What's wrong and how to improve

[BMF-Inc]

A question for all of you out there in the adventure gaming world. I have played many a different adventure game. I have seen companies come and go. Treasures flicker and fade with time. There are a lot of things that make an adventure game great, story-line, dialogue, music, even graphics. My question for all of you is this. Give me a great example of an adventure game gone "wrong" and how you feel you could improve it to make a better game.

Also, try and explain what works for you as a game player, what fits your tastes and moods in terms of an adventure game. Anyways....just a bit to think about

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Black Dahlia. The great storytelling, acting and even gameplay were spoiled by the sheer number of gratuitous puzzles - puzzles that weren't necessary, and often got in the way of the story. If it had one sitxh of the puzzles it ended up with, including that needlessly frustrating maze/underground/rune sequence, it would be a masterpiece.

Harvester. The ending managed to kill the story. Had the creators come up with another ending, the game might be memorable. For me, at least. As it is, it's an example of how bad endings can spoil the whole thing.

Syberia II. The sequel to the famous Syberia tried to add some "action" to the story. BIG NO-NO. It was forceful and made it not as enjoyable as the first one, especially since it kept getting in the way of the story. The best moments of Syberia II were the moments it remaind faithful to itself (i.e., the return to Valadilene and the ending sequence, mostly... as well as the entire first part).

[Radiant]

What is an oft-made mistake, is ending an otherwise puzzle-related game in one or more arcade sequences (e.g. Future Wars, Space Quest III). It would be more fitting to end with a climatic puzzle (e.g. FoA).

Ridiculous plot twists always put off a significant number of people. While I rather liked the ending of Monkey Island II, many people hate it. I found the revelation at the end of Spellcasting 301 too outlandish to cope with.

Finally, bugs bugs and bugs. Many of Sierra's later games are infamous for the horrendous amount of bugs (e.g. QfG4, which I couldn't even complete without savegame hacking, because of insufficient beta testing).

[BMF-Inc]

there was something that I noticed in the gaming world, that I would like to see...does anyone ever remember the first person shooter that was in the jurassic park world? For those who never played it, it gave you almost total interaction with objects around you..having the mouse control your arm in order to pick anything up, throw and swing. I would like to see something similar to that in the adventure gaming world of the future. Not action it up, but add more immersion to the player in the world. I really enjoyed the third game in the Gabriel knight series, simply because the world seemed more fleshed out and real because the camera was up in the mess, you really felt like you were in the fray and made the game more intense. that is what I want to see..not so much more action..but more interaction for us to give us a wonderful unique experience.

[Kinoko]

Oh, those bugs in QFG4. I couldn't play the game for YEARS until I started looking up ways to get around the same old error I got everytime 5 minutes into the game. I'm glad I got past it, because I was a decent game in the end but it's just a classic example of how you must beta test properly, particularly with commencial games.

Personally, I adored the ending of MI2 ^_^ I wish the whole series ended there so I didn't have to keep looking at boxes of MI4 on the shelves with such sadness.

When I think about all the elements that put me off a game, although it's important, puzzles probably aren't up the top. I'll still love a game even when I've been frustrated to the point of murder by ridiculous puzzles.

For me it's probably a visible lack of effort in some areas. As people have said, when you look at a game with great backgrounds but a poor walkcycle and crummy animations, it tends to be a bit disappointing. I probably experienced this with Kings Quest 7 the most. It was a fun game, with some cool puzzles and a nice, fairly original story and gameplay, but I just couldn't stop thinking about how cheap and 'indie' it felt because of the shoddy animations in so many places.

[MillsJROSS]

Syberia...most of the backgrounds were eye candy with no flesh to them. And by flesh, I mean you couldn't interact with most anything that wasn't puzzle related.

Side Note: SQ3's ending was superb in my oppinion. I wouldn't change anything in that game at all. The ending matched with the story-line, and it gave you that feeling of danger. And actually, it's ending was an action/puzzle. You had to figure out what to do with your shields and weopons. There was some actualy thought involved other than aim and fire.

-MillsJROSS

[Radiant]

Mills -> huh? You had to put your shields in the proper direction, and figure out to shoot at the enemy ships rather than at empty space. I don't call that much of a puzzle.
Not that I dislike SQ3, I thought it was very fun. But when I replay it I tend to stop once I enter the office base, because it gets boring from that point on.

[BMF-Inc]

So, let me get this straightened out and a bit more organized, so far we have had these problems arise.

1. Action phases that somewhat give it an anti-climactic feeling
2.The scenery and backgrounds being just that...scenery. No really interaction..even just looking at it.
3. Lack of attention to all aspects of the games in terms of animations, backgrounds, interactions etc.
4. Bugs up the wazoo
5. lack of a focused plot that drives the player to continue
6.ridiculously mindboggling (and completely unnecessary) puzzles

excellent excellent..these things are something that we, as independant game makers, should really take into consideration...taking our time and putting our focus and attention to the details that really iron out a perfectly entertaing game....of course I'm stating the obvious though.

[Ishmael]

there was something that I noticed in the gaming world, that I would like to see...does anyone ever remember the first person shooter that was in the jurassic park world? For those who never played it, it gave you almost total interaction with objects around you..having the mouse control your arm in order to pick anything up, throw and swing.

Trespasser.

Yes, I have it. Never played it through thou, my old crappy laptop couldn't run it properly and I got bored of dying all the time, and nowdays I haven't really been into installing it... But the interface was great IMO. Only that you couldn't carry a baseball bat, a handgun and a shotgun at once, thou you IRL could with that setting, shotgun on the back, handgun on the belt and baseball bat at hand... but changing to the handgun would bring problems then...

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Trespasser had an awesome interface? What!?  I played through the game out of sheer force of will, and I can say with assurance that the interface was terrible!

Introducing Jello-Arm (tm) technology!

Example 1:  If you jump, there is a possiblility the object you are holding will fall out of your hand.

Example 2:  If you fall off of something, even something short, this possibility almost doubles.

Example 3:  the object you are holding can actually get stuck on things that are impossible to get stuck on, like a flat surface.  Then your arm twists behind you like a rubber band until it snaps, and the object wriggles on the surface a bit.

Example 4:  At some points in the game you cannot avoid small spaces, like ducts.  In these areas in particular, your Jello-Arm has the worst time keeping hold of anything.  The object will stick to the walls, snag on a corner, and your arm will stretch behind you trying to keep hold of it, but it eventually fails.  This can become a major problem when a raptor is chasing you and you suddenly stop because you're caught, or your pipe is pulled out of your hands by a sticky wall.

Example 5:  The heart tatoo on your boobs doesn't always reflect health accurately.  Sometimes you could be wandering happily through the forest and then blam, a raptor hits you once and you're dead.  Why?  Because your meter was empty and you couldn't tell.

These are just a few of the annoyances I suffered through playing the game, only to get one of the most anticlimactic endings ever.

Oh ya, on the subject of adventure games that messed up would be The Dig.  I really enjoyed the game, but one of the major nags (and reasons it did not do as well as Lucas Arts hoped) was that some of the puzzle solutions took educated guesses.  There were some points (like the deciphering of the alien runes and studying the library) where you had nothing english to work with and had to try a few things (maybe more) before you succeeded.  I'm all for difficulty, but some of the puzzles were a bit much.  That's the only adventure game I can think of right now that annoyed me at all.

[BMF-Inc]

well with trespasser, yeah the interface was buggy as all hell and really uncontrollable..but the idea of it was what I was focusing on. The idea to pick up interact with everything..something similar to the shenmu series as well for the sega dreamcast (and xbox) just the ability to pick up, look at and interact with an object. This would give you multiple approaches to situations, a more innovative approach. I would lke to see more interactivity and multiple approaches to situations to fit your style of play (something to the effect of the quest for glory series) I think that, if done properly, you could make an unbelievable game that envelopes the player and brings you deeper into the story.

[Radiant]

Though not entirely an adventure, a game that allows you to interact with anything and everything is Ultima 6 (and also, Savage Empire and Martian Dreams, which were built with the same engine). You can go to such extremes as making cloth from flax, cutting it in pieces, dipping them in tar, breaking a branch from a tree and putting the cloth on there - ta dah, we have a torch. That wasn't quite necessary to complete the game but most any fiddling would eventually produce something.

[BMF-Inc]

You know radiant, that was one big reason as to why I enjoyed Ultima 6 and such..the world was very vibrant and alive..a lot of times, in adventure games, anyone besides the necessary character's were very static background music. I wouldl like to see them as integral parts, make them move, have a routine..and such...now that is quite complex to do, and would hope to see future adventure games that come out commercially to maybe add to that...let's see more dynamic character actions....I love to see even the most unimportant character havea  life and have emotions and ideas, that you can hear if you wish....the key is...to make them optional, and make them enjoyable

[PaulSC]

Trespasser was an interesting game in that it looked towards where games were inevitably heading, and then made a spectacularly misguided attempt to get there ten years early.

Some interesting ideas (and on some rare occasions the physics system could do some amazingly realistic things), but it felt like it'd been designed by people who'd never played games before and only had a vague idea of how they worked. I can't believe no one on the production team realised how specactuarly stupid a lot of their ideas were.

As for the thread topic... this complaint mainly applies to AGS games, but I'm totally sick of characters breaking the fourth wall and chatting directly to the audience - especially when they only do this to say stuff like "Ho ho, this background isn't drawn very well is it?". A high percentage of AGS game seems to do this and it always strikes me as extremely lazy writing that usually just ruins any suspension of disbelief you might have in the game's story.