Adventure Gaming Catch-All

Monkey Island is the reason I can't fully get behind any other Pirate themed franchise...Guybrush Threepwood > Jack Sparrow.

Better late than never, Shoptroll. Glad you enjoyed it.
Now onwards to LeChuck's revenge!!

That's such an awesome game, Shoptroll. I'm glad to hear you finally got to play it.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

One of my formative gaming memories was playing Monkey Island with my dad. He helped me solve the puzzles but didn't do them for me. That has a lot to do with my fondness for adventure games now.

I think if my life had gone a different route I probably would've been more of a PC RPG/Adventure kid growing up than a Nintendo + JRPG kid. We had access to Apple II's and early DOS/Windows PCs during the "golden age", I just wasn't really in tune with what was out on PC because my parents got me a subscription to Nintendo Power instead of something like CGW or PCGamer. My first DOS game experience was SimCity and that was something I only recognized because of the deep dives NP did on the SNES version.

Eleima wrote:

Now onwards to LeChuck's revenge!!

Heh, that's not for a while I've got a big pile-up of possible new releases to check out starting this week, and even then I'll probably hit the other adventures I already own before I buy anything new...

For you UK and European people: AdventureX is November 11th and 12th this year. They've got a fully-funded Kickstarter going right now to help improve the event.

Oh sweet! Except I have 1 & 2 sitting in my library and haven't played them yet. Heh. Looked really cool though, so need to get around to them sooner rather than later.

In other adventure game news, I finish Full Throttle Remastered which was pretty cool. I wasn't over the moon for it like most people seemed to be, but I liked it well enough and would still recommend it.

Moved on to Sam & Max:Season One, curtesy of the Telltale bundle. It's uneven at best, dated, with racist, sexist and transphobic jokes here and there (one would hope we've moved on from those, but I'm not fooling myself, we've still got a long way to go). It's not nearly as good as the old Hit the Road classic.

The Journey Down series is good stuff; would recommend.

Eleima wrote:

It's not nearly as good as the old Hit the Road classic.

I still need to play Hit the Road, but when I played Season 1 I definitely had a "how did this get so much praise at launch?" reaction. Which I think was largely due to there being a big drought of adventure games in 2006 when TT hit the scene and people were desperate to get anything remotely similar to LucasArts?

Yeah, it's... ugh, I'd have a hard time recommending it to anyone who isn't a hardcore Sam & Max fan (I was going to write "S&M" but, heh). Some of the jokes are really tasteless.

You guys certainly aren't wrong in your estimations. "S&M" Episodes were... torture. I think I made it through, maybe, half before it was just too eye-rolling even for my questionable standards.

I feel that shoptroll hits the nail on the head with the whole drought insight and the Sam & Max episodes popularity at the time.

I need to get back on my TT backlog. Tales from the Borderlands was surprisingly well put together (I still laugh about anything Loaderbot related (though that may depend on my specific choices). Any-r-who, I feel that GoT and Batman might be a letdown after that freedom. Looking forward to what the Life is Strange folks do with Vampyr. Er, need to finish most of LiS though.

I never did brave season 2+ of Sam & Max after really not enjoying my time with Season 1. I heard they improved somewhat (although I suspect that's in terms of technology, rather than tastefulness).

* * *

I finished up the second episode of Guardians of the Galaxy a couple of days ago and...it's really rather dull (apart from one optional scene involving Rocket's past which was pretty good and kinda heartbreaking)

Spoiler:

Especially because it involved an adorable sentient Otter :3

Also their tech is REALLY starting to show it's age. A big part of why it felt dull and lifeless was the rather stilted way the 'action' looks as the engine struggles to keep up and make things look dramatic.

I honestly think Telltale should take a look at the likes of LiS and Until Dawn, and maybe go back to the drawing board with some of their stuff (much as I still like the stories they put out most of the time) as they are kind of risking falling behind in the "interactive storytelling" department - both in technology and in the way people interact with them.

On that note - Batman Season 2 starts today! I liked the first season so... Should be interesting...?

Oh, how is Until Dawn? It wasn't on my radar until I heard about it in the Ladies of Leet podcast, but then I saw it was a PS4 exclusive.

It's actually REALLY good. A bit tropey, but in a knowing way (it's very much an homage to teen horror movies, sort of) so you start off with your basic unlikable horror movie protagonist templates (virginal leading lady, nerdy jokester, letter jacket jock, horny blonde, smart but b*tchy asian woman etc) although their roles tend to get tweaked and fleshed out a bit as you go through the story.

Like most of these things, it claims many different paths and results to the ending while being about 80% smoke and mirrors, but it's still a lot of fun. Pretty high production value and cast for this type of thing as well (Hayden panettiere, Peter Stormare, the Mr Robot guy - a bunch of people you've probably "seen in things"!)

Still only PS4 though, sadly. Would be good to see this on other platforms.

* * *

Something else to look out for. I finished up the demo for Code 7 (essentially a prelude chapter of the game) and it's REALLY COOL. Think Duskers, played entirely through a Command Line Interface, but instead of drones, you're manipulating the environment (hacking computers and machinery) and interacting with your partner on a recon mission to a distant space station to find out why the crew haven't checked in recently.

It plays sort of like a mix of Telltale games (It's episodic, and there seems to be choices to make which I'm assuming go across chapters of the game) , text adventures (although there is audio, dialogue and some tense real-time scenes where you need to act and type fast) and System Shock.

The demo is up on Steam, I HIGHLY recommend you give it a try if you like weird faux-hacking style cyberpunk horror games.

Recreational Villain wrote:

I feel that shoptroll hits the nail on the head with the whole drought insight and the Sam & Max episodes popularity at the time.

I don't take credit for that though. I'm pretty sure that's just something I picked up via osmosis from reading too much John Walker and Richard Cobbett commentary on the genre.

pyxistyx wrote:

I never did brave season 2+ of Sam & Max after really not enjoying my time with Season 1. I heard they improved somewhat (although I suspect that's in terms of technology, rather than tastefulness).

Season 3 is reportedly better. I really don't remember anything super offensive in the first season but 1) it's been a while and 2) there are definitely certain tropes and jokes I'm much more aware of now. I will say that I think even then I found the first season a bit of a slog to get through design-wise. It's pretty mediocre and having played more of the genre since then I definitely agree with the assessments that the critical response was disproportionate to the actual quality.

Eleima wrote:

Oh, how is Until Dawn? It wasn't on my radar until I heard about it in the Ladies of Leet podcast, but then I saw it was a PS4 exclusive. :(

It is fantastic. I love that game.

shoptroll wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:

I never did brave season 2+ of Sam & Max after really not enjoying my time with Season 1. I heard they improved somewhat (although I suspect that's in terms of technology, rather than tastefulness).

Season 3 is reportedly better. I really don't remember anything super offensive in the first season but 1) it's been a while and 2) there are definitely certain tropes and jokes I'm much more aware of now. I will say that I think even then I found the first season a bit of a slog to get through design-wise. It's pretty mediocre and having played more of the genre since then I definitely agree with the assessments that the critical response was disproportionate to the actual quality.

I do intend to move on to season two and three?, so I'll be reporting back. But I'm taking a break in between. Incidentally, The Journey Down is really good, you guys!

Mario_Alba wrote:
Eleima wrote:

Oh, how is Until Dawn? It wasn't on my radar until I heard about it in the Ladies of Leet podcast, but then I saw it was a PS4 exclusive. :(

It is fantastic. I love that game.

I don't think I'll be buying a PS4 just for its sake though.

Oh, hey. Looks like Black Mirror (not The Charlie Brooker one!) is getting the reboot/remake treatment. :O

Sounds like they're totally rebooting the setting too, the first one was set somewhere in South-west England? I think? But this version is set in Scotland.

Scotland, 1926. Following the death of his father, David Gordon visits his ancestral home for the first time in his life. A life that is soon threatened by the dark secrets that claimed the sanity of many Gordons before him. Blood is not always thicker than water.

It's by King Games who made the Unwritten Tales games and Black Mirror 2 and 3 (which were both surprisingly excellent horror adventure P&C games...the first Black Mirror, not so much).

Also, the first part of Daedelic's new game series, The Pillars of the Earth (apparently it's quite a popular book I've not read). Is out today.

The art is just... <3 !

I haven't read the books, but the 9 part mini-series is excellent. I'm hoping to play this when I get some free time.

pyxistyx wrote:

Also, the first part of Daedelic's new game series, The Pillars of the Earth (apparently it's quite a popular book I've not read). Is out today.

I read the novel years ago and it was wonderful, the best novel I had read in years.

The miniseries was also well done.

I read the sequel, World Without End, but don't remember too much about it. I liked it, but not as much as Pillars.

-BEP

Pillars of the Earth is one of my favorite books. I have reread it 3 or 4 times and have given it as gifts to a half dozen friends. Also, this is a pretty cool video about two guys who worked for Sierra Online in the mid-1990s swapping stories.

The Pillars of the Earth is an outstanding novel. Definitely worth reading.

I saw Pilars of the Earth on the storefront last night and immediately added it to my wishlist. I saw the miniseries then read the novel, and since those are so linear, I'm curious to see what a game will do.
And I agree, Pyxi, the art is just... yum.

i suspect because they call it an "interactive story" and episodic, that it's going to be more along the lines of a Telltale game rather than a regular point and click game. But, I'm skint until my student loan payments start up again so it'll be a little while before I find out first hand!

Eleima wrote:

I saw Pilars of the Earth on the storefront last night and immediately added it to my wishlist. I saw the miniseries then read the novel, and since those are so linear, I'm curious to see what a game will do.
And I agree, Pyxi, the art is just... yum.

...and the music in the trailer on Steam was beautiful. Adding to the list.

Garg. I finished Clockwork Tales: Of Glass and Ink, but somehow missed finding one collectible bug in the last third of the game. I'm one bug away from getting 100% on the achievements, but it doesn't look like there is any way to go back into the previous save and find the last bug.

So to get 100% I'd have to play through almost all of the game again. It only took 4 hours on the hardest difficulty, so I think I could get there in about 2 hours second time through. Normally I could care less, but that one last missing bug is ... bugging me so.

So this is finally happening:

(Source)

The Journey Down: Chapter 3 is now out!