3342 replies to this topic

[Space Voyager]

Are there any recent adventure games where you need to type commands like Space Quest 1,2,3 etc.?

Or are all of them point-and-click type?

Also, which one would you recommend the most?

[FullAuto]

They are all point 'n click these days, I'm afraid!  The only ones I'm aware of where you have to type commands are the odd text adventure.  Best of those I stumbled across recently is Anchorhead, a Lovecraft-inspired job.  Rather good.

Best adventure I've played recently (though I haven't played many) is The Blackwell Legacy, which is quite old school in appearance, but the story is good and the voice acting is well above par (not exactly difficult, I know).

Haven't played Still Life much so far, but it seems to be very good quality all round.

[Space Voyager]

Thanks. I'll read up on these.

[FullAuto]

Interesting interview with Charles Cecil, of Revolution fame.  Responsible for such crimes against reality as Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Swords.

Some choice excerpts:

Quote

VideoGamer.com: Do you see a future where digital distribution leads to no more publishers, maybe no more retailers?

CC: I think it's going to be an awfully long time before there's no more retailers. Certainly those games selling for £40 that cost $100 million to develop, they're going to go through retail aren't they? Part of the problem is a retailer, they talk about Best Buy or whoever, the fact that you have X number of slots, I think they've got 40 slots on DS. So what happens to that 41st game and the 42nd and the 43rd? Clearly these big retailers say we don't care. But they're always going to go for Kung Fu Panda aren't they? They're always going to go for the obvious ones because that is what they know they will sell and they can rely on and is no risk. So it cuts out a lot of innovative products. What digital distribution allows, as well as bypassing retailers which is a different matter, is the ability to offer choice. What's really exciting is it creates an indie scene among consumers who are very happy to go and buy their games digitally. Then they expect to do it for the fraction of the price, they expect to pay £5 or $5 rather than £40 or $40. But if you look at the maths the retailer's taking 40%, the publisher gives a percentage so in the end the developer's getting a percentage of a percentage. They can afford to sell an awful lot less if they go directly.

Quote

VideoGamer.com: For you personally the Broken Sword series is the one that everyone is looking to the next iteration. There is a petition online for a return to the series. How's that worked out?

CC: The petition for the DS was extraordinarily flattering. I was rather a little bit miffed because somebody wrote about it and said we'd organised it.

Broken Sword DS?  Shurely not!  But wait!

Quote

VideoGamer.com: So given the petition would you consider a DS version remake like it calls for?

CC: I'm going to have to be really boring now and just say that the petition was really inspirational. But I'm really not allowed to say any more than that.

VideoGamer.com: Is this what you were talking about with Ubisoft?

CC: I can't... no. I think that the DS is an ideal platform for a point and click adventure. I think it's actually better than point and click in many ways in the interface, because it's so tactile.

VideoGamer.com: Obviously you have an army of fans who are completely in love with the titles which you've made in the past and the DS and indeed the Wii seem like platforms that have potentially allowed the genre to enjoy a renaissance. Is that something you'd go along with?

CC: 100%. Again I just wish that we were having this interview in about a month's time. Then you'd be asking me much more direct questions!

And

Quote

VideoGamer.com: I guess for a game like Broken Sword keeping it 2D especially on the DS it seems like a natural fit.

CC: Of course.

VideoGamer.com: So the message to fans is?

CC: Watch this space, yes. There will be an official announcement. Not there may be, there will be an official announcement. I'm really sorry to be so vague about it but that's just the way it is.

Sounds quite encouraging considering he's not actually said anything!

[FullAuto]

Unsolved Crimes.



"Correct, blood is red.  You are a forensic genius.  With insight like that, you could be the next chief of police!"

Trailer.

The driving sections look tacked on, but I hold out hope for the rest.

[FullAuto]

Brutal Legend!!!  Tim Schafer's new effort.

[FullAuto]

Broken Sword is getting a re-release on the Wii and DS in a director's cut form!

Announcement.

Screens.

[FullAuto]

Scribblenauts.

Quote

What Scribblenauts is about in a nutshell is basically "Anything you write, you can use." That's where the concept really came from. It's the idea of "What if you had all these puzzles, and in order to solve them you can write anything; the limit is your imagination." How you do that is through this character Maxwell. As Maxwell you have to grab in-level objects called Starites, and to do that you can write anything you want, and it'll spawn that object. So if there's a Starite in the tree, you could write "ladder" and then a ladder would spawn. Climb up the ladder, and you grab the Starite.

There're more ways of doing it though obviously. You could write "axe", and then cut the tree down using the object you spawned. You could write "shuriken" and throw that at the Starite in the tree and knock it down. It's all based on real physics and interaction, so there's nothing pre-canned. You could write anything though; imagine you write "goldfish" for some reason, well a goldfish would spawn and sit on the ground. It wouldn't help you at all in that puzzle, but you could do it.

[FullAuto]

Does anyone know anything about The Whispered World?  It looks very pretty indeed.

There is a demo around, apparently...

[FullAuto]

Gabriel Knight writer does new game!

She has a blog!

Quote

Gray Matter is the first adventure game by renowned author Jane Jensen since the release of Gabriel Knight 3: the story mixes eerie goings-on with supernatural events in best Jensen-style. Neurobiologist Dr. David Styles is one of the game’s central characters: since losing his wife in a horrible accident some several years ago, he has become a recluse, seldom leaving Dread Hill House, his English country estate.

When student and part-time street performer Samantha Everett shows up at his doorstep, she unexpectedly becomes his assistant. Hailing from America, she has been travelling through most of Europe the last couple years. Her first task: finding six test subjects at Oxford University for one of Styles’ experiments.

The experiment starts off innocently enough, but then inexplicable incidents start mounting. And Styles is visited by his dear departed wife. Now it’s up to Sam to solve the mysteries of Dread Hill House.

[Slaughter]

Tim Schafer interview.

[Gimli]

Found this one called Morningstar on Kongregate. Love the effort they put into the opening and ending cinematic.
And yeah, those stone heads were pretty creepy.

[FullAuto]

Activision are total arseholes.

My God, EA are the good guys for once.  Never thought I'd say that.

How pathetic is that?  "We passed on the chance to publish the game, but no-one else can publish it because it would hurt us."

[Pete]

Well bear in mind EA will on;y be interested in the big money, but yeah, Activision can be arseholes at times alright.

[FullAuto]

I dunno in this case.  I don't believe the "We're not evil any more, honest." line from EA, but I can't see Brutal Legend being the sort of million-seller EA churn out every year.  Okay, it has Schafer behind it so a lot of older adventure game fans will be pulled in, but the vast majority of the market won't give a toss.  I think it will make them a profit, but they are taking a risk (look at Psychonauts, didn't it sink Double Fine's publisher then?).

[Matri]

Yeah, you're talking about the same EA who re-re-re-releases the same damned FIFA and Madden games every single damned year.

[Gimli]

The Whispered World English demo

Play this now. The English dialogue was written by Steve Ince (Broken Sword). Great hand drawn graphics and lots of great humor. I accept thanks in foreign currency.

[FullAuto]

I pointed that out more than a year ago, damn your dwarven eyes!

[chiasaur11]

And here I was thinking there'd be suggestions for an X-Com adventure game in light of the FPS announcement.

I can see it now. We're talking cruelty that makes Hitchhiker's look like Sam and Max.

[FullAuto]

Gray Matter preview.

This game has took seven years to get made, but it's being written by the same talented lady who wrote the Gabriel Knights.