Ravel myluv
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Broken Age - Double Fine's Kickstarter Adventure Game
- Thread starter J_C
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Ravel myluv
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I'm sure there's a point to be made there, and I'm equally sure it's of great interest.
I loved playing old lucasarts adventures, more so than sierra ones, though I enjoyed lot's of those too. I think puzzles is what makes an adventure game an adventure game. If puzzles are easy and straight forward, I have the feeling I'm watching a movie that has simple puzzles as an obstacle for the story. Why are they obstructing the story? why shouldn't they release this story in a movie format? Simple puzzles almost equals QTE events, so I hardly call Walking dead game a good adventure game.
A good adventure game has to make you get stuck sometimes. It's very rewarding when you find a solution for a dificult puzzle yourself. And Adventures normally gives you only one fresh playthrough, and it's amazing that most of the good adventures puzzles have logical solutions which you only relize after you solved. A good adventure makes you like the game even when you got stuck: Guybrush would deny doing certain things in funny ways... The Monkey Islands is very linear, but i had so much content that it had replayability, if only to see every funny lines.
i remember that Lucasarts released Full Throttle and The Dig at about the same time, and the dig didn't have a verb system, but it used both mouse buttons: one for interactinc and other for looking. Full throttle had a verb system disguised as an emblem, just as the Monkey island coin.
Not that one-click interactions can't give you clever puzzles: The gobliiis series was based on solving puzzles with interaction clicks, but required timing, trial and error, but it was funny and rewarding even when you failed.
By the descriptions, Broken age seems like those old multimedia programes where you had to click on the screen to see the result. A new comparison is machinarium and botanicula. I liked machinarium, but botanicula was lame.
About "Most of the puzzles are resolved with just checking your inventory at the right place", this normally occurs in illogical puzzles or when you get stuck. But normally, everybody tries that as a last resource option. And mostly, after you solve, you realized it wasn't that illogical.
Two things that makes puzzles in adventure games OK: 1st, the frustration turns to immense satisfaction when you solve a puzzle by yourself. Even if it's ilogical and you had to try every option. second, the assurance that you can't die or meet a dead end in adventure games post 1990. In indiana jones adventures you could die, but there's never a dead end. Maniac mansion and zak mackraken had dead ends, as many of early sierra, but adventures were still on their infancy. So, talking about modern adventures, you aways know there's a solution, so you persist, and eventually find.
Those old lucasarts games were also kind of short, but only if you knew what to do. Full Throttle is one of the shortest lucas arts games. but a fresh playthrough would get you stuck, and even a playthrough in which you'd like to see everything would take you time.
I'd rather get stuck trying to solve a game for a month than paying for a game and finishing it on the first day, and the game is even a beta...
Finally, what frustrates me more is when you have no idea of what to do in an adventure game and about 10 locations available and no dialog whatsoever to give you nods about what to do, and adventure games that made you progress a lot, only to find a specific item was left behind so you have to replay everything again. But this is a thing of the past.
I can't believe I have to explain the concept of challenge on the Codex. I like being given a puzzle, spending hours on it and feeling extremely satisfied when I solve it. Puzzles that makes you think, makes you try different things. Same thing for games like Dark Souls. I have no problem in getting stuck in a area or fight for days, trying everything until I finally make it. It is extremely rewarding, in ways that people that only play interactive movies and games on easy will never understand.
I see no point in playing a game where I'm just going through the motions, clicking on everything. The story is mediocre and the gameplay is just doing the obvious, so why even play it? Go read a book, watch a movie or play a actual puzzle.
Yes, but many people don't like it when a game is only challenging because the puzzle doesn't make any sense, and you have to try out every possible combination in your inventory. And some old adventure games were like that. There is a difference between a good challange and "what the fuck was Tim thinking, this is a piece of shit, how could I know that I have to rape the cat to open that door!!! ".
Zboj Lamignat
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Duh, running an internet persona on a discussion forum is a first thing that springs to mind.
People exaggerate the whole illogical puzzle thing. Some games had them, sure, but Tim Schafer's games never had them. Worst one I can think of was painting the fence white, to disguise the cat as a skunk in DotT, and even that was hinted by the dialog with the prisoners.
Weird. Who wants to play a.... game? Especially when you can download "The Beastmaster" on torrent! No puzzles there!
Bt
Bt
Ravel myluv
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If I'm going by your standards on this board, nobody even wants to play a RPG. So your criticism is a bit out of place.
Yeah, p & c gameplay is so fricking bad that even an interactive story like The Walking Dead is more enjoyable. Deal with it!
Dexter
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Couldn't Brofist this hard enough, would Brofist x10.
It's the same shit as back in the day when Adventure games “died” due to the rise and popularity of the console market at that point (especially the PS2) and the pressure this put on Adventure developers by publishers to have everything 3D and possibly Multiplatform and controller-compatible with more "Action" resulting in games like Simon the Sorcerer 3D, Broken Sword 3(D) or Monkey Island 4 and several similar ones that largely ended up alienating their “core demographic” because it wasn't what they wanted and failed to reach the “action gamer/console market” because it wasn't what they wanted.
Nowadays the same shit is happening with the elusive and highly sought-after (presumably either brain-dead or entirely uninterested if the approximations in design are anywhere near right) casual/mobile market we've already discussed a few pages back: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...ter-adventure-game.69252/page-54#post-2942722
They seem to be getting the format and the art style right, but the gameplay and design part is gimped by other considerations. (Shadowrun Returns was gimped for the same reason)
I find this especially curious when it happens to a game that prides itself on being "old-school" and "reviving the classics" and instead of admitting faults, Backers and the media at large seem to be going around praising them for their foresight to reach a "broader audience" while defending the new design and some keep posting this nonsensical article over and over again as to why it supposedly shouldn't have better design in the first place: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html
Somehow in a collective case of mental enfeeblement they don't realise that having these low expectations and encouraging the practices is going to make the game(s) overall worse and less interesting for them to play, just as encouraging the "Action" approach did back in the day.
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If I'm going by your standards on this board, nobody even wants to play a RPG. So your criticism is a bit out of place.
Yeah, p & c gameplay is so fricking bad that even an interactive story like The Walking Dead is more enjoyable. Deal with it!
It must be hard to put food in your mouth with such short and retard arms, isn't it?
Bt
Ravel myluv
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Well I can't reply much except that it's a matter of taste.
When you get satisfaction after an obtuse puzzle, I just get relief it's just over.
You're right that with simple puzzles, the game is (almost) an interactive story. But I'd rather that than torturing my brain for illogical puzzles.
To the moon is one of the best games I've played in recent memory. Yes, its gameplay is super mediocre, but it doesn't distract from the story like shitty puzzles do.
And calling it a "movie", a "long cinematic" or whatever is wrong. As basic as it might be, the simple need to check the environment, chose dialogue etc, immerses the player in the game.
Plus, old adventure games almost always fucked me over not because I didn"t think too hard, but because design was terrible.
You mentionned hidden objects, this is like the cause of 70% of the time I spent blocked on these fucking games.
There are all sorts of other terrible design decisions: characters that suddenly have new lines necessary to progress for no logical reason, inconsistency in how you use the objects etc....
TWD, as illusory as were its choices, tried to actually bring a new form of challenge in adventure games: make good decisions.
I think all modern adventure games need to depart from the p&c stuff and experiment on stuff like this, that is not only more interesting, but also more integral to the game experience that puzzles that offer challenge for the sake of challenge.
Ravel myluv
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I have "short and retard arms"..... M'okay, I guess? You certainly didn't learn anything from the insults duelling from Monkey Island, did you?
If I'm going by your standards on this board, nobody even wants to play a RPG. So your criticism is a bit out of place.
Yeah, p & c gameplay is so fricking bad that even an interactive story like The Walking Dead is more enjoyable. Deal with it!
It must be hard to put food in your mouth with such short and retard arms, isn't it?
Bt
Ravel myluv , your entire argument is how you disliked old adventure games - with all their illogical puzzles and hidden objects -, and like the new ones, with focus on the storytelling. That's fair, it's your opinion & taste.
But the entire point of this kickstarter was to bring back old-school games, to revive the Lucasarts era. They can't simply release a modern adventure game and say "eh, the old ones sucked anyway".
But the entire point of this kickstarter was to bring back old-school games, to revive the Lucasarts era. They can't simply release a modern adventure game and say "eh, the old ones sucked anyway".
Well they can. In fact they have. They better hope they take off like Tell Tale though, because they will not see one cent from me anymore.
Ravel myluv
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With this I will agree.
It's weak from them to promess something to the fans, and deliver something else.
It's good for me, but I understand those who backed the project feel a bit cheated.
Nonsensical puzzles, no, those were just designed by Sierra to force calls to their hint lines. Puzzles that take days to figure out? Yes. The most satisfied I've ever felt playing an adventure game was when, after a week of thinking about it, I finally figured out how to get on the 'long path' in King's Quest 6, without any hints.
I get relief when I'm playing a difficult section in a platformer with no savepoint and I manage to reach the next checkpoint...
About illogical puzzles, i'd say that most of old Lucasarts games had very little illogical puzzles. In fact, I only heard about this whole "illogical" argument when someone talked about the infamous rubber duck in longest Journey, "coining" the term. Lucasarts games all gave hints on how to solve puzzles from dialogue, and the character's observations. The only illogical thing I remember from monkey island is using jojo as a monkey wrench. But after playing these kind of games, you get used to how to think as an adventure player. Anyway, "illogical" puzzles is an overrated modern concept that nobody talked about in the 90's.
Well, you said I mention hidden objects, though I can't remember mentioning them... strange is that I intended to talk about it but forgot while I was writing my post. Yes, pixel hunting is terrible, that's the only thing that pisses me off in adventures. Another thing that I really hated, and is the other side of the "logical" approach, was when I played Runaway, in which you saw objects on screen but you weren't abble to interact with them unless the game presented you with the necessity to use that item. You couldn't get a gallon of gas that was in open view until you find a car that needs gas. That is completelly logical, but it was frustrating, because sometimes the item wouldn't even be detected by the mouse until the right time, so you had to pixel hunt the same screen over and over again...
You remind me of situations in which I solved a puzzle while thinking about it while I was not playing the game... Sometime at school or work, and counting the time to arrive home and try. Of course, sometimes it backfired, but when you tested it and it worked, it was pure bliss...
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Okay, after returning from my extremely profitable occupation and settling down with this game in the comforts of my warm, babe-strewn urban apartment in downtown Osaka, I have to say. This game is pretty good.
It's not that the puzzles are easy per-se; it's more that the game is too generous with clever hints. The characters literally say, HEY SO THIS IS OUR CURRENT PROBLEM AND MAYBE IF SOMEBODY DID THIS THEN WE COULD FIX IT -- and I'm obviously not even talking about Shay's routine, which was hilarious, amazing, thought-provoking, and very fun. No, ironically, most of the game is actually structured in an oddly over-supportive way similar to Shay's mother's treatment of Shay. I think the game could be made more satisfying as a GAME if it cut back on these hints. It makes it all feel a little too on-rails.
The game essentially suffers from a decade of pent-up self-consciousness about the adventure genre. It doesn't want to be illogical, or tricky, or too opaque, too classical, because then somebody will cite Old Man Murray and modern indie design bloggers, convicting Tim Shafer of Bad Design that Killed Adventure Games.
However, it is beautiful, hilarious, enchanting, and fun. It just needs to be a better adventure game. It's too much of a mere string of cutscenes, atm.
PREMATURE VERDICT: It's no Woodruff. But I haven't enjoyed a new adventure game as much as this one in several years.
VERDICT #2: This game is way better than Primordia.
It's not that the puzzles are easy per-se; it's more that the game is too generous with clever hints. The characters literally say, HEY SO THIS IS OUR CURRENT PROBLEM AND MAYBE IF SOMEBODY DID THIS THEN WE COULD FIX IT -- and I'm obviously not even talking about Shay's routine, which was hilarious, amazing, thought-provoking, and very fun. No, ironically, most of the game is actually structured in an oddly over-supportive way similar to Shay's mother's treatment of Shay. I think the game could be made more satisfying as a GAME if it cut back on these hints. It makes it all feel a little too on-rails.
The game essentially suffers from a decade of pent-up self-consciousness about the adventure genre. It doesn't want to be illogical, or tricky, or too opaque, too classical, because then somebody will cite Old Man Murray and modern indie design bloggers, convicting Tim Shafer of Bad Design that Killed Adventure Games.
However, it is beautiful, hilarious, enchanting, and fun. It just needs to be a better adventure game. It's too much of a mere string of cutscenes, atm.
PREMATURE VERDICT: It's no Woodruff. But I haven't enjoyed a new adventure game as much as this one in several years.
VERDICT #2: This game is way better than Primordia.
Simon the Sorcerer 2 - press space to reveal hot spots. I loved that function then and I love it now. I know people think it's decline, but I do not care. Most cases of me getting stuck in games are either stuff like sliding puzzles (#&@%§!) or missing some objects (Was it in Innocient until Caught where you had to find the one pixel chewing gum?).
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