(To the mods, I have no idea if this belonged here or in the Critics Lounge, which is technically about suggestion hunting, if you feel it would be more appropriately placed there, feel free to move it.)
SO WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?:
Basically, I feel for a community about creating Adventure games, there is not a lot of discussion about adventure games, what elements about them are good or bad, and not just blanket statements like "the story was good" but rather what about the story was good, and also what about it could have done with improving. And this is the kind of thing I personally am really interested in. I don't know if anyone else out there is interested but I hope there's a few, so I thought I'd try an experiment. I would start a thread, nitpicking a game from AGS History, not because I want a place to voice my own opinions but because I want to hear people's opinions. I want people to point out things I had not thought of, or argue against my critiques or praise, or other people's critiques or praise. Any kind of interesting discussion about what is bad or good about these games. If it got some discussion, I would start another one later on for a different game and keep going, and start a series of nitpick threads. And maybe if it was popular enough, others would start their own threads in time. Really, I don't have much to lose (other than looking like some pretentious bastard who writes too much about video games).
So if this interests you, please:
As much as I'd prefer people wanting to talk about the game, if you find this stuff interesting but don't feel like you have anything contribute, feel free to mention that you're interested in reading stuff like this, so I can get an idea of how many people in the community value these kinds of discussions. But enough about that, it's time to nitpick.
5 DAYS A NITPICKER:
So for the first nitpick I decided to go with what is quite possibly a corner-stone adventure game of the community that seemingly everyone has played and should hopefully have an opinion on: 5 Days a Stranger. If it's been a long time since you've played the game or you haven't played it (where have you been?) you can acquire it here and I strongly recommend playing it yourself before reading the rest of this post, as this could get spoilery.
EDIT: I decided that I should consider finding a Lets Play for those that played the game years ago and don't quite remember everything, but can't be bothered replaying it all. I would prefer videos without commentary, but I'm not likely to find them. So here's part one for an LP by someone called DeceasedCrab, I have no idea if he's annoying or not: 5 Days LP Part 1
NARRATIVE, SMARRATIVE:
One of the things 5 Days appears to be trying as horror fiction is playing with the idea of paranoia in a group. However, in 5 Days I never remember suspecting anyone in the group, possibly because it implies supernatural involvement very early on in the newspapers, on the television, etc. I'm not sure if that's intentional though. Had Trilby spent the whole game insisting everyone else was trustworthy whilst we the players did not trust anyone we'd probably feel quite disconnected from the player character merely through having a very different opinion on the scenario. I still feel like the game missed an opportunity to explore this paranoia idea.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about this game to me is how most of the characters appear pretty fine with the whole experience. Only Phil really changes over the course of the game at all.(SPOILER FOR TRILBY'S NOTES:)For a game trying to play with the idea of group paranoia, there's not an awful lot of paranoia in the group.
OH SWEET JESUS THE PUZZLES:
Most of the difficulty of 5 Days comes from you not knowing where to look for something. Perhaps the worst part about the game is a few scenarios where you find yourself wondering: "Why would I have thought to do that?"
When you're looking for Simone and Jim at the start of the game, you have to talk to Simone before you can find Jim at all. That does not make any sense already but it's made even worse by how you find Jim. Jim is up a tree that you have to interact with to realize he's up there. But he's only up there after you've spoken to Simone. So if you were unfortunate enough to go outside first, and interact with the tree, you would not bother to interact with it again after talking to Simone. The game pulls a similar irritating move later on when you're supposed to examine the pool on the second day when it has not visually changed. Why would I have thought that something about the pool would've changed? I can't see anything different. This kind of thing is a common mistake in adventure game design. You have to think to yourself: "Why would the player ever think to do this?" and very importantly: "Why would the player think to try it again?" And sadly this kind of thing is very easily fixed. You should have just been able to find Jim before Simone; there was no reason to impose that restriction. Something visually should have changed about the pool so that the player would think to look at it.
TL;DR:
When paranoia is a theme, you should try to give people a reason to be paranoid.
When paranoia is a theme, why are the majority of the characters calm?
Unless the player has a reason to think something has changed and to try again, they won't.
Anyway, I skipped over a lot of stuff because I wanted to stay under 500 words. But that's my nitpick. I hope some of you have something to contribute or at least found that interesting.
SO WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?:
Basically, I feel for a community about creating Adventure games, there is not a lot of discussion about adventure games, what elements about them are good or bad, and not just blanket statements like "the story was good" but rather what about the story was good, and also what about it could have done with improving. And this is the kind of thing I personally am really interested in. I don't know if anyone else out there is interested but I hope there's a few, so I thought I'd try an experiment. I would start a thread, nitpicking a game from AGS History, not because I want a place to voice my own opinions but because I want to hear people's opinions. I want people to point out things I had not thought of, or argue against my critiques or praise, or other people's critiques or praise. Any kind of interesting discussion about what is bad or good about these games. If it got some discussion, I would start another one later on for a different game and keep going, and start a series of nitpick threads. And maybe if it was popular enough, others would start their own threads in time. Really, I don't have much to lose (other than looking like some pretentious bastard who writes too much about video games).
So if this interests you, please:
- Make sure you've played the game, and can remember enough about it.
- Read other people's posts, or at least their TL;DRs and decide if you should read the whole post.
- Write your own post, sharing your own praises and critiques, and responding to other posts. And if it's a bit long, provide a TL;DR. Remember, you don't have to comprehensively analyze the game, just pick a few things you want to talk about.
As much as I'd prefer people wanting to talk about the game, if you find this stuff interesting but don't feel like you have anything contribute, feel free to mention that you're interested in reading stuff like this, so I can get an idea of how many people in the community value these kinds of discussions. But enough about that, it's time to nitpick.
5 DAYS A NITPICKER:
So for the first nitpick I decided to go with what is quite possibly a corner-stone adventure game of the community that seemingly everyone has played and should hopefully have an opinion on: 5 Days a Stranger. If it's been a long time since you've played the game or you haven't played it (where have you been?) you can acquire it here and I strongly recommend playing it yourself before reading the rest of this post, as this could get spoilery.
EDIT: I decided that I should consider finding a Lets Play for those that played the game years ago and don't quite remember everything, but can't be bothered replaying it all. I would prefer videos without commentary, but I'm not likely to find them. So here's part one for an LP by someone called DeceasedCrab, I have no idea if he's annoying or not: 5 Days LP Part 1
NARRATIVE, SMARRATIVE:
One of the things 5 Days appears to be trying as horror fiction is playing with the idea of paranoia in a group. However, in 5 Days I never remember suspecting anyone in the group, possibly because it implies supernatural involvement very early on in the newspapers, on the television, etc. I'm not sure if that's intentional though. Had Trilby spent the whole game insisting everyone else was trustworthy whilst we the players did not trust anyone we'd probably feel quite disconnected from the player character merely through having a very different opinion on the scenario. I still feel like the game missed an opportunity to explore this paranoia idea.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about this game to me is how most of the characters appear pretty fine with the whole experience. Only Phil really changes over the course of the game at all.(SPOILER FOR TRILBY'S NOTES:)
Spoiler
This is quite weird considering that Simone apparently goes through a complete mental break down after the events of the game itself.
[close]
OH SWEET JESUS THE PUZZLES:
Most of the difficulty of 5 Days comes from you not knowing where to look for something. Perhaps the worst part about the game is a few scenarios where you find yourself wondering: "Why would I have thought to do that?"
When you're looking for Simone and Jim at the start of the game, you have to talk to Simone before you can find Jim at all. That does not make any sense already but it's made even worse by how you find Jim. Jim is up a tree that you have to interact with to realize he's up there. But he's only up there after you've spoken to Simone. So if you were unfortunate enough to go outside first, and interact with the tree, you would not bother to interact with it again after talking to Simone. The game pulls a similar irritating move later on when you're supposed to examine the pool on the second day when it has not visually changed. Why would I have thought that something about the pool would've changed? I can't see anything different. This kind of thing is a common mistake in adventure game design. You have to think to yourself: "Why would the player ever think to do this?" and very importantly: "Why would the player think to try it again?" And sadly this kind of thing is very easily fixed. You should have just been able to find Jim before Simone; there was no reason to impose that restriction. Something visually should have changed about the pool so that the player would think to look at it.
TL;DR:
When paranoia is a theme, you should try to give people a reason to be paranoid.
When paranoia is a theme, why are the majority of the characters calm?
Unless the player has a reason to think something has changed and to try again, they won't.
Anyway, I skipped over a lot of stuff because I wanted to stay under 500 words. But that's my nitpick. I hope some of you have something to contribute or at least found that interesting.