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The "last adventures I played" thread

Bubb

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This kind of thread usually generates good reccomendations, I will start:

- NIBIRU : Decent game, it has nazis, ancient mayas and alien technology, what else do you want? It takes a while to pick up on the plot department, but it reasonably delivers. It is from the developers of Black Mirror, and it has an old 2D point and click version that I never checked out.

- Dracula 3 - "The Path of The Dragon" : I liked it a lot. Great atmosphere, and pretty original premise. If you like the idea of a skeptical young italian priest fighting the lord of darkness in post WWI Romenia, grab this one.

- Alter Ego : It has a very stupid ending, other than that it was pretty good. We need more victorian era settings in adventure games.

- Secret Files series: I coldn't get into either of the games. Way too silly and way too popamole. Stay away :(
 

Crooked Bee

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The Next Big Thing (German version): quit a few hours in. Strained humour, yawn-inducing characters, uninteresting puzzles. All in all, boring as boring can be.

Then again, I never liked the Runaway series either.
 

Unkillable Cat

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Sam & Max: Season 2. Before that, Sam & Max: Season 1. Even though I played the two games almost 2 years apart. Yup, it's been a very dry season for me and adventure games.

But all is not lost. Sam & Max: Season 3 (groan) and Tales of Monkey Island are sitting on my desk, waiting to be played.
 

Manny

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I usually play some recent adventures as well as some old ones I didn't play when they were first released.

Deja Vu. I have played the Amiga port in WinUAE. A really great game. The writing is dry, but good, with some nice humour in it. The puzzles aren't really complicated, but they are imaginative, at least in three cases. Also, there are "rooms" you can find many ways. I also like the fact that you start the game with a chemical already injected in your body and, unless you can find the antidote, you die; this really adds to the game atmosphere.

Gemini Rue. Really liked the graphics and the atmosphere. The story was good, but though it posed as if you could affect the outcome of the game through some of your decisions, this wasn’t so. But the worst part were the puzzles: they are mediocre almost all the time, with only a few interesting ones. All in all this game gives us reason to expect better things from the designer in the future. I only hope he will dare to include better and more difficult puzzles.
 

abnaxus

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Gray Matter. Best adventure to come out in a very long time. Easy puzzles, but great characters, music and atmosphere.

Bubb said:
This kind of thread usually generates good reccomendations, I will start:

- NIBIRU : Decent game, it has nazis, ancient mayas and alien technology, what else do you want? It takes a while to pick up on the plot department, but it reasonably delivers. It is from the developers of Black Mirror, and it has an old 2D point and click version that I never checked out.

- Secret Files series: I coldn't get into either of the games. Way too silly and way too popamole. Stay away :(
Tried Nibiru a while back, found it incredibly boring and the main character couldn't be more bland.

Played both Secret Files games, loved those. Some good old skool puzzles in that game and the main character was kinda likeable (the girl, the guy was a douche).
 

Sceptic

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abnaxus said:
Gray Matter. Best adventure to come out in a very long time. Easy puzzles, but great characters, music and atmosphere.
Damn you for stealing my words down to the comma.
But :love: for liking the exact same things about the game. Though I'd also add that the backgrounds were gorgeous.
 

Mister Arkham

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I picked up Telltale's "Puzzle Agent" title in some Steam sale a while back. Played through it in a couple of hours. It's short and mostly easy brain-teaser type stuff, but the art style has a sort of charm and the plot is vaguely fucked up in a David Lynch sort of way. Barely an adventure title (more in common with a Professor Layton game on the DS) but pretty good for something I probably only payed fifty cents for.
 

Mister Arkham

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It really all just comes together in a way that feels right. When I was done with it, I was a bit put off because the puzzles hadn't been more difficult, but when I was actually spending time with the title I was completely charmed by it.

I read recently that they're planning on doing a second, longer installment that treats the first game as a prologue...sort of akin to how Valve claims to be addressing Portal 2. I'll be interested to see if anything comes of it.
 

Allanon

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Black Mirror 3 - Pretty fun game, the last in the series that closes the mystery of the black mirror. Even though it was way to easy, I still had fun.
 

Pussycat669

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I can only echo the opinion above.

Although I didn't like the the Gabriel Knight factor they brought up in the last chapter.
 

asper

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Manny said:
Gemini Rue. Really liked the graphics and the atmosphere. The story was good, but though it posed as if you could affect the outcome of the game through some of your decisions, this wasn’t so. But the worst part were the puzzles: they are mediocre almost all the time, with only a few interesting ones. All in all this game gives us reason to expect better things from the designer in the future. I only hope he will dare to include better and more difficult puzzles.

This. Overall, Gemini Rue is very much worth it.
 

Bubb

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abnaxus said:
Gray Matter. Best adventure to come out in a very long time. Easy puzzles, but great characters, music and atmosphere.

Seconded. I bought and played the german version as soon as it came out. Was it late last year? My memory is fuzzy and I have been playing a lot of newish adventures...

Do you guys have any info on how well the game did on retail? I have not seem any interview from Jensen since the game came out, and some reviews have been unfairly harsh. I hope it sells like hot cakes and she doesn't retire again.

Maybe we will even get Gabriel Knight 4 eventually....

:thumbsup:
 

Manny

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The Black Mirror 2. One of the worst adventure games I’ve ever played, and the only one I uninstalled because I couldn’t take it anymore. I have finished even games like Blackstar, Agent of Justice, but this BM is worse than the first, and that says a lot. The puzzles were bad and boring, and the game suffers of one of the things that I hate on some recent adventure games: the protagonist has to say all that he’s doing and thinking, sometimes making it obvious to the player what he has to do. The story was ok, although it had some stupid moments. And, finally, the protagonist doesn’t have any kind of charm: he’s, like the protagonist of the first game, an “uncharismatic” little prick.

The Black Sanctum and Trekboer. This two little oldie games are very nice. They are from 1983 and 1984, and originally were made for the TRS-80 Color Computer. Both are very similar, except in regard to the atmosphere and genre: the first one is an horror game and the second is sf. Both have graphics with some animations (clouds moving, for example) and you can see all the objects you can interact with. The puzzles are nice and well designed, some easy and some not so much. The stories are simple, but entertaining. The only annoying thing is that you can onlye carry five objects at a time, so you may be forced to drop some, remember where you have drop them and later return to take them back. The interesting thing is that, even with so little story elements, one feels the story much more engaging than some recent games.

A New Beginning. After playing this game, I’m not sure what to think of Daedelic. I have played The Whispered World, and liked it, but thought that it was a little boring sometimes: there were too many similar puzzles (like the “you can’t reach” kind), which extended the game needlessly; also there were too few characters to interact with. But at least you have some nice puzzles and a cursor that doesn’t tell you what to do. A New Beginning is like the opposite: the story flows from the beginning to the end (well, maybe except in chapter 4) and you have more dialogues. But this time Daedelic has preferred an “inteligent” cursor that tells you what to do with the differents hotspots. This has narrowed the options the player has available to solve the puzzles. And this is too bad because the puzzles, even the myst type ones, are nicely integrated to the game. Regarding the story, it begins well, although some scenes are ridiculous and the writing is sometimes over the top, but from chapter 8 on the story isn’t that plausible and one doesn’t know what to think regarding the characters’ personalities.

Timequest. Really an excellent game, and it’s the first Legend game I have played. The story, the descriptions, the interface are great. The puzzles were well designed: although the majority of them were easy (I was stuck only two times), you have to think what to do and pay attention to the hints that are in the enviroment and all of them were really integrated in the story. The ending was really good, and, in my opinion, one of the best I have ever watched. I also liked the humour and the encounters with the different personalites from the past. It’s also worth noting the feel of “openness” to solve the problems, even if all of them have to be solved in a linear way.

After playing this games almost without rest between them, I think that one of the reasons of why new adventure games feel so easy is because of the interface they employ. For example, Timequest doesn’t have that many difficult puzzles, but I never felt that the game was so easy I could play it on automatic pilot and that the game had to tell me what to do next. So, Sceptic, I think you were right in that old thread regarding Gray Matter: maybe the puzzles weren’t bad, only the cursor. Maybe, if the developers returned to the old cursors, where you had to think about the diferent actions you needed to undertake, and not had one cursor that tells you what you have to do with a hotspot, then, just maybe, we can have more adventure games that feel fun again.
 

Sceptic

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Manny said:
Timequest. Really an excellent game, and it’s the first Legend game I have played. The story, the descriptions, the interface are great. The puzzles were well designed: although the majority of them were easy (I was stuck only two times), you have to think what to do and pay attention to the hints that are in the enviroment and all of them were really integrated in the story. The ending was really good, and, in my opinion, one of the best I have ever watched. I also liked the humour and the encounters with the different personalites from the past. It’s also worth noting the feel of “openness” to solve the problems, even if all of them have to be solved in a linear way.
:love:

I love the ending. It really is one of the finest I've played. For a turn-by-turn text adventure to create this kind of nail-biting thrill is quite something.

I don't agree about the linearity. Some of the eras are linked and have to be done in a specific order (the Charlemagne/Napoleon one for example) but many of them can be done in any order. And all of the "messages" can be acquired at any time before, during or after the time disruptions. And even most of the disruptions are independant of each other.

So, Sceptic, I think you were right in that old thread regarding Gray Matter: maybe the puzzles weren’t bad, only the cursor. Maybe, if the developers returned to the old cursors, where you had to think about the diferent actions you needed to undertake, and not had one cursor that tells you what you have to do with a hotspot
I always play Legend adventures with the "half" option instead of the full menu. The main reason (aside from extra space for text) is to get rid of the list of "usable" items in each area. Even this concession, I find, makes the games too easy. If you hide the menu, you have to look at the descriptions and/or the images to figure out which items could be useful before you even start thinking about how to accomplish your goal. With the list you just glance at the sidebar and automatically know which items you can interact with, which severely cuts down on the thinking required to solve the puzzles. It's not a huge difference, but I still find hiding the sidebar makes the games more fun because they're slightly more challenging. The hotspot cursors are even more streamlined: you know which items are needed AND don't usually need to think about what to do with them (granted this is a problem with high-res graphics too; there's so much detail that without hotspots it would be a real pain to figure out which items the developers bothered to program in). This was my major gameplay gripe with Noctropolis, where all puzzles solved themselves automatically; if you were carrying all the items necessary for a multi-step puzzle and clicked on just one of them in the right screen, the puzzle auto-solved itself. No fun.
 

jazzotron

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Another one for Gray Matter, here.

Last I played was Syberia based upon GOG reviews (yeah I know). Fucking painful for a variety of reasons.
 

Manny

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Sceptic said:
I don't agree about the linearity. Some of the eras are linked and have to be done in a specific order (the Charlemagne/Napoleon one for example) but many of them can be done in any order. And all of the "messages" can be acquired at any time before, during or after the time disruptions. And even most of the disruptions are independant of each other.

I think you’re right about the linearity thing: I was using the term in a wide sense and I didn´t realize it isn´t useful, because then all games would be considered linear.

Sceptic said:
I always play Legend adventures with the "half" option instead of the full menu. The main reason (aside from extra space for text) is to get rid of the list of "usable" items in each area. Even this concession, I find, makes the games too easy. If you hide the menu, you have to look at the descriptions and/or the images to figure out which items could be useful before you even start thinking about how to accomplish your goal. With the list you just glance at the sidebar and automatically know which items you can interact with, which severely cuts down on the thinking required to solve the puzzles. It's not a huge difference, but I still find hiding the sidebar makes the games more fun because they're slightly more challenging.

Thanks for the advice. Even after reading the manuals and experimenting with the menus, it didn’t occur to me playing Legend games with “half” option. I think that’s because english isn’t my first language and my vocabulary isn’t large enough. But I played Gateway that way, and it was nicer, not only because of the difficulty, but also because I had to examine the descriptions in a more thorough way. Having the possibility to choose the interface one prefers is really a great great thing in a game. I wish more games would take this route.

As a whole, I think Gateway is on par with Timequest. Gateway has, I think, better puzzles that Timequest. Regarding the structure, I like both the same, even if Gateway is a little more linear. I also like how both games manage to make the reason behind the adventure important in an individual and global manner for your character. But, in respect to the atmosphere and the coherence of the world, I think Timequest is a better game: I don’t like how the fantasy element surfaces in the virtual reality. I like the puzzles in them, but I think I was expecting something more “realistic” in a science fiction world. All in all, a great game.

Sceptic said:
The hotspot cursors are even more streamlined: you know which items are needed AND don't usually need to think about what to do with them (granted this is a problem with high-res graphics too; there's so much detail that without hotspots it would be a real pain to figure out which items the developers bothered to program in). This was my major gameplay gripe with Noctropolis, where all puzzles solved themselves automatically; if you were carrying all the items necessary for a multi-step puzzle and clicked on just one of them in the right screen, the puzzle auto-solved itself. No fun.

I haven’t played Noctropolis, but it’s on my playlist, even if I dislike what you are telling me regarding the interface: from what I´ve seen (the introduction and the beginning of the game), the atmosphere looks really good. But I understand you: playing the Legend games one can see how the interface is really important. But eliminating the hotspot cursors isn’t the solution, as you implied. Maybe if the games had a lot more hotspots than they do now, this problem could be solved. Or return to a parser like the Legend games. But I think, specially when I play recent games, that none of these options will happen.

Today, for example, I finished Edna & Harvey: The Breakout, and what a great game it was. I don’t know if you have played it, Sceptic, but if not you must. I think it’s a classic. The story, the characters, the humour, the atmosphere, the dialogues, the graphics (well, following the distinction the Codex love, the art direction) all of them are excellent. Here it’s a funny story, but, behind it, the player is going to find something “darker” (and not in the new rpgs hype way). I won’t say anything else not to spoil it for you. You have to play it to find out. Regarding the puzzles, they aren’t too difficult (some reviews say that, but, well, now, if the game doesn’t tell the players exactly what they have to do –like in Black Mirror games, for example-, then it’s a difficult game). They have a nice flow, some being more obvious and others where you have to think in creative ways, but all are logical in a madness context. The only problem in this regard is that the game doesn’ have any memorable puzzles. But this is easily forgiven because of a characteristic I haven’t seen in any other graphic adventure games (I can’t talk about text adventures): the level of interactive and reactive is astounding. For any action or combination of items you try, the game has a different answer: sometimes there is a commentary from Edna or Harvey, and sometimes you can do things to differents objects that don’t have anything to do directly with the game. For example, you can cut a poster, write “Edna was here” in a chair or pour kétchup on a plant. All these little details prevent the player from getting bored if he’s stuck and also give him a motivation to try the most diverse and ridicolous things. And works really nice, because you’re controlling a lunatic. And, finally, the interface isn’t the one cursor to do it all; here, at least you have walk, pick up, talk and use.

So, this is an excellent game in allmost all aspects. So that’s why I feel bad regarding the genre when I see this was the first game of Daedalic. One could hope they only have to improve. But no. The Whispered World and A New Beginning are not even close as good as Edna and Harvey, in almost all aspects. For example, none has the level of interactivity that Edna and Harvey had. And even if in The Whispered World the puzzles and the interface are on the old school side, the intelligent cursor and the evident puzzles of A New Beginning are a clear sign of the “casualitation” of their games. And it is symptomatic that two of the main pages of adventure games have given lower scores to Edna and Harvey than to the other games.

The same could be said about Telltale. I have read a lot of bad things in differents forums regarding how they make bad adventure games, including here, in the Codex. And I always have defended the company, because the first season of Sam & Max was ok, with two really good episodes (fourth and five), and the second season, from my point of view, is one of the best games I’ve played in recent years, with an episode, the fourth, on par with the classics in all aspects. But a week ago I played Tales of Monkey Island, and, well, I was a little disappointed. The best thing is the puzzle design: even if they aren’t that difficult, there is a lot of variation and also some lateral thinking involved. But the writing was bad, very bad. This made the characters not charming, and the humour hardly ever worked. The graphics, the music and the voices were ok, but I don’t really care that much about those things (except when they are too bad, like in Quest for Glory V, for example). All in all, even with two nice chapters (third and fourth, that are better than other recent adventure games), the series are inferior to the second season of Sam and Max, and inferior to the Lucas Arts games (well, except, maybe, the fourth; I have the impression that the Telltale game is a little better, but I’m not sure, because I played MI4 when it came out, and I´ve never played it again). And their Back to the Future, from what I´ve read, is worse than anything they have done before.

But, well, there is always hope that this state of things changes or that some new games are at least ok (like Gray Matter or Perry Rhodan). Meanwhile, I’m going to play the Space Quest Saga (I have played only the three first ones many years ago), alternating some more recent games, like Ceville or Sam and Max season three.
 

octavius

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I never had much patience for Adventure games, but before I could look up the (often too obscure) solutions on the Internet I enjoyed games like The Hobbit, The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Legend of the Sword and Journey. Deja Vu, Shadowgate and Uninvited were also fun, but Shadowgate and especially Uninvited were bloody hard.
Of these Legend of the Sword was my favourite. I still feel guilty for pirating it, but I never felt Adventure games offered the same value for money as RPGs and Strategy games, since they were so limited in scope and replayability.
 

Notorious

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Gray Matter and Book of Unwritten Tales - Vieh Chroniken. Both good games. But now i need more adventures, i'm an adventure gaming mood... hmmm...
 

Manny

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Octavius said:
I never had much patience for Adventure games, but before I could look up the (often too obscure) solutions on the Internet I enjoyed games like The Hobbit, The Pawn, Guild of Thieves, Legend of the Sword and Journey. Deja Vu, Shadowgate and Uninvited were also fun, but Shadowgate and especially Uninvited were bloody hard.
Of these Legend of the Sword was my favourite. I still feel guilty for pirating it, but I never felt Adventure games offered the same value for money as RPGs and Strategy games, since they were so limited in scope and replayability.

Of the games you mention, I only have played Deja Vu, and it’s really a good game (you can see my opinion in a post above). I have the other Icom games, but I haven’t played them yet. I know that they are hard and punish the player. But that’s ok to me. Legend of the Sword is a game I’m really intrigued about, because it doesn’t look like an adventure game, but from what I read about it, and now what you said, it plays as an adventure. After the Space Quest games, I think I’m going to try it.

Regarding the limited replayability, that’s true in the sense that all is the same once you have finished the game (except some games like the Quest for Glory or the Indiana Jones games, that have some variations), but, if it’s a good game, I don’t really care about that, because I enjoy the atmosphere, the dialogs, how the story develops, and even remembering the puzzles. I have played, for example, the first Gabriel Knight or the first Monkey Island at least ten times each one, and, in the future, I’m sure I will play them again. I’m not sure, on the other side, what you mean about “limited in scope”.

Notorious said:
Gray Matter and Book of Unwritten Tales - Vieh Chroniken. Both good games. But now i need more adventures, i'm an adventure gaming mood... hmmm...

Notorius, how is Book of Unwritten Tales regarding the puzzles? I have read the Adventure Gamers review and I’ve seen one of the trailers, and, from what I can deduce, it looks like they aren’t that good. Is that truth? And if so, the rest of the elements are so good as to make up for the puzzles. I know that there’s a demo, but it’s too big for me to download.

If you read what I wrote (I know it’s a little large), I can recommend you the second season of Sam & Max, from Telltale, and Edna & Harvey: The Breakout, from Daedalic, if you haven’t played them yet. And, if you don’t care how the interface and the puzzles were treated in Gray Matter, Pherry Rhodan is a good space opera game, that suffers from the same problems that Gray Matter. Also, there are some nice free indie games made with AGS I really like. You can try Technobabylon, first and second parts (the third one isn’t that good, because of the added minigames), and Snakes of Avalon. The first one is sf and the second a “psycological thriller” in an humorous way, with the main character being a drunk in a bar. Both are easy but nice games.
 

Notorious

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The puzzles are pretty straight forward but mostly logical and entertaining. Nothing special really. But the adventure itself is pretty decent with a lot of turns and many places to visit. I also liked the humor but that is obviously a matter of taste. I highly recommend it. (If the English synchronization is ok)

Thanks for the suggestions I will definitely look into it.
 

Redlands

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Does anyone know of any new adventure games with puzzles that aren't really easy? Like ones that require a couple of days of thinking to finally get?

I mean, I can enjoy an adventure game with a decent story (assuming the characters don't walk around like molasses on a cold day, and even then I can sometimes handle terrible interfaces if the story is good enough (such as Grim Fandango)) but damn it, every adventure game now just seems like a cakewalk in terms of puzzles.

Also, do any new adventure games actually kill you? I can see some people's perspectives that random Sierra-esque deaths may not be the best thing ever, but not having *any*, even when it makes sense in the story?

Excuse me for being a grumpy old cunt but at the moment adventure games just seem to be hand-holding interactive story books made for adults.
 

Jaesun

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Redlands said:
Does anyone know of any new adventure games with puzzles that aren't really easy? Like ones that require a couple of days of thinking to finally get?

There is the RHEM series.

It's like motherfucking collar-grabbing HARD CORE Myst, but with no interesting story. Well... kinda. The 2nd one was kinda interesting, story wise.

The graphics/animations are good. The low res might turn some off.

I've played I II and gave up on III.

II was actually my favorite. I could give it a quick review describing it like: riding an incredibly long and fun roller-coaster, and then (the second half) it slams into a brick wall killing all aboard.

Yes I am bitter.
 

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