Point & Click Adventure / Mystery Games

This is genre I've always wanted to get back into but never got around to - but now that GOG has a ton of them, it's been getting easier. Deponia rocks (though I have yet to finish it), and it's freaking awesome to be able to play Police Quest again. Found out there

I've been playing the Blackwell Series recently, and I have mixed but generally positive feelings about it: I love the setting, the story, the characters, etc, and while I like the mechanics in general the progression sometimes bugs me - albeit in different ways for each game. The notetaking system is awesome, albeit the use of it in the second game so far is bugging me. I finished the first and am partway through the second atm, currently hoping that not all the games in the series are as short as the first.

But, as much as I'm loving it so far it did bug me in places... in Blackwell Legacy, in a few places I ran into a problem I typically associate with Monkey Island: for a couple of the puzzles, there is one or even several obvious solutions, but you're not allowed to use them - instead, you have to hunt down the more obscure thing the character wants to do to solve the problem (Monkey Island gets a pass because the solutions are generally comically absurd on purpose (Deponia is like this too, but is still a bit more logical), while this game doesn't). That and the fact that the final puzzle came down to finding a random Lightly Colored Patch and doing something unexpected with it left a bad aftertaste to an otherwise great game, imo.

I had a different problem with the second game, Unbound, which has another issue I'm familiar with (but don't associate with any particular game) - you're dragged along, starving for actions and moving one lead at a time. You finally find a single lead to progress, and while the new area has a variety of actions you can take very few of them actually give you any means of progressing, and sometimes you get all excited to get a new area only to be given nothing whatsoever.

It's particularly noticeable in this series, because you typically progress in the series by getting info to put into your notebook, which can be combined and which you need to interview people about to progress further and find more notes - and it's jarring, because in Legacy Rose wrote down pretty much everything, whereas Lauren barely ever does, even when she should. As a result, while you get a lot of information you only get the option to use a little of it. That, combined with the one-thing-that-causes-progression sometimes being a bit obscure, makes things feel limited in ways they shouldn't, imo.

But eh. It's not a point and click adventure game if its not bugging the crap out of you as you play it. Still really glad that GOG is getting me back into the genre.

Is this a general topic for discussion of adventure games?

Adventure games are perhaps my first love amongst the genres of games (with story-heavy RP Gs close behind).

I haven't yet played the Blackwell games, although they're on my list of games that I'm interested in but haven't yet gotten around to.

As to puzzles, I love it when games allow multiple solutions to puzzles (as could be found—for some puzzles, at least—in A Tale of Two Kingdoms and the Quest for Glory series)—but the inclusion of such does, I fear, impose a cost in implementing all of those solutions.

I believe the commentaries of the Blackwell Legacy did state those were two of the three huge mistakes Dave Gilbert regrets about this game.

Also, Unbound was supposed to be just flashbacks in Convergence.

edited 9th Oct '14 11:15:41 AM by GaryCXJk

I enjoyed The Shivah, but I did have the same problem I do with almost every adventure game (and most puzzle games). I have a low frustration factor and it's far too easy to look up solutions. That and I didn't get how to win the philosophy fist fight until looking it up.

So I finished the last two Blackwell games and as usual the storyline was amazing, if progressively tragic (though the ending of the final game... while I liked it and it wasn't necessarily underwhelming, I do wish they had gone with something a bit different).

Though I started noticing with Deception that the series had a habit of unlocking new options for the player without actually telling them, as well as some inconsistency with what works where and making progressing an issue of process of elimination in places. And as it went on it got a serious issue with Conspicuously Light Patchs, especially in the last game where all of the objects in the game are drawn seamlessly with the backgound (so they're not even lightly colored) and many of the pivotal things you have to interact with are tiny. I can't count how many times I got stuck because I didn't notice that the one post-it note wasn't part of the group with the others or that one square on a pile of trash was important. Also, Epiphany did the thing where brief solutions just unlock further brick walls again.

That said, loved it. I think Convergence is my favorite game in the series, but the last one is probably a close second. It pretty freaking bleak, but that adds to the appeal - the things you fail to do really weigh on you as much as the characters. And the parts that didn't have the flaws I noted were done well, mechanically. Logic worked more times than it didn't, etc.

This has really brought back my love of adventure games - I really need to finish the Deponia series. And I think I still have Memoria on my computer.

edited 14th Oct '14 6:48:35 PM by KnownUnknown

So... here's a question. Do you guys think the episodic or full-game approach is better for the point and click genre?

I personally prefer to be able to play the full game at my own pace, especially games that are big on story. However, I think that episodic gaming is better from a business point of view. Not only do you need less initial investment to start development, but each time you release an episode, you'll once again be on Steam's/Gog's "new releases" list, and a bunch of reviews come out.

That's a lot of free advertisement over an extended period of time, as opposed to just at release day.

I think that it probably depends on the game: some games might do well broken up into episodes, while others might less suited to it.

For example, a long game with a story that naturally forms episodes—perhaps a game following a traveller, with a story that takes place in the various places in which they stop—might be a good candidate for episodic release, with each episode covering one of those stops.

Even better, one might imagine a game with a structure similar to certain TV series: "monster/mystery/problem of the week" stories featuring a recurring cast of characters. Imagine Law And Order: the game series, or something along the lines of the first season or so of Supernatural.

On the other hand, I feel that stories without those natural breaks, or which are too short, perhaps aren't treated well by being broken up into episodes.

Indeed, one pitfall that I've found is that episodic games can feel a bit on the short side, or a little unfulfilling due to a lack of closure in each episode's end.

An example of an adventure-game series that I felt handled episodic gaming well was Cognition: An Erica Reed Thriller: each episode had its own mystery and perpetrator, with a decent beginning, middle and end, both narratively and in terms of gameplay; and over-arching this was a larger plot that was touched on in each episode (as far as I recall), save the last, in which that plot was the focus.

edited 26th Jan '15 6:19:58 AM by ArsThaumaturgis

I've been playing Sam And Max, and was curious about what others thought about that kind of format. Granted, I haven't played many of their other episodic games (both BTTF and Monkey Island on my list to play through soon), but it was still an interesting change from my usual experience.

The first season felt a bit too short for each segment (though they got longer and more developed as the season went on) and while the second one was better with it overall, I don't think they really nailed the episodic format for both length and depth until until the third season.

edited 2nd Feb '15 9:48:52 PM by KnownUnknown