Full motion video games: did you play them?

Nope. Technically you have a point but that’s not how the term was understood back then. Even Phantasmagoria has static backgrounds and it’s pretty much the ultimate FMV game.

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FMV games I’ve played in the past include Wing Commander III, Return to Zork, and Zork Nemesis.

At the time I played them, I enjoyed them. I felt it helped with the immersion, and it seemed to combine what I liked about movies with what I liked about video games. Return to Zork was done in a pretty cheesy (but fun) way, but Nemesis was fairly impressive I felt. I enjoyed the acting in Wing Commander III, quality-wise - it was the best of the 3, however for this one, the FMV elements were really just long cutscenes and less integrated in the game.

Late Shift looks very interesting.

If you are willing to accept the fact that it’s more a movie than a game, yes.

It’s probably the only FMV game that had a production quality so high that I felt it would have made a decent real movie.

There is a sale on Steam for “The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight® Mystery” (which I have always called “Gabriel Knight 2”) so I have watched the intro of the game on YouTube and despite not being sure when I’ll play it, I have decided to purchase it.

Yes, it seems quite cheesy but I think that it might be part of its charm. Jane Jensen never disappointed me and I hope that she will provide a good experience this time as well.

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The german dub turns the cheese up to 11.

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And is that a good thing?

Depends on how much you enjoy it based on that. Many of the intentional and unintentional hilarious parts make the intended shockinging/creepy scenes seem all the more absurd. It´s tonally really all over the place.

One game came to my mind - it’s not classic FMV but very related and I liked it very much, have to set up DOSBox again and play it:
The Riddle of Master Lu

Some screens from the game:

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Late Shift is now on Gog:

@LowLevel: Have you finished the game already? Can you recommend it?

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Did you talk to him lately? He hasn´t been seen here since late in the last year…

I am aware of that. But maybe he’ll be back some day. :wink:

I expect to be mainly a lurker, here. :slightly_smiling_face:

@Someone : I finished “Late Shift” and shared my opinion in a previous post of this thread. It’s a good “choose your own adventure” experience, if you like the acting. Just don’t expect a different kind of “game”.

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German forum users might enjoy this. It´s mostly about the oddly controversial game Night Trap. The last section is a best of from the hilarious german dub of Gabriel Knight 2.

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I just watched the following news report on Dragon’s Lair. Amazing, seeing that it’s from the early 80s, even though the game is actually very simple! I hadn’t imagined that it was possible to load different videos quickly enough back then. Seemingly, it was made possible by the LaserDisk.

Yes, as far as I know it was the first videogame with a LaserDisk, hence the graphics made a big jump forward for the stardards at that time.

I was never able to finish it.

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I always wanted to play that, but never had the chance. Then I bought the awful Dragon’s Lair 3D (which crashes in level 1 if it loads at all - so I even did not get to experience exactly how bad it was).
Since I wasted €20 on that, I am waiting for the originals (+Space age) to be on a -95% sale.

FMV games I have played & Completed or are in my library waiting to be (re)played:

  • Phantasmagoria (R)
  • Phantasmagoria 2 (C)
  • Ripper (C)
  • Gabriel Knight 2 (R)
  • Her Story

[edit: (C) = completed, (R)=completed but will need to replay one day]

I have a definite overlap there. I enjoyed GK2 and Her Story.

I’ve got Dragon Lore on CD-ROM from '95; that’s CG FMV. I never got too far though; gameplay was awkward even if it looked pretty neat.

There’s also Who’s Oscar Lake (Wie is Oscar Lake):

Operatie teddybeer:

All of the more recent Telltale games are basically FMV games as well even if it’s technically rendered in real time.

That’s why I lost my interest in their games. For example, I would have liked to play a Batman point & click game, but their Batman series is too much a FMV game. In my opinion, the Arkham series is much better, when it comes to Batman games.

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That’s because it used a LaserDisk. It was only possible to play a scene from the disc, but not to render graphics in the scene.

And AFAIR the arcade machines had a very “buggy” hardware. If a player “hit” the cabinet (accidentally) the Laserdisk stopped working.

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Am I the only one who always thought it was kinda odd that lowlevel never used relative sentences in his thread titles, but rather opted to use two sentences instead?