Le Saboteur said:
I understand the complaint. I just never found it legitimate. Is 10-hours of gameplay with an engaging story worth less than a game with 100-hrs of gameplay and a story that barely holds the whole enterprise together? Or is this mentality part of the reason behind the decline in the adventure game everywhere that's not Germany?
It was hardly a complaint. In fact, if the game was not a linear, tightly-woven experience and had, say, open-world sections or character customization, branching story elements and like, it would hardly be
Max Payne. I think said comment came out of me more for the purposes of this discussion - since it was a fun one-time romp for me (at least for now), it may not inspire an engaging back-and-forth about it. Guess I was wrong.
That being said, I know plenty of games that do reach the best of all worlds, having longevity, replay value and a story that holds together regardless. In fact, the game I've probably most raved about in here recently hits all those marks.
Re: Adventure games. To be honest, I don't actually see a decline in the genre. On the opposite, I'd say it's about as healthy as it has ever been. Now, it's just dwarved by new players on the field, with bigger marketing and more mainstream attention. I won't deny that adventure gaming is definitely something of an underground movement these days, but when you think of it, in their heyday
all gaming was somewhat underground. So it's not so much a decline in genre as it is a change in perspective.
Le Saboteur said:
I still need to play through the original Broken Sword and Mata Hari. Both were downloaded months ago, and I barely spent five minutes with them.
As I've said before,
Broken Sword should be worth anyone's time.
Mata Hari, however, missed some chords with me. It fell guilty of having too many puzzles that hardly supported the narrative, which is essential when you're trying to tell a "serious" story. It's not easy, but I expected more from Barwood considering he got it almost flawlessly right with FoA.
Le Saboteur said:
Going back to the above topic, this might satisfy both of our tastes.
Oh yeah. Have had that one in my sights for a while. It's giving me those classic
Thief vibes, with a facelift. Unless the reviews universally come down on it hard, I'll be all over it.