A Vampyre Story - Playable demo available.

[Eggie]

I'm pretty sure Bill Tiller didn't write the dialogue.
Maybe he should have given it a go.

[ildu]

There are obvious things that bother me, but I'm prepared to look past them.

Why?

Because they're mostly technical issues, and issues that have originated from either a low budget or low man-power, rather than something significant like a lack of effort or talent.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

You seem to be making a lot of assumptions there, ildu.  I guess I'm not so eager to look the other way when a commercial project like this has some rather glaring flaws (like walking deads) that wouldn't exist were it to have been properly tested.  This wouldn't have fixed some of the horrible 3D, but then again, it was their choice to use 3D instead of the better looking 2d art they had in early builds, so as far as I'm concerned they should be taken to task for it rather than forgiven like they've given the game away.  I'd probably be less bothered if it had been budgeted at 15 dollars, since the game is actually rather short and focuses mainly on puzzles that involve a lot of backtracking (and deliberately sets itself up for a sequel).

[Ghost]

Gee, it's "only" 20 Euros here... but considering your points I'll sit it out until it's totally low budget. Reviews here in germany have been rather unforgiving too, though the voice acting generally got good ratings.

[Ozzie]

You seem to be making a lot of assumptions there, ildu.  I guess I'm not so eager to look the other way when a commercial project like this has some rather glaring flaws (like walking deads) that wouldn't exist were it to have been properly tested.  This wouldn't have fixed some of the horrible 3D, but then again, it was their choice to use 3D instead of the better looking 2d art they had in early builds, so as far as I'm concerned they should be taken to task for it rather than forgiven like they've given the game away.  I'd probably be less bothered if it had been budgeted at 15 dollars, since the game is actually rather short and focuses mainly on puzzles that involve a lot of backtracking (and deliberately sets itself up for a sequel).

For me the 3D is a lot better, the 2D sprites looked a bit plain.....and supposedly it's harder and a lot more time-consuming to pull off the same amount of animations in 2D than in 3D. It's also easier to find good 3D animators than 2D ones. From what I've read. What do I know?
I think the game could have been tested better. Even the demo had some clipping mistakes. And I think they could have found someone that actually is capable of writing funny stuff.
But maybe Bill Tiller just naturally expected the game to be funny. I mean, the guys at LucasArts back then weren't also the most obviously talented writers, with the exception of Tim Schafer possibly, but they threw ideas and jokes at each other and what sticked came into the game.
Either the work process isn't the same at Autumn Moon or they don't have such a great sense of humour or they aren't just as naturally gifted as most of the guys at LucasArts were back then. Maybe you also need intuition for good humor, whatever.

It's kinda to be expected that their first adventure game isn't a new masterpiece. Labyrinth from LucasArts back then wasn't that great either and it took them some time to work things out. It's Bill Tillers first game anyway. So, I just hope they get better at doing them.

[Sam.]

The new Sam & Max hit the spot, was funny and was telltale's first adventure game. First Game nerves isn't really an excuse when you have had so long to develop it and you've been in the business as long as Bill Tiller has. Just because commercial adventure games are so few and far between, especially pretty ones, we shouldn't be making excuses for a game which doesn't seem to have been thought about enough.


EDIT: Also, Bone was supposed to be quite good and according to pedants, came BEFORE Sam & Max. Pshaw.

[Privateer Puddin']

Bone, Zooty?

[Sam.]

Never heard of it.

[m0ds]

If this game doesn't do too well perhaps this will act as an incentive for Tiller to re-unite with Ron Gilbert or Tim Schafer on a lone project, or did they all fall out? If they didn't, why are they oblivious to the genius of working together? It seemed to be a winning formula back in the day. Not that I recall any of them working on the same project for LEC, but correct me if I'm wrong

[Ozzie]

@Zooty: But Bone and Sam & Max were designed by people who already had design experience. Dave Grossman, anyone? And the Bone games weren't too awesome either according to reviews, "just" good. The same for the first few Sam & Max episodes.

AVS itself wasn't very long in development. It was announced 4 years ago, but development started much later.
Look, I don't mean that there's no reason to dislike AVS. But I'm actually surprised that people see now that it isn't the new adventure masterpiece. I guess it's good, but it should be clear that the first game is always the hardest. The amount of work for the engine was underestimated and it didn't get done until very late, so the glitches aren't very surprising. They should definately release a patch, though, just because they couldn't fix it in the first place doesn't mean that they couldn't fix it later.
Also, the budget constraints made it necessary to split the story up into multiple parts, hence the unfulfilling ending.

[Sam.]

I'm pretty sure Bill Tiller didn't just pick people off the street, Dave harris worked on The Dig and Grim Fandango, he is hardly new to the game (http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,3219/)

I just think "first game" is a poor excuse for a buggy game, anyone can test.

[LimpingFish]

I don't want to get into what some people (Hello, AdventureGamers.com! ) consider my vendetta against commercial adventures and the people who play them, but my "Why?" to Ildu does relate to it in a small way.

A Vampyre Story, and I have only played the demo, seems to be a very shoddy product. Fours years of development, excuses aside, and the move to 3D don't seem to have amounted to much. In my opinion, you're only as good as your last game and favorable goodwill will only get you so far. I'll probably pick up AVS once it hits the bargain bins, just to see if I was right, but on the strength of the demo (and lets remember that demos should show your games strengths, leaving the player wanting more) I won't be expecting much. The fact that the name "Bill Tiller" occurred anywhere in that equation means little to me anyway. If AVS was scuppered by a low budget (though what that has to do with anything is beyond me. Never stopped Dave Gilbert from making good games), then the hows and whys of it's apparent quality are known only the people who worked on it. Talk of supporting the creators or the genre are as baffling to me as they are naive, and I hold my hand up to not entertaining either. But..

(cue tension)

A lot of "big" adventure names seem to have smelled the funk of the casual market lately (Chris Jones and Arron Conners "Three Cards to Midnight", lauded as the return to the days of Tex Murphy, turns out to be largely cut from the same cloth as those horrible find-the-junk non-games) and some adventure fans orgasmic delight when they see these names in preview snippets or similar seems to cloud their ability to consider the fact that it's money, and not a desire to pick up where they left off, that has warranted these creators return.

Which makes me seem all cynical and bitter, etc, etc. But I have yet to see a product that has broken through the lid of the box marked "thoroughly average" that these developers seem to inhabit. Of course Tim Schafer did it. Though, in my eyes at least, he's far more competent a developer, and less cynical a creator, than most of these names from yore appear to have become. And Hal Barwood's Mata Hari looks interesting, though Barwood has at least some track record beyond his more famous titles (the underrated RTX Red Rock, for example).

But until Jane Jensen, Steve Ince (alright, So Blonde wasn't that bad), and all those other way-back-when peoples, release a game that I can play on it's own merits, they'll always be trading on past goodwill.

A world were Telltale (and I do admit their output has become better than most) make the best adventure games? Who could have guessed?

[Ozzie]

Well, if you don't like AVS you will definately hate Mata Hari. Don't get your hopes up! 

Your opinion may be harsh, but I don't have a problem with it.
I think it's not naive though to support a company who makes games with a vision and the best intentions contrary to to those publishers and developers that churn out one soulless product, an x-th iteration of a franchise or licensed title after another. There are also many adventure games that I consider soulless, but AVS has a heart in my opinion, even if it can't articulate itself well.
Sure, if it sucks, why should you buy it. You shouldn't, but I don't think it sucks. And I think they will improve.

I think you have high expectation towards adventure games and that's just right. Just because the quality kept dropping over the past years doesn't mean that you should be happy with less.

But anyway, tastes vary, I liked the demo very much. Maybe the german translation makes a difference. The puzzle design didn't give a great impression and most of the jokes felt flat, but it was fun. Probably not the adventure of the year, though. Anyway, I still need to play the full version, so why am I talking so much here? I have no idea!
AVS still wasn't 4 years in development, though.

[ManicMatt]

It can't be any worse than Limbo of the Lost, right?

Did anyone even touch that game with a barge pole? And if so, why? I hope it was a pirate copy/demo and you were just playing to see how shoddy and ripped off it was.

I have so many games to play, I can afford to be picky. I MUST be picky. I have over 40 games that need playing!! I need to take a year out to catch up, seriously..

[LimpingFish]

I think you have high expectation towards adventure games and that's just right. Just because the quality kept dropping over the past years doesn't mean that you should be happy with less.

I suppose my disdain for a lot of current commercial adventures is due to a number of factors. It's not because I want to return to the past, because my favorite "modern" commercial adventures are those that try to break with the inherent conventions of the genre. And it's not that you can't enjoy a game that tries to invoke the feeling of those classic titles, or one that has a clear artistic vision.  What really bugs me is the redundancy (creative, technical, what have you) of a lot of these titles. They neither entice you to play them, nor offer you anything substantial if you choose to do so. They seem to exist purely to say "I am a commercial adventure game" and take up shelf space.

The adventure game seems to be the only genre that makes me feel this way.

And people took exception to the fact that I largely blame "adventure fans" and the adventure media for this situation.

Bad games exist in all genres, sure, but the adventure game seems to be the only genre that has such forgiving fans. Which is where talk of "supporting" the genre comes in, I suppose. But I just don't see it that way, and I think it does more harm than good. The genre should stand, or fall, on it's own merits.

I'd rather these studios that do have a valid creative agenda repackage their stories and ideas in a more commercially viable genre, if lack of budgets and publisher support is to blame for these lackluster end products.

[Ozzie]

It can't be any worse than Limbo of the Lost, right?

Did anyone even touch that game with a barge pole? And if so, why? I hope it was a pirate copy/demo and you were just playing to see how shoddy and ripped off it was.

I have so many games to play, I can afford to be picky. I MUST be picky. I have over 40 games that need playing!! I need to take a year out to catch up, seriously..

There were some reviews that rated that game pretty well, like the ones on GameBoomers or JustAdventure. Unbelievable, actually. I guess this is this forgiveness LimpingFish is talking about.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

It's pretty well known that on this issue I agree with LimpingFsh completely.  Most of these adventure sites are pretty pathetic at giving games an honest rating, really.  There have been so many games rated highly on sites like fourfatchicks that I can barely stand it's unbelievable. 

Fish is right, you know; the average adventure fan is so starved for something from the genre that they will lift up a turd and say it's gold just because there's nothing else.  I don't really blame them for this because there really aren't that many adventure games being made commercially, but they also shouldn't be terribly offended when they're called out for mindlessly supporting something that would be a market failure in any other genre, and I really think Vampyre Story is in that category.  Virtually everything about it is bland, the jokes have all been heard before, the characters have no depth, the voices are largely horrible, the puzzles range from poor to broken, the special gui 'feature' of Mona not actually taking stuff and having to backtrack to use it in puzzle solutions stands out as a deliberate attempt to pad the game, her powers are inconsistent, it just plays like a decent amateur game.

The fact is, though, is that it's NOT an amateur game.  It's a commercial game for 30 dollars, an attempt to cash in on the episodic craze and it's weak in almost every area.  As much as I disliked most of the Sam and Max Telltale episodes for their flat humor and flimsy puzzles, I have to say in all honesty that the production values were much higher and showed extensive testing.

[ManicMatt]

The exact same thing happened in the final years of the Amiga.

I'd read one magazine and it'd give really generous reviews to anything, and rarely give out a bad mark. But not AMIGA POWER, oh no. If the game was shit, they'd give it a true score.

Like this game, Valhalla, the first ever "Full speech" game on the Amiga:


It plays as exciting as it looks. Lots of brown. The main character walks very slowly, block by block. Horrible puzzles that were plain evil.

"Brilliant!! 92%" said one magazine. "Awful. 36%" Said Amiga Power.

I miss that magazine..

[Snarky]

A lot of "big" adventure names seem to have smelled the funk of the casual market lately (Chris Jones and Arron Conners "Three Cards to Midnight", lauded as the return to the days of Tex Murphy, turns out to be largely cut from the same cloth as those horrible find-the-junk non-games)

It's pretty well known that on this issue I agree with LimpingFsh completely.  Most of these adventure sites are pretty pathetic at giving games an honest rating, really.  There have been so many games rated highly on sites like fourfatchicks that I can barely stand it's unbelievable. 

Fish is right, you know; the average adventure fan is so starved for something from the genre that they will lift up a turd and say it's gold just because there's nothing else.

Just because YOU don't personally enjoy or appreciate something doesn't mean others cannot honestly do so. Some people like playing hidden-item games, and some people enjoy adventures that stick very close to the old tried-and-true formula. Not your cup of tea? Fine. But attacking people for liking something you don't like? Honestly...  :

And while many adventure game sites are a lot more uncritical than I would be, I find that Adventure Gamers - which I used to write for occasionally - tends to be a bit tougher on the grading scale, and separate the gems (or at least the solid titles that are worth a look) from the dross. For example, currently the last three reviews give grades of 1.5, 2 and 3.5 (out of 5), and the preview of A Vampyre Story was definitely measured in its enthusiasm.

[LimpingFish]

I'm not in the habit of attacking people (unless I'm lurking in a dark alley with a baseball bat), and I just stated that I consider those hidden object games to be appalling claptrap. The fact that some people enjoy them is largely irrelevant, as is the fact that some people enjoy Martin Lawrence movies. They're still shit. Some people can have fun crouching by the side of the road, poking fresh roadkill with a pointy stick. People are, by and large, weird and varied. I don't have a problem with that.

To paraphrase what I said on AdventureGamer's forums, I regularly see adventure fans and the adventure media supporting sub-standard products that mainstream gaming outlets rate much lower. Maybe this is because the mainstream tends to rate them not as a genre but as individual games. If you treat the adventure game as though it exists in a gaming vacuum, separate from the criteria that other genres are routinely judged on, is it any wonder we constantly end up with nothing more than the mundanely average?

The fact that somebody may enjoy the mundanely average doesn't automatically validate it's quality.