"retro doesn't always mean good" at the top of that review should be something all game makers should remember, i dont care what you liked as a kid most of us have moved on, in fact "retro usually isn't good" would be better
Sorry but from my understanding retro means "I get to play the game" instead of the modern "I only get to watch the game and choose a bit of dialogue".
I'd like some retro gaming experiences, please.
Sorry but from my understanding retro means "I get to play the game" instead of the modern "I only get to watch the game and choose a bit of dialogue".
I'd like some retro gaming experiences, please.
oh har har, i think you misunderstand what retro means, retro means the total lack of innovation or imagination that totally relies on nostalgia from a time where you didn't know better, but you really should now
and please how is a few extra clicks of the mouse on open then clicking on door playing a game any more than scrolling your mouse to the open door icon.
as a point and click adventure game fan you really have very little to stand on when saying a game has no gameplay.
and game you don't like that much is popular, but the games you like aren't, GET OVER IT
That's a great summary of adventure game interfaces! One other thing to think about is the other side: the developers of the game.
A good text adventure has a huge vocabulary. In Zork II, you can "RAPE PRINCESS". Granted, you don't live very long if you attempt it, but the option is there. If you're the developer, and you support the verb "RAPE", you now have to figure out what happens if the user tries it with everything else in the game. (Can you rape the wizard? Can you rape a grue? Can you rape the brass lamp?)
The more you limit the verbs, the less you have to worry about stuff like this. If there's a graphical adventure that uses the word "RAPE" often enough to support it on the interface, I haven't played it. Simplifying the verbs means fewer interactions to worry about, which means you can get the game out faster with fewer bugs. And fewer letters from angry parents who find out you can rape things in the game.
Rather Dashing gave a good breakdown of the pointlessness of clicking on words then the interaction
I didn't mean to say it was pointless, or even universally a bad idea in a modern context. All I said was that it was a problem which requires justification.
That's a great summary of adventure game interfaces! One other thing to think about is the other side: the developers of the game.
The true other side is for freedom of use. The problem most adventures have is that they have what seems like a larger toolset in front of them, but as the Venn Diagram shows they tend to use 2-3 verbs in roughly the same capacity.
What's the solution? THAT isn't something I actually explicitly meant to lay out. I just meant to imply that modern games have TENDED toward the solution of realizing that their design used only a handful of verbs and that binding the interface to the mouse cursor caused performing actions to be simpler to execute without actually affecting complexity. The OTHER way to go, of course, would be to try and really utilize a bank or parser interface in a way that embraced the greater degree of complexity. There ARE things that can be done only with a parser or a bank, but if you're not doing them then there really is nothing justifying the use of that interface.
oh har har, i think you misunderstand what retro means, retro means the total lack of innovation or imagination that totally relies on nostalgia from a time where you didn't know better, but you really should now
and please how is a few extra clicks of the mouse on open then clicking on door playing a game any more than scrolling your mouse to the open door icon.
as a point and click adventure game fan you really have very little to stand on when saying a game has no gameplay.
and game you don't like that much is popular, but the games you like aren't, GET OVER IT
To me retro means low resolution, low color games that follow an 8 or 16 bit scheme and an older type of gameplay like the 90s jrpgs or the SCUMM adventures. Innovation is fine, but what if a game doesn't want to innovate? Does EVERY game have to innovate?
oh har har, i think you misunderstand what retro means, retro means the total lack of innovation or imagination that totally relies on nostalgia from a time where you didn't know better, but you really should now
and please how is a few extra clicks of the mouse on open then clicking on door playing a game any more than scrolling your mouse to the open door icon.
as a point and click adventure game fan you really have very little to stand on when saying a game has no gameplay.
and game you don't like that much is popular, but the games you like aren't, GET OVER IT
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If you ask me, a lot of so called "retro" games are far more enjoyable than modern counterparts.
Sometimes modern games railroad you too much. There is no real game there, at least nothing more than simply child's play.
Too much context sensitive action dumbs down the game a lot.
God of War for instance is terrible for this.
Quick time events, button mashing, and dumb puzzles ruin a pretty interesting story at times.
And many enemies lack any interesting patterns and just sponge hits and maybe occasionally react if they are slightly tougher ones.
OK so let's battle it against a retro classic: Castlevania
Its simpler, mechanics-wise, but in many ways its a smarter experience.
All the enemies have unique patterns that require careful timing or strategy to kill, and each weapon and item you find has some kind of use to it,
And it rewards you immediately for exploring with something you really need,
I'd rather have one bit of Chicken over a part of health anytime because that's immediately helpful and rewarding and fit for purpose.
Arguably in GoW, that sort of power up doesn't really have much use in the long run because the game scales up and there is health n shit everywhere anyway so it doesn't feel so valuable.
Games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter clearly borrow from more classical design and in many ways much better games.
Monster Hunter is a bit grindy, but what makes it so rewarding is that often enough the items*have*both immediate and long-term uses, and that gives the game this level of strategic planning. Resource management.
And you actually need almost everything at some point, because the monsters actually get more diverse overtime.
Simple patterns become more complicated patterns.
Hell I fought a monster that can summon other boss monsters nearby,
So how do you deal with that?
Well...
A. Use a dung him to get rid of that monster for now,
B. Try to fight both
C. Run away and wait for either monster to move to a different area.
D. Already be prepared with the right abilities to see them coming
E. Learn the monsters patferns /weaknesses and exploit them. In this case attack just before it makes the call to counter or use a specific item to stun it (the game gives you a little hint at what that item is if you talk to people)
And those strategies become even more intricate when you introduce more players to the mix, and the risk/reward mechanic of deciding whether to try to kill of capture that monster
(Capturing is harder to do, but gives you better stuff normally)
Again, Dark Souls is kind of similar, but has a heavier emphasis on skill, pattern analysis, and timing.
Instead of being overpowered like in God of War, of having the chance to beef yourself up in Monster Hunter, in Dark Souls you are almost always UNDERPOWERED.
Every drop of health counts. Mistakes are immediately costly.
It throws you in the deep end. A simple enemy can easily kill you if you don't react the right way.
You don't have a large repotoire of tools or abilities, and that's the point.you need to learn what attacks and weapons and items take out what. All the enemy attack patterns and timings.
Whether to dodge or block. What can leave the enemy open, what can/leave you open, and not just to that enemy but the whole gang surrounding you!
Dark Souls wouldn't exist without Kings Field, which wouldnt exist if there was no games like Elder Scrolls or Ultima.
And I argue that we can still learn a lot from what's already there, and that's its important to play, design, and enjoy retro styled games, because it keeps the memory alive and relevant to the modern age that tries to blockbusterfy everything to appease all markets.
And that dumbing down does absolutely nothing for the art of design in the long-run except bury originality.
I'd like to add that I missed out on having a Super Nintendo in the 90s, and now that I own one, I've had a lot of fun so far playing 15-20 year old games for the first time, with no influence of nostalgia.
I'd like to add that I missed out on having a Super Nintendo in the 90s, and now that I own one, I've had a lot of fun so far playing 15-20 year old games for the first time, with no influence of nostalgia.
I'd like to add that I missed out on having a Super Nintendo in the 90s, and now that I own one, I've had a lot of fun so far playing 15-20 year old games for the first time, with no influence of nostalgia.
I think a part of that is due to two things.
1. Design limitations that caused many developers to think very carefully of what they could do and what they couldn't do. Many stories I have read about unique features in games is due to that outside the box thinking developers had to do to keep that feature in the game.
2. Polish. Games couldn't be patched. They had to be almost perfect when they went Gold,
A lot of polish is necessary. A lot of pointless fat had to be trimmed off as soon as possible.
And I think in some ways, people maybe cared more.
These days there is a clear divide between mainstream and indie, but in those days that wasn't so clearcut.
Many mega-corporations still had people working there with actual soul, a vision. Many are still too small to need to worry too much about labour costs and shareholders and deadlines, and could just makes what they wanted, not what would sell well to X demographic.
I sometimes imagine the industry like a onion.
As it grows, the inner layers expand but become more vulnerable to the outside world as it grows till eventually it becomes a mere dried out husk.
If I ever got round to starting an indie company, Id keep it indy.
I wouldnt make the mistake of making bigger and better. Instead its better to be like other plants and develop many smaller seeds.
Several teams wprking on multiple projects, from small to large, (if the funding was there)
As the saying goes, don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
(But spreading yourself too thin is also a big mistake. So id set myself a growth limit and try to keep that growth as organic as possible. And quality gams experience would be the mantra Id try to keep. (Workplace philosophy is often an overlooked factor and can cause long-term problems. Something I would like to nip in the bud before it can be a problem))
Also, not everyone cared back in the day. There were a lot of shitty games shoveled out for sixty dollars that you'd buy and be completely jipped on. The AVGN is kind of a product of that. You were stuck with those games, and on some of them you can tell they just DIDN'T CARE. That said, there were a shitton of games that were given a lot of care. Telltale still gives their games a lot of care. I'll work on streamlining my SCUMM interface.
Also, not everyone cared back in the day. There were a lot of shitty games shoveled out for sixty dollars that you'd buy and be completely jipped on. The AVGN is kind of a product of that. You were stuck with those games, and on some of them you can tell they just DIDN'T CARE. That said, there were a shitton of games that were given a lot of care. Telltale still gives their games a lot of care. I'll work on streamlining my SCUMM interface.
To be fair, a lot of those games were made by the same companies.
Ocean... Brrr! Just mentioning that company is enough to give me chills! XD
To me retro means low resolution, low color games that follow an 8 or 16 bit scheme and an older type of gameplay like the 90s jrpgs or the SCUMM adventures. Innovation is fine, but what if a game doesn't want to innovate? Does EVERY game have to innovate?
i would say there is a separation between art and game mechanics, i am fine with retro art, but if the actual game is just super mario reskinned it is lame.
to help explain what i mean my basic history of playing computer games and loving it goes NES-Mega drive-PC and the reason i have never gone back to nintendo(or consoles in general even though i have owned a playstation and an xbox 360 and i messed around with the commodore and other older PC type consoles) is because essentially every game on the NES and the mega drive was just basically the same 3 games reskinned into another game and i got REALLY tried of that, to me the PC to me stood for new and innovative games types (including adventure games which have innovated since text adventures and early point and click) that try new mechanics and even invent new genres, obviously there are established genres with mechanics that happen in most of the games, but it is innovation that makes a great game, like HL2 would have not been anywhere near as good if they hadn't decided to do physics puzzles and instead just made a high resolution version of HL with a different story, it was that innovation (I'm not saying they did it first) and many others that made HL2 great.
i just think it is lazy and boring to just remake another game but with different art and story, there has to be something new and interesting about it else what is the point?
essentially every game on the NES and the mega drive was just basically the same 3 games reskinned into another game
So, because the 8-bit console generation was heavily littered with side-scrolling platformers and top-down adventures, that means consoles suck? I'd say that's due more to limitations of the controller than lack of innovation. I mean, come on--the NES only had 2 face buttons and that was it. There's only so much you can do with a D-Pad, A, B, Select and Start.
Besides that, I disagree. Mega Man, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Wizards and Warriors, and StarTropics (to name a few) feel little to nothing like each other.
i just think it is lazy and boring to just remake another game but with different art and story, there has to be something new and interesting about it else what is the point?
I have had every set-top Nintendo console (except WiiU), a Dreamcast, and every iteration of Playstation and there is a hell of a lot of innovation going on. Nintendo even said that the reason why they made Zelda:Wind Waker, instead of a game similar to the realistic (for then) Spaceworld 2000 tech demo, was because they had Link doing the same old things as he did in Ocarina of Time, so they changed the art style to give themselves more ways to vary the gameplay.
Further, it's no secret the the majority of good games for Nintendo's consoles are first-party games.
Now you're going to hate on Nintendo for rehashing their old games, when what they're actually doing is keeping what people love about a game, and changing the rest up a bit to keep it fresh and new. People want Mario games and Zelda games to play the way they do, and that's why they love those franchises. When Team Ninja "innovated" with Metroid: Other M, people hated it. They don't want their bad ass female space hunter to be a whiny little girl; They want her to kick ass and take names.
Innovation for its own sake is not necessarily a good thing. And respecting what people love about games and keeping faithful to fans of a franchise's (or, in the case of SCUMM, a genre's) roots is not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, people complain about new Tomb Raider being an Uncharted clone (though Uncharted takes heavily from older Tomb Raider stuff) but new Tomb Raider is still a very good game. It doesn't suffer from not being the epitome of innovation.
EDIT: And, oh yes--The Wii Remote. How many people hate on Wii's motion controls? Quite a few people, I think. But hey, because 360 and PS3 fall back on standard controller schemes, their games suffer for it due to lack of innovation. Wait, no they don't.
So, because the 8-bit console generation was heavily littered with side-scrolling platformers and top-down adventures, that means consoles suck? I'd say that's due more to limitations of the controller than lack of innovation. I mean, come on--the NES only had 2 face buttons and that was it. There's only so much you can do with a D-Pad, A, B, Select and Start.
Besides that, I disagree. Mega Man, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Wizards and Warriors, and StarTropics (to name a few) feel little to nothing like each other.
I have had every set-top Nintendo console (except WiiU), a Dreamcast, and every iteration of Playstation and there is a hell of a lot of innovation going on. Nintendo even said that the reason why they made Zelda:Wind Waker, instead of a game similar to the realistic (for then) Spaceworld 2000 tech demo, was because they had Link doing the same old things as he did in Ocarina of Time, so they changed the art style to give themselves more ways to vary the gameplay.
Further, it's no secret the the majority of good games for Nintendo's consoles are first-party games.
Now you're going to hate on Nintendo for rehashing their old games, when what they're actually doing is keeping what people love about a game, and changing the rest up a bit to keep it fresh and new. People want Mario games and Zelda games to play the way they do, and that's why they love those franchises. When Team Ninja "innovated" with Metroid: Other M, people hated it. They don't want their bad ass female space hunter to be a whiny little girl; They want her to kick ass and take names.
Innovation for its own sake is not necessarily a good thing. And respecting what people love about games and keeping faithful to fans of a franchise's (or, in the case of SCUMM, a genre's) roots is not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, people complain about new Tomb Raider being an Uncharted clone (though Uncharted takes heavily from older Tomb Raider stuff) but new Tomb Raider is still a very good game. It doesn't suffer from not being the epitome of innovation.
EDIT: And, oh yes--The Wii Remote. How many people hate on Wii's motion controls? Quite a few people, I think. But hey, because 360 and PS3 fall back on standard controller schemes, their games suffer for it due to lack of innovation. Wait, no they don't.
people can like what they want, and if they like the same old thing they can buy the same old thing if they want, but i like new things.
to me nintendo has just been selling the same games my whole life while i moved on to new things, also i would say innovation for innovation's sake is actually an oxymoron.
if as you say the games were all just clones of themselves because of the limitations of the controller why do they keep making the same game? (retro)
to me tomb raider was an evolution of platformers and i was glad to leave mario behind.
i hate the motion controller not because it was innovative, but because it isn't the way i want to play games, flicking my wrist around isn't innovative or interesting, the technology may be innovative but the games that use it aren't, it is just a gimmick.
and i gave an example of HL to HL2 which i think was good and that should have been clear that i don't think continuing a franchise is a bad thing, just that rehashing the same old thing without any "new" in it is just pointless.
i think if there are problems with certain types of games game developers should be thinking of new ways to solve those problems not just ignore them thinking "people like the old games and they had problems lets just keep ignoring the problems and make another game just the same" which is the attitude that many point and click adventures seem to be made by, don't get me wrong i have been defending point and click games for years saying that they aren't dead, but i also haven't been just ignoring all the bad things about them, i want them to be improved not just rehashed.
also i don't think everything ninteno has done is bad, but just not enough good things for me to buy it
But if, by your standard, games should always innovate or else not be worth playing (much less making), then what you're really saying is that Point and Click adventure games should die, because they are old and only the new matters. Hey, let's innovate adventure games by taking out the hard puzzles and replacing exploration with QTE's. That's innovation, isn't it?
So, by rights, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future are new and fresh and therefore better and more worthy or your time than Day of the Tentacle or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
But if, by your standard, games should always innovate or else not be worth playing (much less making), then what you're really saying is that Point and Click adventure games should die, because they are old and only the new matters. Hey, let's innovate adventure games by taking out the hard puzzles and replacing exploration with QTE's. That's innovation, isn't it?
So, by rights, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future are new and fresh and therefore better and more worthy or your time than Day of the Tentacle or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
no, lets not have a semantic argument.
i would say that jurassic park sucked because of the QTE's i hate all QTE's (this may start another semantic argument because QTE is a broad term) i want to play the game not be told what to press on a second to second basis which to me is essentially the game playing me (QTE's to me are just rhythm games and i hate them) i can't even think of what QTE you are referring to in back to the future.
and i would say that comparing monkey island to the walking dead is like comparing Half life to supreme commander, to me they are different genres that try to achieve different things, i like puzzle based point and click games and i don't want them to die, i just want them to be improved
To be honest all you're arguing is that certain things sucked because you didn't like them. Which is fair, from an entirely subjective perspective. But Mario Galaxy is not Super Mario Bros.
I would argue that "better" is subjective. Different is the point. You're saying if games aren't different from each other, then they're not worth your time because, effectively, if you've played one you've played them all. If you've played Metroid, you therefore have no reason to play Kid Icarus and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night; if you've played Uncharted, you've played Tomb Raider; and further if you've played Full Throttle, you've played Curse of Monkey Island--nevermind if any of these are any good.
Back to the Future doesn't have QTEs, but it is easy as crap, favoring a "cinematic" quality. That doesn't make it better. It's just different--and because you say different is good, then it is more worth your time. You also made no original distinction about what qualifies as "better" and what doesn't--merely that games which are similar are pointless. That means games should be different, regardless of whether or not they are better. You also apparently couldn't care less about, say Zelda for example, because all Zelda games are similar, nevermind if the reason why is because "if it's not broke don't fix it".
To be honest all you're arguing is that certain things sucked because you didn't like them. Which is fair, from an entirely subjective perspective. But Mario Galaxy is not Super Mario Bros.
well i gave a reason why i don't like QTE's, but entertaimnet is mostly subjective, but i think saying i don't want to be told what to do on a second to second basis because if feels like the game playing me is as objective as i can be, i think i can give reasons for everything i don't like about point and click adventure games, but to really get that done i would have to write an essay about it
I would argue that "better" is subjective. Different is the point. You're saying if games aren't different from each other, then they're not worth your time because, effectively, if you've played one you've played them all. If you've played Metroid, you therefore have no reason to play Kid Icarus and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, nevermind if they're good.
Back to the Future doesn't have QTEs, but it is easy as crap, favoring a "cinematic" quality. That doesn't make it better. You also made no original distinction about what qualifies as "better" and what doesn't--merely that games which are similar are pointless. That means games should be different, regardless of whether or not they are better. You also apparently couldn't care less about, say Zelda for example, because all Zelda games are similar, nevermind if the reason why is because "if it's not broke don't fix it".
i don't think every new game should be an new genre or that continuing a franchise is a bad thing, or that if something isn't broke you should fix it anyway, but i would say that a lot of adventure games are broke
also i don't think back to the future is better than Day of the Tentacle or many other great point and click games, that is just you thinking that is what i mean, innovation is improving which has to mean different just cus it does
i would say that a lot of adventure games are broke
Because they are similar? Because they are hard?
Telltale's adventure games (S&M and TOMI) are innovative, but that doesn't make them inherently superior to older adventure games.
Certainly the Sierra adventure games were punishing because of obscure puzzle solutions and the ability to dead-end oneself, but that speaks nothing to why you think modern SCUMM-style games (ie. retro adventure games) aren't worth your notice.
EDIT: Now, if you said "I don't play games which are similar to each other because I really don't play many games, so I want to keep my experience well-rounded and not concentrate on any one particular style; I just wish they'd innovate more to keep my experience changing" then that would be a valid point, because it would be more a matter of gaming preference than a critique about a game's innovation.
Telltale's adventure games (S&M and TOMI) are innovative, but that doesn't make them inherently superior to older adventure games.
Certainly the Sierra adventure games were punishing because of obscure puzzle solutions and the ability to dead-end oneself, but that speaks nothing to why you think modern SCUMM-style games (ie. retro adventure games) aren't worth your notice.
no they are broke because of certain recurring problems in many point and click games.
the SCUMM system is essentially pointless because when am i ever going to open a person (except that one puzzle that i will get stuck on because i didn't think to open a person) why not just have icons for the possible action pop up around the mouse cursor that you can select with your mouse wheel, that way the verbs at the bottom wouldn't limit the actions you could perform or get you stuck because you can't read the mind of the creator of the game and select open man, i would say it is because people are lazy and cant be bothered to invent their own system and would rather rely on a broken system.
and then there is all the items in our inventory (i enjoy combining and using them just to get that straight) this system works most of the time, but when i play adventure games now whenever i find a new item i just try and combine them all for no narrative reason, because i know i will have to and because of the amount of times i have been stuck in a game because i haven't combined the correct items, this is clearly not a good thing for me to just do things totally out of contexts of the game because of an essential problem with combining things, i think they should just tell you what to combine to get it over with at the correct time narratively.
also there is a big problem that there is only one solution to every problem, and if you aren't in the exact mindset that the developer intended you end up just using everything on everything until you get to a puzzle that makes sense, i often find myself thinking why couldn't i have used this other similar item to do the exact same thing, because in real life you could, why not have multiple solutions to problems? it is because of laziness and because of an "other games don't do it so why should i in my game attitude"
these are just the problems of the top of my head that i dont see any attempt to solve and using the SCUMM system just promotes this "don't bother fixing it" attitude because it doesn't need innovating just rehashing
no they are broke because of certain recurring problems in many point and click games.
the SCUMM system is essentially pointless because when am i ever going to open a person (except that one puzzle that i will get stuck on because i didn't think to open a person) why not just have icons for the possible action pop up around the mouse cursor that you can select with your mouse wheel, that way the verbs at the bottom wouldn't limit the actions you could perform or get you stuck because you can't read the mind of the creator of the game and select open man, i would say it is because people are lazy and cant be bothered to invent their own system and would rather rely on a broken system.
and then there is all the items in our inventory (i enjoy combining and using them just to get that straight) this system works most of the time, but when i play adventure games now whenever i find a new item i just try and combine them all for no narrative reason, because i know i will have to and because of the amount of times i have been stuck in a game because i haven't combined the correct items, this is clearly not a good thing for me to just do things totally out of contexts of the game because of an essential problem with combining things, i think they should just tell you what to combine to get it over with at the correct time narratively.
also there is a big problem that there is only one solution to every problem, and if you aren't in the exact mindset that the developer intended you end up just using everything on everything until you get to a puzzle that makes sense, i often find myself thinking why couldn't i have used this other similar item to do the exact same thing, because in real life you could, why not have multiple solutions to problems? it is because of laziness and because of an "other games don't do it so why should i in my game attitude"
these are just the problems of the top of my head that i dont see any attempt to solve and using the SCUMM system just promotes this "don't bother fixing it" attitude because it doesn't need innovating just rehashing
Ah now you are getting to the real problem with adventure games, and even your suggestion doesn't eliminate the fact that players are going to use everything on everything until something works.
And some older adventure games quite nicely came up with their own ways of dealing with that.
I know at least one designed itself around it by making certain items replenish able but could be combined and used wrong, then subtle clues around can direct the player to find their own conclusion.
(Which is why I would argue SCUMM isn't broken, its the designers that are broken for not thinking of that possibility and accommodating for it)
Then the other way to do it is to make the player be more active in that adventure and have to think on their feet.
I haven't played it yet, but what I've heard from The Last Express, is that the game runs in real time, and is designed to react immediately to player input.
So really, designers need to think like Dungeon Masters, and determine whether they want to move players along the story path, letting their interactions change the route, or if ithey want to set up a sequence of scenarios and wait for the resolution to that scenario before moving on/ ending the game.
On one of the marvel moives where there go into space they should have a Death Star in the background or a Star Destroyer so Star Wars will be in the same universe then Luke Skywalker can be an Avenger.
i guess what i am saying is that i want to play games that attempt to solve the problems of the previous generation of games, not just keep the same problems because people have gotten used to them
Then what you really want is tabletop roleplaying games. Puzzles are always different and there's as many ways to solve them as you can think of. Graphics are a bit nonexistent, though, and there's no savegames so if you die, you're dead.
Actually, he's touching exactly on the problems I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT. His complaints make sense. And believe me, it's not laziness that keeps me from adding more solutions, it's because of the limitations of my own brain. I'd have someone else helping me design puzzles and jokes and stuff if I could, but I don't. So I run out of ideas quite often and get writer's block all the time.
I have thought of a few things to try to do to innovate, but they're not huge things because I'm not really clever. I got rid of look at because a verb that tells you what a thing is is useless when the bar at the top of the game that says "Look at Thing" can just tell you. What else is the verb going to tell you? Got rid of Open, Close, Push, and Pull too. Added Check (functions as Search, Look in, Look behind, Look under, etc.) and Move, and will get rid of them if I end up finding no good use for them.
And I'm running with about four playable characters at a time, and they always follow each other, but are still switchable. It's a small change from games like The Cave and Maniac Mansion, but that's that.
Telltale had a big innovative idea that nobody even paid attention to, or at least not in design-circles, which was the dialog system that allowed for two characters to talk to another character. It's such an obvious, simple change.
And making adventure games more playable on consoles with The Devil's Playhouse and Tales, which everyone threw a huge shitfest over.
I do what I can, but I find discussion like this extremely valuable. Not really wanting to jump in screaming and SILENCE THE HERETIC or anything like that because that DOESN'T HELP ME. Criticism helps me look at alternatives.
Actually, he's touching exactly on the problems I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT. His complaints make sense. And believe me, it's not laziness that keeps me from adding more solutions, it's because of the limitations of my own brain. I'd have someone else helping me design puzzles and jokes and stuff if I could, but I don't. So I run out of ideas quite often and get writer's block all the time.
I have thought of a few things to try to do to innovate, but they're not huge things because I'm not really clever. I got rid of look at because a verb that tells you what a thing is is useless when the bar at the top of the game that says "Look at Thing" can just tell you. What else is the verb going to tell you? Got rid of Open, Close, Push, and Pull too. Added Check (functions as Search, Look in, Look behind, Look under, etc.) and Move, and will get rid of them if I end up finding no good use for them.
And I'm running with about four playable characters at a time, and they always follow each other, but are still switchable. It's a small change from games like The Cave and Maniac Mansion, but that's that.
Telltale had a big innovative idea that nobody even paid attention to, or at least not in design-circles, which was the dialog system that allowed for two characters to talk to another character. It's such an obvious, simple change.
And making adventure games more playable on consoles with The Devil's Playhouse and Tales, which everyone threw a huge shitfest over.
I do what I can, but I find discussion like this extremely valuable. Not really wanting to jump in screaming and SILENCE THE HERETIC or anything like that because that DOESN'T HELP ME. Criticism helps me look at alternatives.
Oh yeah. He's got a valid point.
I just don't think its quite fair to be too dismissive of retro titles, thats all.
(There are a lot of cool ideas lurking around in old games. If you can lift and improve them, then it only helps to improve videogames in the long-run)
EDIT: As for your idea Fawful. It may help to focus on the characters and their
abilities themselves as the source for the puzzles, over the generic puzzle system.
(Maybe even their personalities to an extent. Or even their relationships with each other and the world if you want to get really deep into puzzles. (I always liked the relationship system in Onimusha 2. How you interacted with the characters, the items that you traded with them in particular, eventually affected who you team up with, who you played as at certain points, and how their fates at the end of the game end up. Of course its imperfect. A lot of guesswork is needed if you didn't have a guide, and you could screw yourself over by trading stuff at the wrong time, but it is certainly an interesting idea that could be lifted and improved on))
A little context sensitive shortcut here and there wouldn't hurt, as long as the meat is somewhere else.
(Ofcourse, take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm just a gamer in the end of the day, not a designer. (not yet anyway! *derp*))
Comments
Sorry but from my understanding retro means "I get to play the game" instead of the modern "I only get to watch the game and choose a bit of dialogue".
I'd like some retro gaming experiences, please.
oh har har, i think you misunderstand what retro means, retro means the total lack of innovation or imagination that totally relies on nostalgia from a time where you didn't know better, but you really should now
and please how is a few extra clicks of the mouse on open then clicking on door playing a game any more than scrolling your mouse to the open door icon.
as a point and click adventure game fan you really have very little to stand on when saying a game has no gameplay.
and game you don't like that much is popular, but the games you like aren't, GET OVER IT
A good text adventure has a huge vocabulary. In Zork II, you can "RAPE PRINCESS". Granted, you don't live very long if you attempt it, but the option is there. If you're the developer, and you support the verb "RAPE", you now have to figure out what happens if the user tries it with everything else in the game. (Can you rape the wizard? Can you rape a grue? Can you rape the brass lamp?)
The more you limit the verbs, the less you have to worry about stuff like this. If there's a graphical adventure that uses the word "RAPE" often enough to support it on the interface, I haven't played it. Simplifying the verbs means fewer interactions to worry about, which means you can get the game out faster with fewer bugs. And fewer letters from angry parents who find out you can rape things in the game.
The true other side is for freedom of use. The problem most adventures have is that they have what seems like a larger toolset in front of them, but as the Venn Diagram shows they tend to use 2-3 verbs in roughly the same capacity.
What's the solution? THAT isn't something I actually explicitly meant to lay out. I just meant to imply that modern games have TENDED toward the solution of realizing that their design used only a handful of verbs and that binding the interface to the mouse cursor caused performing actions to be simpler to execute without actually affecting complexity. The OTHER way to go, of course, would be to try and really utilize a bank or parser interface in a way that embraced the greater degree of complexity. There ARE things that can be done only with a parser or a bank, but if you're not doing them then there really is nothing justifying the use of that interface.
Glad to be there to help... or rather not be there. Let me know the next time you need someone to yell at for no reason.
My nets down you jerk!
To me retro means low resolution, low color games that follow an 8 or 16 bit scheme and an older type of gameplay like the 90s jrpgs or the SCUMM adventures. Innovation is fine, but what if a game doesn't want to innovate? Does EVERY game have to innovate?
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If you ask me, a lot of so called "retro" games are far more enjoyable than modern counterparts.
Sometimes modern games railroad you too much. There is no real game there, at least nothing more than simply child's play.
Too much context sensitive action dumbs down the game a lot.
God of War for instance is terrible for this.
Quick time events, button mashing, and dumb puzzles ruin a pretty interesting story at times.
And many enemies lack any interesting patterns and just sponge hits and maybe occasionally react if they are slightly tougher ones.
OK so let's battle it against a retro classic: Castlevania
Its simpler, mechanics-wise, but in many ways its a smarter experience.
All the enemies have unique patterns that require careful timing or strategy to kill, and each weapon and item you find has some kind of use to it,
And it rewards you immediately for exploring with something you really need,
I'd rather have one bit of Chicken over a part of health anytime because that's immediately helpful and rewarding and fit for purpose.
Arguably in GoW, that sort of power up doesn't really have much use in the long run because the game scales up and there is health n shit everywhere anyway so it doesn't feel so valuable.
Games like Dark Souls and Monster Hunter clearly borrow from more classical design and in many ways much better games.
Monster Hunter is a bit grindy, but what makes it so rewarding is that often enough the items*have*both immediate and long-term uses, and that gives the game this level of strategic planning. Resource management.
And you actually need almost everything at some point, because the monsters actually get more diverse overtime.
Simple patterns become more complicated patterns.
Hell I fought a monster that can summon other boss monsters nearby,
So how do you deal with that?
Well...
A. Use a dung him to get rid of that monster for now,
B. Try to fight both
C. Run away and wait for either monster to move to a different area.
D. Already be prepared with the right abilities to see them coming
E. Learn the monsters patferns /weaknesses and exploit them. In this case attack just before it makes the call to counter or use a specific item to stun it (the game gives you a little hint at what that item is if you talk to people)
And those strategies become even more intricate when you introduce more players to the mix, and the risk/reward mechanic of deciding whether to try to kill of capture that monster
(Capturing is harder to do, but gives you better stuff normally)
Again, Dark Souls is kind of similar, but has a heavier emphasis on skill, pattern analysis, and timing.
Instead of being overpowered like in God of War, of having the chance to beef yourself up in Monster Hunter, in Dark Souls you are almost always UNDERPOWERED.
Every drop of health counts. Mistakes are immediately costly.
It throws you in the deep end. A simple enemy can easily kill you if you don't react the right way.
You don't have a large repotoire of tools or abilities, and that's the point.you need to learn what attacks and weapons and items take out what. All the enemy attack patterns and timings.
Whether to dodge or block. What can leave the enemy open, what can/leave you open, and not just to that enemy but the whole gang surrounding you!
Dark Souls wouldn't exist without Kings Field, which wouldnt exist if there was no games like Elder Scrolls or Ultima.
And I argue that we can still learn a lot from what's already there, and that's its important to play, design, and enjoy retro styled games, because it keeps the memory alive and relevant to the modern age that tries to blockbusterfy everything to appease all markets.
And that dumbing down does absolutely nothing for the art of design in the long-run except bury originality.
Playing Super Mario World?
I think a part of that is due to two things.
1. Design limitations that caused many developers to think very carefully of what they could do and what they couldn't do. Many stories I have read about unique features in games is due to that outside the box thinking developers had to do to keep that feature in the game.
2. Polish. Games couldn't be patched. They had to be almost perfect when they went Gold,
A lot of polish is necessary. A lot of pointless fat had to be trimmed off as soon as possible.
And I think in some ways, people maybe cared more.
These days there is a clear divide between mainstream and indie, but in those days that wasn't so clearcut.
Many mega-corporations still had people working there with actual soul, a vision. Many are still too small to need to worry too much about labour costs and shareholders and deadlines, and could just makes what they wanted, not what would sell well to X demographic.
I sometimes imagine the industry like a onion.
As it grows, the inner layers expand but become more vulnerable to the outside world as it grows till eventually it becomes a mere dried out husk.
If I ever got round to starting an indie company, Id keep it indy.
I wouldnt make the mistake of making bigger and better. Instead its better to be like other plants and develop many smaller seeds.
Several teams wprking on multiple projects, from small to large, (if the funding was there)
As the saying goes, don't put all of your eggs in one basket.
(But spreading yourself too thin is also a big mistake. So id set myself a growth limit and try to keep that growth as organic as possible. And quality gams experience would be the mantra Id try to keep. (Workplace philosophy is often an overlooked factor and can cause long-term problems. Something I would like to nip in the bud before it can be a problem))
Also, not everyone cared back in the day. There were a lot of shitty games shoveled out for sixty dollars that you'd buy and be completely jipped on. The AVGN is kind of a product of that. You were stuck with those games, and on some of them you can tell they just DIDN'T CARE. That said, there were a shitton of games that were given a lot of care. Telltale still gives their games a lot of care. I'll work on streamlining my SCUMM interface.
To be fair, a lot of those games were made by the same companies.
Ocean... Brrr! Just mentioning that company is enough to give me chills! XD
i would say there is a separation between art and game mechanics, i am fine with retro art, but if the actual game is just super mario reskinned it is lame.
to help explain what i mean my basic history of playing computer games and loving it goes NES-Mega drive-PC and the reason i have never gone back to nintendo(or consoles in general even though i have owned a playstation and an xbox 360 and i messed around with the commodore and other older PC type consoles) is because essentially every game on the NES and the mega drive was just basically the same 3 games reskinned into another game and i got REALLY tried of that, to me the PC to me stood for new and innovative games types (including adventure games which have innovated since text adventures and early point and click) that try new mechanics and even invent new genres, obviously there are established genres with mechanics that happen in most of the games, but it is innovation that makes a great game, like HL2 would have not been anywhere near as good if they hadn't decided to do physics puzzles and instead just made a high resolution version of HL with a different story, it was that innovation (I'm not saying they did it first) and many others that made HL2 great.
i just think it is lazy and boring to just remake another game but with different art and story, there has to be something new and interesting about it else what is the point?
to me Retro means remake old games
they were just the extra flavor, my main meal is PC.
Besides that, I disagree. Mega Man, Castlevania, Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Wizards and Warriors, and StarTropics (to name a few) feel little to nothing like each other.
I have had every set-top Nintendo console (except WiiU), a Dreamcast, and every iteration of Playstation and there is a hell of a lot of innovation going on. Nintendo even said that the reason why they made Zelda:Wind Waker, instead of a game similar to the realistic (for then) Spaceworld 2000 tech demo, was because they had Link doing the same old things as he did in Ocarina of Time, so they changed the art style to give themselves more ways to vary the gameplay.
Further, it's no secret the the majority of good games for Nintendo's consoles are first-party games.
Now you're going to hate on Nintendo for rehashing their old games, when what they're actually doing is keeping what people love about a game, and changing the rest up a bit to keep it fresh and new. People want Mario games and Zelda games to play the way they do, and that's why they love those franchises. When Team Ninja "innovated" with Metroid: Other M, people hated it. They don't want their bad ass female space hunter to be a whiny little girl; They want her to kick ass and take names.
Innovation for its own sake is not necessarily a good thing. And respecting what people love about games and keeping faithful to fans of a franchise's (or, in the case of SCUMM, a genre's) roots is not necessarily a bad thing. Hell, people complain about new Tomb Raider being an Uncharted clone (though Uncharted takes heavily from older Tomb Raider stuff) but new Tomb Raider is still a very good game. It doesn't suffer from not being the epitome of innovation.
EDIT: And, oh yes--The Wii Remote. How many people hate on Wii's motion controls? Quite a few people, I think. But hey, because 360 and PS3 fall back on standard controller schemes, their games suffer for it due to lack of innovation. Wait, no they don't.
people can like what they want, and if they like the same old thing they can buy the same old thing if they want, but i like new things.
to me nintendo has just been selling the same games my whole life while i moved on to new things, also i would say innovation for innovation's sake is actually an oxymoron.
if as you say the games were all just clones of themselves because of the limitations of the controller why do they keep making the same game? (retro)
to me tomb raider was an evolution of platformers and i was glad to leave mario behind.
i hate the motion controller not because it was innovative, but because it isn't the way i want to play games, flicking my wrist around isn't innovative or interesting, the technology may be innovative but the games that use it aren't, it is just a gimmick.
and i gave an example of HL to HL2 which i think was good and that should have been clear that i don't think continuing a franchise is a bad thing, just that rehashing the same old thing without any "new" in it is just pointless.
i think if there are problems with certain types of games game developers should be thinking of new ways to solve those problems not just ignore them thinking "people like the old games and they had problems lets just keep ignoring the problems and make another game just the same" which is the attitude that many point and click adventures seem to be made by, don't get me wrong i have been defending point and click games for years saying that they aren't dead, but i also haven't been just ignoring all the bad things about them, i want them to be improved not just rehashed.
also i don't think everything ninteno has done is bad, but just not enough good things for me to buy it
So, by rights, Jurassic Park and Back to the Future are new and fresh and therefore better and more worthy or your time than Day of the Tentacle or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.
no, lets not have a semantic argument.
i would say that jurassic park sucked because of the QTE's i hate all QTE's (this may start another semantic argument because QTE is a broad term) i want to play the game not be told what to press on a second to second basis which to me is essentially the game playing me (QTE's to me are just rhythm games and i hate them) i can't even think of what QTE you are referring to in back to the future.
and i would say that comparing monkey island to the walking dead is like comparing Half life to supreme commander, to me they are different genres that try to achieve different things, i like puzzle based point and click games and i don't want them to die, i just want them to be improved
Back to the Future doesn't have QTEs, but it is easy as crap, favoring a "cinematic" quality. That doesn't make it better. It's just different--and because you say different is good, then it is more worth your time. You also made no original distinction about what qualifies as "better" and what doesn't--merely that games which are similar are pointless. That means games should be different, regardless of whether or not they are better. You also apparently couldn't care less about, say Zelda for example, because all Zelda games are similar, nevermind if the reason why is because "if it's not broke don't fix it".
well i gave a reason why i don't like QTE's, but entertaimnet is mostly subjective, but i think saying i don't want to be told what to do on a second to second basis because if feels like the game playing me is as objective as i can be, i think i can give reasons for everything i don't like about point and click adventure games, but to really get that done i would have to write an essay about it
i don't think every new game should be an new genre or that continuing a franchise is a bad thing, or that if something isn't broke you should fix it anyway, but i would say that a lot of adventure games are broke
also i don't think back to the future is better than Day of the Tentacle or many other great point and click games, that is just you thinking that is what i mean, innovation is improving which has to mean different just cus it does
Telltale's adventure games (S&M and TOMI) are innovative, but that doesn't make them inherently superior to older adventure games.
Certainly the Sierra adventure games were punishing because of obscure puzzle solutions and the ability to dead-end oneself, but that speaks nothing to why you think modern SCUMM-style games (ie. retro adventure games) aren't worth your notice.
EDIT: Now, if you said "I don't play games which are similar to each other because I really don't play many games, so I want to keep my experience well-rounded and not concentrate on any one particular style; I just wish they'd innovate more to keep my experience changing" then that would be a valid point, because it would be more a matter of gaming preference than a critique about a game's innovation.
no they are broke because of certain recurring problems in many point and click games.
the SCUMM system is essentially pointless because when am i ever going to open a person (except that one puzzle that i will get stuck on because i didn't think to open a person) why not just have icons for the possible action pop up around the mouse cursor that you can select with your mouse wheel, that way the verbs at the bottom wouldn't limit the actions you could perform or get you stuck because you can't read the mind of the creator of the game and select open man, i would say it is because people are lazy and cant be bothered to invent their own system and would rather rely on a broken system.
and then there is all the items in our inventory (i enjoy combining and using them just to get that straight) this system works most of the time, but when i play adventure games now whenever i find a new item i just try and combine them all for no narrative reason, because i know i will have to and because of the amount of times i have been stuck in a game because i haven't combined the correct items, this is clearly not a good thing for me to just do things totally out of contexts of the game because of an essential problem with combining things, i think they should just tell you what to combine to get it over with at the correct time narratively.
also there is a big problem that there is only one solution to every problem, and if you aren't in the exact mindset that the developer intended you end up just using everything on everything until you get to a puzzle that makes sense, i often find myself thinking why couldn't i have used this other similar item to do the exact same thing, because in real life you could, why not have multiple solutions to problems? it is because of laziness and because of an "other games don't do it so why should i in my game attitude"
these are just the problems of the top of my head that i dont see any attempt to solve and using the SCUMM system just promotes this "don't bother fixing it" attitude because it doesn't need innovating just rehashing
Ah now you are getting to the real problem with adventure games, and even your suggestion doesn't eliminate the fact that players are going to use everything on everything until something works.
And some older adventure games quite nicely came up with their own ways of dealing with that.
I know at least one designed itself around it by making certain items replenish able but could be combined and used wrong, then subtle clues around can direct the player to find their own conclusion.
(Which is why I would argue SCUMM isn't broken, its the designers that are broken for not thinking of that possibility and accommodating for it)
Then the other way to do it is to make the player be more active in that adventure and have to think on their feet.
I haven't played it yet, but what I've heard from The Last Express, is that the game runs in real time, and is designed to react immediately to player input.
So really, designers need to think like Dungeon Masters, and determine whether they want to move players along the story path, letting their interactions change the route, or if ithey want to set up a sequence of scenarios and wait for the resolution to that scenario before moving on/ ending the game.
Actually, he's touching exactly on the problems I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT. His complaints make sense. And believe me, it's not laziness that keeps me from adding more solutions, it's because of the limitations of my own brain. I'd have someone else helping me design puzzles and jokes and stuff if I could, but I don't. So I run out of ideas quite often and get writer's block all the time.
I have thought of a few things to try to do to innovate, but they're not huge things because I'm not really clever. I got rid of look at because a verb that tells you what a thing is is useless when the bar at the top of the game that says "Look at Thing" can just tell you. What else is the verb going to tell you? Got rid of Open, Close, Push, and Pull too. Added Check (functions as Search, Look in, Look behind, Look under, etc.) and Move, and will get rid of them if I end up finding no good use for them.
And I'm running with about four playable characters at a time, and they always follow each other, but are still switchable. It's a small change from games like The Cave and Maniac Mansion, but that's that.
Telltale had a big innovative idea that nobody even paid attention to, or at least not in design-circles, which was the dialog system that allowed for two characters to talk to another character. It's such an obvious, simple change.
And making adventure games more playable on consoles with The Devil's Playhouse and Tales, which everyone threw a huge shitfest over.
I do what I can, but I find discussion like this extremely valuable. Not really wanting to jump in screaming and SILENCE THE HERETIC or anything like that because that DOESN'T HELP ME. Criticism helps me look at alternatives.
Oh yeah. He's got a valid point.
I just don't think its quite fair to be too dismissive of retro titles, thats all.
(There are a lot of cool ideas lurking around in old games. If you can lift and improve them, then it only helps to improve videogames in the long-run)
EDIT: As for your idea Fawful. It may help to focus on the characters and their
abilities themselves as the source for the puzzles, over the generic puzzle system.
(Maybe even their personalities to an extent. Or even their relationships with each other and the world if you want to get really deep into puzzles. (I always liked the relationship system in Onimusha 2. How you interacted with the characters, the items that you traded with them in particular, eventually affected who you team up with, who you played as at certain points, and how their fates at the end of the game end up. Of course its imperfect. A lot of guesswork is needed if you didn't have a guide, and you could screw yourself over by trading stuff at the wrong time, but it is certainly an interesting idea that could be lifted and improved on))
A little context sensitive shortcut here and there wouldn't hurt, as long as the meat is somewhere else.
(Ofcourse, take what I say with a grain of salt. I'm just a gamer in the end of the day, not a designer. (not yet anyway! *derp*))