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Action games are about shooting things.
Platform games are about jumping on things.
Strategy games are about building things and commanding units.
Adventure games are about... what? Pointing and clicking? Having an inventory? Combining items?

No. Adventure games are about experiencing a story. Atleast that's how I see it. Defining an entire genre as a "game which conforms to a certain design blueprint" is ridiculously silly, I think. It would be like defining movie genres based on the type of camera and lighting used.

Everything on that site is completely true!

http://www.bbspot.com/News/2005/02/jesus_frag_fest.html

However, citing Warren Spector seems counter-productive. This is the same person who justified the abysmal console-ization of DE:IW and seems to think gamers should toe-the-line of current trends rather than catering to the will of the gamers themselves.

I agree with your view on DE:IW, but I thought we discovered it wasn't Warren who said it after all?

My university teaches Java in its programming courses.

I can sort of see why, it's quite easy to get into... but I'd rather have started with C++ instead, since I already had a bit of programming experience before the courses.

I thought Ian Livingstone said that.

Ah, you're probably right. I just remembered that Warren has expressed his negative opinions on adventure games in the past, and made the connection to that quote immediately.

The cat-puzzle is just an extreme example, but that article summarizes pretty much what I feel about point and click games nowadays. The things you have to do to advance through the plot in many adventure games seem to be there just to lengthen the game and give you a "challenge", it doesn't feel natural (fetch quests, anyone?). I just want to step into the role of the character I play, and live his life for the duration of the game. Live the story. Not solve arbitrary puzzles.

As a side note, I used to laugh at the comments Warren Spector made about adventure games (balancing three biscuits on your head while whistling a tune in order to open a door, you remember), but I sympathize with him completely now. Solving adventure games is simply not fun for me anymore. I want... something new. Something not point and click. I want to play games that are adventures, but I'm tired of "adventure games".

If I'm not making any sense, then please say so, so I can confirm the feeling I have that I'm unable to explain to people what I mean.

Edit: Oh yeah:

Hey, what about Syberia? Longest Journey? Broken Sword 3? Ok, so BS3's controls suck - does that mean BS3 has killed action/adventures? Because otherwise, it's one HELL of a game.

Of these games I've only played BS3, and I couldn't be bothered to finish it because I found the crate pushing and sneaking extremely tedious and unintuitive. The game is a step in the right direction I think, but unfortunately it didn't succeed well enough in anything it tried to do. In my opinion.

There hasn't been a (commercial) adventure game that has intrigued me since... I dunno, mid-late nineties or so. I wouldn't mind seeing adventure games as we know them stay dead. Yes, dead, after having killed themselves.

Technology has finally come far enough that the elements I like about adventure games (story, dialogue, interaction) are finally starting to appear in games that aren't all about puzzle solving.

Deus Ex, for instance.

If somebody is going to try and be funny by quoting that image there I'm going to have to bring out the knives!

As you yourself quoted, "1 minute after 23:59 on the Thursday".

Thursday has come and gone.

I'm going to get this obvious one out of the way while I retreat to my cabin to think of something amazing!

I like this. I never was very interested in it previously, but the demo is certainly cool. It's very well polished, and runs very smoothly on my machine. The cut-scenes are excellent, and the overall feel of the game is quite nifty.

Only thing I could complain about are the controls, I guess. Not that they're any different from other 3rd person console platformers, so it's not exactly a complaint about Psychonauts itself.

I may have to buy this.

What is this House of Leaves? I thought[1] it reminded me of that movie 'The Navidson Record'
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Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  Ã,  last year.


[1] BJ4 is great. I'm pretty happy with how the music turned out, but as they say 'eget beröm luktar illa'.*

*I did my best with this phrase, it's Swedish and means something like "own praise smells bad". Search me what that means. But I guess it relates to what happened today. I showed Thumper my notebook of sketches and she really liked them, she said I should open my own shop. Which I'd do if I could get up the nerve to go outside my apartment, even Lude has stopping coming around, I should just burn this whole forum down...

Pretty much!

Stupid me for not remembering there are people who use SDRAM! Ignore my advice.

When I was a kid, I wanted to study dinosaurs, and I thought that's all scientists ever did. Hence, a scientist.

The new chip will run as fast as your motherboard can handle. If there already is a 133MHz in your computer, I'm guessing that's the highest your mb can do. Putting a faster ram stick in will work, but it will just run at 133MHz.

... as opposed to thinking big from the beginning? Sorry, I don't understand your reasoning at all.

[get people to make games]

The idea of the competition is to get people to make games. In a way it's especially aimed towards people who haven't made any games yet, because what better way is there to start making games than by starting small?

So then, just make your games already. The "one room only" idea is mostly there to make you think small, which means more chance for success.

Right?

My grandfather is 108 years old and this game wouldn't let him play it! Maybe it's only a good thing though, since this game was INTENSE.

And I suppose this is as good a place as any to post this. http://www.abo.fi/~andslott/bjww.oggÃ,  The Percy theme sure is versatile.

Ah, KGB (or Conspiracy as the version I bought was called, which featured Donald Sutherland as your character's dead father, appearing to give you advice when you wanted). Difficult indeed, and I think the graphic style is quite unique, especially the characters.

Now for the real reason I wrote this post. A very good review of said game.
http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/kgb/reviews/reviewerId,4870/