The Rise, Fall and Rise of Adventure Games

[Towels]

Good article, thanks for pointing out where I can find some good adventure games.

As far as the Adventure game puzzles go, I heard people complain about the puzzles, but I enjoyed most of the dream logic/acid trip puzzles as long as they were relevant to the game's narrative. That was the beauty of it; the interactive thinking brought you more into the game's world. (I'm not talking about frustrations like using the wrong keyword, that's the down side of giving the player complete control of text input.)

Silent Hill 1 and 2 had puzzles that were bizzare, but had solutions that made since in the context of the game's narrative. Harry was confronted with puzzles involving his little girl's imagination. James had puzzles revolving around his guilt. These puzzles gave me more emeresion into the game's world.

Then Silent Hill 3 got a little out there and some of the puzzles couldn't make since even with context. There was one puzzle in the mall about reordering Shakespeare books and your only clue was a convoluted poem. I read the official strategy guide and the solution required me to know about some pop-culture Japanese retelling of Macbeth. How am I going to know that as an American, and what does that have anything to do with Heather, an American teenager, escaping a mall? Then they just stopped trying with 4 and 5.

 

[Heart of Darkness]

Dammit, Shamus, you're making me want to play King's Quest VI again. Other than that, good article. Hopefully Telltale will be able to entice more developers to start bringing back the "adventure game" genre.

 

[veloper]

Sorry, but I don't see how Telltale "reivents" the genre.

Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Sam & Max, Monkey Island. Throughout the '90s, these franchises were as much a fixture of gaming as Lara Croft, Metroid, and Sonic are now. And about as variable in terms of quality. The problem was that adventure games didn't age well or evolve fast enough. Gamers were coming to realize that random "gotcha" deaths weren't all that fun. And while everyone loves a good puzzle, not even the most die-hard adventure game fans enjoy getting stuck for six hours because they were typing "PUT MAYONNAISE ON MINOTAUR" instead of "USE MAYONNAISE WITH MINOTAUR."

None of these criticisms apply to Sam&Max, Monkey Island or any of the Lucas Arts adventures. The stupid deaths were Sierra's hallmark and the text parsers had disappeared in the 90s.

Ron Gilbert removed all that crap from the genre with Monkey Island and all the LA adventure games that followed were great.
I don't see the Tellgame games as anything other than a continuation in the LA tradition.

 

[Albino Boo]

Good article, thanks for pointing out where I can find some good adventure games.

As far as the Adventure game puzzles go, I heard people complain about the puzzles, but I enjoyed most of the dream logic/acid trip puzzles as long as they were relevant to the game's narrative. That was the beauty of it; the interactive thinking brought you more into the game's world. (I'm not talking about frustrations like using the wrong keyword, that's the down side of giving the player complete control of text input.)

Silent Hill 1 and 2 had puzzles that were bizzare, but had solutions that made since in the context of the game's narrative. Harry was confronted with puzzles involving his little girl's imagination. James had puzzles revolving around his guilt. These puzzles gave me more emeresion into the game's world.

Then Silent Hill 3 got a little out there and some of the puzzles couldn't make since even with context. There was one puzzle in the mall about reordering Shakespeare books and your only clue was a convoluted poem. I read the official strategy guide and the solution required me to know about some pop-culture Japanese retelling of Macbeth. How am I going to know that as an American, and what does that have anything to do with Heather, an American teenager, escaping a mall? Then they just stopped trying with 4 and 5.

You could solve that puzzle by just knowing the plots of the plays. You didn't need to know that Kurosawa's Throne of blood was based on MacBeth. I would hardly call Kurosawa an obscure part of Japaneses pop culture. His 7 Seven Samurai was turned into the The Magnificent Seven by Hollywood. Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress has been acknowledged by George Lucas as a major influence on the first star wars film. A fist full of dollars was almost a shot by shot remake of Yojimbo. In addition he also directed the Japanese segments of Tora! Tora! Tora! for 20th Century Fox.

However it does point out one the problems with adventure games is that what one groups think as common knowledge isn't necessarily known by everyone. Which makes them a lot less accessible than rpgs and fps. They have make assumptions about the target markets knowledge levels, pitch it to high you frustrate most players. Pitch it to low and it becomes too easy and players feel they have been short changed

 

[Dhatz]

absoletely my opinion, there is not one single reason I'd play adventure games, se I'll keep missin Black mirror, machinarium, fahrenheit, A Vampyre story or monkey island itself(I only did Polda 3 in childhood because it was from my country)

 

[Shamus Young]

Sorry, but I don't see how Telltale "reivents" the genre.

Kings Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Gabriel Knight, Sam & Max, Monkey Island. Throughout the '90s, these franchises were as much a fixture of gaming as Lara Croft, Metroid, and Sonic are now. And about as variable in terms of quality. The problem was that adventure games didn't age well or evolve fast enough. Gamers were coming to realize that random "gotcha" deaths weren't all that fun. And while everyone loves a good puzzle, not even the most die-hard adventure game fans enjoy getting stuck for six hours because they were typing "PUT MAYONNAISE ON MINOTAUR" instead of "USE MAYONNAISE WITH MINOTAUR."

None of these criticisms apply to Sam&Max, Monkey Island or any of the Lucas Arts adventures. The stupid deaths were Sierra's hallmark and the text parsers had disappeared in the 90s.

Ron Gilbert removed all that crap from the genre with Monkey Island and all the LA adventure games that followed were great.
I don't see the Tellgame games as anything other than a continuation in the LA tradition.

The shorter, cheaper episodes of episodic content, built-in hint system, point-n-click (instead of verb based). Other differences as well, I'm sure.

Like I said in the article, they changes everything that wasn't part of the core fun. With Lucasarts, they didn't need to change as much because those games were already dang good.

 

[rabidmidget]

Adventure games have always held a special place in my heart, especially the monkey island series (and grim fandango). Reading this article makes sam and max season 3, oh so more tempting.

 

[UtopiaV1]

I'm sorry, I just don't find the new games funny. The voice actors and writing for Sam and Max, Day of the Tentacle, and the Tex Murphy games were just spot on. I think it was the constraints the game developers were under that help spark creativity, because when the graphics were bad, they had to make up for it with the jokes. Good trade-off, I think everyone will agree. These days, graphics are better, but the writing really doesn't seem as funny (at least, not in a laugh out loud way).

Still, the new helper functions in game and actual puzzles are much better. Just, no good jokes! All subjective though, isn't it?

 

[okitana]

for anyone looking for more great, new adventure games.. deffs check out jolly rover.
last week it won best australian game at freeplay. !
http://www.brawsome.com.au/JollyRover/

 

[Samsont]

Damn shamus you must running on empty trying to do all the things you have to do, Spoiler warning, running twenty sided, this, and all of the other stufff that I'm sure I left out. Most people probably couldn't do that.

 

[jelock]

True, they have done some good work bringing adventure games back into the spotlight, though their audience is still relatively small unfortunately. Now if only some of the other studios would start looking into them again, surely Lucasarts has noticed how well the MI re-releases have done, if they got back on the adventure wagon there could be some amazing stuff coming out again.

On a side note - The description for Wallace and Grommit The Last Resort on the telltale page made me laugh with its unintentional innuendo. (Look up what bonking means in Britian)

 

[blueskirt]

I don't agree about the reasons behind the fall. Text parser had disappeared entirely from adventure games by 1990, same for dead-ends and cheap death several years later. The problem of the adventure genre was the turmoil that were the years 1997-2001 on PC.

First it coincides with the rise of the internet and a complete change in demographics, before 1997, only nerds with passion for solving puzzles owned computers, starting in 1997 everyone needed a computer but not everyone liked to solve puzzles.

Also, 1997-2001 were the golden or silver age of many genres:
RPG (Fallout 1-2, Baldur Gates 1-2, Planescape Torment, Land Of Lore 2, Diablo 1-2, FF7)
RTS (C&C2, RA2, Total Annihilation, Starcraft, Dark Reign, AoE and all its imitators)
FPS (Half-Life, System Shock 2, Deus Ex and so many other games)
turn based strategy (Jagged Alliance 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2-3 and the Civ games that made a come back)
Stealth games (Thief 1-2, Metal Gear Solid, Commandos)
Racing games which got a whole lot better when 3D came around

My dad, his friend, my cousin and I were all adventure games junkies. If you checked the games we bought, back in 1991-1996, more than half of it would have consisted of adventure games. Starting in 1997, adventure games consisted of less than 10%, thanks to all these genres becoming awesome overnight.

Then you got the multiplayer factor, something adventure games could never wrap themselves around. Before 1997, multiplayer meant hotseat games or knowing someone else who owned a computer and the game in RL. With the internet, finding other players became extremely trivial.

Combine all these factors, in the same period of time, and you spell the death of adventure games.

As for the main reason behind TTG's success, like you said, they discovered the central source of entertainment cames in the form of verbal feedback. Before Telltale Games came around, adventure games were still being made, but most followed the Myst puzzle loving euro brunette formula or the FBI/Scotland Yard agent tracking down the Jack the Ripper copycat for the Nth time formula, formulas which tend to be dead serious, while what most adventure games fans wanted were humorous games in the same vein as Monkey Island or Day Of The Tentacle, games where, even when you were stuck, you'd still had fun thanks to all the funny verbal feedback.

Edit: Various edits and rewording.

 

[BehattedWanderer]

I remember those days...I forget which King's Quest it was, but it was the one where you were eaten by the whale. You had a certain amount of time to climb the whale's tongue, and use a feather in your inventory to tickle the whale's uvula. The issue was that if any part of you touched the wrong pixel of tongue while climbing, your stupid ass would fall back down, and you would have to start again. It was a terribly precise path up the tongue you had to follow, otherwise it was back into the floor of the mouth, where you would suffer death if you fell far enough. Between things like that and the highly specific commands, they wore down on me. Still haven't decided if I'll look into the new Monkey Island games yet.

 

[Sylocat]

I'm surprised you didn't mention Myst's influence on the genre. It was a heavy influence in popularizing the AFGNCAAP and the "collecting diary pages" tropes.

 

[veloper]

I don't agree about the reasons behind the fall. Text parser had disappeared entirely from adventure games by 1990, same for dead-ends and cheap death several years later. The problem of the adventure genre was the turmoil that were the years 1997-2001 on PC.

First it coincides with the rise of the internet and a complete change in demographics, before 1997, only nerds with passion for solving puzzles owned computers, starting in 1997 everyone needed a computer but not everyone liked to solve puzzles.

Also, 1997-2001 were the golden or silver age of many genres:
RPG (Fallout 1-2, Baldur Gates 1-2, Planescape Torment, Land Of Lore 2, Diablo 1-2, FF7)
RTS (C&C2, RA2, Total Annihilation, Starcraft, Dark Reign, AoE and all its imitators)
FPS (Half-Life, System Shock 2, Deus Ex and so many other games)
turn based strategy (Jagged Alliance 2, Heroes of Might and Magic 2-3 and the Civ games that made a come back)
Stealth games (Thief 1-2, Metal Gear Solid, Commandos)
Racing games which got a whole lot better when 3D came around

My dad, his friend, my cousin and I were all adventure games junkies. If you checked the games we bought, back in 1991-1996, more than half of it would have consisted of adventure games. Starting in 1997, it consisted of less than 10%, thanks to all these genres becoming awesome overnight.

Then you got the multiplayer factor, something adventure games could never wrap themselves around. Before 1997, multiplayer meant hotseat games or knowing someone else who owned a computer and the game in RL. With the internet, finding other players became extremely trivial.

Combine all these factors, in the same period of time, and you spell the death of adventure games.

As for the main reason behind TTG's success, like you said, they discovered the central source of entertainment cames in the form of verbal feedback. Before Telltale Games came around, adventure games were still being made, but most followed the Myst puzzle loving euro brunette formula or the FBI/Scotland Yard agent tracking down the Jack the Ripper copycat for the Nth time formula, formulas which tend to be dead serious, while what most adventure games fans wanted were humorous games in the same vein as Monkey Island or Day Of The Tentacle, games where, even when you were stuck, you'd still had fun thanks to all the funny verbal feedback.

Edit: Various edits and rewording.

Best first time post I ever read on thses boards. Welcome!

 

[Agiel7]

Even as a hardcore PC gamer since the days of TIE Fighter, Jane's F-15, and Dune 2, I occasionally take issue with your takes on PC games of old. So, I came into this article half-expecting that you'd blame the decline of adventure games on the dumbing down of the gaming audience rather than the faults of the genre and its developers. That said, I was pleased that you correctly identified that it was the conservative approach the game design that led to its demise (such a tenuous grasp on causality).

However, the Emperor of Mankind and the hardcore Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War 2 player in me take offense that you use the term "Space Marine" too lightly. In the future, please make a distinction between "Space Marines" and the legions of copies of the "Colonial Marines" of the Alien movies.

 

[Green Ninja]

Shamous, if you still like the Genre you have to play the two games from the German studi Daedalic, The Whispered World and Edna & Harvey: The Breakout. I'm not sure if Edna is availabe in English yet, but I think you can get TWW over steam.

You'l probably get a lot of gaming recommendations, but those two games are the best Adventures I've played in a decade and that includes the games from Telltale.

 

[RvLeshrac]

Don't mean to spoil your fun Shamus, but if I recall correctly Destructoid has been reviewing Tell Tale Games' adventures for a while now, and they've been giving them rather low, almost abysmal scores most of the time.

Destructoid writes <a href=http://www.destructoid.com/dear-telltale-i-love-you-but--140831.phtml>silly-ass articles like this, so I don't think they're much of a reference point.

 

[shiajun]

Some people seem to have stopped playing adventure games waaaaaaaaaaaay ago. I started playing computer games with adventure games (Gabriel Knight: sins of the fathers, to be precise) and I've never ever bumped into a text parser. At all. Today the interaction is mediated by two or three action icons (usually variations of "examine", "use" and "take"). Pixel hunt is no more in recent years as most include some way to reveal hotspots, a lot include some sort of internal hint system, etc. etc. All those niggles...gone. Bizarre logic will still be there, but then again each genre has their own set of annoying core tropes (like RPGs and RTS) that never ever seem to go away and we're still buying them, no?

If anyone got interested by the article, I suggest you jump over to www.adventuregamers.com, browse the site, and check out some reviews. While a lot of games are rather mediocre (at best) there's a lot being done that's interesting. What's better is that in adventure games you get a vastly greater diversity of plots, characters and tone, that you see in other genres. That's a good point right there if you feel your gaming experiencies have become stale.


As for this:

As for the main reason behind TTG's success, like you said, they discovered the central source of entertainment cames in the form of verbal feedback. Before Telltale Games came around, adventure games were still being made, but most followed the Myst puzzle loving euro brunette formula or the FBI/Scotland Yard agent tracking down the Jack the Ripper copycat for the Nth time formula, formulas which tend to be dead serious, while what most adventure games fans wanted were humorous games in the same vein as Monkey Island or Day Of The Tentacle, games where, even when you were stuck, you'd still had fun thanks to all the funny verbal feedback.

I profoundly disagree that most adventure gamers just want humor. It that were true, Gabriel Knight, The Longest Journey, Syberia, Still Life, Black Mirror, Overclocked, etc. etc....wouldn't have the recognition they have in the adventure gaming community. I'd even venture to put Heavy Rain into that category. While LucasArts where the masters of humor back when they did something more than Star Wars, I really don't think their success was because the audience just wants humor. They were successful because they made very good, high quality, polished games. It's just that the genre they delved into was humor. Even Grim Fandango side steps goofy, light-hearted humor and goes fully into black humor and irony.

PS: I am eagerly awaiting Grey Matter, a game by Gabriel Knight's Jane Jensen that's taken way too long to arrive due to several development tragedy stories. You should too.

EDIT: some rewording