Internet Killed the Point and Click Star
Like Star War being popular in it's prime, it's also similar to the adventure genre it's self. The best around, though with time, and technology, remakes/sequels get lost in obscurity.
When talking about MI:SE at E3, LucasArts kind of stumbled upon the prime reason puzzle/adventure games lost steam, without even thinking about it.
So many people can now go online and type "Win at monkey game" and what used to be a week long epic adventure of amazingness, suddenly turns into a 2 hour button mashing pile of Yak's pap.
Also Lucasarts never really will be able to ignore the face MI4 was totally rubbish and bad, which is a shame owing to the fact MI3 was a pretty nice job.
However I think Telltale has really managed to capture the love of MI games and adding the series structure with a lot of TBC, really keeps us guessing and loving the game. Sadly however, the only people this series really probably appeals to is the MI faithful, and would be surprised if many new players completely unknown to the World of MI, played and enjoyed these games (so far)
That being said... the adventure game is not totally dead. I have recently watched the SAW game on Xbox360, and whilst it appears to be a mindless hack and slash FPS (which it does turn into sadly) the beginning elements of the game are environmental awareness and puzzle based; which is kind of awesome given the fact most games now, from MMO to Soccer Sims are the same series of button smashing until you win.
I hope the future of MI evolves, and someone takes the gamble to make a new MI adventure in the future that has that Fableish puzzle solving element, but with the adage of first person travel and combat control.
The Pirate genre is currently hot (PotC helped that) I would love to see an elaborate project propel the MI franchise into brave new territory of game play and design.
When talking about MI:SE at E3, LucasArts kind of stumbled upon the prime reason puzzle/adventure games lost steam, without even thinking about it.
So many people can now go online and type "Win at monkey game" and what used to be a week long epic adventure of amazingness, suddenly turns into a 2 hour button mashing pile of Yak's pap.
Also Lucasarts never really will be able to ignore the face MI4 was totally rubbish and bad, which is a shame owing to the fact MI3 was a pretty nice job.
However I think Telltale has really managed to capture the love of MI games and adding the series structure with a lot of TBC, really keeps us guessing and loving the game. Sadly however, the only people this series really probably appeals to is the MI faithful, and would be surprised if many new players completely unknown to the World of MI, played and enjoyed these games (so far)
That being said... the adventure game is not totally dead. I have recently watched the SAW game on Xbox360, and whilst it appears to be a mindless hack and slash FPS (which it does turn into sadly) the beginning elements of the game are environmental awareness and puzzle based; which is kind of awesome given the fact most games now, from MMO to Soccer Sims are the same series of button smashing until you win.
I hope the future of MI evolves, and someone takes the gamble to make a new MI adventure in the future that has that Fableish puzzle solving element, but with the adage of first person travel and combat control.
The Pirate genre is currently hot (PotC helped that) I would love to see an elaborate project propel the MI franchise into brave new territory of game play and design.
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That's exactly what a lot of people don't want really. The adventure genre died in a sense when it its best bits started getting swallowed up and incorporated in to other genres. The implementation of 3D movement and cinematics is also something that can take away from what made adventure games great in the first place - MI4, Grim Fandango etc would all have been more enjoyable with a standard point'n'click interface IMO. Combat and stuff just alienates a lot of players who don't want that, the best example being Dreamfall which was absolutely horrible in gameplay terms. Telltale is doing a great job of breathing life into the genre by keeping things fairly traditional.
Haha, don't get me started on ratings. It's very rare that a mature rating is actually mature at all. What happened to proper adult humour, like in The Longest Journey? I think i've reviewed about 40 "mature" games in the last few years which were all basically kids games with constant violence. And not in a funny Sam And Max type-way, but in a serious OMG LOOK THIS GAME IS SO DARK AND BLOODY DON'T SHOW YOUR PARENTS way. Though to be fair, games were always like that in general. We just miss the verfremdungseffekt from the graphics being so crappy in the past.
Or that the major adventure publishers had help lines. :P
What made MI1+2 great for me? There were some truly mind bending puzzles, as well as some obvious ones, so obvious they were hard as you didn't think they could rightfully be the solution. When you was stuck... you had 2 option.. Dial the 0901 number (i lived in England at the time) and have your mum absolutely throttle you come time for the bill... or 2, Talk to your friends about it for hours and try and come up with ideas (Yes back in the early 90's playing video games didn't evoke anti social behavior)
well... there was option three... go to your friends house and use their phone to make the 0901 call... but I never went that far... headcheese helmet.... ever.
I guess this is just me having one of my first old fart moments of life. Back in my day we didnt have the internet for fancy walkthrus... nor did we have these CD/DVD rom things... we actually had to be ready and willing to change 14 floppy A disks to play a game. Oh oh, and there was no game piracy... ohhh no... if we wanted to play a game we had to make a pirate face on a cardboard dial thingy and enter the code.. damn... some of those Anti software copy devices were actually more fun to play with than the game itself.
You are an ignorant and pathetic excuse for a human being, I have ADHD and used to be medicated for it and take ritalin several times a day, how dare you say it is a made up condition.
You might wanna get rediagnosed, 8 years ago all forms of Autism (except secerely acute forms) were classified as ADD/ADHD, but doctors are admitting now that a lot of people really should have been classed under different sections of the Autism spectrum, such as Aspergers.
ADD isn't made up. You're an idiot.
But you probably have Aspergers if you weren't destructive, as most kids with aspergers (cough me included cough) were on ritalin, and classes as having ADD.
But ADD exists.
Back on topic.
You my friend, are an ignorant fool. You're ADD comment reflects that. MI will always be a puzzle game, and no other genre has pulled off decent puzzles yet, you just get switch type ones like Prince of Persia. Inventory combination only works with Adventure games and combat would completely ruin MI, it wouldn't work storywise and it would be aimed at a different audience, namely idiots who need fighting to make a game fun.
Hmm, I shall look into getting rediagnosed at some point in the near future, thanks.
I completely agree, Telltale Games really do have a tried and tested formula that works with the Monkey Island series.
Monkey Island is an intellectual franchise, adding first person and fighting for the sake of fighting would ruin the game and take it into the realms of a genre that it should not venture into.
I can appreciate people's points of view surrounding taste in games, but changing one game into a game it isn't? I don't agree with that. If you want a game that is similar to what you are looking for, go and actually play the game that you actually enjoy as opposed to trying to influence the opinions of people who have been strong fans of the game so it's conception.
The point and click genre is becoming scarce and Telltale is preventing it's extinction, I say good on them for making the point and click formula work time and time again with consistent improvements with every release.
They actually aren't "preventing its extinction", they're just making the most high-profile titles. There are plenty of adventures released every year, they just tend to be low-budget, indie and/or niche products.
A huge proportion of kids given medication are kids with single parents (and angry boyfriends) or dangerous home conditions, and they're given Ritalin because it keeps them out of the way and quiet. (this wasn't why I was medicated mind you). But it's a lot of them, and if government agencies are monitoring suspect families, like ones with Domestic Violence but can't prove anything, kids are often given medication, as there's no negative effects, it just makes them quiet and concentrate.
The idea of no medication is a bit foolish, the problem is that kids with autism often get distracted at school and are upset easily, and bullying is a problem as they lack social skills (me as a kid). Pretty much, Ritalin helps kids concentrate so they can do well in school (not a problem with me, but I only have aspergers, not ADD), and it also makes them less impulsive, so it minimizes bullying. Other methods do work a little bit, but medication is a lot easier, has no negative effects and generally helps kids ease into society easier.
You're an idiot for thinking ADD doesn't exist.
Right, back on topic.
Adventure games are pretty much a niche market now, and the first example I can think of is the western RPG genre. Not Mass Effect, but the whole diablo 2 clone game series, and there's a lot of them (Sacred, Titan Quest, FATE, Torchlight). These games are sticking to a formula that a lot of people enjoy, and occassionally you'll get a big title come out of the genre, (Diablo 3), but it'll never become a major genre for games, like point and click adventures.
There are groups of people, with money, that are looking to play these niche games, but from a business standpoint it doesn't make sense to make these games Mainstream, and most will agree that the indy development teams make the games better in their own way, as more attention is paid to the script and little details, instead of cutting edge graphics and sound etc.
Although, Tim Schafer did mention doing a Monkey Island FPS awhile back...
"Schafer told GameSpot his next title would be a first-person shooter set in the Monkey Island universe"
http://au.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/brutallegend/news.html?sid=6178482&mode=all
And I *like it that way, thanks. From my experience, more people liking something can only bring trouble.
I think the internet could really be a boon for adventure gaming, and that while what telltale is doing is fantastic, but that there's another unexplorer area that adventure games would really shine.
A fully browser-based 2d graphic adventure could be a hit. It could tap into the casual gamer market that pogo plays in.
Not you, the other guy.
I probably should have multiquoted.
He was posting in regards to somebody elses message, not yours.
OK everyone is confused now.
I can't see browser games taking off, but Dragon Age was going to release one.
It's come to the point now where flash games aren't as popular as they once were. You play them a lot as kids but there aren't any really big ones out there played by adults for long periods of time.
A really short adventure game might work, but I fail to see anyone investing too much time in it, as flash games are best played on the go, not in long sittings.
I'll through my hat into the ring as someone else who was misdiagnosed with ADD. wkjezz never said ADD wasn't real, he just implied that there are many kids out there who think they have it who don't, which is true.
Edit: Wait, he did say it wasn't real. He called it a "make-believe condition." That's wrong and I'm going to stop defending him now.
As for the internet killing adventure games, no, that's not right at all. If anything it saved the genre, but more on that later. I might be shunned by my adventure game brethren for saying this but I actually don't like being stuck on a puzzle for hours on end. I relish challenge but nothing frustrates me more than a "getting the key out of the train tracks puzzle" Vis-à-vis The Longest Journey. I consider myself pretty good at adventure games and there are only two times I've ever needed to search the internet (Sam & Max Reality 2.0 spoiler:
Think about it. How many people out have ever thought "I'm not going to buy that game because I can just look up the answers online?" No, like many prominent games from before the '90s the genre initially didn't survive the transition to 3D. While the earliest 3D games for the genre (I'm thinking Grim Fandango and The Longest Journey) were absolute classics they just didn't sell as well as they hoped*. I think the problem is that people who play adventure games usually aren't the sort of people who keep top of the line computers, and as a result the people who had the systems to play those games weren't very interested in them.
After that it just became a matter of stores telling publishers that adventure games don't sell, which then in turns leads to publishers not publishing adventure games, which then in turn leads to adventure games not selling because there are none, which then in turn keeps stores continuing to tell publishers that adventure games don't sell.
Then Telltale comes along. They want to make adventure games but no publisher will publish them unless they prove they can make a profit. So Telltale uses the internet and offers their games via digital distribution. With Sam & Max season 1 they made a profit before the game ever hit store shelves as a physical disc, which was later produced by JoWood. (The disc itself was made by Telltale, all JoWood had to do was supply it to store shelves.)
For those of you who have read this far I applaud you. So in short I submit that the popularization of the internet really had nothing to do with the downfall of adventure gaming. Those who have said so should get on their knees and beg the internet's forgiveness, for it is it's fickle doing that we finally have adventure games back in our lives.
*The Longest Journey actually sold alright, the real problem was that the LucasArts games, GF and EMI both failed to sell.
Check out Machinarium, it's an excellent flash-based adventure game from the same guys who made Samorost 1 and 2.
Hmm, now I have myself curious. I've started a poll on whether or not everyone used help.
By Flash game, I meant online play in the browser game, which is what the stupid original poster was hinting at.
Very sad if that's how you're playing the games, I think you're missing out on the experience enjoyed by everyone else who loves these games. I occasionally use walkthrus and/or the hint forum but only when I'm really stuck; it doesn't detract from my enjoyment, I only use it when I would otherwise have started getting frustrated.
Totally subjective and I don't really see how this affects anything.
I personally felt MI3 missed a lot of what made the first two games special, whereas MI4 largely redeemed the series for me. I think mainly that the voices were done a lot better, which is a really important factor for immersion. MI3's dialogue just wasn't "snappy" enough. However I know there are differing opinions on this
Again I have no idea where you get this information, as I understand it many new players have been introduced to the MI canon through already being fans of Telltale; vice-versa, a great number of MI fans have been introduced to Telltale through this release.
Something tells me you haven't played many of the games I have.
And this idea is good how?
Why not just make a completely different game featuring the elements you describe, rather than taking a successful franchise and attempting to apply UI paradigms that were never meant to work with it? There are WAY too many FPS games out there. It's like people don't know how to make anything else any more.
Pirates have always been "hot", they are not a fad, everybody knows that they are awesome.
Brave new territories of gameplay and design, yes. But decide what gameplay mechanics you want, then invent a world that fits around them. Then find the team that can build it. That's how innovative games are made... (in at least a lot of cases!) You can't just throw a franchise at an idea and expect it to work...
you might want to take a look at still life (2). that's not a game i'd likely let a kid play. but i also doubt it's game a kid would like.
as for your point, can't agree more. i had a look at madworld recently, just because of its pretty drastic rating for a wii game. it is fun to play for a while, until you've found out most ways to impale/rip apart/incinerate/slaughter your enemies. the multiplayer mode is a joke too.
i really hope funcom starts working hard on the next longest journey soon.
Is this an actual English word? (I know it's German, but is it used in the English language?)
I heavily doubt that it's not...