When will the improvements start to show?
I was thinking, there has been a lot of positive response about the sam and max game so far. There have also been a fair few constructive criticisms.
(Just to note, the main ones I can think of that keep cropping up are:
- Puzzles are a little too easy
- Wacky, but perhaps not quite wacky enough
- Voice acting could use a little tightening up)
We know from the first two Bone games that Telltale have been excellent in taking these criticisms on board and making improvements that make it obvious that they've listened.
This time, though, the games are coming out much closer together. The next one is coming out in december, the one after that is just a month after that and they're being worked on 3 or 4 at a time.
I wonder then, how long it will take for the little improvements we're looking for (by the sounds of it) to start to filter through?
(Just to note, the main ones I can think of that keep cropping up are:
- Puzzles are a little too easy
- Wacky, but perhaps not quite wacky enough
- Voice acting could use a little tightening up)
We know from the first two Bone games that Telltale have been excellent in taking these criticisms on board and making improvements that make it obvious that they've listened.
This time, though, the games are coming out much closer together. The next one is coming out in december, the one after that is just a month after that and they're being worked on 3 or 4 at a time.
I wonder then, how long it will take for the little improvements we're looking for (by the sounds of it) to start to filter through?
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then again, who knows? the next episode might be far wackier anyway, you can never tell with sam and max.
It's a but harder to quantify 'toughness' in an adventure (over an FPS or RTS or RPG ,say) because puzzles that confound some people will be a breeze for others.
I guess puzzle density is one way to determine how much effort is needed to progress in the story, but you don't want to put people off or not reward them enough for puzzle completion before they're stuck on the next one.
Er...got any evidence to support that?
You and I might, but if the hardcore, traditional adventure gamer was enough of a market chances are the genre wouldn't be as much of a niche in the first place.
no but would you disagree? It was very successful when it came out.. by the time it got to abt 96..it seemed everyone I know had played it..either they'd got it themselves..was in of those lucasarts adventure packs..had borrowed it from a friend.. a lot of people played hit the road..all over the world
I agree.
--Erwin
But it doesn't need to be too easy or too hard. It COULD be just right.
However, if the game is too hard, you get the opportunity to stretch your abilities in order to see more of the game. Then, the computer game is not just a time-killer; - it becomes a fun way to develop different skills such as logic, patience, creativity etc. And the reward for going further is not just the fun story (which btw is very rewarding), you also get the wonderful feeling of having accomplished something!
I want hard games. Otherwise I feel it's a waste of time and money.
The problem with that argument is that puzzles that are too hard don't improve your puzzle solving ability, they only improve your ability to search a walkthrough or use trial-and-error in your inventory, which is annoying and pointless.
If a puzzle makes most people think for a while, and eventually through a little time and consideration figure out the solution, then it's not too hard. I think this is the sort of puzzle that you're actually talking about. Only when the solution is so obscure that most people will not realise what to do except by chance is it too hard, and those puzzles are what I think should be avoided.
The problem is that most puzzles in the history of the genre are either in that last category, or are too easy. It's a difficult balance to achieve.
For the sake of keeping the lively banter going, here's my personal opinion on that:
I don't know if the "stretching your skills" argument holds for adventure games. Within one game, figuring out one puzzle solution rarely helps you build up game skills to help with the next one. It's not like an arcade/console beat'em up or brawler, or a platformer like Mario 64 or Prince of Persia, where as you go from jump to jump or fight to fight you get a feel for the combo systems and the nuances of the controls, allowing you to be more efficient at getting from place to place and proficient at dispatching your enemies. In an adventure game after you solve one puzzle, you're back to square one on the next one.
The exception to that is just if you have played a lot of adventure games and you therefore sort of instinctively know how they work in general... how NPCs most commonly drop clues, what sorts of situations are gates to further story branches versus being a dead end, etc. That has nothing to do with puzzle difficulty, though. That isn't even a skill you acquire through playing the puzzles in one particular game. It's something that just sort of naturally burns itself into your brain as the result of a large quantity of AGs played, regardless of quality or difficulty.
Increased difficulty leading to a solution feeling more rewarding is something I agree with though - nothing in gaming feels better than actually getting past something, especially if you think that something was a worthwhile challenge. That feeling of reward and having it be your actions advancing the story is probably one of the reasons the adventure genre is as appealing as it is (and definitely one of the reasons why the same stories told in the most successful adventure games probably wouldn't have the same emotional or entertaining impact if they were directly translated to a more passive form like a comic or novelization).
The thing is, that part in the last paragraph about it being a "worthwhile challenge" is really important. The really classically hard hard adventure games rarely played fair with their most difficult puzzles. Too frequently, instead of actually being fun to solve, the puzzles in so many adventure games relied on the player's masochistic tendencies and their desire to "just get past it" to see the cutscene that would play afterwards. I think that's important to consider, because frequently, looking back at that stuff, it's actually rubbish. I like feeling rewarded when I accomplish something, but I don't want the game to flay me to within an inch of my life, then pat me on the head, tell me I'm a good boy and offer me a snack.
Anyway, just one guy's opinion.
I agree COMPLETELY! I'm a bit worried that all the comments about 'MAKE THE GAME HARDER' are going to be taken too literally. I'd MUCH rather play an easy game and finish it, than get stuck on a game and move on to the next one because it stops being 'FUN'.
Now, I haven't played CULTURE SHOCK, but from reports, I hear it's FUN and EASY. Not so mad on the EASY part, but playing a game is supposed to be FUN. When it becomes a CHORE is when I throw my hands up in the air, start sweating, and either do some work, think about hot women, or do nothing. But when I play a game, I wanna have FUN.
I do NOT want to WORK in a game.
That said, as Jake mentioned, most hard adventure games just require you to try every single combination possible to solve a puzzle, since a lot of their puzzles don't have any real logic to them. I don't mind a challenge, as long as the solution to a puzzle is logical. This means of course that smart people (your typical adventure game fan is pretty smart) will find these puzzles with logical solutions easy, since logical thinking comes naturally to smart people. This doesn't mean that those puzzles are easy, just like quantum physics isn't easy just because it makes sense to a bunch of students and scientists.
So basically what I'm trying to say is... er... gimme easy puzzles!
I actually do think that you can develop two important skills by solving puzzles in adventure games. Patience and creativity! If the solution of the puzzles always is the first or second thing that comes to mind, you'll not gain anything from it. If you have to sit down and think, "hmm. I wonder if I could make the shop assistant go away for a while.....but he would never go away from his plants - which I can't move since they are chained to the wall. Wait, is that a tractor? Wonder if I could find the key somewhere..", you'll activate your brain and voila! you are not passive anymore.
I actually think that gaming is a rather depressing phenomenon if the gamer remains completely passive.
I think the reviews all speak for themselves. They have all pointed out the games level of difficulty as a negative for the game. It all depends who your target market is. For Bone I can completely accept that level of difficulty for the target audience they are after. For Sam & Max, I think the majority of fans would want something more challenging than culture shock. If you are getting a short episode, why would you want to complete it in one sitting? Ideally i'd get stuck along the way a few times..go away come back to the game complete it in a couple of weeks and then be only waiting 2 more weeks for the next episode.
I don't like the 'use-everything-with-everything' and 'click-on-everything-on-every-screen' way of solving puzzles. It's tedious.
Other tedious ways of prolonging a game by artificially increasing 'difficulty' is where you can't pick up an object until you've become aware of the situation where it can be used, and more often than not it's many screens of to-ing and fro-ing to get the newly pick-uppable object to the location it's now needed.
I, for one, am glad Telltale is not using these all-too-often-employed techniques to pointlessly increase the play length of the games.
I didnt say a month I said 2 weeks..
If they could really churn Sam and Max episodes out that quickly, would there really be any need for having a season, rather than continuous stream of episodes?
Saying that Sam and Max episodes take less than a month to create is like suggesting weekly TV shows must be possible to complete in less than a week because that's how frequently they come out. Telltale has been developing Sam and Max for a while now. They can crank out episodes faster now that the engine and in-game tools are done, but they still take a fair amount of time. I guarantee you that a fair amount of work has been done on every episode. They can't just up and make the changes people are requesting in the next episode. Maybe later in the season, but even that is not a sure thing.
Ah, sorry about that. In that case, I agree.
Funniest thing I've read all day. Good points, though. :P
I play adventure games primarily to be entertained, and to me, one of the most rewarding and fun things is solving a puzzle that actually made sense, especially if it was clever in some manner. That, and throw in a great story and characters... that's why good adventure games are so awesome.
Absolutely. Although I like very hard (but solvable) adventure games, we need this series to work and become succesful. For Telltale, for Sam & Max fans, for episodic gaming and for adventure fans in general. If it attracts more people if it's easier, so be it.
I'd say Hit the Road is far to hard for a bigger audience, and will only scare more people away nowadays. Although, I think the next episodes can be harder without driving people away. Always on the low side of average difficulty, but still harder than it is now.
We have to remember, by the way, that Culture Shock is the first episode. When newcomers play it, it'll serve as an introductory episode, in more ways than one.
But the problem with adventure game-developers has ALWAYS been that no one wants to build on what the good games in the genres have done well in the past. Monkey Island 1&2 are still the adventuregames with the best and most varied puzzles in the genre, since they do not rely solely on "click on these things in the right order"-puzzles. Instead they make use of different types of challenges like riddles, contraptions and other similiar things where you cant just click on things at random and get the solution. Instead you have to THINK.
Those games along with Broken Sword 1, Broken Sword 4 and The Dig are the prime examples of how the challenges in adventure games should be done. And adventure games that are to easy are nothing more than interactive movies.
(but I do like Telltales games. I think the design, animations, sound, music and overall presentation in their games is really really good.
What can be done about this? Well, make the puzzles slightly harder. How (seeing as harder is a very relative term)? Make them more involved. Instead of having so many puzzles where you only use one object on another, and that is it, have some more where you get an object, modify it, then apply it to the situation. And bring back the ability to use objects on each other... plus the ability to click Max and use him on things (pretty please?).
Or, if you decide to put in more of the wacky, brainracking puzzles of yesteryear, apply one of these two things:
1. Have Normal and Max difficulties (where Normal has toned down puzzles, and Max has the full amount of pain). Cons: requires more effort by the design team. They would technically have to create two solutions to each puzzle, or at least two paths through the game.
2. Have the ability to touch... er, I mean click yourself. Selecting Sam would provide introspection and the ability to talk to yourself. Stuck on a puzzle? Click on Sam and he will talk to himself about how to solve the puzzle. Progressing through the introspection dialog choices would progressively give you better hints, until flat out telling you how to solve the puzzle at hand. Cons: Accidentally clicking on yourself might reveal something you wanted to figure out yourself. Also, you lose the ability to click on anything obscured by Sam.
Anyone else have any ideas on how to increase the difficulty, or on ways to increase it but still keep the game accessible?
...uh, on the other hand...
Well I don't work, so I WANT to work in a game!
Sam and Max HTR was difficult but not frustrating, because it was not completely linear, and there was plenty of fun things to see and hear to help you ease the time you spent thinking (i kept thinking about the puzzles in class, noting on a sheet of paper ideas to try at home).
I played the original game in small bursts (my parents would forbid long sessions). That s the way i played the new one too and i enjoyed it a looot.
By the way, if the game is easy for me, it was just perfect for my wife (and she gets frustrated easily with video games).
If, when I find out the answer, I say "Of course!" it's a good puzzle.
If, when I find out the answer, I say "What the hell?" it's not a good puzzle.
It's a fine line, but of course Telltale managed to avoid it for the most part by making the puzzles so easy.