot of this love can be chalked up to nostalgia value.) When they're good, I think they're REALLY good, but unfortunately when they're bad they can been some of the most mind-numbingly frustrating games of all time.

That is to say, I love them when the puzzles have logical answers. Perhaps not entirely obvious ones, but logical nonetheless. I can't stand them when they have illogical answers. Answers so strange that they only might be stumbled upon by trying every possible option with everything else and spending hours wandering around doing things without actually having a concrete reason for doing them.

I would love to see the point-and-click adventure revived, but only taking the good parts and throwing the rest in the waste bin. Then I would like to see more exploration/vibrant worlds/deep story-telling added into the mix. To me that would pretty much amount to the perfect game (but that's probably just me.)

 

[mjc0961]

*standing ovation*

Seriously I could not be more pleased right now. Good show, Shamus. Telltale is doing awesome things with adventure games and more people need to know about it. I can't get enough Sam & Max myself. Which reminds me, they still haven't given us a release date for the final episode of The Devil's Playhouse, have they? Aww now I'm sad.

I would love to see the point-and-click adventure revived, but only taking the good parts and throwing the rest in the waste bin. Then I would like to see more exploration/vibrant worlds/deep story-telling added into the mix. To me that would pretty much amount to the perfect game (but that's probably just me.)

It is revived: http://www.telltalegames.com/

Check it out, they have a lot of demos available for the various games, I'm sure you'd find something you like. Telltale = AWESOME.

 

[Lissar]

I've already bought some of their games, and I quite like them though it's not quite in the direction I was hoping for (especially since I'd reaaaaaally like to see new IP in the genre and not just sequels to old classics.) Still, I hope it means that there will be more variety for the genre in the future.

 

[CorruptBiggins]

(especially since I'd reaaaaaally like to see new IP in the genre and not just sequels to old classics.)

Then you should definitely keep an eye on Telltale towards the end of the year as they are currently developing Jurassic Park & Back to the Future games and I would imagine that their Pilot Program (which so far has produced Nelson Tethers) will be continuing as well.

 

[LadyRhian]

I have to admit, even today point-and-click adventures remain my favorite genre (although I'll admit that a lot of this love can be chalked up to nostalgia value.) When they're good, I think they're REALLY good, but unfortunately when they're bad they can been some of the most mind-numbingly frustrating games of all time.

That is to say, I love them when the puzzles have logical answers. Perhaps not entirely obvious ones, but logical nonetheless. I can't stand them when they have illogical answers. Answers so strange that they only might be stumbled upon by trying every possible option with everything else and spending hours wandering around doing things without actually having a concrete reason for doing them.

I think Yahtzee alluded to his adventure-game beginnings in his review of "The Darkness", when he was trying to rub the car on the grate with his tentacles to escape the graveyard... which is what your comment reminded me of.

If adventure games are brought back, it'd be nice to make them a little more user-friendly. list acceptable verbs so we can tell what command might work without having to beat our heads in with hammers in frustration trying to find the one verb that will work in this situation. Also, graphics do not matter as much as the fact that the game must be FUN TO PLAY. Not 70 hours of teeth-grinding frustration. In-game hints would be great- perhaps varied levels of hints so you can choose what level of help you need from vague hint all the way up to "do this", or "here, you idiot."

 

[Moriarty]

IF they would make something actually new, I would propably like it. What I've seen so far are sequels to dekade-old franchises Instead of new characters and stories.

The newer Monkey Island episodes were not bad as games per se, but I got tired of the same characters over and over again and even felt a bit betrayed as

Spoiler

they dared to make the voodoo lady evil.