It Came From The Desert!

[Kinoko]

Does anyone remember the game (or it's sequel) "It Came From The Desert"? I was just reminded of it and wondered if people would consider that an adventure game? I'd never thought about it before but I most certainly would.

It had a really great non-linear storyline and an original interface. It was even quite thrilling in places. I have only fond memories of it. Trying to go out on a date with Dusty from K-BUG. Finally managing to shoot the antennae of ants in the action sequences. Ahh, it was fun. I especially loved escaping from the hospital and hiding in rooms, scaring other patients and whizzing around in a wheelchair. Hmm, a lot of the things I loved best about it were indeed the action sequences (some of them anyway, some others were hideous) but it really did have just a -great- adventure feel to it.

[Elianto]

Don't think can be considered and adventure but it's one of the game I played most on my Amiga500

[InCreator]

It felt more like an arcade game, yeah. And a bit of tycoon with the time as a resource to play with...
But I loved the game. While story was somewhat stupid and overused, it was still very well implemented and...
...bugs are most horrible creatures on our planet.
Including ants.

Looking a zombie or vampire movie doesn't affect me at all.
Looking at the spider through maginfying glass scares the crap out of me.
Ants were what made this game so cool.

But I think that it is possible to cut most action sequences out, release pressure from time limit and remake it to a nice adventure game, like:

1. Getting to know people around the valley
2. Getting money and stuff to trade them for some weapons
3. Getting the plane
4. The fight
5. Entering the ant's nest and destroying the queen?

Well, if you rephrase these points, you'll get nice components/puzzles for a typical adventure game:

1. Characters! Dialogues! Exploration! If characters/dialogues are well made, it also works as atmosphere burst (5 days a stranger, anyone?).
2. Puzzles! A shop (an adventure game without a shop?)! Maybe some stealing/distracting/etc stuff?
3. There could be loads of puzzles around this event.
4. Action sequences... maybe
5. The maze! (erm... maybe?) And largest atmosphere burst.

Huh.
Yes, even if it wasn't really an adventure game, it has lots of potential to become one.

[GarageGothic]

This thread explains exactly why I - with very few exceptions, one being any independent production - have stopped enjoying adventure games.

Back in the day, we didn't really distinguish between genres. Cinemaware is an excellent example of that - is Wings a flight simulator? Not really, it has a story and arcade-like bombing sequences. Is Defender of a Crown a strategy game? Sure, but it also has arcade tournaments, fencing and catapult shooting. Is It Came from the Desert an adventure game? Well, you go around and talk to people, choose your responses, find evidence, and the whole story is totally interactive. It Came from the Desert is by far a better interactive fiction experience than any adventure game I've played for the last decade.

When did we become such genre purists?

I mean, most of the games that we consider adventure classics had arcade sequences: The Indiana Jones games, Sam & Max, the Manhunter games, nearly all Space Quests (not sure about 2), Police Quest 1 and 3 (driving), Larry 3, Codename: Iceman, Conquest of Camelot. Granted, some of them were poorly implemented (I literally spent months trying to master the steering of the submarine in Codename: Iceman). Hell, some of the best designed adventure games ever were hybrids: The Quest for Glory series.

Have you ever noticed that in bookstores you have the genre shelves: "Mystery", "Fantasy", "Romance", "Science Fiction" - and then you have the rest of the stuff, "Fiction and literature". The underlying assumption is of course that genre fiction is cheap, it isn't art, it's for Barbare Cartland readers and sci-fi geeks who care only for their genres. To a certain degree this is true, A LOT of mystery, fantasy and romance books are written by hacks and churned out by the dozen. But great works of art have been written within those genres by people like Arthur C. Clarke, Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick. Yet somehow these genres are valued lower than the "real" "Fiction and literature". Same thing with movies - we have all the "dumb" genres, Comedy, Action, Horror, Sci-fi and then we have the "classy" genre, Drama. It always pisses me off, when I look at the shelves in a dvd-store and find Fight Club among the action movies instead of the dramas, and I think that pretty much describes the situation.

These days, most games are in a genre: FPS, RTS, RPG, adventure, simulation, arcade driving and what-not. Why is it that we worry so much about this? People love games that break boundaries - GTA is proof of that - so why aren't we looking for the "Fiction and literature" or "Drama" genres of games? Games that can be about anything, that doesn't have limits for what we can and can't ask the player to do, or doesn't fit neatly into any particular category? Why not? Because companies love genres. It makes it so much easier to sell games. "What's this here, the cover looks interesting?" "Oh that's the newest first person shooter" creates much less doubt in the customer than "Well, I suppose you mostly walk around shooting monsters, but it also involves some strategy elements and you have to go back and forth to collect items".

But we're not companies - we don't have to explain our games in four words or less. We're players, and we're independent creators of games.

So what's with this hang-up with genres, and what's "typical" for adventure games?

[remixor]

Have you ever noticed that in bookstores you have the genre shelves: "Mystery", "Fantasy", "Romance", "Science Fiction" - and then you have the rest of the stuff, "Fiction and literature". The underlying assumption is of course that genre fiction is cheap, it isn't art, it's for Barbare Cartland readers and sci-fi geeks who care only for their genres. To a certain degree this is true, A LOT of mystery, fantasy and romance books are written by hacks and churned out by the dozen. But great works of art have been written within those genres by people like Arthur C. Clarke, Roger Zelazny and Philip K. Dick. Yet somehow these genres are valued lower than the "real" "Fiction and literature". Same thing with movies - we have all the "dumb" genres, Comedy, Action, Horror, Sci-fi and then we have the "classy" genre, Drama. It always pisses me off, when I look at the shelves in a dvd-store and find Fight Club among the action movies instead of the dramas, and I think that pretty much describes the situation.

That might be part of it, but I suspect bookstores don't actually give a crap about putting down genre fiction.Ã,  It's a money/convenience issue.Ã,  By far and away, most sci-fi/fantasy fans read either exclusively sci-fi/fantasy or it's the vast majority.Ã,  It makes a lot more sense for bookstores to set sci-fi/fantasy apart because they know there's a substantial consumer base who will just go straight to that section.Ã,  It's easier for the genre fans and bookstores if the fans don't have to look through the enormous "fiction/literature" section to find what they want.Ã,  If suddenly everyone who reads books started reading tons of sci-fi as well and all the sci-fi fans suddenly branched out into other genres, I suspect some bookstores would start to combine the sections in some way, but that's pretty unlikely to ever happen.

And by the way, I don't need a million responses saying "I read all the genres, shut up!" because I know there are plenty of people who do.


EDIT: THAT SAID, I do agree with you in principle.  I really don't like how people have become such genre maniacs.  It drives me nuts.  I took a class on Dune last semester.  I'd never read the series before, and it was excellent.  However, it drove me crazy that I honestly couldn't find anyone else in the class with the slightest interest in anything other than sci-fi/fantasy.  They literally seemed to think their genre was the only one that counted (they were all very nice people though!).  Same goes for games.  The attitude of many of the forumers at Just Adventure+ (and a few at places like Adventure Gamers) is so elitist as to be infuriating.  It is in fact one of the primary reasons us Adventure Gamers/Mixnmojo guys decided to open up [ur=http://www.idlethumbs.net]Idle Thumbs[/url].  (Shameless plug time!)

[Esseb]

Just Adventure+ people are genre elitists? Which genre is that?

[GarageGothic]

Just Adventure+ people are genre elitists? Which genre is that?

ROFL

[BerserkerTails]

One thing I've noticed about my time spent at these forums, is the prejudice towards Sierra's classic adventures. Now, this is only my opinion, but it seems to me like alot of people on the forums like the LucasArts adventures better. And usually, when asked why, they say because you can't die or get stuck. Now to me, these are pivotal adventure game elements. I was always the first to save my game, then move Graham closer to the cliff edge, etc... Part of an adventure game's charm are the deaths.

Now, I can see why alot of amateur adventure games don't support deaths, as most death sequences can take a long time due to animations needed. Thing is, I get caught up more in a game when I can make one wrong step and BOOM, I die. I think it adds alot of tension to a game, something I always seemed to find missing in most of Lucasarts' games.

Today's adventure games just don't seem to intrigue me as much as the adventure games of old. Like, for example, in "Police Quest 2", at the end, when you finally find the kidnapped girl, and all the sudden she says (Referring to the villain of the game):"Oh no Sonny, I hear footsteps. HE'S COMING BACK!!". I remember, when I first played that, and even still when I play that, my hair sticks straight up. I haven't had that feeling from many adventure games these days.

The latest adventure games I've truly loved that have come out in the past couple years have been Yahtzee's "Days" games. When you knew the welder was on the loose, and could actually kill you, well, that was scary.

I think that's what is missing from adventure games this days. The ability to screw up. You can screw up in real life, so hy not be able to in adventure games?

[GarageGothic]

That's really another discussion altogether, but I agree. I miss the danger in most modern games (and right as you thought it was safe, they kill you anyway - see Black Mirror). The thing with Sierra was that in some games it was really tedious (Graham pushing the rock from the wrong side), but in the Space Quest series the multitude of deaths became part of the joke.

I think most people's main issue with death in games is that you can just restore anyway, so what's the point? Save early save often and it just becomes a minor annoyance - so why not remove it. That's what LucasArts did eventually - except for a few EVIL instances in Indy 4, and the (player provoked) underwater death in MI1.

[Gilbert]

* Gilbot V7000a just remembers he has the PCE CD version of this game but never got to really start playing it, maybe he should.

[remixor]

I think it's silly to say something like "deaths are part of what makes adventure games".Ã,  That's just part of how games were by a certain company (and some of their designers, such as Al Lowe, thought the deaths were annoying and was vocal about his wish to decrease them).Ã,  If you enjoy it, great, but it's perfectly understandable why someone else wouldn't.

[Kinoko]

Yeah, this is another topic altogether but... whatever. I like all sorts of adventures for all the reasons stated here. I love that Lucasarts is all about story without mortality to get in the way, and I love how Sierra games put you on edge (and I do love creative death scenes, Space Quest in particular).

As far as ICFTD being an adventure or not or the whole genre thing - I totally agree about some people being genre police but it DOES make things more convenient. It can't always be used, but the fact is that a LOT of games fit fairly well into genres and it makes it much easier to find the kind of thing you like, or to explain to someone what a game is like. There are always those special games that cross boundaries and any intelligent gamer knows that but there's nothing wrong with using genre to make things easier.

Personally, I really believe ICFTD is a kind of adventure game, despite the fact that it doesn't fit in with the usual Lucasarts/Sierra conventions. Interactive fiction, whatever... in my head, "adventure" is how I would personally catagorise it, but that's just me.

[BerserkerTails]

I think it's silly to say something like "deaths are part of what makes adventure games".

So do I actually. See, what I said was that "To me, deaths are part of what makes adventure games". In my post above, I made sure to state a few times that this was my opinion.

Anyway, back on topic... I played "It came from the Desert" a few years back, and I remember quite enjoying it. I didn't think of it as an adventure game at the time, but I think I'll have to replay it again.

[SSH]

So, are Counterstrike and Quake counted as adventures, too, now? 

[Privateer Puddin']

well Quake 2 does have a story!