Are Graphic Adventures Good or Bad?

Eel Snave · Post by **Eel Snave** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 11:11 pm

At the risk of derailing the other thread, it is time for the bi-annual (Haha! Bi!) thread about Graphic Adventures. Do they suck? Or what? And why?

Jolor · Post by **Jolor** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 11:24 pm

The potential for a story-telling PC game is great; the implementation of late, not so much.

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Fri Nov 19, 2004 11:42 pm

i voted 'Yay'...graphics adventures can be a lot of fun if they're done well. unfortunately, like jolor said, the quality hasn't been so hot in recent years. there have been some great ones in the past though.

Kael · Post by **Kael** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 2:18 am

A graphic adventure with a sense of humor is a godsend. Monkey Island, Sam and Max (damn you Lucasarts!), Grim Fandango. All awesome.

jonsauce · Post by **jonsauce** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 3:26 am

bluefugue · Post by **bluefugue** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 7:47 am

I wouldn't say they are bad. I just don't like them, because puzzle gameplay doesn't interest me.

moss_icon · Post by **moss_icon** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 10:45 am

"nay!"

read a book.

StormcloudCreations · Sat Nov 20, 2004 12:34 pm

Glad to see the Yay!'s here; my next soon to be beta-testing project is a combination interactive fiction/graphic adventure/"Fighting Fantasy" type game, with 3D graphics for all the different locations, the ability to keep your character and transfer them from module to module, and a REAL storyline that unravels slowly and evolves (not just "kill the foozle").

I love 'em personally, which is why I wanted to try one out. All the Legend (remember those?), Sierra and LucasArts adventures were always cool and thought-provoking to play.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 1:06 pm

bluefugue wrote:I wouldn't say they are bad. I just don't like them, because puzzle gameplay doesn't interest me.

Ditto.

knob · Post by **knob** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 1:59 pm

I'd say "Yay!" just because I know they don't suck. They don't interest me too much, though. Monkey Island was fun, and that's only because I used a walkthrough.

I don't mind thinking in my games, but Graphical Adventures are a bit annoying at times. Going pixel to pixel, searching for something that might be usable just flat out sucks at times.

is_dead · Post by **is_dead** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 3:43 pm

Voted Nay. I think the appeal of having as much time to explore and solve puzzles as you want and no risk of death is limited. The appeal for games that are extremely easy to play but with stories will keep a few around, some of them might even be good (Siberia) but not mainstream or top line releases. Agree with moss, reading a book is better.

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sat Nov 20, 2004 9:43 pm

Yay.
But I definitely gotta be in the right mood. A quiet, laid back, almost melancholy mood works best for me. Right now I'm working my way very slowly through "The Watchmaker" and enjoying the slow-moving pace quite a bit. But I only fire it up about once every two months on the laptop--graphic adventures are great to play on the sofa.

Meghan · Post by **Meghan** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 1:33 am

I think Grim Fandango and Gabriel Knight 1 are two of the best games I've ever played. The Monkey Island series is a good time too.

Zekester · Post by **Zekester** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:22 am

Grim Fandango was cool....until i got stuck not knowing what to do next.
They must MUST have puzzles that make sense!

BTW are the new CSI games considered in this category, and are they any good?

Giles Habibula · Post by **Giles Habibula** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:34 am

Zekester wrote:Grim Fandango was cool....until i got stuck not knowing what to do next.
They must MUST have puzzles that make sense!

BTW are the new CSI games considered in this category, and are they any good?

I had to pick up the GF strat guide from someone on eBay. Cool game though.

And yes the CSI are along these lines, though more like real detective work rather than 'puzzles' from what I understand having never played one. The reviews I've read were pretty mediocre or less.

bluefugue · Post by **bluefugue** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 7:38 am

Grim Fandango had some of the best story, music, art direction, and style of any videogame I've ever seen. Pity about those puzzles.

D.A.Lewis · Post by **D.A.Lewis** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 11:58 am

I am a GA gamer but I see the genre falls into two camps.

There is the pretty puzzle genre:

Like many gamers I have a problem with this type of game. typically this game is deviod of people or mostly empty of people but spectacular graphics. You are placed in some setting and your mission is usually to solve some obscure puzzles. While I don't like this type of game it does appeal to many gamers. That's because the puzzles are hard and require a special type of brain power. Call it genius or what you will but the puzzles are hard and typically have NO real relationship to the setting other than the puzzle that is there.

A lot of gamers like these games like Myst(S), Dark Fall, Timescape,Mysterious Journey, Amber etc. They get made, they get bought, they get played. I occasionally give them a go and suck miserably. Some pretty puzzle games manage to break the sterility of this camp like Mission Critical, Morhpeus or Zork Nemisis but those games relied on a strong story telling which leads to the second camp. . . .

There there is the Story adventure:

This camp has puzzles too, but you are usually place in a world with other people and most of the puzzles you solve have to deal with interacting with other people. When this type of game is done well it is usually well recieived by a wide varitey of gamers. Grim Fandango, Sam & Max, Syberia, Longest Jouney. I looks forward to these type of games as much as the next CRPG.

I hope these Nay votes are only about your personal gaming preference.

DTG · Post by **DTG** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 2:55 pm

Nay. Big Nay
I've tried. Really. Heck, some of my first games were graphical adventures (LLL 1, Space Quest 1), before I knew better.

But the stupid "adventure game logic" kills me every time. I've tried the recent ones that people rave about, but I inevitably always get to some point where I'm hopping back and forth ad naseum trying to figure out some stupid puzzle. Example - everyone said how great "The Longest Journey" is. I got as far as the alley with the toy monkey and the detective. When I broke down and read the solution in a hint file, I tried it out, watched the result, then deleted the game. I mean...what kind of solution was THAT? It had no basis whatsoever in reality, and only made sense in the wacko world of make-believe. At least Myst puzzles, though obsure, are consistent - - lever A always makes B happen, and after a while you can piece it all together.

Grim Fandango, same thing - there was some tower puzzle right after you left the city - unfortunately, I forget the specifics.

Syberia - I actually pushed through almost to the end on this one because I liked the atmosphere, but then I hit the 2nd-most annoying thing in adventure games - having to revisit a location you've been to 100 times now that you've hit a trigger that changes it. I got that at the University - - wandered around in circles for 2 hours, read the hint finally, and that was it. Bottom line is that there's no logic in these games - they're great until you hit some bizarro nonsensical puzzle that makes you look up the answer, and by then the atmosphere has worn off.

[EDIT] - for spelling and clarification

Itsatrap · Post by **Itsatrap** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 4:59 pm

The Curse of Monkey Island is currently at the top of my list of favorite adventure games. Recent stuff (like the poorly-paced Syberia games) don't even come close to replicating that experience. Most importantly, CoMI had a "lite" mode with easier puzzles.

The old Lucasarts adventures are good, but the old Sierra adventures are of mixed quality. Part of the difference is that you couldn't die or become irreversibly stuck in Lucasarts games. The Sierra games were much less forgiving and tended to penalize you for every wrong move.

Grim Fandango has an excellent story, but it suffers from interface and camera problems which make the puzzles much harder to solve. I think it would have made a great movie.

I'm iffy on TLJ, which I generally regard as overrated.

- Alan

[EDIT] The old Legend Entertainment games are classics, but they're definitely for advanced adventure gamers only.

BacardiJim · Post by **BacardiJim** » Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:47 pm

Adventure games are pretty much the only games I play.

Dirt · Post by **Dirt** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:03 am

They're great. Too bad they cancelled Sam and Max.

Zanthia_s · Post by **Zanthia_s** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 3:22 am

voted yay even though they should be separated between first person lonely games such as myst and story driven games with character interaction. fans of one type are often not fans of the other.

i am not a big fan of the first person lonely games such as myst and all of its many clones. to me these are basically puzzle games; plot here is very thin. but i do play them.

i do love the adventure game that has a great story with lots of character interaction. these are usually third person. some of my favorites are: Longest Journey, syberia, monkey island, sanitarium, Tex Murphy, Sam and max, discworld noir and grim fandango.

a top notch character driven graphic adventure is my second favorite type of game to play. well if a new Tex Murphy game came out, well that is about the only thing that could overtake a new rpg.

Zekester · Post by **Zekester** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 10:34 am

I just bought "Wanted: A Wild Western Adventure" over the weekend.

We'll see if it changes my mind about these games.

Kyosho · Post by **Kyosho** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:46 am

D.A.Lewis wrote:This camp has puzzles too, but you are usually place in a world with other people and most of the puzzles you solve have to deal with interacting with other people. When this type of game is done well it is usually well recieived by a wide varitey of gamers. Grim Fandango, Sam & Max, Syberia, Longest Jouney. I looks forward to these type of games as much as the next CRPG.

These are the type of adventures I play. I don't play them for the puzzles, I play them for the story. Like the Gabriel Knight series. It's probably my all-time favorite game series simply because of the story.

If I get stuck at a puzzle for too long in an adventure game, I always find a walkthrough. I'd rather do that than get stuck on a puzzle so bad that it ruins the experience and/or I give up playing.

For those who say read a book: Well, if you want, sure why not. But I play story-centric adventures because I want to be a part of the story.

bluefugue · Post by **bluefugue** » Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:55 am

My problem though is that the only way I am "a part of" a game's story is if I am affecting it through the gameplay. (Best of all when I am creating my own story instead of being at the whim of a top down narrator.) If the gameplay is not fun (as puzzles are not for me), then i don't feel like I am a part of the story any more than if I were reading a book. IOW if I played an adventure game just for the story, and used a walkthrough to get through the puzzles, it would feel just as passive to me as reading a book.

There are some games like Grim Fandango where maybe the story is good enough for this "walkthrough-at-hand" approach. But I wouldn't feel any more engaged in the story than if I were watching a Grim Fandango movie, because in either case my participation would be effectively zero.

Octopus Overlords

Are Graphic Adventures Good or Bad?

Graphic Adventures: Yay or Nay?

Are Graphic Adventures Good or Bad?