Of the games you mentioned, I think the great thing about them is not only that there is a big world with many things to do, but also that there is several ways to do one task that you are asked to do.
Then there is mostly action games that have strong puzzle elements like the Resident Evil games. The combination can be very successful and endearing, too.
Speaking for myself, I never really liked FPS games for several reasons. I get easily lost, most of the rooms look alike to me, except for the enemies who youĀ“re not supposed to get too close to it feels very desolate and lonely and the fact that you only a camera with an attached hand with a gun in it. Yes fantasy in all, but it never felt to me like I controlled a character.
I was a big player of DOOM and Quake and Castle Wolfenstein back then. These games are really fun, but they are not as endearing or as fondly remembered as the adventure games.
There were a couple of things back then that were very puzzling (no pun intended) like as when LA pulled the plug on the Sam and Max sequel based on āsome numbers from Europeā when the game was almost completed and the fans eagerly awaited it. Certainly didnāt contribute.
I used to like FPS shooters but I pretty much abandoned them several years ago. The lack of any narrative was the most annoying thing to me and also the fact that they are quite repetitive and somewhat boring. I might still buy the latest Call of Duty because I love WWII games, but that would be a notable exception. I had much more fun with mixed FPS/Adventure games like Half Life and even Uncharted. Right now I mostly play open world games. I do miss the fact there arenāt any more point-and-click adventures, which is why I loved TWP.
Iām not sure if my logical thinking is because I loved these adventure games when I grew up, or if I loved these adventure games because I was a logical thinkerā¦
I am an Art Director (often marketing advisor), working with big worldwide brands. And Iām also a website coder, today working mostly with WordPress. And doing the actual php/javascript/css coding stuff, not just using Installatron and installing fancy themes (well, I never do that). People who know me say Iām the most engineer-like artist theyāve ever met.
When I was 14 (I think), I said Iād like to create graphics with a computer and code my programs. I remember I was playing Loom when I said that. I learned how to draw imitating the graphics on Lucasā boxes. No idea how I was steered to website coding, but that might just be due to being interested in computers since my junior years. When I was maybe 15 I managed to translate parts of MI2 to Finnish with my Amiga.
But yeah, Iād say Lucas adventures are the reason I do what I do instead of being a car mechanic or something.
Have you ever taken a look at Alien: Isolation? Itās a game that takes advantage of the desolation and loneliness you mentioned. The most atmospheric 3D game Iāve ever played! Itās not exactly a shooter, but rather a survival/stealth game. You have to hide from antagonists very often (e.g. inside of a locker) or have to distract them. A hand with a gun is only visible as long as you are pressing the button for targeting. Whenever you shoot in this game, you actually act in self-defense. Ammunition is very rare. At the beginning of the game, you donāt even have any weapon. And, thanks to a map, you donāt get lost too easily. I found the game very thrilling. I usually donāt like FPS, but Alien: Isolation is different, and IMHO itās a must for everyone who likes the Alien movies, especially the first one! You will definitely feel that youāre controlling a character.
IĀ“m aware of that game and even though I havenĀ“t played it myself, I admit it looks interesting. I wouldnĀ“t consider it a first person shooter though, the current first person jump scare horror thing seems to be an entirely different beast.
I do recall that the '00s were particularly devoid of good P&C adventures, and lately they appear to be a bit on the decline again, but the past years they were anything but a dead genre. Completely overshadowed by more widely popular types of games for sure, but at least for me there was a steady supply of fresh, quality gems. My personal P&C adventure renaissance began in 2010 with the aptly named āA New Beginningā, followed by
Resonance (2012)
Deponia (2012)
Chains of Satinav (2012)
Chaos on Deponia (2012)
Memoria (2013)
Goodbye Deponia (2013)
Jack Keane 2 (2013)
The Night of the Rabbit (2013)
Randalās Monday (2014)
Broken Sword 5 (2014)
The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 (2015)
Broken Age (2015)
Technobabylon (2015)
Deponia Doomsday (2016)
Shardlight (2016)
Thereās definitely more to be had, depending on your particular taste (and maybe I forgot one or two I played), but I definitely bought more P&C Adventures than, say, RPGs during that period.
Edit: I also remember enjoying this series of articles that covered a wide selection of beloved classics of the genre, in 2014. More proof to me that it is not dead, only niche ;-).
Somehow same happened to me.
I started translating games with Amiga, as well as ripping images, sprites, and music withā¦ uhmmā¦ I donāt remember but was a fantastic program, it searched for bitplanes in memory areasā¦
This is a very interesting topic and I have a couple questions that maybe someone from the team can answer or clarify. If you compare the team who worked on TWP and Monkey Island 1, they are about the same size, and the game took as long to developā¦ Is that because TWP included developing the engine? Iām not sure about that. I think the reason is that in adventure games a much higher percentage of the time is spent in deciding the story, writing dialogs, polishing puzzles, ā¦ And that is not any faster today than 25 years ago.
Other areas of artistic creation like movies have drastically seen the cost of production going down in terms of equipment and how much faster certain processes areā¦ I donāt think itās the case for adventure games.
Basically, you need to reach the same number of players as 25 years ago in order to keep the business going, because the process is as streamlined as it can be.
As someone said on the blog/twitter or steam I would really love that Terrible Toybox is profitable enough so Ron, Gary and David can keep doing what they love and donāt need to get real jobs But the market is the market, and I donāt think TWP has exceeded the expectations that the team hadā¦ I hope Iām wrong and, as Ron said, the tail is thick and long.
Maybe thereās a niche between TWP and the object finding games, a place where good storytelling and a certain level of frustration of hard puzzles sells like crazy.
[quote=āChronoShades734, post:3, topic:275, full:trueā]
Additionally, Is the consensus of this community that TellTale didnāt do it any favors? The episodic release is a terrible format for games that require any sort of immersion. I havenāt played any recently, but I canāt even recall finishing one single series. Have they bastardized it completely, or am I the minority opinion?
[/quote]I have no problem with the episodic release. If you donāt like to wait for the next episode, you always had the option to wait for the end of the season before you start playing.
āSam & Maxā all seasons, āTales of Monkey Islandā and āBack to the Futureā, I would recommend any time.
After that, starting with āJurassic Parkā they massively changed their style. There are barely any puzzles anymore, and you get the most annoying form of quick time events imaginable. Those are no real adventures anymore, imho.
Iād put money on the idea that an abnormal percentage of us fit in this category. We were in on the home computer thing earlier than most because we were a bit more technically inclined than the other kids, adventure games were one of the few things available, and puzzles were just fine with us because we were already dealing with the puzzle of working with command-line driven interfaces. When a modern FPS gamer has problems with his computer, itās probably an old adventure gamer that is helping him get it straightened out.
At this point most of us have jobs and other responsibilities that provide us with more puzzles than we need. Taking a week (or a month) to solve an adventure game is less interesting than it used to be. I donāt mean that it isnāt fun, it just isnāt the highlight that it used to be. I am absolutely not concerned about adventure games ādyingā, and Iām happy that we have a difficult time agreeing what an adventure game even is. It means that game ideas continue to evolve and defy simple categorization.
What will never die is the fact that my daughterās name is in the phonebook of a Ron freakinā Gilbert game. I donāt know that I will ever enjoy an old-style adventure game like I used to, but what could cooler than combining your new love with your old love?
Can I say something controversial? I just played 30 mins of the first episode of The Walking Dead and I have to say itās very goodā¦
It makes me question whether puzzles are really important in a story. You can do a game where you can interact but you donāt have puzzles, you canāt get stuck, you canāt be confused. and it worksā¦
However, Thimbleweed Park is very intuitive and gives a lot of clues for pretty much everything. As such, I donāt think any of the game is particularly hard, and when one gets stuck thereās typically other stuff to be getting on with due to the open design of the game (which is highly commendable).
Iād say that the difficulty of TWP on hard mode is moderate.
Some things are crushingly obvious such as looking at the t-shirt granted to Delores and having it described as precisely the design for the specific tube you need for the factory main entrance. This makes the next step almost excruciatingly simple. They could have just had the following said when looking at the t-shirt: āItās the T-shirt Uncle Chuck gave me. He must have really loved tubes; thereās a very peculiar and special looking tube design on this T-shirt.ā
Or: āā¦ Iāve never seen this tube design before.ā
Or something even less obvious.
There are a number of moments in the game like this, but I think itās a very well balanced game which could have helped us just a smidge less.
[quote=āseguso, post:52, topic:275ā]
It makes me question whether puzzles are really important in a story. You can do a game where you can interact but you donāt have puzzles, you canāt get stuck, you canāt be confused. and it worksā¦
[/quote]Yes, those have a story. I agree with that. You might call them interactive movies or visual novels, packed with quick time events. Those are genres which work without puzzles, since they are indeed primarily made to tell a story. I just wouldnāt call them adventure games. Thatās all.
I donāt like them. But Iām sure there is a market for that style of game. Telltale wouldnāt have continued making them that way if it werenāt.
And I think, it would have been fair, if Telltale had a big warning about this massive style change on their site.
I also had much more fun playing Doom than the later Telltale games, yet I never stopped playing adventure games as well. So for me, Doom and other popular action games certainly werenāt a reason for any decline in adventure games.
Yes, Telltale games are story games, they are not puzzle games however.
I havenĀ“t played most after the first two Sam & Max Games, so I donĀ“t know for sure, but most people who did say they only simulate interactivty through decisions, but in the end the outcome is almost always more or less the same.
I canĀ“t confirm that myself, though but I heard many were dissapointed in that regard. What they most certainly are not is puzzle games.
The genre got itĀ“s name from the game Collosal Cave Adventure, a text adventure that was the spirtual predecessor to games like Kings Quest which was the inspiration for Maniac Mansion.
All those are puzzle games where you can really move around and interact freely, they were not anything like interactive movies.
Or the 1987 spanish precursor of the genre by Paco Menendez and Juan Delcan known as āLa abadia del Crimenā based on the novel āThe name of the roseā by Umberto Eco. http://www.abadiadelcrimen.com/
Iād sign that! It started with Jurassic Park, being a QTE fest.
I enjoyed all the games before, so no need to complain. But I have moved on.
As @seguso mentioned: Puzzles may not be important in a story. I also (sometimes) read books, i.e. stories without puzzles at all. But a good adventure game for me is more something like MI, TWP and Telltaleās older games, but not their new ones.
Reading titles like Jurassic Park and Back to the Future here on this blog always makes me wonder why there has never been any 2D point & click game based on one of those movies. And why does it need to be 3D?
When it comes to Alien, I understand that there would have to be the possibility of dying as a thrilling component due to the horror genre. But, in my opinion, the Nazi fights from the Indy games have proven that even this would be feasible in a 2D point & click game.
But the market is the market, and I donāt think TWP has exceeded the expectations that the team hadā¦ I hope Iām wrong and, as Ron said, the tail is thick and long.