Adventure Gaming Catch-All

I've not heard of them before, but DotEmu now has The Last Express available for download.

They look to be a bit of a GoG lite. I think they did games of their own for a while.

tanstaafl wrote:

I've not heard of them before, but DotEmu now has The Last Express available for download.

They look to be a bit of a GoG lite. I think they did games of their own for a while.

And I believe that it's optimized for running on modern pcs, much like GOG does.

UCRC wrote:

I've sent this list to friend of mine, and instead of 'thanks' message I got back was this: WHERE IS THE LAST EXPRESS?
At first I thought that he missed it, but I've checked and it seems that my second-favourite adventure game of all times isn't there at all.
It's one of deepest, most immersive, most ambitious experiences in all gaming history, yet, totally unfamiliar to most of gamers, because it was published at the very, very wrong time. If it wasn't for piece in Escapist I wouldn't even know it existed. It's so awesome, that it should be every gamer's duty to play it.

(Wow, this thread is two years old now.) That's my original post from 2009. Last Express is absolute must play.

tanstaafl wrote:

I've not heard of them before, but DotEmu now has The Last Express available for download.

They look to be a bit of a GoG lite. I think they did games of their own for a while.

I JUST found this last night, searching for games with interesting AI. The Last Express looks really, really cool. I haven't heard of DotEmu before, though. Any word on the quality of their service?

Sweet! One more of our "must-plays" is available. Added the link.

Sorry for not maintaining this as much lately, I resolve to be better about it in 2011.

Now I really want to give Last Express another go, haven't played it in two years. Anyone else trying it out?

UCRC wrote:

Now I really want to give Last Express another go, haven't played it in two years. Anyone else trying it out?

Same here after hearing so much about it on Idle Thumbs.

just subscribing to the thread, don't mind me =)

Police quest 1-4 and the Zork Anthology* are on GoG now.

* which for some bizarre reason also contains planetfall. Huh. Alas it lacks Grand Inquisitor and Nemesis, which is a shame, i quite liked those two.

I never did manage to get into the Police Quest games originally - worth picking up?

Yeah, not sure what Planetfall is doing in there. If nothing else, what about Stationfall? And Enchanter/Sorcerer/Spellbreaker are more in line with the original Zorks anyway.

stevenmack wrote:

Alas it lacks Grand Inquisitor and Nemesis, which is a shame, i quite liked those two

Don't forget Return to Zork, which was my personal favorite of the graphical Zork games. I didn't care for Nemesis at all, it didn't feel like a Zork game at all, but Grand Inquisitor was quite good too.

Latrine wrote:

Don't forget Return to Zork, which was my personal favorite of the graphical Zork games.

Want some Rye? 'Course ya do.

I beat most of the Zorks back in the day, but my favorite has to be Beyond Zork. There's something about that game, the imagery still sticks with me.

Bonus_Eruptus wrote:
UCRC wrote:

Now I really want to give Last Express another go, haven't played it in two years. Anyone else trying it out?

Same here after hearing so much about it on Idle Thumbs.

Haha, by coincidence I'm in middle of re-listening to IT and just got to the episode (Dreaming of Gillen) where they talk about Jordan Mechner and Last Express.

edit: random thought: somebody should port it for iOS. Point and click adventures seem to port really well and Last Express would play amazing on iPad. Anyway, installing it on my PC now
BTW: while it was installing I had a look at Mechner's website. Apparently February issue of Edge has LE retrospective.
Okay, time to play.

Dysplastic wrote:
Latrine wrote:

Don't forget Return to Zork, which was my personal favorite of the graphical Zork games.

Want some Rye? 'Course ya do.

Shucks. As if you even had to ask anymore.

FYI: The first three in the Broken Sword series are available on Steam now. I just knocked off the first two and am enjoying #3.

Looks like GOG now has The Last Express for $5.99.

ebarstad wrote:

GOG

Boo!

ebarstad wrote:

$5.99

Yeah!

stevenmack wrote:

Police quest 1-4 and the Zork Anthology* are on GoG now.

Oso wrote:

FYI: The first three in the Broken Sword series are available on Steam now. I just knocked off the first two and am enjoying #3.

ebarstad wrote:

Looks like GOG now has The Last Express for $5.99.

Thanks, updated all links. I'm excited about running through The Last Express again. The Zork pack is pretty cool too, but I'm a bigger fan of Return to Zork than any of those. Still need buy links for Return, Nemesis and Grand Inquisitor, if anyone ever comes across those on your travels.

I'm picking up the Last Express when I hit a dry spell. It sounds like a very interesting title based upon what Idle Thumbs has said about it.

SuperDave wrote:

I'm picking up the Last Express when I hit a dry spell. It sounds like a very interesting title based upon what Idle Thumbs has said about it.

Well, it is on the must-play list in the OP...I'd hate to think that guy doesn't know his stuff.

ebarstad wrote:

Looks like GOG now has The Last Express for $5.99.

Well, guess I just ran out of excuses not to grab it.

Now if only my internet connection wasn't hopelessly crippled I might actually be able to download the thing. A pox on you BT!

Crossposted from the VG Deals thread - GoG has all of the Tex Murphy games at 60% off for the weekend: http://www.gog.com/en/news/tex_murph...

Subscribing to thread. Did anyone ever try out Alternativa?

PC Gamer has an interesting interview with Jonathan Blow about his upcoming adventure game, The Witness. The headline is about him calling social games evil, but the meat of the interview is about how he's trying to evolve the adventure game template with his new game.

Jonathan Blow wrote:

It’s that, for most genres of game, gameplay has really been streamlined. A lot of problems have been fixed, things are better.

So, if you play Super Meat Boy for example, it’s a lot like an old-school platformer, but it’s refined. That game could have been made in the early nineties technically, but the design sensibility is very modern. So, it’s a product of modern design ideas.

That happened to all the genres, but it never quite happened in adventure games. The core gameplay of a racing game, for example, has been refined. It’s way more interesting than Pole Position was in the arcade, you know. Much more sophisticated. A first person shooter is a lot about knowing what’s happening on the map. Especially if it’s multiplayer, like, who is where? And all this stuff. It’s been iterated and refined.

Adventure games are still what they used to be. And what the core gameplay actually is, is very different from what the designer intends. The designer wants it to be, “It’s going to be cool puzzle solving. There’s going to be a story and stuff.” But really what’s actually going through the players head in adventure games is, “I don’t know if I should be clicking on this thing” or “I don’t know if this is a puzzle” or “I don’t know if I need an item to solve this that I don’t have yet, or if I’m just not thinking.”

Adventure games are all confusion. If it’s text, it’s “Why doesn’t the parser understand me still?” So the core gameplay of adventure games is actually fumbling through something, right? And that’s true with modern [versions]. All the episodic stuff that’s coming out. And there’s a whole community that makes modern interactive fiction games and all this stuff. And it’s true for all these games.

So the long-winded way of getting to the point is that one of the design ideas behind The Witness is that it is inspired by games like Myst and… even text based adventure games, even to an extent of the feel of the world. But adventure gameplay is fundamentally broken so if you’re going to take modern design ideas and modern design sensibility and change adventure so that they’re playable by modern standards, what does that genre turn into? And there’s a bunch of different things that it could turn into and [The Witness] is just one of them.

As much as I enjoy adventure games, he has a very good point. The majority of my time with an adventure game, even more modern ones, it spent wondering what I'm supposed to do next, whether there's a puzzle that I'm missing, and whether or not I have everything I need to solve the task at hand. My wife and I have recently been playing through the Strongbad games, and most of them are so poorly structured that we've either spent our time wondering what to do next or else felt completely railroaded into annoyingly simple puzzles.

At the same time, I think that's part of the appeal of the genre for its diehard fans. There's something appealing about not only figuring out the solution to a puzzle but also finding the puzzle to begin with. It's a niche appeal, to be sure, but it's there.

The other enjoyable aspect of adventure games, is the feeling when you open up a new area to visit

Telltale Rebooting Sierra's Kings Quest, Confirms Puzzle Agent Sequel

Personally I wish they were doing Space Quest instead, the time is ripe for more sci-fi parody. I don't really see how to revamp King's Quest for a modern audience and make it relevant.

Also in case you missed it they also announced The Walking Dead and Fables adaptations. Actually now that I think about it, King's Quest is really a weird choice if they're already doing Fables.

Too bad there's no Telltale stock that I could have bought a year or two ago - they're really turning on the afterburners lately. Can't wait to give all of those new series a spin.

Latrine wrote:

Telltale Rebooting Sierra's Kings Quest, Confirms Puzzle Agent Sequel

Personally I wish they were doing Space Quest instead, the time is ripe for more sci-fi parody. I don't really see how to revamp King's Quest for a modern audience and make it relevant.

Thanks for the link. That article also reminded me that The Silver Lining released a few episodes already. Last time I looked into it there was only a teaser trailer, no actual playable stuff. Downloading episodes 1, 2 and 3 now.

Stele wrote:

Thanks for the link. That article also reminded me that The Silver Lining released a few episodes already. Last time I looked into it there was only a teaser trailer, no actual playable stuff. Downloading episodes 1, 2 and 3 now.

Oh wow...I followed that project for almost ten years. Last I heard they'd gotten shut down by Sierra, which hacked everyone off. Glad to see they're up and running! I'll play through those right away and post my impressions. Super excited!