That’s fine man, I specifically said they aren’t for everyone. I HATE RTS games. I suck balls at them and I don’t think they are fun, but I’m not gonna sit here say they don’t count as games, or that they all suck because I don’t like them. That’s stupid as fuck.
Your horse in Shadows of the Colossus.
Tho I thought it was Argo…It’s been like 10 years tho so I could be wrong.
I really liked point and click adventure games back in the day. I don’t think the gameplay was bad. You could do a lot more exploring and cover more ground than you were usually able to do on the 16-bit consoles that were around at the time.
I love the genre as much as I did as a kid maybe more now that I can appreciate it on a more substantive level than before. It bothers me how Portal and The Walking Dead while masterpieces in their own right, are among the only games in the adventure genre which get mainstream love. however, others like Gone Home are finding their niche. Man that game is a prime example of how narrative and game play can harmonize so well acting in each other’s place, without one the other loses all value, yet some gamers ignorantly label similar styled games as walking simulators Gone Home is one of the very best games I’ve played in years I absolutely loved the mystery of it all and swear hung through every book and cranny of the house.
The term walking simulator is 9/10 times as incorrect as it is condescending, but such ignorance is not limited to SRK, many gamers are unable to articulate why they feel the way they do about a given game and just assume their point of view is the one that should be given the most weight by everyone else not just themselves.
Speaking of story in games, I bought The Shivah last summer for $1 and it’s very different than most other games you play as a Rabbi with a crisis of faith and it is a choice based game, but you’re not judged the way a WRPG typically does there is no good or evil there are only moral choices or faith bases choices. Anyways while it isn’t perfect by any means and I beat it under 2 hours, it still had so much more depth and significance because it was a game that tested me as a person not just as a gamer and made me really think deeply about the fundamental questions its themes and ideas bring to mind, that goes to show the power of narrative in games.
Yeah, I’m not even going to try to defend Gone Home. With its interactivity so limited that only visual novels have less player-driven actions than it, Gone Home is only as good as its story…and it tells a bad story.
No tenchu love in this thread? Tatsumaru might be close to getting in my character top 5 list.
As for the gameplay/story discussion. I feel like gameplay can carry a game the easiest. For example, if the gameplay is amazing but the story/characters/art direction are all ass it can still be considered a good game. On the other hand, if the story/characters are amazing in a game but the gameplay is a broken mess, it would ruin the whole experience.
However, I feel the story/characters are really what makes a game great. It’s what keeps bringing you back to the same game/series. An example for me would be the mgs series. I could never get into mgs1 when I was a kid cause I thought the gameplay was trash and couldn’t stand the camera angle. But later down the line when I bought mgs3 subsistence with the camera change to 3rd person, it instantly became one of my favorite games of all time. Then I got extremely interested in the story and had to play through all the old mgs games, and I actually still enjoyed them even though I still think mgs1 gameplay isn’t exactly the best lol. Needless to say the mgs series is probably now my favorite of any games series to this day.
Yea I definitely think strong gameplay can more easily carry a game then strong story. I mean God Hand is ugly as fuck, has a retarded story, and stupid as fuck characters (Tho I still love em lol) but the gameplay is so fucking amazing that in general you don’t fuckin care.
But I mean the Soul Reaver Series hardly has the most amazing gameplay SR1 is all block puzzles and minor puzzle combat, SR2 is bland combat and no block puzzles, and Defiance is a cheap DMC clone with ok combat. But the story? Holy fuckin shit the story yo.
I see portal as a FPA game similar to Metroid prime…combat isn’t the focus and it’s more about exploring and solving puzzles to get to your next destination.
I don’t think you guys understand that by definition Portal is an adventure game through and through, the genre is not limited to point and click games, Infernoman summed it up in a nutshell, but if you want the technical definition here you go:
@GespenstRitter Sure it has more limited interaction than say Gears of War, but It’s ignorant to call the player interaction limited considering the intent of Gone Home because you’re expecting it to be something it simply isn’t and as for it being a bad story well thats your opinion. Checkers is super limited all you do is move forward unless you have a king, see how silly that sounds? And what you call visual novels are just a different name for 80’s/90’s style point and click adventure games. Where limiting interaction is part of the intended experience. As
@flighflighflugit You have to consider the genre rather than make a blanket statement, game play carries more weight in say a Bayonetta more than story where in a Grim Fandango the narrative (not to be confused with story/plot) is typically given more emphasis.
I think the biggest hurdle for narrative and plot heavy games is they almost by definition can’t be judged fairly based on watching a game play video and gamers love to jump to conclusions as the last few pages of this thread prove. You can watch 10 minutes of say Resident Evil 4 and have a good idea on whether you’d like it or not because you can immediately vicariously feel the pleasure or dislike of the game play, but watching a trailer for a game like The Walking Dead makes it much harder to see the value in it because it requires player investment.
So does that make Puzzle Fighter an adventure game? I mean Akuma’s counter gem is kinda ridiculous sometimes and that can be quite a puzzle to get a win on higher difficulties.
Clash of Heroes is now an adventure game. Counter Strike is an adventure game because you have to solve the puzzle of where the terrorists hid the bomb.
You see nobody really gives a fuck what some nobody on a fringe gaming website declares as the definition of an adventure game. A lot of people define an adventure game, as a game where you explore shit and go to optional out of the way locations, regardless of the amount of action and/or puzzles. So shit like Tomb Raider, Elder Scrolls, ANY JRPG, Strider, Psychonauts, and practically any free roaming game.
If I wanted to be really hard headed about this I could call upon the actual definition of the word “adventure” which is:
"An adventure is an exciting or unusual experience. It may also be a bold, usually risky undertaking, with an uncertain outcome."
So in that context, I walked up to a Sunoco earlier and seen a car crash on the way which was pretty exciting to watch. So that was an adventure right?
Also you do just move forward in checkers. All checkers is, is the decision of which checker piece you want to move forward first. There is some strategy behind that but let’s not act like it’s some very in depth board game. There’s a reason why people use the saying “This is Chess, not Checkers” when describing something of great complexity.
@orochizoolander yea but even for bayonetta you still have a fun character and good art direction/setting. Plus, every game doesn’t need some deep story… Just needs to fit the game.
Zoo you are just getting stupid now. Portal is no way an adventure game, exploration is not a feature. Even Portal 2 where you have ability to move about, Portal is very very liner. Its a Puzzle Game disguised as a FPS.
Your other arguments lost weight as how stupid your first statement was. You can’t compare checkers to a video game for an argument. And Gone Home? The original Oregon Trail for the Apple IIe has more interaction.
You don’t get to tell anyone about story or narrative any more as obviously you got no idea what you are talking about.