Adventure Gaming Catch-All

For anyone interested, Technocrat Games posted a post-mortem for Technobabylon which Wadjet Eye published earlier this year.

I was so excited to toe dip into King's Quest this morning, but the game said I needed to download the latest update. I tried to do that and it said everything was updated. No biggie - that happened on my Last of Us remaster too and that was solved with a simple delete and reinstall... So I deleted it and reinstalled, and had the same result. What the heck, PS4? Now I suspect my gaming time this evening willb e spent on Sony customer support.

Has anyone managed to play it? I haven't seen a review anywhere and I'm eager to know if it is as good as I hope it is!

All I've seen floating around is a preview, and it seems pretty positive. Not sure if it's officially out, though, I thought it was still a few days away?

Today is the release date for Chapter One.

Speak of the devil - here's Justin McElroy's review on Polygon of KQ2015:
http://www.polygon.com/2015/7/28/903...

Good to go in armed with slow load times knowledge. I don't mind leisurely strolls through Daventry, so I'm excited that they responded so positively to the world building, writing and acting!

Now, if only I can get it to work...

Slow load times? Are they building it in Unity by any chance?

They're also speaking specifically about the XBox One version. I wonder if the PC version has the same loading issues.

The loading issue turned out to be that I had pre-ordered it, which allowed me to download it but wouldn't let me play until I purchased it again for $0.00. Yup, the solution was that inane.

I got to play the intro section, and my first impressions are really great. It is both fun and funny, with fantastic vocal performances and great characters. There are already a ton of little King's Quest nods. The game is positively oozing charm - like almost too much charm.

So far I've found the pacing pretty brisk, and the load times haven't been nearly as long as the Polygon review had me bracing for, but I'll see how that develops as I progress through the game.

My experience with Polygon's reviewers is that they're a lot less tolerant of technical issues than I am. Their terribly inconsistent framerate is my occasional, largely unnoticed framerate change. Their terrible loading times are my loading times that are maybe a little long but really not a big deal.

Yeah, what I''m hearing from folks is only positive. Granted, no one I've talked to has played more then an hour or two.

The average play-through time for this chapter is apparently five or six hours so an hour or two is actually a pretty healthy chunk of the game.

Funny, Justin McElroy is getting a bit defensive about reactions to his review:

Weird seeing folks deflect my King’s Quest criticism by saying it’s how classic adventure games work. As if that genre didn’t,you know, die.

https://twitter.com/JustinMcElroy/st...

As if that genre didn't, you know, maintain roughly the same level of sales it had before while it was eclipsed by other more popular genres. (And let's not talk about the bajillion hidden object adventure games making a bunch of money on mobile platforms.)

ClockworkHouse wrote:

As if that genre didn't, you know, maintain roughly the same level of sales it had before while it was eclipsed by other more popular genres. (And let's not talk about the bajillion hidden object adventure games making a bunch of money on mobile platforms.)

And the runaway success of Telltale's take on the genre.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

As if that genre didn't, you know, maintain roughly the same level of sales it had before while it was eclipsed by other more popular genres. (And let's not talk about the bajillion hidden object adventure games making a bunch of money on mobile platforms.)

To be fair, companies exited the genre also because those sales probably weren't to cover the increasing development costs as the genre moved into 3D.

shoptroll wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

As if that genre didn't, you know, maintain roughly the same level of sales it had before while it was eclipsed by other more popular genres. (And let's not talk about the bajillion hidden object adventure games making a bunch of money on mobile platforms.)

To be fair, companies exited the genre also because those sales probably weren't to cover the increasing development costs as the genre moved into 3D.

True. And FMV turned out to be an expensive dead-end for the genre as a whole.

I just find the "this genre died" argument to be fairly ignorant and easily refuted. "This genre had other genres become more popular with the rise of what we now consider to be 'core' gamers" probably doesn't have quite the same snarky ring to it, though, does it?

Wow, yeah. Justin's comments are completely ignorant when you deliberately take them out of context.

True. And FMV turned out to be an expensive dead-end for the genre as a whole.

Someone hasn't played Her Story or Contradiction...

NSMike wrote:
True. And FMV turned out to be an expensive dead-end for the genre as a whole.

Someone hasn't played Her Story or Contradiction...

That was true at the time. Not so much anymore.

On a different topic, Cradle is looking to be really interesting although I've not had a chance to delve into it too deeply yet. It's getting some really good buzz so far though!

That's going on the wishlist.

Got to play more King's Quest this morning. I had one laugh-to-the-point of tears moment - I'm really digging it! It feels like a King's Quest game even if the mechanics hew closer to a Telltale and some of the comedic beats borrow a page from Monkey Island in terms of how they utilize the absurd. I've yet to encounter long load times or pacing issues - in fact I'd say the load times are pretty instantaneous. It makes me wonder if the press version just wasn't fully optimized to run efficiently or something. There are even a few moments where you get something and need to backtrack and shortcuts open up.

The writing is really hilarious, particularly if you keep trying to do the same incorrect actions over and over. (BTW - If you see a broken horn, keep blowing into it.) There's an awful lot of easter eggs and fun narration that comes from the various dead ends, so I definitely encourage trying to "break" the game!

My only real quipe is that I haven't run into a puzzle that's particularly challenging, but it is early.

Here's where I am (still pretty early) if anyone else is playing:

Spoiler:

Graham just got introduced to Manny, the character voiced by Wallace Shawn.

Oh good grief, 11th Hour is *bad*. It's epic levels of badness. I'm going to finish it, because I don't know that I ever did when we got it 20 years ago, but... oh wow, it's sooooo bad. Word of advice: stick to 7th Guest.

Also: if Stauf was so rich and wanted to have such a fancy mansion... Did he really need to have only a single bathroom in there?!?

Eleima wrote:

Oh good grief, 11th Hour is *bad*. It's epic levels of badness. I'm going to finish it, because I don't know that I ever did when we got it 20 years ago, but... oh wow, it's sooooo bad. Word of advice: stick to 7th Guest. :D

While 7th guest was a driving factor in upgrading my PC at the time (or maybe it was Myst -- I definitely needed to upgrade to a faster CD-ROM drive around then), it also led directly to preferring to play games with headphones on ("Feeling looooonely?") to avoid the mockery of those around me.

11th Hour is even worse in that regard, you're taunted and teased at every turn. I found it really annoying.

This was posted on Eurogamer today and I thought some of you might enjoy it: Broken Sword and 25 Years of Revolution

Book of Unwritten Tales 2 has been such a delight so far. It represents the best of point and click adventure games.

If anyone is interested, I'll likely be covering the new King's Quest on UMB sometime in September. So get playing so I can have a ton of listener comments!

Spoiler:

(for those who haven't gotten it yet, I *may* also have a steam key to give away after that show comes out...)

Thirteenth wrote:

Book of Unwritten Tales 2 has been such a delight so far. It represents the best of point and click adventure games.

It's such a wonderful game. The whole series is so damn great!