The Adventure Game (Or The Rise And Fall Of LucasArts)

[Steven]

I think the Lucas 'uns are great, and Full Throttle is my favourite of the lot, but I do prefer the jeopardy of the Sierra games, I like how archaic they are, and how utterly demanding they can be.  I like the storytelling more than the comedy in the LA games.  I don't find them funny, so they don't really offer me anything.

I'm guessing you've played the Sierra titles as more of an adult and have had the benefit of the internet to help with things like dead-ends and some of the impossible puzzles? This would be a massively different experience to frustratingly trying to make your way through them as a clueless pre-pubescent, you'd be hyper aware of having to save the game constantly plus it avoids shite like the copious disk-swapping.

Going in as a consenting adult who's a glutton for punishment, with a sedo-masochistic gaming penchant if you will would not be the way many of us experienced these titles hence the preference for LucasArt. Though the humour in the Sierra titles was probably much more 'adult' orientated I would concede.

[garbed_attic]

Any of the bits with Jim are my favourites!







I do find something deeply endearing about the po-faced seriousness of some of Sierra's games. It's all about responsible fun, you guys.

[Steven]

Holy fuck, I forgot how infuriating Zak McKracken is. The mazes, the copious mazes! Having to fly back and forth from one location to the other constantly and unsure of what exactly you're meant to be doing. Also I forgot you could later swap between four different characters which makes it even more confusing! All of this stuff probably lengthened the playability back in the day so was more acceptable, remember when the back of boxes would boast about 'over 60 hours of gameplay'? This kind of annoying padding is responsible.

[Rev]

Oh, Zak McKracken really is the sort of game that you only remember the good bits from, and become horrified by when you revisit it.  There's so much padding in that thing.

On the Sierra/LucasArts thing - I prefer the Sierra games too, as they were tough nuts to crack.  In my case I played them at the time, as it were, so there was no internet to consult.  If you got stuck you'd consult with other players in the 6th form common room, and you'd generally get past 'that bit' before getting stuck at the next 'that bit' - we'd all graduated from text adventures so knew how to handle such bollockry.  I never finished half of those games. 

The LucasArts titles on the other hand came with the assurance that you'd definitely finish them, because they kind of had training wheels on (with the exception of Maniac Mansion).  Absolutely lovely but somehow less rewarding.

Now Delphine, right, Delphine's the middle ground here...  have they not been mentioned yet?  Future Wars?  Operation Stealth?  Cruise for a Corpse?  Banging stuff, and cutting-edge (at the time).

[madhair60]

Tex Murphy?

I have all those games on GoG (along with a fuckload of other obscure 'uns) and I'm yet to dig in.  Can't wait to get 'round to 'em.

I agree with you regarding the Sierra games.  While I didn't play them at the time, I didn't play the Lucasarts games back then either.  Except for the brilliant Full Throttle which I spent a bit of time with.

[biggytitbo]

Really enjoyed Operation Stealth at the time, although it did unfortunetly borrow some of the top down mazey bullshit from Last Crusade.


I'm playing the FM Towns version of Zak Macraken right now, it's a game I really want to like but it's so unforigivingly hard and badly designed that I would not stand a chance without cheating. In many ways it's quite sophisticated with so many different locations and the multiple characters - God knows how they ever managed to get all that in on a C64. But the constant player punishing gameplay decisions ruin it.

[Jerzy Bondov]

I borrowed an adventure game off my friend in school where you were a spy or something who crashes a plane somewhere and forgets who he is, I think. It had a sort of isometric view. Anybody know what that was?

Meanwhile, I only recently realised that the voice cast for Discworld had (in addition to Eric Idle and Tony Robinson) Rob Brydon and Jon Pertwee! Listening to it now they are extremely recognisable. I can forgive the younger me for not recognising Brydon in 1996, but Pertwee was my favourite Doctor Who. He's very funny in this. The game deserves its obtuse reputation but it's still very much worth playing. The second one is arguably better although I preferred the SCUMM style art of the first over its DTV Disney sequel rip off cartoon stylings. For some reason I didn't get very far with Discworld Noir and these days it's apparently a pain to get working. Not sure what I'm driving at now. Still. Good.

[Consignia]

The Discworld game left such an impression on me, that a single line, "Who gives a monkey?" inspired me to write a BASIC game. I really can't remember the logic behind it, but each player had to give a number and an amount of monkey. You couldn't give too much or too little monkey based on the number. The game then declared which player had won.

[syntaxerror]

The game deserves its obtuse reputation but it's still very much worth playing. The second one is arguably better although I preferred the SCUMM style art of the first over its DTV Disney sequel rip off cartoon stylings. For some reason I didn't get very far with Discworld Noir and these days it's apparently a pain to get working. Not sure what I'm driving at now. Still. Good.

Would the Discworld games make sense/be any good to someone who isn't familiar with the franchise and lore of Discworld? The whole Terry Pratchett thing passed me by.

[syntaxerror]

Now Delphine, right, Delphine's the middle ground here...  have they not been mentioned yet?  Future Wars?  Operation Stealth?  Cruise for a Corpse?  Banging stuff, and cutting-edge (at the time).

I had a box set that included these three games (and Another World and Flashback) and I have to say I wasn't mad on them. CFAC dragged along at a snails pace and was second only to KGB in terms of difficulty (i.e. impossible). Future Wars had some of the worst pixel hunting ever seen in a game, and Operation Stealth was marred by some horrible arcade-y bits you were forced to play with the mouse.

[syntaxerror]

One game I've got a lot of love for is Universe (1994) by Core Design. For the time, it looked amazing. The interface is a mess, its buggy and often crashes, the writing is weak at the best of times, but the sound track, the artwork and the world you have to explore is really absorbing and really draws you in. It also had a couple of crappy arcade bits and there's a few unfair situations where you can die if you inadvertently say or do the wrong thing. If you've never played it, its certainly worth a shot. Avoid the PC version because the music is rubbish.

Here is a youtube playthough of the Amiga version if you'd like to hear the soundtrack.

[Consignia]

Would the Discworld games make sense/be any good to someone who isn't familiar with the franchise and lore of Discworld? The whole Terry Pratchett thing passed me by.

As far I recall, they are steeped in references and the lore, but they are all pretty enjoyable on their own.

[biggytitbo]

I enjoyed both the discworld games at the time, but didn't have much patience with noir.


The one I'd like to play now is Bladerunner, but I have had no look getting it up and running using any kind of emulator, DOSbox or whatever. Any suggestions?

[Jerzy Bondov]

The one I'd like to play now is Bladerunner, but I have had no look getting it up and running using any kind of emulator, DOSbox or whatever. Any suggestions?

I've still got the discs for that somewhere. That was a brilliant game, probably.

Have you tried this?

[Sexton Brackets Drugbust]

Blade runner is fantastic, but flawed.

One of the nicest/most frustrating features, depending on your POV, is that who is and isn't a replicant is randomly decided whenever you start a new game. This increases replayability, but makes aiming for specific endings - of which there are several - tricky.

There are also a few timed action sequences that are particularly difficult to get specific outcomes (possibly one of those problems to do with fast modern processor speeds.)

[Steven]

I liked the Delphine stuff but I don't really regard Another World or Flashback as adventure games, more platformer really, essentially remakes of Prince Of Persia with a couple of puzzles thrown in. Cruise For A Corpse was a bit frustrating, very innovative for the time with polygonal characters but a bit too sobre for me as a kid, plus it took me a long time to realise I could click on the boat map overview to teleport between locations rather than fucking walking there and swapping disks multiple along the way! There were a few other games that did the 3D adventure/fighting hybrid thing thing early-on as well, remember Ecstatica anybody? That game was seriously batshit, then there was the Alone In The Dark series.

I borrowed an adventure game off my friend in school where you were a spy or something who crashes a plane somewhere and forgets who he is, I think. It had a sort of isometric view. Anybody know what that was?

Not isometric but Flight Of The Amazon Queen featured a plane crash.

One game I've got a lot of love for is Universe (1994) by Core Design.

They did that after Curse Of Enchantia which I referenced in the OP, never played Universe though as I think I had a go on the demo for the Amiga right before I sold it and got a PC. The art style and interface is very similar.

The one I'd like to play now is Bladerunner, but I have had no look getting it up and running using any kind of emulator, DOSbox or whatever. Any suggestions?

Don't use a Mac? I've had it on my PC for a year or more and still haven't got around to playing it, it was atmospheric but I don't remember it being that engaging.

One of the nicest/most frustrating features, depending on your POV, is that who is and isn't a replicant is randomly decided whenever you start a new game. This increases replayability, but makes aiming for specific endings - of which there are several - tricky.

Yeah, this is another case of developers trying to innovate but actually making things worse, like the multiple character traits and selection in Maniac Mansion etc. It SHOULD give the game more replayability.. but adventure games by their very definition are very linear experiences so this does not really work, plus it complicates things a lot and makes much more work for the developers to tie all that stuff together. Better off making one story and using all your effort making that storyline the best that it can be.

[biggytitbo]

I seem to remember playing Cruise for a Corpse was like wading through treacle, so slow and stilted as a game. Probbaly asking a bit much of the Amiga.


Currently playing Curse again, managed to get it working. Got to be in with a shout as the most beautiful game ever. It's really good fun too, great voice acting and the difficultly pitched just about right.

[syntaxerror]

liked the Delphine stuff but I don't really regard Another World or Flashback as adventure games

They just came in a box together. Make whatever inference you want from that.

[Rev]

I seem to remember playing Cruise for a Corpse was like wading through treacle, so slow and stilted as a game. Probbaly asking a bit much of the Amiga.

It's a fair point, and I didn't finish it at the time because I ended up worn out by it.  Years later I got a PC version from a charity shop for a quid and without the disc-swapping, it's an amazingly brief and breezy game.  Disc-swapping really did falsely extend the experience of some of these things quite a bit:  my main impression of the Monkey Island remake was 'it can't have been this short?'

Jerzy - I know exactly which game you're talking about, but I'm buggered if I can remember the title at the moment.  Extremely orange, right?  It wasn't an adventure game of exactly the same stripe as we're talking about here, but did involve finding and using items to - I think - gradually get stuff together to fix your plane.  I think it may have been randomly generated too.

Hold it - this? http://hol.abime.net/95

[Mister Six]

I had a box set that included these three games (and Another World and Flashback) and I have to say I wasn't mad on them. CFAC dragged along at a snails pace and was second only to KGB in terms of difficulty (i.e. impossible).

I completed CFAC for the first time a couple of years ago, having got it as part of an Amiga multipack compilation (along with... hmm, I'm not sure. Another World and something else? Not Flashback, I think, so not the one you're talking about) in the '90s, and it's not difficult as such, just incredibly tedious. It starts off well - great intro, lovely conversation cutscenes - but it's not really an adventure game as we knew them back in the day; there are almost no object-based puzzles and pretty much every single object in the game is a red herring, despite each one having its own little contextual menu of "interactive" options.

Also, pretty much as soon as you get a clue from the barman, it hits this annoying rhythm whereby you have to systematically re-visit every single location on the off-chance that something has changed - whether that's an object of only a few pixels wide being added to a location for you to examine or pick up, or a character having moved to an otherwise unremarkable "corridor" along the side of the ship. Combing these areas is more bearable on a modern PC with their fancy hard drives, but it must have been almost unbearable on an un-HD-equipped Amiga.

If anyone's still thinking of giving it a go -

1- Take the soap with you and you can use it to avoid a crap fight scene.
2- Take notes on all of the characters' motivations, relationships and comments, because you'll need to choose a culprit at the end, and there's no way of reviewing what you've learned. (The culprit doesn't change from game to game, so you can always just look up a solution online).

Also, it was mentioned upthread, but Flight of the Navigator Queen was a tremendous game and well worth playing. Check that one out. Plus, of course, Beneath a Steel Sky...

[Jerzy Bondov]

Jerzy - I know exactly which game you're talking about, but I'm buggered if I can remember the title at the moment.  Extremely orange, right?  It wasn't an adventure game of exactly the same stripe as we're talking about here, but did involve finding and using items to - I think - gradually get stuff together to fix your plane.  I think it may have been randomly generated too.

Hold it - this? http://hol.abime.net/95

Sadly not! That does look ace though. I'm fairly certain the guy in the one I'm thinking of wore a suit and maybe a bowler hat. It definitely had dialogue trees, an inventory, and so on. Ahhhhh it probably doesn't even exist

[Steven]

[syntaxerror]

...it's not difficult as such, just incredibly tedious.

Well I was a pretty stupid child, I still don't think I'd be smart enough to beat it. I don't think I've ever beaten a point 'n' click adventure without some kind of help.

Beneath a Steel Sky

How did we get this far without mentioning this classic? Its freely available on almost every platform (and is hosted on the ScummVM site) so there's no reason for fans of the genre not to play it and iirc Alan Moore did some of the artwork for it.

[Steven]

How did we get this far without mentioning this classic? Its freely available on almost every platform (and is hosted on the ScummVM site) so there's no reason for fans of the genre not to play it and iirc Alan Moore did some of the artwork for it.

I referenced it in the OP, they did put out a version of it for the iPhone. I did also see someone on the AGS forum who was doing a HD remake. And there was machinations for a sequel to be worked on after the Broken Sword Kickstarter got off the ground.

Incidentally it's worth looking at AGS, Adventure Game Studio, free software made for developing your own adventure games and makes things like coding and sprites easy to figure out, as well as small teams there's just individual people doing the art and code for a game entirely on their own, sometimes by even cannibalizing art from other games. There's even a series of tutorials on youtube for it. Some of the stuff looks quite decent.


The Journey of Iesir


The Knobbly Crook


Primordia


Lancelot's Hangover

[syntaxerror]

I referenced it in the OP, they did put out a version of it for the iPhone. I did also see someone on the AGS forum who was doing a HD remake. And there was machinations for a sequel to be worked on after the Broken Sword Kickstarter got off the ground.

Well that was all the way back on the first page. I can't be expected to remember that far back. Also that HD remake of BASS looks horrible.

[Steven]

Well that was all the way back on the first page. I can't be expected to remember that far back. Also that HD remake of BASS looks horrible.

I dunno, other people tend to prefer the clean HD look but I much prefer the retro more pixelly art of yore, but yes I'd say it looks worse but it's a fan-made job. Some prefer the higher-res cartoony Curse Of Monkey Island type of graphics, but I'd much prefer this kind of look to be honest:



Someone even did a re-imagining of Curse Of as a Gameboy game.



Keep yer HD shite, I mean.. Pixel-gasm!

[biggytitbo]

Replaying Curse of Monkey Island I forgot just how good it is. It was late in the day but it was the perfection of the Lucasarts adventure game formula, finally managing to evolve out all the annoying and frustrating elements from the gameplay and just leave the fun. And as the last one before the ill advised move to 3D its one of the best looking games ever made, and the voice acting is absolutely exceptional. An utter treat, it goes right up there into my top adventure games, just behind the first Broken Sword.

[Steven]

And as the last one before the ill advised move to 3D its one of the best looking games ever made, and the voice acting is absolutely exceptional. An utter treat, it goes right up there into my top adventure games, just behind the first Broken Sword.

I'll probably give it another go soon, it looks good and has good voice acting, I mean they even got Wilbur/Scrooge McDuck himself as one of the pirates! The problem was I just don't think the cartoon style fitted the Monkey Island series, and there was something missing in the humour department, I mean they introduced this weird joke about Guybrush being afraid of porcelain from out of nowhere, it's obviously a symptom of outside parties coming in and partly creating fanfiction and partly shoving in their own ideas apropos of context.

Was thinking about giving Cruise For A Corpse another stab for the first time since 1992 or so, but Mister Six's detailed account really brings back how annoying the gameplay was with the characters shifting location and the dialogue nature of the puzzles, I mean it's probably a great idea for an older Agatha Christie type literate player but for kids playing the thing.. yeesh, what a slog.

[biggytitbo]

Haha yeah that is Scrooge McDuck isn't it? I knew I recognised the voice from somewhere. Anyway, best voiced game of all time I think. Animation film quality. High watermark for the traditional 80s/90s era adventure game anyway, it never got any better.

[Steven]

It's Alan Young who also was Wilbur in Mr Ed.

Have you tried The Black Mirror? It was an adventure game with a similar tone/storyline to Broken Sword.

Also the guy who did the Gobliiins games did The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble, which was published by Sierra, I think I remember seeing screenshots at the time but forgot all about its existence, wonder if it's any good?