Are Telltale listening to the complaints about the difficulty-level of their games? [Archive]

numble

11/02/2006, 12:40 pm

Major_Higgins

11/02/2006, 12:47 pm

That's sad, I was mortified when realizing all I needed to make the helmet was the "antenna."
That was ridiculous. But I liked the whole psychotherapist part. I think it was the best puzzle.

Now, there must be a way of pleasing casual gamers (the Market...) and adventurers. It can be MORE difficult without having to write "DJ bring sekey madoule" on a tombstone ;)

0renji

11/02/2006, 12:52 pm

My problem with having no difficult puzzles is this:
I am unashamedly RUBBISH at solving puzzles. What I enjoy is the story, and actually seeing the solutions to the puzzles. If I CAN work out a puzzle, alrighty; but if I can't, and I look up a walkthrough, I can still marvel at the insane logic of whoever designed this, and I can enjoy the outcome. Of course if a puzzle is hard because it's NOT logical, I get no enjoyment; if it's logical but I couldn't figure it out, I still get enjoyment. If the puzzle is so easy I can just do it straight away, I also get no enjoyment, and the end result is just not as wacky (the reward for solving a hard puzzle in HtR was a funny scene or just a really good animation which is funny in itself, plus story advancement and often new locations.)

However I think that it's right to start out this easy. Train up those who have just picked up the game and haven't been conditioned to pick up every object, and then in later games, get them thinking.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 01:00 pm

I don't buy that argument numble.. I think people who arent in your "hardcore adventure gamer demographic" would just as much like a challenge as the rest of us.. Why is everyone so afraid to force people to think about situations a little bit?

I think the easy/difficult mode would not be that hard to implement either.. in easy mode you use gas launcher.. set it to difficult and you cant just use it you must find ammo to use etc etc using jps example.

0renji

11/02/2006, 01:05 pm

I don't buy that argument numble.. I think people who arent in your "hardcore adventure gamer demographic" would just as much like a challenge as the rest of us.. Why is everyone so afraid to force people to think about situations a little bit?

The risk is too high that new players who aren't used to adventure games will get stuck on a puzzle, then just abandon the game on a shelf because it's "too hard." And then of course they won't play any other of the episodes or any other adventure games maybe.

Some people get angry when they feel they aren't "smart enough" for a game, so even if they look up a walkthrough they're likely to just resent it and feel, not that they didn't get the puzzle, but that THE PUZZLE WAS WRONG. and so on...

Hero1

11/02/2006, 01:14 pm

I think the people that would enjoy the difficulty would far outweigh those that would be turned off by it.. you would get 95% very high rated reviews.. you would get really strong word of mouth..

jp-30

11/02/2006, 01:18 pm

As has been said, Telltale need to attract a new audience with these games in order to survive. If that means starting the series fairly easy to hook and 'train' new players, so be it. Most games have an easier 'training' level or two at the start. As that isn't an option in a game as short as Sam & Max, then one could expect the difficulty to increase in each subsequent episode.

Just look at the difficulty level in Out From Boneville (BONE 1) compared to the Graet Cow Race (BONE 2).

I have every confidence the difficulty and wackiness will increase as the season progresses.

numble

11/02/2006, 01:22 pm

My argument is not talking about thinking about a solution a bit--take a look at Old Man Murray's theory for the death of adventure games (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/79.html) or listen to the Broadcast Gamer podcast (http://www.broadcastgamer.com/audio/2006/10/bcg_105_061023.mp3), where they discuss Culture Shock and adventure games in general--it may be just a random podcast to you or me, but Telltale deemed them important enough to give them a copy of the game in advance.

I'm discussing puzzles akin to the "use paper cup with golf ball retriever and make a bungee rope with twine (after a whole bunch of puzzles to get the twine) so that you can bungee jump with it to retrieve a piece of tar." Or the puzzle described in Old Man Murray's article. They require a lot more than "thinking about solutions for a little bit." You need hours to figure out something like that, some people even have to leave the game for a couple of days before trying to figure it out. In today's games, and today's world of gamers--is it really that surprising that people actually are turned off if they're required to spend 2 hours to get pass the equivalent of a locked door? And nearly every adventure game puzzle basically boils down to finding a key (solution) to open a locked door (puzzle).

Tobias

11/02/2006, 01:28 pm

Give a man a fish and he has food for the day, teach a man to fish and he has food for a lifetime. If a student doesn't keep up in school, he gets to go to special classes (play an easier game, if you will) you do not force the rest of the class to sit through lectures about stuff they already know.

Not everyone can read, so lets all make picture-books, then they will appeal to everyone, right? Wrong, the people who can read will find these books unappealing. Which is why it is absolutely ridiculous to dumb down (if you pardon the expression) games to make them more accessible, alot of people will find this ungratifying and disappointing.

I saw many puzzle opportunities in Culture Shock that were pretty much handed to the player on a silver platter, I will not go into all of the due to spoilers but the creation of the helmet has already been mentioned and it's a good example of what made me disappointed.

0renji

11/02/2006, 01:36 pm

But books and classes are not a new idea - they are not just starting up, they do not rely on new players (readers, students) to be successful. If ALL books were Shakespeare-ish length and language (if we take that as the equivalent to HtR), hardly anyone would bother reading. MOST people in the civilised world CAN read; MOST people in the world DON'T play adventure games.

"A lot of people"? I'm just not sure how many adventure gamers there ARE any more. But I might be wrong! I don't really check statistics!

Although now that I think about it, I'm probably underestimating how smart most people are. Even they would probably get that antenna puzzle straight away. Hmmm... I wouldn't know unless I tested the game on a few non-gamers.

Tobias

11/02/2006, 01:52 pm

I'm not saying all games should be hardcore, there are easier games out there and that's fine. But barely getting any puzzles from a genre built around puzzles is not fine, adventure games were created because some developers felt that games could be alot more sophisticated than what was currently available, that was the appeal of adventure games.

If you remove that part you're essentially killing what made us interested in the genre in the first place. Creating an option for people to play the game with a tuned down difficulty is a good option, and if people are offended by the fact that they're not "smart enough" for the full version, well tough luck. But don't ruin the experience for people who are expecting more.

There are games out there that I'm no good at, I've never quite been able to wrap my head around complicated war strategy games, too much to keep track of at once. But I don't expect the developers to ruin those games for the people who do enjoy them just so I can have a click-to-win button. I much prefer the tranquil experience of solving good puzzles in an adventure game, there's something extremely satisfying about finally figuring out a puzzle that you have been stuck on for a while - I never got that out of Culture Shock.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 01:57 pm

If they take their time increasing the difficulty I'm afraid they are gonna lose a lot of fans...

Telltale said themselves before Sam & Max came out they are targeting the seasoned adventure gamer.. This isn't Bone.. You think the 30, 000 people that signed that petition to save freelance police are gonna struggle to figure out culture shock.. 30, 000 X a $9 is 270, 000 an episode.. you dont want to lose your core audience to appease a few casual gamers who may only stick around for an episode or two..

numble

11/02/2006, 02:02 pm

The high cost of developing games means that games have to be successful. But writing a book is another story.

There are 30 people listed as Telltale staff, it would cost a million dollars a year just to pay them the average salary in America, and probably 2-3 million+ to pay them the going rate in the computer games industry. Add in costs for computers and bandwidth, office space, advertising, music creators, voice actors and everything else associated with game production, and its going to be a hefty production cost.

As I said before, if adventure games were extremely profitable, Lucasarts and Sierra would still be making them left and right.

I do not fault Telltale for altering the adventure-game formula to try to reach a larger pool of customers.

briankory

11/02/2006, 02:05 pm

Oh ....ok..I need to stop being such an ass hole . Telltale its perfect the way it is.

jp-30

11/02/2006, 02:09 pm

If you remove that part you're essentially killing what made us interested in the genre in the first place.

I'm here for the story, the jokes, the writing, the environments... the fun. I'm not here to be able to sit in smug satifaction that I used maple syrup on cat hair to make a fake moustache to disguise myself as somebody who doesn't have a moustache (for example).

I will admit that for some the puzzles ARE the enjoyment. For me though, they're just the mechanism by which to progress the story and set up the jokes.

Don't get me wrong, I love figuring out puzzles too, but they're certainly not the top reason why I like adventure games as a genre.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 02:09 pm

I do not fault Telltale for altering the adventure-game formula to try to reach a larger pool of customers.

Why cant you reach the same pool of customers with a harder game? I think its a dangerous thing to dumb things down with a property like Sam & Max..

Hero1

11/02/2006, 02:13 pm

I'm here for the story, the jokes, the writing, the environments... the fun. I'm not here to be able to sit in smug satifaction that I used maple syrup on cat hair to make a fake moustache to disguise myself as somebody who doesn't have a moustache (for example).

Whenever the difficulty question is raised someone brings up this point which I think is unfair. No one is asking for ridiculous puzzles when they say they want it harder. If the only item in a room is a piece of cheese, and you have to use the cheese to solve the puzzle, that's just not even a challenge. Dave Grossman is an excellent game designer, all the solutions in culture shock made perfect sense, it was just too easy to get there. Puzzles are not the be all and end all of adventure games, but they are an important ingredient. You need all working, humour/story/puzzles etc to make a great game.

numble

11/02/2006, 02:15 pm

I expect it to be harder; I don't expect it to reach the insane levels of difficulty we've seen in the past however--Heather Logas--one of Telltale's game designers--is quoted in an article at mixnmojo.com saying that she is not a fan of puzzles being too illogical:

"Personally, even though they can be tricky and require a lot of tuning, I like designing the mini-games/puzzles because it's fun and sometimes just as much a puzzle to design it as to play it. I think the hardest for me is the traditional adventure game inventory based puzzles. I am very resistant to puzzles that just don't make any logical sense to the player, so it is sometimes really hard to figure out a puzzle that makes sense and isn't completely ridiculous. It takes a lot of work, a lot of brain-storming, and a lot of bouncing ideas off other people in the office. And then you have to hope that the gamers' brains will work like your brain and the brains of the people you've bounced it off of. Occasionally we'll come up with something that isn't completely satisfying but in order to get the game done we just have to leave it."

jp-30

11/02/2006, 02:16 pm

Don't forget perspective. Back in 1993 we didn't have the internet to run to as soon as we got stuck. We had to give the game to our friends play the game with our friends to have a new perspective on puzzles where we were stuck. You could write to a gaming magazine for a hint, but that'd take 2 or 3 months to get back to you anyway.

We're also 13 years more experienced in game playing (and in life) now, so maybe the internet, and us getting older is partially a factor in the new game's relative ease.

jp-30

11/02/2006, 02:17 pm

Whenever the difficulty question is raised someone brings up this point which I think is unfair. No one is asking for ridiculous puzzles when they say they want it harder. If the only item in a room is a piece of cheese, and you have to use the cheese to solve the puzzle, that's just not even a challenge. Dave Grossman is an excellent game designer, all the solutions in culture shock made perfect sense, it was just too easy to get there. Puzzles are not the be all and end all of adventure games, but they are an important ingredient. You need all working, humour/story/puzzles etc to make a great game.

My quote was a direct response to the assertation that "we're only here for the puzzles" which, for many, is absolutely untrue.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 02:21 pm

Hey I agree, you dont wanna get caught up in 1 thing like the puzzles, and ignore the fact that culture shock was a great game. The animation, music, writing, voices, characters etc etc was all excellent. I just get a little worried when people say that the difficulty was perfect, cause from my perspective, and reading a lot of the reviews that was the only sticking point from this being a 10 out of 10 game.

Tobias

11/02/2006, 02:25 pm

Back in 1993 we didn't have the internet
Sure we did.

But frankly, I do not see what internet has to do with the difficulty of this game. I'm not one of those people who run off to read a walkthrough as soon as I'm stuck, that's cheating.

I wouldn't be here complaining about the lack of puzzles if I actually got stuck somewhere.

Yandros

11/02/2006, 02:26 pm

The curse of monkey island and monkey island 2 had two modes: Easy and Hard. Why can't we just have that again?

jp-30

11/02/2006, 02:30 pm

Sure we did.

It may have existed, but it wasn't available in everyone's house. And even then, outside of Usenet, there weren't many places to get game walkthroughs.

But frankly, I do not see what internet has to do with the difficulty of this game. I'm not one of those people who run off to read a walkthrough as soon as I'm stuck, that's cheating.

You might not be one to run off, but there are plenty here who do.

I understand you thought the puzzles weren't hard enough. I could have done with a few extended ones (elsewhere I've suggested finding ammo for the tear grenade launcher, finding a key for the office closet etc) too.

But I totally understand and agree with the logic behind making the first episode on the easy side to attract a new audience - because without a new audience to tap into (or resurrecting an audience that hasn't played an adventure in 10 years), Telltale is going to struggle.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 02:36 pm

why would they struggle ressurecting an audience? Thats where I think people underestimate Sam & Max. LucasArts sure did, look at the response to freelance police's cancellation. People grew up with hit the road, they love that game, its part of their childhood, they still play it to this day. I think its the funniest game ever made and its definitely considered a classic. Tapping into the existing hit the road fans, and just giving them an awareness that a sequel is out now is a good tactic. Oh well I better go do something constructive now I think i'm repeating myself :D :D :D

Tobias

11/02/2006, 02:39 pm

It may have existed, but it wasn't available in everyone's house. And even then, outside of Usenet, there weren't many places to get game walkthroughs.
BBSes were still going strong back then.

But I totally understand and agree with the logic behind making the first episode on the easy side to attract a new audience
I'm all for attracting new players to the genre, I just don't see why you have to scare off the old fans in the process.

I've already suggested how they can make the game appeal to both veterans and novices, it's a little more work but it should be worth it if it ends up selling to a bigger audience. Right now I see lots of people passing up on the game because they've overheard it was too easy mumbling something about how they might get it once all six episodes are released - and that can't be good for business.

0renji

11/02/2006, 02:42 pm

Ask most gamers whether they have heard of Sam and Max and they'll probably say no. I'm talking here about gamers who are not adults, the "young generation" of gamers. The response to Freelance Police is likely nothing to the response that people would have had to, I don't know, Halo 2 or Half-Life 2 being cancelled. What I'm driving at here is that essentially the hard-core fanbase is pretty small.

I think Sam and Max have some deep flaws when it comes to marketing though - it's not for children, but adults don't want to be seen playing a game with a talking dog and rabbit... Telltale also have put so, so many references to previous Sam and Max things but aimed the puzzles at newcomers. Weird contradiction.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 02:52 pm

Well I completely disagree with that.

0renji

11/02/2006, 02:54 pm

Well I completely disagree with that.

Your evidence is overwhelming. I surrender!

Hero1

11/02/2006, 03:00 pm

I think the audience that was targeted when hit the road came out, which was successful, could be targeted once again with culture shock. People like funny games, Sam & Max could be enjoyed by a wide range of people. Are telltale trying to get some kind of half-life like sales? I think the entire Sam & Max audience is reasonably big in the scale of people purchasing games from telltale.

0renji

11/02/2006, 03:03 pm

Okay. True. Production costs are also a lot lower so they don't need that big an audience. I am just highly pessimistic about all kinds of things, so I'm probably underestimating a lot.

XMunkki

11/02/2006, 03:18 pm

Just played through it, took about 2.5h. Personally I found the difficulty level to be pretty much spot on, though I wanted the rabbit do some funky things more. Overall I really enjoyed the atmosphere and witty dialogue. As a foreigner my english doesn't quite twist that far when wielding it myself but I can sure understand and enjoy it. :)

I think some people feel that episodic games are too short because people are not used to episodic content yet. 2.5h for one episode may seem little for some, but if every episodi is as long, then I just got 6*2.5h=15h of game entertainment for my $40. Just my 2c.

Major_Higgins

11/02/2006, 03:58 pm

I think some people feel that episodic games are too short because people are not used to episodic content yet.

Well that's probably a valid point!

Lazerus101

11/02/2006, 03:59 pm

Well that's probably a valid point!

True though I have bought both HL2 Episode 1 and Sin Episode 1 and they are both substantially longer, though substantially more expensive.

SurplusGamer

11/02/2006, 05:16 pm

I actually don't think it's a length problem - it's a pacing problem. Episode 1 is great and short but it has the pacing of a much longer adventure like Hit The Road. Things happen quite slowly, that is. And because things happen quite slowly, over not much time, not much actually happens in the game.

I'm not a TV series fanboy, but I think you can look to these to learn a few lessons about pacing - the TV series was pretty hyperactive because it only had 10 minutes in which to tell its story. But tell it it did and sometimes it was surprising just how much STUFF they could fit into that 10 minutes.

With a longer game like Hit the Road you can afford to slow things right down because by the end of it, there's still plenty of stuff that's happened and plenty to look back on.

With a 3 hour game like Culture Shock I think what's needed is a slightly faster pace so that by the end, even though it didn't take very long, it seems like lots has happened.

If that makes sense.

briankory

11/02/2006, 06:13 pm

I just played it and it took me about 3 hours. 3 hours for an epsidoe is enough for me . I LOVED THE WHOLE THING

dunkpork

11/02/2006, 06:30 pm

I thought the difficulty was just fine for the introductory episode.

Pvt._Public

11/02/2006, 08:09 pm

Would you like some nicely designed puzzles which make logical sense and fit into the context of the game, OR would you like an obscene amount of illogical pointless puzzles which make the game more of a chore than fun?

I personally don't enjoy having every little thing turn into a pointless quest with the logic of 3 year olds. Hmm... I need to get out of the office... First, find the door knob (hidden in the fruit box), find my magnet for later (stuck down the back of the old couch, need enormous ball of twine and paper clip from Kentucky to pick up), etc.

I've found the difficulty level for Bone and Sam & Max to be just about right so far. I'd rather pay for quality, not quantity.

Hero1

11/02/2006, 08:24 pm

Would you like some nicely designed puzzles which make logical sense and fit into the context of the game, OR would you like an obscene amount of illogical pointless puzzles which make the game more of a chore than fun?

why cant you have nicely designed puzzles that make logical sense, fit in with the game and are difficult? Take the psychoanalysis puzzle.. that was great and required thinking..

numble

11/02/2006, 10:40 pm

Here are just some important points from a recent Retronauts podcast dedicated to Sam and Max Hit the Road, that I think should be considered. They do conclude in the end that they believe in Telltale and think Telltale will do just fine.

A lot more of things are said in the podcast itself, and here's the link:
Retronaut's podcast on Sam and Max Hit The Road (http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/Podcasts/Retronauts/102506.mp3)

A: "Sam and Max is the one game so far, that I love! Sam and Max is awesome."
B: "Well that's going to make an interesting podcast, I really like the graphics and the animation of Sam and Max; I love the writing, but I don't think it's all that fun.
A: "Do you just not like adventure games?"
B: "Because it's an adventure game. And as much as like the idea of adventure games, they ultimately boil down to this pointless BS where you're just like clicking on stuff and hoping that you can make compilations and connections. "
C: "Yes! I was thinking today..."
B: "I was playing Sam and Max this weekend... and I kind of had this epiphany...this remembrance of what the genre was like and why it's dead now, why people don't play it anymore. There's just too much of... I'll just combine stuff and then eventually I'll get something right."
C: "There's this peculiar dream-logic in adventure games where the solution you're acting out only makes sense in adventure games."
B: "It makes sense retroactively, it's like you do it, and then you say, 'Oh, I kinda see how that happened, but it wasn't really intuitive in terms of logic or gameplay."

...
A: "You just start sweeping your cursor."
B: "That's what happens in every adventure game, at some point you get to the area where you're like, 'Alright I'm completely stuck, so I'm going to spend an hour making every possible click combination."

...
A: "(The illogical adventure puzzles) felt maybe a little more offensive in Sam and Max because the rest of the game is so good."

C: "...there was a certain masochism to the logic..."
...
B: "...I feel good when I saw a solution that had a logical build-up, when I solve a puzzle that is kinda arbitrary, I don't feel satisfaction... I'm just annoyed that they made me jump through so many stupid hoops."
...
C: "There's a strangeness, where if you played enough adventure games, you would be able to start to thinking as crazy as they did, to kind of circumvent their craziness."
...
B: "...(in the 90s) adventure games had become so insular and so recursive, so that only if you played adventure games, then you spoke the language. In a way adventure games became as insular and stagnant as fighting games, like you can't be good at a fighting game now, unless you played all the fighting games and you really master them. Adventure games were about the same way... a kind of niche genre that continues to fold in on itself until it eventually dies."

numble

11/02/2006, 11:12 pm

And if anybody asks, the reason why I bring outside gamer opinions in here is just for a little perspective... We need to face the reality that Sam and Max fans discussing something in a Sam and Max forum do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the majority of gamers. It's the equivalent to Star Trek fans discussing whether or not Star Trek should change certain aspects of their shows to appeal to a greater audience... in the end, the creators rely on more objective opinions to know what their audience really thinks. We can go on and on about whether or not we think there is a sufficient fanbase to make profitable games of a certain type, but saying something like "I know I'll play it, and a couple of my friends would too if the difficulty were back to Hit the Road levels" is really not the most reliable indicator of reality.

Basically my argument boils down to this:
It will be more difficult, but you are not going to get to the level of past adventure games where you get stuck for an hour or more on a puzzle, nor reach those insane levels of illogicality.

Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale, on where he expects episodic gaming to be like in the future:
"The more things that pull people into playing an episode, and sustaining that episodic feel where you're always getting new content and stories, that's growing. You know, on Monday I can play Sam & Max, on Tuesday I can play Half-Life, on Wednesday I can play Penny Arcade, and on Thursday maybe I can play the new Simpsons game. It starts to validate it as a way of getting content in a way that's an intelligent evolution from television, gaming, web surfing--bringing it all together. There is a critical mass approaching."

Incognito

11/02/2006, 11:59 pm

A: "Do you just not like adventure games?"
B: "Because it's an adventure game. And as much as like the idea of adventure games, they ultimately boil down to this pointless BS where you're just like clicking on stuff and hoping that you can make compilations and connections. "
C: "Yes! I was thinking today..."
B: "I was playing Sam and Max this weekend... and I kind of had this epiphany...this remembrance of what the genre was like and why it's dead now, why people don't play it anymore. There's just too much of... I'll just combine stuff and then eventually I'll get something right."

Such stupid comments like these from Retronauts makes me wanna punch peope in the face.

1. If it boils down to "Just clicking on stuff" when you´re playing, then you are either playing a crappy adventuregame (Simon the Sorceror, Discworld 2), or you aren´t really interested in the game.
2. The adventuregenre IS NOT DEAD. Nor has it been dead. It would be pretty impressive for a dead genre to just recently have gotten games like Fahrenheit, Dreamfall, Broken Sword 4, Bone 1&2, Sam & Max and have upcoming games like Sam & Max ep 2-6, Bone Episode 3, Runaway 2, Overclocked, A Vampyre Story, Omikron 2, Heavy Rain etc...

I wish people who have no knowledge about the genre would stfu. :mad:

numble

11/03/2006, 12:14 am

If you just emphasize that only adventure gamers can talk about adventure games, you just PROVE their point. Especially this point:

"...adventure games had become so insular and so recursive, so that only if you played adventure games, then you spoke the language. In a way adventure games became as insular and stagnant as fighting games, like you can't be good at a fighting game now, unless you played all the fighting games and you really master them. Adventure games were about the same way... a kind of niche genre that continues to fold in on itself until it eventually dies."

Anyway, their point about how it was previously a dead genre is in terms of where they exist in the wider world of video games--15-20 years ago, they were probably a VERY big part of the video game world--you were not a gamer unless you had played a Sierra "Quest" game, or a Lucasarts SCUMM game. Go into a video game store, and there would be a adventure section full of those. In the past decade however, I would say most video gamers consider it more of a niche genre, go into any video game store, at least in America, and you won't find any such section today.

And I would argue that the episodic model and differences in the Telltale adventure gamers is the beginning of a resurgence of such games, with changes that really alter things. If you listen to the podcast for example, you'll learn a theory about why Telltale games only have one "verb" for the cursor, compared to past adventure games that had "talk to, pick up, use, look at" and how this change makes it much more intuitive for all gamers.

Face it, if you are an experienced adventure gamer (I am), every time you entered a room, your brain would automatically go into the "adventure-game trance":

1. Right click/navigate cursor to "look at" verb
2. Left click object to "look at object"
3. Right click/navigate cursor to "pick up" verb
4. Left click object to "pick up object"
4a. Object goes into your inventory.
4b. Object does not go into your inventory.
5. If object can't be picked up, right click/navigate cursor to "use" verb
6. Left click object to "use object"
7. Repeat steps 1-6 for for every other object in the room.

Veteran adventure gamers expect this activity and don't mind it, but it's not really a stretch of an imagination to imagine why people don't find this activity fun. Making the mouse automatically pick up something if it can be picked up really cuts out a lot of this activity, but also shortens the game a bit, and I've seen some people on this forum actually request the old implementation.

Incognito

11/03/2006, 12:30 am

If you just emphasize that only adventure gamers can talk about adventure games, you just PROVE their point.

I din´t say that you have to be an adventuregamer. I said that you have to be someone interested in playing an adventure game. If other genres like the strategygenre was trying to satisfy non-interested games like him in retronauts, then there wouldnt be any Total War-games, just hordes of Command&Conquer-clones.

Markusdragon

11/03/2006, 12:43 am

1. If it boils down to "Just clicking on stuff" when you´re playing, then you are either playing a crappy adventuregame (Simon the Sorceror, Discworld 2), or you aren´t really interested in the game.

Right, that's it! No-one insults Discworld 2!

*storms out*

Jokieman

11/03/2006, 12:56 am

I stand by my statement that Sam & Max: Culture Shock is still missing something. There is a lack of depth/lack of creativity when it comes to the puzzles that needs to be addressed. The ease of the puzzles is a part of it, but not the whole part. I felt some of the puzzles to be very bland and not very creative.

I liked the game, don't get me wrong, they are on the right track, but if I were to compare the game to a swimming pool, then Sam & Max would have about 6 inches of water in it, while some Lucas Arts classics were about 10 feet deep.

I also felt the plot line was too linear, and that there should have been a couple of sub plots thrown in for good measure.

numble

11/03/2006, 01:02 am

Jokieman: In your opinion, what is an example of a puzzle with creativity and depth from a Lucasarts classic?

therobbot

11/03/2006, 01:13 am

Some thoughts on this subject:

I really can't say much about the difficulty of S&M because I have yet to play beyond the demo (waiting for the Paypal option to come back) but I have some thoughts about that in general:

1. Why is it that people always say you can't be successful with adventures only aimed at adventure gamers anymore. I can't really believe the market became smaller. I know lots of people here (Germany) who enjoy adventures and we're in our twenties now so we have more money to spend on games than we had when we first played them. And there *were* good and successful adventures in recent years (take Runaway or Tony Tough). I guess since sequels are made for both of them they must have been successful. But they weren't made by Americans and it seems that in the US there is this whole mindset of "adventures need to appeal to every gamer or they won't be successful". Well, I don't get it. And I completely agree with Tobias (nice name :)). I'm not good with strategy games or first person shooters but I don't think that game developers of these games would ever consider making it easier so that I enjoy them.

2. I don't understand the trend of adventure games. I didn't need a walkthrough for HtR or Day of the Tentacle. I think that their puzzles were so well designed and logical in their own world that it was just rewarding to figure them out. However I completely stopped playing Syberia 2 which is supposed to be targeted at a non-adventurer audience because I just didn't get it. The puzzles were so badly designed that I never knew what I was supposed to do. I'm standing in a wood and need to make fire. Oh, yeah, it makes perfectly sense that I need to walk two screens away to find wood. Right...
Now, I'm pretty sure that the puzzles in S&M won't be like that at all because there are some very good designers working on that. My point is: I don't get how anybody could prefer a game like Syberia to a game like HtR, except for people who don't like cartoon games. But I think *if* you like cartoon games you also enjoy a certain amount of craziness to puzzles because it's just so rewarding. And no, I'm *not* talking about search for the one-pixel-chewing gum kind of puzzles but for well designed crazy-but-logical puzzles like the ones in Day of the Tentacle.

3. Having said all of this I want to say that I have confidence that the designers will make the coming episodes harder. I just wonder... if the difficulty level is as easy as most people are claiming, why does it say on the download side that it's difficulty 4 out of 6? I really wonder what 1 out of 6 is? Watching a movie?

Ok, I'll stop talking now until after I played the whole game. Thanks for making this game in any case. I know I will enjoy it even though I might wish for more.

Tobias

therobbot

11/03/2006, 01:21 am

Sorry, can't stop talking. :)

numble, I know your question wasn't pointed at me but for me an example of classic Lucas Arts puzzles is when in Day of the Tentacle you're stuck in the tree in the future and to get down you need to convince George Washington to cut down the tree in the past by painting the fruits red so it looks like a cherry tree. These are puzzles I can still laugh about and talk to friends who also played it years later. And for me that is part of the fun of adventure games.

Tobias

numble

11/03/2006, 02:08 am

Sorry, can't stop talking.

numble, I know your question wasn't pointed at me but for me an example of classic Lucas Arts puzzles is when in Day of the Tentacle you're stuck in the tree in the future and to get down you need to convince George Washington to cut down the tree in the past by painting the fruits red so it looks like a cherry tree. These are puzzles I can still laugh about and talk to friends who also played it years later. And for me that is part of the fun of adventure games.

Tobias

I would agree with that actually. Since you haven't played the game yet, I won't reveal/spoil it, but I will say that I think the last puzzle in Culture Shock is actually more difficult and complex than the final puzzle in Day of the Tentacle.

Any way, I think I'm through here. My only points have been that yes, I do expect the games to be more difficult in the future, but no, I don't expect them to be quite like the games of the past.

I really absolutely just love adventure games but realize that if more quality games of these are to be made, some things need to be sacrificed for that to happen. I would be happy if changes don't have to be made, but the reality, at least in America, is that people haven't been buying these things that much.

I haven't played Psychonauts yet, but from what I gather, Tim Schafer--legendary creator of Grim Fandango and Full Throttle--basically adds a TON of action/platformer elements into it while still preserving his adventure essentials of humor, dialog and story. There are a couple of puzzles I heard, but aren't major and aren't hard. But the game, like Culture Shock, received rave reviews everywhere due especially to its writing, humor, and characters--Psychonauts even won the equivalent of the Academy Award in Britain for best screenplay for a video game. I can only imagine how he would be ripped to shreds by you guys that demand harder puzzles and wishing that you can get stuck every once in awhile.

Maybe you guys really are just very hardcore adventure gamers that have tons of experience from playing lots and lots of adventure games (Sorry Incognito, but I only recognize Bone, Sam and Max, and A Vampyre Story from your list of games----and I have played every Lucasarts adventure, a bunch of Sierra games, Return to Zork, Zork GI and the Last Express, amongst others) so maybe puzzles in those games take only 15 minutes of thinking for you guys. For me, I would say I often found myself stuck for an hour or two on a puzzle at a time (maybe because I played them at such a young age), and I would end up resorting to a walkthrough more often than not. But if your 15 minute puzzles take me (a fairly experienced adventure gamer) an hour or 2, imagine how extremely difficult and put off somebody that is new to the genre is.

It looks like nearly everyone on Gametap has played Culture Shock, and that looks great, since it looks like before S&M, Gametap players don't really play much adventure games according to the rankings. If I can get into my "dirty political and strategic mode," I'd say this bode wells for a Season 2. If Telltale doesn't release it to Gametap, a lot of Gametap players will be thirsty to open their wallets anyway (they appear to be the type to be willing to spend $60-$120/year for what amounts to a video game rental service already). And if they do give it to Gametap, Telltale can charge a ton of money since they know how popular and valuable they are to Gametap. Win/Win.

(Sorry, I've exposed that disdainful greedy and conniving part of me that now desires swiss cheese...)

Incognito

11/03/2006, 02:40 am

No one demanded Psychonauts to be harder since it was more of an actionplattformer than an adventuregame, and as such hade enough challenge.

But Telltale choosed to make an adventuregame, and because of that they need to build to challenge around the puzzles. Episode 1 is getting good reviews, but if you look at the criticism against the game it is in nearly all reviews about the low difficulty-level and the gamelength. And everyone understands the importance of reviewratings.

DoubtedEdwardo

11/03/2006, 02:49 am

Increasing the difficulty of the puzzles is one thing, but stopping spelling out the answers to the puzzles in 10 foot high flashing neon lights would also help. It would be nice to have to think about a puzzle rather then just follow instructions. I know not all the puzzles in Culture Shock were like that but I think the majority were.

Jokieman

11/03/2006, 03:11 am

Jokieman: In your opinion, what is an example of a puzzle with creativity and depth from a Lucasarts classic?

Ok I'm rewriting this, So ignore everything I wrote before.

#1 The Game was too Linear. There was only one way to end the game, there were no choices to be made. This caused a lack of depth because there wasn't more than 1 way to solve the game. In just about every Lucas Game I've played there was more than 1 way to solve the game. There were lots of puzzles, some of which were essential, and some of which weren't. There were some puzzles that were strictly "gag" puzzles. Puzzles that once were solved were meant to elicit a chuckle or an OMG. (Like Guybrush falling off the cliff, with a little GAME OVER being displayed on the screen. Then suddenly Guybrush flies back onto the screen, makes a joke about the Rubber Tree. and it inevitably puts a smile on your face. After you get freaked out because you didn't save the game in the last 2 hours. hehe)

#2 The puzzles were easy enough to figure out in most cases, that any 8 year old kid could have done them. They were too easy, but worse, they weren't very imaginative. They were way too logical in a real world sense. (The Puzzles did not match up to the craziness of Sam & Max. A talking dog and a talking rabbit do not think the same way people do, yet in order to solve the puzzles, you didn't have to think like sam & max, you had to think like you normally do. This does not add to the immersiveness of the game.) Someone else mentioned the DOTT puzzle (and yeah that was a really good puzzle.) Any of the Lucas games are FULL of puzzle's like the DOTT puzzle, they required real thinking to solve them, and they required you to try and think like the character you were playing to solve them. Sam & Max lacked this kind of creativity with it's puzzles.

#3 There were at least 2 instances in Sam & Max where you can ask the same question over and over a couple of times and get different answers. In some Lucas Games they used these as Dialogue puzzles where you keep asking the same question and you keep getting a different answer until finally the character gives in and helps you out. That's creative, that's thinking smart. In the case of Guybrush, he was an annoying kid, and when he kept "nagging" the "adults" in the game like a "kid" is supposed to do, the adults finally gave in, like they're supposed to do, that's immersiveness that Sam & Max lacks.

#4 A game as an Episode should follow certain successful episodic rules. If you're going to have a game that runs like a T.V. show, then it needs to follow a T.V. series formula. We'll use the XFILES here because I don't think anyone can say that the Xfiles wasn't a good show. Fact of the matter is, Xfiles had one big overall plot, with a lot of sub-plots that would occasionally advance the overall plot closer to a resolution. Sam & Max had no sub plots (and you know, even all the old Lucas Games usually had Sub Plots. that tied into the overall plot of the story, and Sam & Max is missing that here.)

The lack of Sub plots gave the game an overall feeling of moving too slow, like others commented. The pace of the game is fine, if it's a full feature game, but as a small episodic game, the pace was incredibly slow. episodes need to have a lot of stuff happening in a short amount of time, that you just don't have with Sam & Max or the Bone games, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

#5: Sam & Max weren't Edgy enough. There was some wittiness going on, and yes, I got all of the jokes, but again, the pacing of the overall game was too slow, there was none of the raciness I was expecting from Sam or Max. I mean if you had to rate this game by today's standards, it'd be given a solid G rating. I was hoping for something more along the lines of PG or PG13. Sam Put me to sleep with the slow pacing of his Bogart-type voice at times.

All of these things add up to a lack of depth. Like I said, If Sam & Max: Culture Shock, were a pool, then that pool would be about 6 inches deep. Compare that pool to the Secrets of Monkey Island, say, and we're talking about a 10 feet deep pool.

And one more thing: Towards the end of the game I started noticing more graphic/sound glitches that were going on in almost every scene. Made me feel like the game hadn't been properly tested for bugs and that it didn't receive a proper "final touch" before it went out. This will be another problem with an Episodic game platform because of the time constraints in getting rid of all the bugs.

Firvulag

11/03/2006, 03:54 am

i think there is a very fine line between challenging and fun puzzles and just plain bad design.
as with most adventure games you end up trying every item with every clickable thing in the game..not good gameplay in my book.

you mention series formuals like x-files and things.
this is probably just a "pilot" episode. i am not sure but i sortoff expect the next episodes to have an overall plot. atleast thats what i hope^^

Stoney

11/03/2006, 04:32 am

Everything important has already been said. After finishing Episode 1 i have to admit there is some bad aftertaste, playing the game was refreshing but it was a very very short refreshment. No Item Combining Puzzles, etc.

I really hope Telltale will make the puzzles harder in Episode 2 as they were not challenging at all. Don´t get me wrong, the game is an enjoyment to play for old adventure enthusiasts, but i miss getting stuck, having to think my way out like in the old times.

For the glitches, yes there seem to be some memory leaks towards the end of the Game (Where you face Brady). That added with some animation errors (Missing running animation when doing certain things in dream sequence) etc, leads to the fact that it hasnt been tested properly.

Alucard

11/03/2006, 04:33 am

Well I'm going to give my 2 random cents.
Adventure games are a bit of a niche market but they have a huge potential.
I think it has lots of potential though since the market for female gamers is pretty untapped. (now only if we could get girls to stop blowing so much cash on make-up and crap like that then we could get more of this money into the adventure game industry.... ok ok lofty goals and to some members a bit sexist but I'm 1/2 kidding anyway) I don't think watering down these games because they might be too difficult for beginnners? (somehow I'm reminded of doki doki panic. I'm a bit offended at nindendo for that sham but thats a little off topic)

I don't think that this type of game is dying out but it might need to change a little. I personally don't like how verbs have been stripped from the games. I think it allows for more humor and can sometimes increase the difficulty a bit.
It's like if you had a fighting game where all the moves were mapped to one button... ok ok! it isn't that bad but I barely had to think this episode. The puzzles were just too transparent Still I give the game somewhere in the range of an 8/10.

I hope that we can see the increase in difficulty by next episode.

numble

11/03/2006, 07:53 am

Retronauts podcast on Sam and Max and adventure games (http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/Podcasts/Retronauts/102506.mp3)

If you listen to the podcast for example, you'll learn a theory about why Telltale games only have one "verb" for the cursor, compared to past adventure games that had "talk to, pick up, use, look at" and how this change makes it much more intuitive for all gamers.

Face it, if you are an experienced adventure gamer (I am), every time you entered a room, your brain would automatically go into the "adventure-game trance":

1. Right click/navigate cursor to "look at" verb
2. Left click object to "look at object"
3. Right click/navigate cursor to "pick up" verb
4. Left click object to "pick up object"
4a. Object goes into your inventory.
4b. Object does not go into your inventory.
5. If object can't be picked up, right click/navigate cursor to "use" verb
6. Left click object to "use object"
7. Repeat steps 1-6 for for every other object in the room.

Veteran adventure gamers expect this activity and don't mind it, but it's not really a stretch of an imagination to imagine why people don't find this activity fun. Making the mouse automatically pick up something if it can be picked up really cuts out a lot of this activity, but also shortens the game a bit, and I've seen some people on this forum actually request the old implementation.

Laserschwert

11/03/2006, 08:35 am

I think the last puzzle of the game was probably the one that showed best what puzzles in Sam & Max should be like, because it had you think along the lines of a classic comic/comedic Tex Avery-like stereotype, which makes absolute sense in a comic adventure.

dunkpork

11/03/2006, 10:04 am

I hate hunting widgets and connecting them to thing-a-ma-jigs to pass by the arbitrarily puzzle-like keeper of the gate. I thought the puzzles in Episode 1 were intelligent, well related to the story, creative, and fun.

I also hate bashing my brain into a wall because the relation between two objects is so obscure that I can't tell it's a solution to a puzzle until after the solution is complete (or I cheat and find the answer).

rhov23

11/03/2006, 10:17 am

Loved the graphics. Loved the characters, but man... no freedom... so linear that it became claustrophobic...

you couldn't start a puzzle, and try another one meanwhile... An area of movement that was restricted to just 3 rooms/houses?

jp-30

11/03/2006, 10:25 am

Fact of the matter is, Xfiles had one big overall plot, with a lot of sub-plots that would occasionally advance the overall plot closer to a resolution. Sam & Max had no sub plots (and you know, even all the old Lucas Games usually had Sub Plots. that tied into the overall plot of the story, and Sam & Max is missing that here.)

Given only one episode has come out, how do you know the seeds of the uber-plot haven't been planted in Episode 1?

jp-30

11/03/2006, 12:19 pm

The Game was too Linear. There was only one way to end the game, there were no choices to be made. This caused a lack of depth because there wasn't more than 1 way to solve the game. In just about every Lucas Game I've played there was more than 1 way to solve the game.

Adventure Games by their very nature are linear. It's not an RPG. there is a story to be told, and other than splitting into 3 separate paths in Fate of Atlantis (which all had the same endgame sequence regardless) I cannot recall a single LucasArts adventure with multiple ways to complete the game. Sure there were the occasional bonus screen like when you sunk the ship in MI2, and the occasional puzzle may have has 2 solutions (fight / talk in Last Crusade), but I'm not recalling anything that could be called multiple solutions to 'solve the game' in any of the LEC classics.

I thought having all 3 poppers able to be interacted with in any order (even if they can't be dehypnotised in any order) was great - really gave the feel of openness and, dare I say it... non linearity.

The puzzles were easy enough to figure out in most cases, that any 8 year old kid could have done them. They were too easy, but worse, they weren't very imaginative. They were way too logical in a real world sense.

I thought the psychoanalysis and dream puzzles were absolutely outstanding, at least equal to any other inspired puzzle in games gone by.

And for most people having illogical puzzles is the worst thing possible in an adventure. I assume you mean we didn't have to think like an anthromorphic gumshoe dog to solve puzzles - and yet the very first puzzle was solved by unloading your gun on an inanimate object.

#4 A game as an Episode should follow certain successful episodic rules. If you're going to have a game that runs like a T.V. show, then it needs to follow a T.V. series formula. We'll use the XFILES here because I don't think anyone can say that the Xfiles wasn't a good show. Fact of the matter is, Xfiles had one big overall plot, with a lot of sub-plots that would occasionally advance the overall plot closer to a resolution. Sam & Max had no sub plots (and you know, even all the old Lucas Games usually had Sub Plots. that tied into the overall plot of the story, and Sam & Max is missing that here.)

Maybe you're looking at it from the wrong angle. Telltale have said that there will be an overall story arc tying the season together. In the context of the season, perhaps Culture Shock was the sub-plot.

The lack of Sub plots gave the game an overall feeling of moving too slow, like others commented. The pace of the game is fine, if it's a full feature game, but as a small episodic game, the pace was incredibly slow. episodes need to have a lot of stuff happening in a short amount of time, that you just don't have with Sam & Max or the Bone games, and I'm not the only one who feels this way.

See, I've only seen you comment about the game being to slow. I thought it was incredibly well paced - every location had at least one puzzle and at least one NPC to interact with. To me the interactivity density was wonderful. Things to see, do, interact with, talk to in every location. And to-ing and fro-ing to collect objects to solve puzzles with was kept to a minimum - it's needless traipsing that in my mind upsets the pace of the game. And wouldn't sub-plots, by their very nature, actually slow the pace of the story advancement down?

I cannot get my head around how you feel the pace was dragging. It was incredibly tight as far as I'n concerned.

Anyway, to each there own. Just pointing out that there are others of us, who are seasoned adventuregamers too, who do not share your viewpoint on the "faults" you have raised.

Udvarnoky

11/03/2006, 12:47 pm

I haven't played Psychonauts yet

Do it now.

therobbot

11/03/2006, 01:45 pm

Ok, I finished the game and first of all let me say that I loved it, laughed a lot and am looking forward to the next episodes. But since this is the puzzle difficulty thread, I have some things to add.

*** POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD! ****

First of all, numble, which puzzle do you mean when you say that the last puzzle was more complex than the DOTT puzzle? Because I thought both of the last puzzles (dream sequence and soda poppers) were quite creative but VERY easy. I didn't have to think much about it and as somebody else said it seemed as if it was written in bold flashing letters what I was supposed to do.

I thought that all the puzzles were very clever, logical, and some of them even really unique and hilarious. There were no badly designed puzzles and you never had to walk for ages just to complete puzzles. So well done there. But still I had some problems with them (spoilers in brackets):

1. Too many hints! And I'm talking about hints being given without asking for it (Like when I only need to talk to Sybil to get diagnosed for the former childstar thing instead of having to give the form to her )

2. Sometimes there were just not enough possibilities so it was easy to do the right thing accidentally (for example I put the cheese in the box of one of the soda poppers without thinking much about it and was kind of disappointed to see that this results in him getting knocked out even though I did not think about this at all. It might help if I have to do some more preparation before.).

3. Some puzzles could have been awesome but missed it, again because of not enough possibilities. (Like the first dream sequence that could have been really hard (finding all the right things) but it was enough to just get two things right (Max was obvious because of the peers thing and then you just had to find the birthday cake). I thought I'd need to get the right thing everywhere. And this would have been so much better. However the ink puzzle was better here.)

4. Finally sometimes it seemed that I didn't have any chance to do anything but the right thing (Like in the second dream sequence where except for the Max head puzzle I felt like I had no chance to not do the right thing).

I know that 2-4 sound like the same thing without the spoilers. Sorry for that.

So I guess what I want to say is: The puzzles were great but maybe you should really consider only helping if asked for. Because otherwise you ruin the whole fun of "getting the puzzle".

Tobias

TheGreyMatter

11/03/2006, 02:27 pm

I thought having all 3 poppers able to be interacted with in any order (even if they can't be dehypnotised in any order) was great - really gave the feel of openness and, dare I say it... non linearity.

actually you can, if you dehypnotise whizzer before specs you will get a different chase sequence. :)

jp-30

11/03/2006, 02:37 pm

Yeah, I saw that on the replay through with my wife - I meant you need to do Peepers first. Specs & Wizzer can be done in either order.

DoubtedEdwardo

11/03/2006, 03:15 pm

Something else too add to the difficulty debate. I'm hoping the episodes will be cumulative eg the locations and/or items in one episode will be brought over to the next. While this might not work for some things, I think it would slowly increase the difficulty as we have more items to choose. I guess it would be hard to keep every location but I imagine the office and the two shops will be kept on for possibly the rest of the season. In past adventure games you often picked something up simply because you could and then find it to be useful later, in the episodic format you pick something up to solve a puzzle in the short term then are presently surprised when you find it solves something in a later episode. I think this is something that could work really well if done right.

jp-30

11/03/2006, 03:21 pm

It's been said that you can't revisit old locations (unless they're part of the new game) or carry over objects from one game to the next.

Each game is meant to be played standalone, which would be impossible if you needed to have picked up an object from Episode 1 to use it in Episode 3.

DoubtedEdwardo

11/03/2006, 03:28 pm

numble

11/03/2006, 03:39 pm

Do it now. (Play Psychonauts)

Thing is, I'm afraid of my current system specs not being up to par (haven't actually checked yet though) and I don't have a console system.

Well, just checked and it looks like my system is just above the bare minimum. But I still am afraid of a laggy experience. I will look into first thing when I get a new system (especially with OS X Leopard and Windows Vista coming), or (less likely) get one of those extremely expensive consoles.

numble

11/03/2006, 03:43 pm

Regarding the last DOTT puzzle--if I'm not mistaken, it involves Dr. Edison tied up, and the purple tentacle chasing you with a shrink-ray gun. To beat it, you simply tell Purple Tentacle to shoot Dr. Edison instead of you. I think the last puzzle in Culture Shock is very similar, but a bit more complex and difficult.

jp-30

11/03/2006, 03:44 pm

I mean the objects that were needed to solve the puzzles in the episode could be carried over. Surely everyone would have picked those up, but if it's already been said that it won't happen I won't press the point.
I thought it was a good idea...

Oh, it could be a great idea in certain circumstances. Certainly add to continuity between episodes.

Who's to say the spray can (for example) from Episode 1 won't be used agaiin in a later episode? But it's not as if someone who has only bought Episode 3 won't have access to the item, it would just be a standard item that people who have played the earlier episodes will recognise..

ShiratoriNinjaBrat

11/03/2006, 06:11 pm

Viz79

11/03/2006, 07:22 pm

RTF

11/03/2006, 08:29 pm

I just finished playing the game. It took me about four hours. I thought it was great. I like adventure games, played almost all the classics(including Hit the Road), but I am absolutely terrible at solving them; not only do I miss even obvious solutions, but I get frustrated far too quickly. Only once or twice have I ever completed a game without using a walkthrough - and this is one of the fortunate cases where I didn't need one. I got the whole season and am now eager for more.

Personally, I think the difficulty is just right for a product that Telltale wants to actually profit from - everything made sense, there were lots of clues, and just a few head-tweakers(the hypnosis dream and graffiti knockout segments got me for a little while, but I trusted myself to find the solution, which isn't always the case in a huge, sprawling adventure) The people moaning about easiness are the adventure hardcore - which like all gaming hardcore tend to overrepresent themselves. This isn't just an "adventure game problem" - over time all game genres have hardened up. Early space shooters like Space Invaders and Galaga are hardly as intense as stuff you saw later - Tempest, R-Type, Ikaruga. And it's true of fighting games and platform games and music games and strategy games and first-person games and flight sims and pretty much everything else on the market(there are even hardcore dating sims - and yes, I mind that kind as well!).

Why does it happen? Why is it different now? Why it happened is pretty easy to explain... retail economics dictate that stores can only profit by shelving the hottest sellers - if it moves slower than the hottest game, it's lowering their profit. Hence why today's sell window spans only a few weeks to months. Hot sellers in gaming are, generally, titles that contain a gameplay that is already known to players but is expanded upon - something that can be described in simple genre terms. High production values can help substantially, but if the gameplay is new to players, they are not as likely to hear about it, and neither are they as likely to be immediately interested. So in the arcades and retail, the market for "introductory" games of any kind started losing weight in the second half of the 1980s, and then practically disappeared during the 1990s. This is why Japan's game market has measurably grown smaller in the past few years - not enough new players, and too many dropping out of gaming entirely.

The online market is the cure, because there's no shelf acting as a bottleneck to harden genres. It's why casual gaming is a hit - casual-styled titles are the "introductory" games of our time; they don't carry groundbreaking technology or complexity. In fact, other than the production values, they're downright minimalistic. But they aren't all match-three puzzlers or Breakout clones either - those are just tried-and-true methods. Those styles of game happen to be easier to match difficulty to. Anyone can play a game of Minesweeper, while the world champions of the game can clear boards in mere moments. Both are happy.

In conclusion, I think what Telltale is doing is pioneering casual adventure. Because of the nature of the genre(fixed puzzle difficulty with very little flexibility), the hardcore segment will probably always feel underserved by them, but I don't think that's a reason to get angry. In the future, as a result of the popularity of games like the new Sam and Max, a new market for difficult adventure games may appear. Whether or not Telltale is the one making them, you'll stand to benefit a few years down the line. In the meantime, there are plenty of classic and extremely difficult adventure games around. Surely you haven't played them all?

numble

11/03/2006, 09:49 pm

Interesting theory, RTF... it's really compelling and I've never heard it quite formulated like you have done. Thanks.

Hero1

11/04/2006, 12:40 am

If the "casual adventure" is right, I wanna go left. :cool:

Pvt._Public

11/04/2006, 03:18 am

if it wasn't for the second to last, and last puzzle, i would have thought this game was a user paced story book interactive movie, more than an adventure game.

which is funny cause i was reading this interview with roberta williams who did kings quest, and she was trying to do just that, make an interactive story book, cept i'll bet the puzzles in kings quest one were a little harder. let's hope the next game ramps up, not by one but by 2 levels of difficulty muwahahaha

let our brains suffer... sufferrrrr... must find rope.

Roberta Williams is married to the devil who carries his enormous genatalia around in a wheelbarrow. And if you thought I stole that from Old Man Murray, you'd be absolutely right. She's responsible for making adventure games so mind numbingly stupid in the first place and she's never to be mentioned again. Who wants to die in an adventure game? Who wants to solve stupid illogical puzzles? Who wants to play the next in a series of stupid, clichéd fantasy games which make you feel like a dork for calling yourself a gamer? I hold her personally responsible for the downfall of the popularity of Adventures. Also, she always gives the impression of thinking she's better than you. And that's MY thing!

Major_Higgins

11/04/2006, 06:20 am

Aww, come on leave the Old Lady be, this is absurd.

RTF has a good, well demonstrated point, in the fact that Telltale + Sam&Max + Online Distribution is good alchemy for the Genre. We've been fussing about the difficulty a whole lot, but can't we just take a look and applaud Telltale for what we were all waiting for : the Rebirth of Adventure (and don't tell me about Runaway please, it's crap)? Who cares if Culture Shock feels more like an interactive animated cartoon? Our Eldorado is back!
It can grow in different manners now, easy or Ikaruga-esque, whatever. It's a genre, there can be different "branches" of it (think about the gap between Red Orchestra & Quake 4 in the FPS genre, for example).

Now, let's see what Jane Jensen does with Grey Matter!

numble

11/04/2006, 07:18 am

For perspective on Pvt. Public's comments, this is basically Roberta Williams's theory on the downturn of the genre:

Back when I got started, which sounds like ancient history, back then the demographics of people who were into computer games, was totally different, in my opinion, then they are today. Back then, computers were more expensive, which made them more exclusive to people who were maybe at a certain income level, or education level. So the people that played computer games 15 years ago were that type of person. They probably didn't watch television as much, and the instant gratification era hadn't quite grown the way it has lately. I think in the last 5 or 6 years, the demographics have really changed, now this is my opinion, because computers are less expensive so more people can afford them. More "average" people now feel they should own one.

Jokieman

11/04/2006, 09:35 am

Irony is that I 'accidently' finished the last puzzle while just messing around with the options. I mean honestly.. I finished it and thought 'oh erm.. did I just miss an opportunity to think heavily on a puzzle?'

Honestly though, I understand Telltale are trying to focus on a large target audience but I think they need to make them a little more complicated. The game just flowed on automatically for me without really ever having to think for more than a few minutes. I loved the adventures where you'd really have to 'think' over possible solutions. Not too hard but just a little harder guys?

That's interesting because that's exactly how I finished the Dream Sequence.

As For Roberta Williams, I guess she never heard of the commodore 64 for under $200.00.. Roberta's theory has several holes in it, because her theory does not account for the dwindling sales of Adventure Games. according to her theory, the Genre would at least have stayed stagnant, thus making the games still profitable, just not by as much as the new segment of games. That's a critical flaw in her thinking because she, like other game designers, don't want to admit the truth.

What has hurt adventure games more than anything is the appalling number of BAD ones that have been released. People get tired of wasting their money on BADLY written and executed Adventure Games. For every 1 good adventure game, 10 bad ones are released. Take a look at any adventure gaming forum and you'll see a LOT of people say the same thing "I'm not buying it until I hear from a trusted source that it is good, because I have spent too much money on bad adventure games."

The fact that Sodoku is so popular among so many people proves that there are a lot of people out there who still crave difficult puzzles to solve and other types of Mind exercises. They just choose not to get it from Adventure games anymore because they have been ripped off so much in the past by bugware.

In a very REAL sense, Adventure Games have been responsible for killing their own Genre. I can guarantee you it wasn't because of hard puzzles. It was due to poor design and execution, and the fact that a lot of the adventure games out there are just plain boring because Game developers focus on eye candy instead of the writing and dialogue. Which is always fatal when it comes to Adventure Games whose very souls rely on excellent and witty scripts/dialogues.

Example: Sony Online Entertainment said the same thing about their hard core gamers segment as well. They said "Our game is failing because we are catering to the hard core segment, so we are going to make the game accessible to casual players." (When in truth, the game was failing because even then they chose not to listen to their players, in fact Raph Koster openly admitted that he felt HE knew what was best, not us. Raph was wrong. heh).

The problem with this is that they completely alienated their loyal fan base, and they were quite surprised to see that loyal fan base totally desert them in the case of Star Wars Galaxies. They have been ailing from that for a year now and they have since admitted to making a "huge mistake" by alienating those players. But it's too late, we all moved on. We gave them ample warning and they didn't listen. Sony and Lucas Arts have lost a bundle on a game that should have been a MEGA-HIT from the very beginning and only grown in popularity.

Example: The Movie industry has made similar mistakes in the past because they thought they had to make "dumbed down" movies because their audiences were too stupid to "get it" And for a few years there every blockbuster that came out TANKED because of that kind of thinking.

When ANY company starts believing it knows what's best for it's customer, what they are REALLY saying is "We like our Ego's better than our Customers." And that translates into "We hate money." hehe. ALWAYS.

And I'll tell you something else. It is confusing to me when they make adultish type jokes about an "organ" And then give you puzzles that an 8 year old is going to have an easy time solving. There seems to be some confusion about where they want to take Sam & Max, and what Audience it is for.

As for the game being Linear, All games have a story to tell, this is true, but not all games make you feel like you are forced into it like I felt forced with Sam & Max. By it's very nature an Adventure game has to be more creative. If I just want to kill stuff I can easil Load up Call of Duty and go through the levels and follow the path that I am given. If I want to play and Adventure Game, I want there to be some kind of "adventure" about it, and that means giving me choices as to how I finish that game. The result has to be the same, I understand this, But should I have to follow one prescribed path to get there? Other successful adventure games have proven that this is not the case (Some have even offered alternate endings, if I remember correctly.)

I liked the game, but there is room for a lot of improvement here. I hope the peeps at TellTale are listening, it would be a boon for them if they did.

"A Good adventure game is a good thinking game. It is the modern version of Chess. It requires Strategy, Thought, and Patience to win out." -- Me, Right Now.

Sicarius

11/04/2006, 09:55 am

Yeah, Episode 2 (and the following) definitly need more challenging puzzles. I just got through my first run and had no problems at all. Only the last one could actually count as a riddle in my opinion.

Culture Shock has excellent characters, locations and dialogues but to make it perfect, it definitly needs more riddles that require actually some brains so to speak. Making it easier for the "crowd" is no excuse. There are always ways to help people with a riddle ingame so they'll eventually come to it and since we've two characters here, it's obvious how it could work.

Perhaps that's one of the faults in the whole "episodic"-thing (since I haven't encounter that problem in other blockbuster adventures lately released like Secret Files Tunguska or Ankh). In a continues game you can begin with easy riddles and then slowly go to more challenging things but since every episode needs to stand for itself...

I hope you guys at Telltale come up with something. Sam 'n Max Hit the Road wasn't only a success because of the surroundings, the riddles were good and challenging too (also I admit that it's one of the easier LucasArts Adventures).

And I mostly agree with Jokieman.

Maratanos

11/04/2006, 10:18 am

I've seen a lot of bad adventure games as well... Beyond Atlantis comes to mind...

numble

11/04/2006, 10:30 am

Jokieman

11/04/2006, 11:05 am

Just because you think that any 8-year old can solve them, doesn't make it true. The fact that Telltale is more or less hitting it's targeted game length for it's episodic game (check out the poll on the forum) is pretty tremendous. Look at the interviews with Dan Connors that you can find on the web, and you'll see that this is probably where they want to be in terms of length.

The problem is that I and many others do that already. A lot of people are playing 3-4-5 games at once. Having the game be shorter doesn't really help that at all. It does however help the game developer because they see profits a lot quicker than designing a feature length game. Also I don't feel that Telltale has really given the Episodic adventure enough time to see if it is a success or not. So far they've released a total of 3 episodic adventures, and two of them were "first on the block" meaning the first Bone game and the first Sam & Max game are of course expected to have high sales numbers. Bone because it was the first Episodic adventure and Sam & Max because it was a popular feature length game at one time. Another issue concerns the time frame. Sure on Monday I can play sam & max. But what about the monday after that, and the monday after that. What do I get to fill that "timeslot" until the next one comes out? With a feature length game, I can go back to that game every monday for a month if I want to. So In a sense a feature length game provides a better "season" than an Episodic game due to the length of time involved between each episode.

In fact many times these games already provide chapters and I usually found it very convenient to end my playing session when i reached a new chapter, to continue it on at a later date. I don't believe there is anyone out there who feels forced into playing 25 hours straight to finish a "full" length feature because it is "too long". I have never heard anyone complain that an adventure game was "too long" In fact the major complaints for adventure games have ALWAYS been "Too Short.", "Boring.", and "Buggy."

They are hoping to make this the beginning of an episodic gaming trend that expands so that the vision in that quote can come true. Make the puzzles too difficult and you lengthen the game to a point where you spend a week on the game, and that destroys the vision already--not to mention all the things I and others have said before about getting frustrated and annoyed with puzzles and eventually having to use a walkthrough, even in the well-designed classics

I agree, it's what telltale wants to happen, but I think eventually they will have to develop feature length games if they want to survive. Episodic gaming is very limited in it's scope. Those same ADHD kids that Episodic games appeal to will be the same ones who get tired of waiting a month or two for the next one to come out, they will move on and forget about it.

I've had to use walkthroughs before, several times, I don't find it "frustrating" to use one, what I found is that upon using one, I realized that I "should have" figured that out on my own. There were very FEW times when I resorted to a walkthrough for help and thought to myself. "Well that was totally illogical and I would have never gotten that." Though it has happened, it has been so rare I could count the times on a single hand.

Have you ever watched a Pixar movie? The critical reaction to them usually are that adults and children love the movies, but for different reasons. If you think that Pixar movies are for kids only, it would be really weird to know why Steve Purcell, the creator of Sam and Max, works for them.

Yes, Pixar has done some good work. I'll note however they were recently bought out by Disney thanks to Steve Jobs, and they were losing money because their last couple of movies didn't do so well. They moved away from their own formula a bit and it cost them. (Not that this applies at all to this conversation, but in general computer animation is becoming too perfect on screen and because of this is becoming less desirable. The Incredibles would have been much better off being Live Action, and Cars, as much as I like it, I think we could have done without it all together. Pixar needs to stick with movies like Monsters Inc. and Finding Nemo, to keep churning out those profits. Over The Hedge by Dreamworks felt more like a Pixar animation than did either of the Pixar movies I just mentioned.) The problem is that the main FEATURE of the Adventure game is the puzzles. If they are not difficult enough, then people will eventually decide that the puzzles are too trivial to waste their time on. A LOT of people have felt that the puzzles for all three of their episodic releases have been too simple by far, and the game's length for each one, too short. I happen to think that telltale is aiming too low, if this is their target, and others do agree with me.

Episodic games have a lot of hurdles to overcome as many people have pointed out, If TellTale is not careful, they are going to start losing sales. I would guess that the great cow race did not sell as well as Bone did, because people are still complaining about the simplicity of the puzzles.

And forgive me for pointing out that most adventure gamers are grown adults now. Grown adults usually tend toward a desire to be challenged. The Challenge is what keeps them entertained.

The average computer gamer is around 25 years old now.

And Sam and Max used to be a children's TV show, it'd be way too discontinuous for them to target only adults with the IP.

Again, The Sam & Max Episode "I" played had witticisms that weren't meant for the age bracket that the puzzles were targeted at. In this sense I have a strong feeling that the game developers and writers are confused about their target audience. I feel at the very least that they are trying to target too wide of an audience and that in the end it is going to bite them on the butt as it has for so many others in the past.

I think we have to simply agree to disagree here. I find a lot of problems with the episodic format that are going to become much more telling as time wears on if TellTale doesn't make an attempt to overcome them. And you seem to find the game very fine just the way it is.

At the very least, for Episodic Gaming to last long term, the pace of the games need to be picked up. The story line, the puzzles, etc, it all MOVES like a feature length game, when it needs to be moving like a much shorter game. I really felt like I didn't even get a full chapter's worth of play out of Sam & Max: Culture Shock.

numble

11/04/2006, 11:16 am

how old? (http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=851)

That's an interesting forum post in another part of the site, and my rough overview of it is that most of the posters basically were 8-12 years old when they first started playing adventure games. (10 year olds playing Leisure Suit Larry? Scandalous!) Of course most of those people are now in their 20s-40s, so here is one problem that is really difficult with adventure games: If you appeal too much to the experienced gamers, you make the barrier of entry too high for introductory gamers, and your market will eventually literally die out.

As to what to do in-between episodes, the quote says that "there is a critical mass around episodic gaming that needs to be achieved" implying that the critical mass has not yet been achieved. And Telltale will be introducing both the interim theater as well as machinama S&M shorts in between episodes. If you use Gametap to play Sam and Max (and they do intend to eventually be Worldwide, as Telltale said in a forum post) you get to watch a "new" episode of the classic cartoon every week.

And I've had to use a walkthrough in every adventure game I've played (except for Culture Shock!) because I don't have the time to spend 1-2 hours clicking up item combinations to find the solution to what really is just the equivalent to a key to a door.

dunkpork

11/04/2006, 11:18 am

Jokieman

11/04/2006, 11:29 am

Adventure games have been the victim of FPS/MMORPG games/companies consolodating the "industry's" finances into a very small, very concentrated core of products, just as much as they have been the victim of any staleness of design.

Numerous genres, from Strategy to RPG to Adventure to Simulation, have been victims of the FPS/MMORPG rampage of the last 10+ years.

From a personal standpoint and from what I have read from others on other forums, this is simply not true. It is a truth that game developers would like to believe, very much so, I think, but the truth of the matter is the Adventure Gaming community is inundated with horrible adventure games to the point where many of us are not willing to spend their money on one until we KNOW it's good.

Most FPS shooters are pretty good, some are better than others, and only a very few have been truly horrible, and they ended up not selling so well.

Same with RTS style games, and every other game out there.

However, Finding a good FPS game is really easy for someone to do, they read a few reviews, and go buy it.

Finding a good adventure game sometimes is like finding a needle in a haystack. This, in large part, is why this segment suffers as it does. My guess is if 80% of the adventure games out there were good or better, a lot more copies would be sold.

Strategy Games like Age of Empires, RPG games like NeverWinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, etc, none of these games have ever had a problem selling copies. In fact these games are just as famous in their segment as Halflife is in it's segment. Your view, I think, is very narrow.

Bioware in fact has produced some of the best games in the RPG Genre. Knights of the Old Republic was a HUGE success, as was it's sequel. And one of the reasons for that is because you as a player had a choice. You could go with the dark side, or go with the light side, how you played the game determined the outcome. And all of Bioware's RPG's have been made in such a way that the games have huge replayability value, despite the fact that most RPG's are like most adventures. You play them once usually and put them away. Players never felt forced into one role or another to succeed, and interestingly enough, to make a "classic" adventure, this has to be included into it as well.

Sicarius

11/04/2006, 12:24 pm

That's an interesting forum post in another part of the site, and my rough overview of it is that most of the posters basically were 8-12 years old when they first started playing adventure games. (10 year olds playing Leisure Suit Larry? Scandalous!) Of course most of those people are now in their 20s-40s, so here is one problem that is really difficult with adventure games: If you appeal too much to the experienced gamers, you make the barrier of entry too high for introductory gamers, and your market will eventually literally die out.

But if you don't appeal to them at all, you'll lose everything too. Sam & Max is a strong worldwide license (much stronger than Bone) which "Hit the Road" helped with significantly. Now 13years later, many people who played the original (me too), are desperate to get a worthy successor. But as desperate as we are we still have expectations and one of them are original and challenging puzzles. If they don't appeal to us well enough, many of us won't come back for episode 3 (some perhaps even't won't return for Ep2).

There was once an article at GameSpy.com where they asked different decisionlayers how important hardcore gamers are and they all agreed that they are necessary for a game to be really and totally successful.

But in any case: Age is not the real problem here. We were once young too, that didn't stop us from beating the games back then and won't stop the new generation from beating the new ones, if they really want to.

As to what to do in-between episodes, the quote says that "there is a critical mass around episodic gaming that needs to be achieved" implying that the critical mass has not yet been achieved. And Telltale will be introducing both the interim theater as well as machinama S&M shorts in between episodes. If you use Gametap to play Sam and Max (and they do intend to eventually be Worldwide, as Telltale said in a forum post) you get to watch a "new" episode of the classic cartoon every week.

I don't want to watch films (also I do long for a DVD-edition of the series here in europe) I want to play A GAME. They are a nice addition but they can't replace the experience of controling the characters and progressing with them.

And I've had to use a walkthrough in every adventure game I've played (except for Culture Shock!) because I don't have the time to spend 1-2 hours clicking up item combinations to find the solution to what really is just the equivalent to a key to a door.

Then adventures aren't your genre. It sounds hard but it seems to be so. If you aren't willing to spend hours to solve a game, then go watch a televisionseries. There you get your experience without any effort on your side.

Of course there are riddles in some adventures that are totally of scale in ways of difficutly but that's still no excuse for making it too easy. As long as a puzzle remains logic and thus beatable, there is no reason not to implent it. If that's scares a gamer away, he wouldn't have liked it anyway.

A game is NOT ONLY a story that is told. The mechanics are important too. Even MORE important. If the mechanics are good, I don't necessarily (depends on the genre) need a story but if I don't have good mechanics, no good story can truely save a game. And one mechanic of a PnC are challenging puzzles.

Culture Shock makes nearly everthing right but the big points which cost it dearly are the too easy difficulty of the puzzles and the too short playtime (even for a game of the "new" episodic age) which not only comes from that.

It seems that "fast fast" is a new problem in itself in the new generation of videogames and as someone who experienced the "good times" first hand, I don't like the way we're heading. It's the opposite of working -> working more hours for less pay and in episodic gaming you pay more for less hours (in the original shareware [which already was episodic gaming] days back with Doom and co. you got this all for FREE).

If I want the fast food experience I go to McDonalds not to a fine restaurant. And for me Sam & Max resides in the latter, so I expect some challenge for my money, even at that low price. And that why I also want the series to be a huge success. Thats the reason why I write these lines, so that Telltale sees what's going on and that they can use one of the advantages of the episodic format and make Ep2 better.

balloftwine

11/04/2006, 12:30 pm

how old? (http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=851)

That's an interesting forum post in another part of the site, and my rough overview of it is that most of the posters basically were 8-12 years old when they first started playing adventure games. (10 year olds playing Leisure Suit Larry? Scandalous!) Of course most of those people are now in their 20s-40s, so here is one problem that is really difficult with adventure games: If you appeal too much to the experienced gamers, you make the barrier of entry too high for introductory gamers, and your market will eventually literally die out.

Interesting logic there... so what your saying is all the people who played the 'really hard' adventures when they were 12 and now want the same level of difficulty in the new S&M games are excluding the younger gamers who want a lower level of difficulty... but surely we all had that level of difficulty in the first place? Are kids today not as intelligent as we were? Maybe their just so used to looking at pretty colours they cant be bothered to solve intricate puzzles...

jp-30

11/04/2006, 12:51 pm

I look at at slightly differently, and imagine if Hit The Road was released today instead of 13 years ago, many of the experienced Adventure Gamers would an all likelihood find it too easy.

We've all had 13 years of game playing and life experience since 1993. Many of us have gone from being kids/teens to adults.

What was a difficult game for us back in 1993 when we were kids might not be so difficult for us in 2006 as adults, yet people are wanting to experience the same sort of challenge Hit The Road presented to them back in the day.

To do that and keep up with the player's growth and experience, the new game would need to be substantially harder than Hit The Road, wouldn't it? -and that's where the barrier to new players that numble mentions would occur.

numble

11/04/2006, 01:55 pm

Then adventures aren't your genre. It sounds hard but it seems to be so. If you aren't willing to spend hours to solve a game, then go watch a televisionseries. There you get your experience without any effort on your side.

Sicarius: That is awfully elitist of you to say. Not everybody has hours to spend to solve puzzles. To those that bring up the popularity of Sodoku, it is popular mostly because people can do it when they're on the train or waiting in line for something, if sodoku required a cumulation of 20 hours (or even 4-5) in front of a computer, I doubt it would be as popular.

There have been med students and grad students and other busy folk that have posted on this forum saying that Culture Shock fits right into their busy schedules, that it took 4-5 days to set aside the 3-4 hours required for Culture Shock, and if it were a longer game they wouldn't be able to find time for it.

I'd like to share a quote about a whole bunch of people that you'd also dismiss and wish would just go watch a television series instead of muddying up adventure games.

So I'd like to share a little story with all of you guys at telltale. As one of the lead testers at GameTap, I was sent to Digital Life this past weekend in NYC with the job of demonstrating Sam & Max: Culture Shock to the happy convention-goers. Having spent many many MANY hours testing the game, I felt pretty confident that the public reactions would be nothing less than amazing. The game is just that good. Even expecting such a positive reaction, I was blown away by the public response. As expected, fans of the series came by in droves, but what I didn't expect was how many non-gamers became consumed by the game. People who had long ago written off video games as "not for me" ended up staying for up to an hour completely enthralled by the game, and considering we were right next to American Idol's karaoke competition, that is nothing short of amazing. Some people even saved their game and patiently waited while we gave the presentation to a new group. You guys have done an amazing job and I can't wait to see more.

Sincerely,
Will Armstrong
Gametap: Lead Alpha Tester

Hero1

11/04/2006, 02:09 pm

I agree with Sicarius. If I could beat hit the road when I was 13, why couldn't a 13 year old of today beat a new challenging sam and max game. I watched my 7 year old nephew beat bone quite easily.. This whole "making the game more difficult will lose telltale its audience" argument is a myth. If they made it more difficult they would sell more copies!!

Udvarnoky

11/04/2006, 02:11 pm

A game is NOT ONLY a story that is told. The mechanics are important too. Even MORE important. If the mechanics are good, I don't necessarily (depends on the genre) need a story but if I don't have good mechanics, no good story can truely save a game. And one mechanic of a PnC are challenging puzzles.

I think what sets an adventure game apart from another type is that the story is indeed more important than the mechanic. "PnC" is not a genre, it's an interface, and neither it nor the puzzles are the star of a story game, even if they happen to have played a large role in the oldies. The story, the characters, and the writing were the foundation of those games, and what hold up when you replay them. If my main concern was for adventure games to preserve the puzzle difficulty and let the important stuff take a back seat, I'd probably be a bigger fan of a lot of current "adventures" than I am.

Hero1

11/04/2006, 02:14 pm

I think what sets an adventure game apart from another type is that the story is indeed more important than the mechanic. "PnC" is not a genre, it's an interface, and neither it nor the puzzles are the star of a story game, even if they happen to have played a large role in the oldies. The story, the characters, and the writing were the foundation of those games, and what hold up when you replay them. If my main concern was for adventure games to preserve the puzzle difficulty and let the important stuff take a back seat, I'd probably be a bigger fan of Myst or a lot of current "adventures" than I am.

Telltale have already got the story/writing & characters right. Why cant we ask them to get the puzzles at the same level of excellence?

numble

11/04/2006, 02:19 pm

I think we will just continue to argue past each other, people clearly have different views, and as Udvarnoky pointed outed, the most hardcore of you are basically arguing that the puzzles are more important than the story.

A game is NOT ONLY a story that is told. The mechanics are important too. Even MORE important.If the mechanics are good, I don't necessarily (depends on the genre) need a story but if I don't have good mechanics, no good story can truely save a game. And one mechanic of a PnC are challenging puzzles.

EDIT: To summarize:
But I am slightly curious as to what everyone else thinks, since this thread has mushroomed into nearly 3000 views. I am aware that the only the most hardcore and biased individuals (myself included) usually post on game forums--(just take a look at the comments at kotaku or joystiq... I guarantee you that most of the ideas propounded in any of the wii/ps3 posts will show themselves to be inaccurate when those systems actually launch).

My point has always been that yes, I expect the games to be more difficult in the future, but not insanely difficult that it breaks up the concept of episodic gaming that they are trying to pioneer. No, I do not agree that increasing a game's difficulty will make a game sell more copies. No, I do not have the time to spend 2 or more hours to solve one puzzle, but I don't think that means I'm some uncouth individual that should not be playing adventure games. I think a lot more people have trouble with adventure game puzzles then some of you think--see all the people asking for hints in the forum (for puzzles any 8 year old can solve!!!) or more indirectly, get the Google toolbar that guesses what you want to search for--type in any classic adventure game and Google will guess that you are looking for the walkthrough.

My views on almost everything Telltale and adventure-related can practically be gleaned from all other previous posts. If presented with evidence to the contrary, I will admit that I am wrong, but the decline in adventure games over the years as a non-niche genre has made conclude the things that I conclude, and I appreciate the tremendous efforts that this little Telltale start-up is making to both bring back adventure gaming as a mainstream genre, encouraging a new class of people to embrace video games, as well as really pioneering the idea of truly episodic gaming. Those are tall measures indeed, and they will be making a lot of innovations as well as taking lots of risks along the way. But to those that simplify all these issues to "if they made it more difficult they would sell more copies!!" I'm politely inclined to disbelieve you.

Hero1

11/04/2006, 02:28 pm

Yeah I dont think anyone is gonna change their minds.. but we're right :p :p

Udvarnoky

11/04/2006, 02:29 pm

Telltale have already got the story/writing & characters right. Why cant we ask them to get the puzzles at the same level of excellence?

Is a puzzle's level of excellence directly related to its difficulty?

and as Udvarnoky pointed outed, the most hardcore of you are basically arguing that the puzzles are more important than the story.

And let me just clarify that I really only believe this to be the case with story-driven games. In another genre a great story and great writing are wonderful additions and can benefit any game, but a racing game has to be a good racing game first and foremost. A shooter has to nail what makes a shooter game great before adding frosting elsewhere. And an adventure game's core is its story and characters. Let the puzzles or however you move through the game serve that, not the other way around. Compare a true story game like Monkey Island to a puzzle game like Myst. Both are widely considered "adventure games," but how are they different in focus?

jp-30

11/04/2006, 02:50 pm

Is a puzzle's level of excellence directly related to its difficulty?

http://www.globalschoolnet.org/about/images/applause.gif

But I am slightly curious as to what everyone else thinks, since this thread has mushroomed into nearly 3000 views. I am aware that the only the most hardcore and biased individuals (myself included) usually post on game forums

I think it's interesting to read the comments of gamers, but not necessarily adventure gamers posted elswhere on the net. Still not representative of the people the GameTap guy was demo-ing to recently, but a litte less biased than our good selves..

IdleThumbs discussion (http://forums.idlethumbs.net/showthread.php?t=4690)
I just finished it. To be honest, I hadn't expected it to be as amazing as it turned out to be. I can't really think of anything bad to say about it. The 3d graphics work surprisingly well, and Sam & Max have some of the best 3d animation that I've seen. If only the characters in Dreamfall had been this expressive... You know, this is probably one of the advantages of making episodic games. The developers spend more time on each individual part of the game so in the end the game ends up more detailed as a whole. They're able to spend the time to do things like make sure that each scene is animated properly instead of inserting boring generic animations. Also, I love the red and black title sequences and the dream sequences were top notch.
______________________
Just finished it and it is suprinsgly good : I have some stuff to bitch about in terms of loading times and small freezes when characters enter the scene but on the content it is nearly flawless... which suprises me 'cause I really couldn't get into Hit the Road.

On the whole, I feel like it is the first truly episodic game in the sense that it takes a great deal of advantages from the format and plays with it quite smartly. I'm surprised and happy that Telltale is the first to get that right.

What pleases me most about Telltale and Culture Shock is to see them strip the adventure genre from the superficial : nearly everything revolves around dialogs and story, making most of the puzzles just a deal of understanding the circumstances and playing like the character would. I'm really greatful for the disappearance of object combinations and object chase.

And then, obviously, the dialog : god, I usually smile at funny games, but this one made me laugh out loud ... and this something even Pyshonauts couldn't do. What's even greater is that they really got the animations right this time, it's really a huge leap from the Bone games : I'd even say I can't remember a game in which 3D animation looked as handcrafted as this, like 2D animation oftenly does. Meaning, even outside the dialogs, the SodaPoppers and the Inconvenicence store guy really exists as living characters.

Jeez...I'm really surprised I responded so well to it!
______________________________________
Absolutely loved it! Agree with everything said here, that it's the most solid episodic adventure yet. Really had the feeling that I'd finished something, when it ended (Unlike Out from Boneville) And it actually felt lengthy, because I wasn't expecting much after getting rid of the Soda Poppers.

And while I thought Sam's voice acting wasn't up to par with Max's, I did get used to him and started laughing out loud at some of the things he said. And yes, the animations were awesome. And the camera system was flawless, it seems. Always showing you some funny background detail when the characters were talking or you were loading in between scenes.

Yeah, awesome game! Best adventure game I've played for a long time..
_________________________________________
I just finished the episode and it completely surpassed by expectations, those high reviews weren't hyperbole after all (of course the game is short but that's the expectation for the format).

It's weird being back in a proper adventure game.
_________________________________________

You'll see similar sentiment in amongst the Slashdot (http://games.slashdot.org/games/06/11/03/1614205.shtml) Sam & Max comments.

Giligan

11/04/2006, 02:59 pm

http://www.globalschoolnet.org/about/images/applause.gif

Harsh! :p

Have any S&M game developers posted in this thread yet?

balloftwine

11/04/2006, 03:01 pm

I think this is getting a bit heated. I really enjoyed the game and look forward to the next one being just as good... if not better. I do think its not as complicated as it was in hit the road and it suffers for that, im sure telltale are aware there are a large number of people who feel that way, I think its becoming unproductive to keep going on about it though. Cant wait to see what the next ones like and i think one thing were all agreed on is that the new S&M game is going to have us coming back for more. Well at least 90 percent and thats pretty good going. Well done telltale!:o

Johnny Walker

11/04/2006, 03:01 pm

Compare a true story game like Monkey Island to a puzzle game like Myst. Both are widely considered "adventure games," but how are they different in focus?

Very good point. I'm pretty happy with the level of difficulty in the games because I played Sam & Max for entertainment: They make me laugh, I enjoyed the story and puzzles weren't bad either.

In this day and age you simply cannot have a game that stops because the user has got stuck. It doesn't work. Everything has to continue moving forward.

How many of you REALLY want "difficult" puzzles? A puzzle that you have to go away and think about for a few days. There's no gameplay while you're thinking, in fact you literally can't play the game until you progress further by solving the puzzle. Does that sound like fun?

The clever way that Monkey Island got around this problem was to allow the user to complete several different puzzles/tasks at one time: If the user got stuck on one, they could move onto another. Sam & Max: Culture Shock used this a little for the knocking out of the soda jerks puzzles, but even then you can get stuck on the final puzzle and be unable to continue.

Do people really want that? Because I imagine it's pretty difficult to gauge a puzzle so that everyone gets stuck just the right amount of time, so it doesn't become too frustrating.

Who knows, maybe they WILL up the challenge a bit in the next game... I imagine they didn't want to alienate anyone with a difficult/annoying puzzle in chapter one, anyway!

Johnny Walker

11/04/2006, 03:04 pm

Great quotes from the IdleThumbs discussion, jp-30! I agree with all of them!

dunkpork

11/04/2006, 03:24 pm

From a personal standpoint and from what I have read from others on other forums, this is simply not true. It is a truth that game developers would like to believe, very much so, I think, but the truth of the matter is the Adventure Gaming community is inundated with horrible adventure games to the point where many of us are not willing to spend their money on one until we KNOW it's good.

Most FPS shooters are pretty good, some are better than others, and only a very few have been truly horrible, and they ended up not selling so well.

Same with RTS style games, and every other game out there.

However, Finding a good FPS game is really easy for someone to do, they read a few reviews, and go buy it.

Finding a good adventure game sometimes is like finding a needle in a haystack. This, in large part, is why this segment suffers as it does. My guess is if 80% of the adventure games out there were good or better, a lot more copies would be sold.

Strategy Games like Age of Empires, RPG games like NeverWinter Nights, Knights of the Old Republic, etc, none of these games have ever had a problem selling copies. In fact these games are just as famous in their segment as Halflife is in it's segment. Your view, I think, is very narrow.

Bioware in fact has produced some of the best games in the RPG Genre. Knights of the Old Republic was a HUGE success, as was it's sequel. And one of the reasons for that is because you as a player had a choice. You could go with the dark side, or go with the light side, how you played the game determined the outcome. And all of Bioware's RPG's have been made in such a way that the games have huge replayability value, despite the fact that most RPG's are like most adventures. You play them once usually and put them away. Players never felt forced into one role or another to succeed, and interestingly enough, to make a "classic" adventure, this has to be included into it as well.

Well, I have to disagree. I worked at retail during the period FPS/MMORPG games started to affect the "industry" and I, personally, saw a decrease in sales of "older" or more "cerebral" genres. In the early 00s this reversed as people fell out of infatuation with the new online technology and went back to old buying habits, not to mention a generation of grown up console gamers (used to single player games) ready to buy new PC games.

The fact that my old store went out of business because there were fewer and fewer products, and more and more people sitting at home playing the same product endlessly (HL online, UO/EQ), speaks to some truth in the interpretation.

I could be completely wrong, but I don't think I am. And I'm not interested in picking apart your post, asserting my position, and defending it. Really it would be difficult to quantify anyways, so we'd be stuck at opinion and assertion.

Personally I'm just happy to see Sam & Max again! ;)

Pvt._Public

11/04/2006, 06:49 pm

I have an interview with Tim Schafer in one of my copies of PCPowerPlay where he says the reason adventure games are dead are because they haven't gone out and tried to evolve for many years. The fact that at least 75% of the posts in this forum demand that Telltale remake Hit the Road or at least make the new games more like it only strengthen this idea.

Which is why I applaud (not literally) when Adventures try something new such as interactive movie styled games (like Fahrenheit or "The Indigo Prophecy" for you silly Americans) or combine them with other genres (like Psychonauts) or even just go and make the game with a decent 3D engine (like Bone and BS3 & 4). Obviously we need to fine tune things a little still (The pathfinding in BS4 was abysmal and having the ability to both use OR look should always be allowed) but it's time we stopped demanding everything the same and try and add in some more constructive criticism.

So you don't like the puzzles. Would you perhaps like easy, medium and hard modes for the next games? Rather than just "I want the harder puzzles 'cause I been playing adventure games since I was a foetus!" think about whether you want more puzzles or maybe some really polished puzzles with some optional ones to see extra stuff. Then calmly, politely, and with decent use of grammar and spelling make your suggestions. Then don't get annoyed if Telltale ignores them :) Them's the breaks!

Major_Higgins

11/04/2006, 08:51 pm

Fahrenheit or "The Indigo Prophecy

Oooh, yessir, Fahrenheit was quite nice. The narration, the mix of genres... And the game did "flow" pretty nicely. But it was still short and very straightforward.

Open-endedness is something that hurt the adventure games too. Since GTA (and maybe before), people want freedom, variety, constant distractions, etc. Who today wants to stay stuck in the same three rooms with a couple objects (except us)? Games or becoming bigger and bigger in virtual surface. People want to be in credible virtual worlds.

I can easily imagine an adventure game with GTA's freedom.
The problem, I think, is that adventure games need to be more polished than other genres. Every pixel, every text must be right. It would probably take a decade to make an Adventure-Universe. Damn!

numble

11/04/2006, 09:31 pm

Armchair empire interview with Tim Schafer. (http://www.armchairempire.com/Interviews/psychonauts-tim-schafer.htm)

Tim Schafer
People’s memories of past games are a challenge. Because as the years go by, people romanticize old games. They make them kind of perfect in their head. Or they mix them up with their memories of being a kid. So someone says, oh I “LOOOVED” that game, really what they just miss is being 13 and not having anything to worry about except what game to play next. So when you make a new game, you’re not just trying to top your previous games. You’re trying to top peoples idealized and selective memories of what’s gone before.

Pvt._Public

11/04/2006, 09:40 pm

I'm not so sure you can have a true open-ended adventure. You could have a small degree of open endedness (for instance, multiple paths to complete different things. Different puzzles to get different items to draw different conclusions) but the very nature of the Adventure doesn't lend itself to a wide open world. Also, many open ended games give you a lovely large world with lots of space (rooms) but because of how large they are, only a few certain spots are actually filled with anything interesting. Oblivion for instance. Great big game world with great big empty pointless spaces. I've used Oblivion for this point before and god help me, I'll use it again until all the world hates it as much as I!

But imagine an adventure game which takes up a huge island, only most of the island is dense bush and mountains with little to look at or interact with. Ick.

Hero1

11/04/2006, 11:35 pm

Is a puzzle's level of excellence directly related to its difficulty?

If the puzzle is so easy how can you even call it a puzzle. Does the puzzle make you think? does it make sense? If I looked at all the puzzles in culture shock I would say yes they all made sense, but I only had to think and get my mind working 2 times in the entire game.. I just breezed through it. Don't underestimate the power of a good puzzle and how it relates to other parts of the game. If you get stuck you are more likely to explore the world more, click on more things and become more immersed in the characters and the game.

jp-30

11/05/2006, 02:35 am

What to you is a 'difficult' puzzle?

Using objects in unusual/unexpected (illogical?) ways (MI Monkey Wrench, anyone?). Combining 3 or more objects to make a new object (which as been pointed out can be somewhat contrived in the context of a game).

For me, an example of an excellent puzzle is the insult swordfighting from Monkey Island. You have to learn the winning responses from better swordsmen to be able to use later against other opponents. Did it make me 'think'? Not really. Was it difficult? No.

But it was huge fun, and indeed an excellent puzzle.

Hero1

11/05/2006, 03:10 am

I thought the psychoanalysis puzzle in culture shock was awesome.. That was one of my all time favorites.. really well thoughout, creative and challenging.

A difficult and rewarding puzzle? Its not so much using objects in weird ways or combining weird things together..

but say in grim fandango, you have to get the balloon off the clown, fill it with the stuff..and then send it down the mail shoot... To solve that puzzle you need to explore your environment, and think about using items in your world. Which is fun.. even in hit the road using the cup to get tar while you bungee jump was a lot of fun.. you dont automatically think to do these things straight away, but if you think at whats at your disposal and whats in the environment, it makes a lot of sense.

and let me go back to the "cheese puzzle" in culture shock.. Now in bosco's store the only item you can pick up is cheese.. It was simply too easy to figure out..what else are you gonna do? I think there could have been more steps involved to knock whizzer out there, or atleast more in the environment. Or you could have atleast got the cheese from somewhere else. There could have been 1 item that you could have given him that didnt set off an alarm, another that did. There could be a lot more complexity, in fact JP I think you've already come up with a few good examples...

Derwin

11/05/2006, 03:22 am

What to you is a 'difficult' puzzle?

For me, a difficult puzzle can be something slightly zany/illogical, or it can be a logical puzzle like the ones in S&M but with less hints and/or more steps.

What made the puzzles in S&M so easy for me was that they all seemed laid out for me.

Example: One of my favorite puzzles, the psychiatric evaluation, could be made slightly more difficult (for some) if Sybil didn't flat out say which of the three symptoms she was looking for in each test. Certainly, it is logical that she would tell her patient the symptoms before the tests, but does she have to say "Obsessed with money" before the ink blot test, without including the other two symptoms?

DoubtedEdwardo

11/05/2006, 04:28 am

So far the only suggestion that would allow Telltale to attract all the players they want to attract would be to implement an easy/(medium?)/hard setting. That way all players would be catered for and maybe the easy players would become intrigued about the higher difficulties, play them, and slowly increase the difficulty of puzzles they're willing to solve.

One of the easiest ways to do this would be to alter the number of in game hints you get. Telltale don't have time to create a completely different game with harder puzzles, but changing the number of clues people give you shouldn't be that hard.

As to the whole puzzles vs. story debate I think there is a very fine balance to be kept. Without a good enough story there is no incentive to come back to the game to solve that horribly difficult puzzle and with out the puzzles you might as well go watch a movie. To me it seems they are equally important and the reason recent adventure games have been so bad is that they concentrate on getting one just right then messing up the other.

Incognito

11/05/2006, 05:19 am

Sicarius: That is awfully elitist of you to say. Not everybody has hours to spend to solve puzzles.

Its not the slightest bit elitist, its simple logic. A game needs challenge to be a wellcrafted game, and the quality of games shouldnt suffer because some people says they dont have time to actually play the games. The whole point of adventureGAMES its telling an INTERACTIVE story, and if you dumb down the interactive part then you don´t have a good game. What you are left with is few buttonclicks to play upp storysequences.

1UP summarizes the problem quite good:
"The whole thing takes about four hours to play, with only five or six small locations to explore and a handful of simple puzzles to solve. None of this will win over anyone who doesn't already like adventure games, though. Too much of Culture Shock boils down to clicking on one object or dialogue choice after another and chuckling at whatever smartass thing Sam or Max says. Each little cartoon snippet you unlock is fun, but eventually you find yourself asking why you have to do so much work for them -- it's like watching a cartoon on a DVD player powered by a hand crank."

BigJKO

11/05/2006, 06:46 am

One of the easiest ways to do this would be to alter the number of in game hints you get. Telltale don't have time to create a completely different game with harder puzzles, but changing the number of clues people give you shouldn't be that hard.

It would be lovely if, depending on how you did on the first puzzle, the game would change the amount of hints given through-out the game. Granted, it'd be hard to measure.

If the puzzle is so easy how can you even call it a puzzle. Does the puzzle make you think? does it make sense? If I looked at all the puzzles in culture shock I would say yes they all made sense, but I only had to think and get my mind working 2 times in the entire game.. I just breezed through it. Don't underestimate the power of a good puzzle and how it relates to other parts of the game. If you get stuck you are more likely to explore the world more, click on more things and become more immersed in the characters and the game.

The puzzles made me think, pretty much through-out the entire game. I even got stuck when trying to figure out how to knock out Peepers. I don't think anyone's arguing that you didn't find the game difficult. It just seems to me like a lot of you are missing the fact that not everyone found the game easy.

numble

11/05/2006, 08:16 am

Its not the slightest bit elitist, its simple logic. A game needs challenge to be a wellcrafted game, and the quality of games shouldnt suffer because some people says they dont have time to actually play the games. The whole point of adventureGAMES its telling an INTERACTIVE story, and if you dumb down the interactive part then you don´t have a good game. What you are left with is few buttonclicks to play upp storysequences.

1UP summarizes the problem quite good:
"The whole thing takes about four hours to play, with only five or six small locations to explore and a handful of simple puzzles to solve. None of this will win over anyone who doesn't already like adventure games, though. Too much of Culture Shock boils down to clicking on one object or dialogue choice after another and chuckling at whatever smartass thing Sam or Max says. Each little cartoon snippet you unlock is fun, but eventually you find yourself asking why you have to do so much work for them -- it's like watching a cartoon on a DVD player powered by a hand crank."

I don't get what you're getting at with bringing the 1up summary, 1Up is basically saying only adventure gamers will like Culture Shock, since according to them, Culture Shock requires so much work.

Your argument is the exact opposite: that adventure gamers will not like Culture Shock because it doesn't require any work. Additionally, do you actually believe that 1up will change it's mind if you make it require more work?

For a more in-depth look at what 1up thinks about this stuff, listen to the 1up's Retronauts podcast on Sam and Max (http://zdmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o1/Podcasts/Retronauts/102506.mp3) which Telltale conveniently (and surreptitiously) has given a very prominent link to on the front page of its blogs/news/comics page. It's basically very critical about the way adventure games used to be. Why would someone put up a link that is in many ways actually very critical about a game they want to pay homage to? My guess is that, even if Telltale doesn't agree with all the points that they're making, the fact that they want people to listen to it must mean they at least think these points should be considered.

I've talked on and on about this already. I'm tired of people saying that the logical progression of my arguments is that adventure games aren't for me. I feel that I've explored every argument to be made, and I'm just going to repeat myself if I keep going. Unless there are new things to say or address (such as the meaning behind what 1up actually thinks), we're just going to talk past one another.

Incognito

11/05/2006, 08:51 am

I don't get what you're getting at with bringing the 1up summary, 1Up is basically saying only adventure gamers will like Culture Shock, since according to them, Culture Shock requires so much work.

Your argument is the exact opposite: that adventure gamers will not like Culture Shock because it doesn't require any work. Additionally, do you actually believe that 1up will change it's mind if you make it require more work?

What 1UP is saying is that since the puzzles are so basic that the game more resembles a comic book than a game, you will wonder why have to work even this much for the game, so that games interactivity is quite pointless.

If the retronauts-podcast is the same that was transcribed here before, then I have already dismissed it as being random bantering from people who dont know the genre and dont wanna know (since they say that genre is dead, and that even the good adventuregames is about random clicking on objects).

No matter what people think of the genres past efforts, it doesnt change the facts that they have choosen to develop a game in the genre. If they dont want puzzles in the oldschool-style, then they have to replace it with something else because people want to PLAY when they pay for a game.

There are ways to change the oldschool-formula.

Westwood did it with Bladerunner
SEGA did it with Shenmue
Quantic Dreams did it with Fahrenheit.

Telltale doesnt have to create and oldschool-adventuregame. But they still have to create a GAME. And games requires a bit of a challenge. If you dont want a challenge, well then dont play. If Telltales try to appeal to non-gamers by dumbing down even the coming episodes, then they will get slaughterd in the coming reviews when this fresh feeling of Sam&Max´s return have faded away.

numble

11/05/2006, 09:05 am

I really disagree with that inference of what 1up is saying--I really think like your stretching what they say way too much.

1up
"The whole thing takes about four hours to play, with only five or six small locations to explore and a handful of simple puzzles to solve. None of this will win over anyone who doesn't already like adventure games, though. Too much of Culture Shock boils down to clicking on one object or dialogue choice after another and chuckling at whatever smartass thing Sam or Max says. Each little cartoon snippet you unlock is fun, but eventually you find yourself asking why you have to do so much work for them -- it's like watching a cartoon on a DVD player powered by a hand crank."

1Up is basically saying only adventure gamers will like Culture Shock, since according to them, Culture Shock requires so much work. It's not that hard of a quote to comprehend.

And the Retronauts podcast is full of commentators that have played all the Lucasarts and Sierra games, so its not random bantering. I think there are about 5-6 people talking, and I've only really highlighted one. Again, you display a penchant for dismissing arguments without anything beyond a superficial consideration of them. There's no point in debating with somebody that does that.

Major_Higgins

11/05/2006, 09:20 am

I feel that I've explored every argument to be made, and I'm just going to repeat myself if I keep going.

Yeah, I think this whole debate is running in circles. Telltale did what they did, and it's pretty damn good. Quantic Dream did what they did, etc.
Sam & Max are not the exact same as 13 years ago because time has passed (obviously) and things change.

Now let's wait for Episode 2 before jumping to conclusions.

There, I'm out, bye.

numble

11/05/2006, 09:22 am

And honestly, look at the things we've linked to or discussed about Idle Thumbs, Digital Life, Gametap and other people's comments. You have to at least acknowledge that not all people feel the way you do--I acknowledge that you have your point of view, and feel very strongly about it. But many of you just dismiss the things I say, declare that adventure games aren't for me, that I shouldn't play if I only have 5 hours a week available, and on and on. I've been quite clear that I think the difficulty will go up, but such an admission doesn't do anything for you. The logical progression of my arguments seem to continue to be: in reality you aren't an adventure gamer, Telltale is going to fail if it continues to satisfy the like of you. I've been an avid supporter of Lucasarts-style story driven games (and its offshoots) for most of my life, and it is really disappointing that you guys wish to drive me out simply because I've had to use walkthroughs or think that puzzles are not the be on and end all of the genre.

EDIT:
Yeah, this was written in a little fit of frustration. I agree with Major_Higgins, it's time for me to check out and move on.

Incognito

11/05/2006, 09:28 am

I really disagree with that inference of what 1up is saying--I really think like your stretching what they say way too much.

1Up is basically saying only adventure gamers will like Culture Shock, since according to them, Culture Shock requires so much work. It's not that hard of a quote to comprehend.

And the Retronauts podcast is full of commentators that have played all the Lucasarts and Sierra games, so its not random bantering. I think there are about 5-6 people talking, and I've only really highlighted one. Again, you display a penchant for dismissing arguments without anything beyond a superficial consideration of them. There's no point in debating with somebody that does that.

Read the 1UP-quote again. They say " a handful of simple puzzles", so the bit about "working hard" is not really about the game being suitable for seasoned adventuregamers.

This part is the interesting one:
"it's like watching a cartoon on a DVD player powered by a hand crank.""

How on earth can that be interpreted as that the game is only for adventure gamers?

And its really not interesting if the retronauts-people have played the LucasArts- and Sierra-adventure. Those games are 10-15 old. Everyone has played them. But have they played the more recent adventures like:

A Moment of Silence
Broken Sword 3
Broken Sword 4
Dreamfall
Fahrenheit
Martin Mystére
Myst 4
Myst 5
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Silver Earring
Still Life
Syberia 1
Syberia 2

Since they say that genre is "dead", then they don´t give an impression of having played those games, since no genre with so many good games release in just a couple of years can be considered "dead".

That, and the fact that the part that they say that even the best adventuregames are about random clicking is enough for me to dismiss their opions as "random bantering". If they want their opinions to count, then they really have to get at least some facts right.

Its not arrogance from my side, its arrogance from theirs.

Edit: But sure, if I have seem arrogant - then I apologise. But just as some people seem to be annoyed with my comments, I get annoyed by being branded some kind of elite abnormal super-adventurer just because I wants a bit of a challenge when I play. :)

Incognito

11/05/2006, 09:38 am

Yeah, I think this whole debate is running in circles. Telltale did what they did, and it's pretty damn good. Quantic Dream did what they did, etc.
Sam & Max are not the exact same as 13 years ago because time has passed (obviously) and things change.

Now let's wait for Episode 2 before jumping to conclusions.

There, I'm out, bye.

I myself never said that I wanted Sam&Max to be exactly as it was 13 years ago. On the contrary. I welcome innovation and development of the genre. But some kind of challenge is still an important part of a game, which is exactly what you can read in the reviews from gamespot, 1UP and others. Telltale did do a good job with episode 1, and I do like it. I just think that it can be so much better.

And yes, I think this discussion is important since Telltale is one of very few developers who listen to their customers. I don´t expect them to listen to only me, and no one else. But I want to make my opinions heard. If anyone doesnt want this discussion, well then this is just one thread out of hundreds in this forum. ;)

Maratanos

11/05/2006, 10:15 am

And let me just clarify that I really only believe this to be the case with story-driven games. In another genre a great story and great writing are wonderful additions and can benefit any game, but a racing game has to be a good racing game first and foremost. A shooter has to nail what makes a shooter game great before adding frosting elsewhere. And an adventure game's core is its story and characters. Let the puzzles or however you move through the game serve that, not the other way around. Compare a true story game like Monkey Island to a puzzle game like Myst. Both are widely considered "adventure games," but how are they different in focus?

Myst is actually less of a purely puzzle game than you may think. I have not played Monkey Island, but I have to say, that in all likelyhood, their way of storytelling is significantly different.

Monkey Island, I get the feeling, tells a story through what you do. You wander around and do stuff, and story happens to you.

In Myst, the focus of storytelling is different. Not much actually HAPPENS to you. All the happening has already taken place. However, the story is still there, documented carefully in the books.

Yet still, I bet Monkey Island had more of a story than that. It's kindof likely, in fact, since Myst still doesn't have much of a story, even in its books. But Myst isn't the totallity of the story. Not by a long shot. There have been 4 sequels, and an attempt at an MMO (coming back this December, by the way!). All 5 of these, in my opinion, have a significant amount of story, more than the original Myst. But the totality of the story is greater than even that.

In short, I would disagree that the Myst series' focus is on puzzles. It's focus is also on stories. Those stories are merely told differently...

numble

11/05/2006, 10:41 am

I still disagree. I don't believe that a reviewer will say both that adventure gamers will like it and then that adventure gamers will not like it in the span of 30 seconds. Short of personally asking the reviewer what he meant, we will never know.

EDIT:
I'm really stopping now. I've realized that, since I also haven't played any of those games you mentioned, you would dismiss my comments right off as unqualified, so there's no point in belaboring this discussion any further.

Hero1

11/05/2006, 01:58 pm

PC Gamer UK

Sam and Max's twisted world is captured near-perfectly in the art, which makes the disappointments in the dialogue and puzzles all the more acute.

PC Game World

Judged against regular game standards, it was definitely too short and easy
A major contributor to the short playtime is the easy puzzles. Almost every one is presented and solved in the same area, using items found in that area.
mature dialog content doesn’t mesh well with the overly-easy puzzles. I think Telltale was trying to please both hardcore Sam & Max fans and the Bejewed crowd, but I don’t think that’s really possible (or even necessary).

Gamespot

The Bad: Limited inventory makes puzzle-solving pretty easy; short and easy enough that you might not want to replay it;

Gamespy

As an adventure game, solving puzzles is a big part of the gameplay. By and large, the puzzles in Culture Shock are fairly easy.

Adventure Gamers

Culture Shock continues the Telltale trend of games on the easier side. The puzzles are more intelligent than Great Cow Race but still not difficult to figure out.

Games Radar

That said, Culture Shock is a pretty simple game. Everything you can interact with lights up when you mouse over it, and while the puzzles are clever, they're not exactly difficult

Quandary

You will move through the game fairly quickly because the puzzles aren't too tricky

Just Adventure

I would place all the puzzles at the easy to medium level of difficulty.

2404

Puzzle-wise, you will find that Sam and Max sticks with the standard dialogue- and inventory-based quests, with a small amount of pixel hunting thrown in. This will dismay some of the older gamers, who were hoping perhaps for a little more depth from Sam and Max, but it will make the game more accessible to younger gamers

IGN

Of the few dozen puzzles in the game only a handful will really challenge your problem solving skills. Most have simple one-part solutions and are as easy and as obvious as flipping on a light switch.

Firing Squad

Puzzles for the most part are rather simple but there are a few that are pretty challenging

Yahoo Games

Our one reservation, and it's a little one, is that if you're an old hand at adventure games you'll probably find it a touch on the easy side. Only the very last problem really stumped us for any length of time, and often you'll find fairly obvious solutions close by.

Gaming Trend

Overall, the game is fairly simple and fun. The interaction that made the first game so much fun is very much present in this title. The only drawback is also one of the strengths - the episodic nature. Because this is the first episode of the game, the area is rather limited. You can get in the car and harass motorists, but you really can't escape from the initial area quite yet. Perhaps in subsequent episodes we'll see a return to this area, as well as the new areas, but only time will tell. As a result, you don't get the crazy puzzles that you do in other adventure games where you might pick up a wrench in one location hundreds of miles away from where you use it. In Culture Shock, at least at this stage, the puzzles are still insane, but you really only have a small number of possible uses for some of the objects you obtain. I'm hoping the difficulty ramps a little bit for future episodes.

Incognito

11/05/2006, 02:04 pm

I'm really stopping now. I've realized that, since I also haven't played any of those games you mentioned, you would dismiss my comments right off as unqualified, so there's no point in belaboring this discussion any further.

Nope. I wouldnt do that. Well.....not until you try and generalise about the genre like the retronauts-guys tried. ;)

Johnny Walker

11/05/2006, 02:10 pm

I have an interview with Tim Schafer in one of my copies of PCPowerPlay where he says the reason adventure games are dead are because they haven't gone out and tried to evolve for many years. The fact that at least 75% of the posts in this forum demand that Telltale remake Hit the Road or at least make the new games more like it only strengthen this idea.

Agreed, TellTale have done a good job progressing the adventure genre with Sam & Max. The whole idea of verbs is actually pretty dumb. Even having two verbs is pointless and completely unintuitive.

Since they say that genre is "dead", then they don´t give an impression of having played those games, since no genre with so many good games release in just a couple of years can be considered "dead".

Incognito: You're really ignoring the obvious, so hopefully I can persuade you once and for all: Adventure games are dead. The games you mention are produced by small companies for a niche market. Sure, adventure games are not technically dead, because there IS new titles, but that's not what people mean when they say "adventure games are dead".

There's still new software being developed for the Amiga, for instance, that doesn't mean that the Amiga isn't dead - because it is! Well and truly. Nailed up, six feet under. Dead. It's only being kept alive for the few die-hards who still love that machine... so I can understand you might argue that technically it's still alive, but that's not what people mean when they say it's dead.

It's hyperbole, but it's what's meant that matters.

numble

11/05/2006, 02:11 pm

Ron Gilbert, Monkey Island creator (http://grumpygamer.com/7615642)
Does Myst have partial responsibility at the death of the Adventures?
No, Adventures killed themselves. There they did not have an assistance of someone else necessarily. Old Man Murray (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/77.html) has a excellent explanation.

Tim Schafer, creator of Full Throttle and Grim Fandango (http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3138084)
"Someone said once, 'Why do we play adventure games?'" Schafer recalls, acknowledging that the adventure-game genre died an early death due to its relative inaccessibility. "Well, it's like that guy who's banging his head against the wall, and it's like, 'Why are you banging your head against the wall?' 'Cause it feels so good when you stop.' Adventure gamers are a little bit like that."

I guess it's time to dismiss those guys as being unqualified to talk about the genre.

Edit:
My interpretation of the really-hard-to-understand Schafer metaphor: he's talking about how you spend hours trying multiple variations of item/verb/inventory combinations--like banging your head against the wall multiple times--until you get the right solution.

Hero1

11/05/2006, 02:13 pm

Nice effort ignoring the 13 reviews i quoted that cited the game as being easy :D :D :D

numble

11/05/2006, 02:28 pm

Hero: We've all acknowledged that the game is easier than your run-of-the-mill adventure game and that it's invariably going to be more difficult later on. I don't think pointing out that some selected reviews point out that a minor issue with the game is puzzle difficulty proves the point that this is the OVERWHELMING issue, you can read many posts that basically say "good puzzles overcome a good story"-- and that is basically what I'm taking issue with.

I've read many of the whole reviews, and they focus on story, characters and humor and even discussing the episodic model, a lot more than discussing the puzzles. Quote the percentage of time spent discussing the problems with puzzle easiness--without a biased selection of which reviews to include/exclude--and I'll be more inclined to believe you.

WDeranged

11/05/2006, 02:31 pm

Schafer's snippet is spot on, developers are competing with the rose tinted childhood memory of being lost in a world of imagination.

Saying this, you only have to load up one of your old favourites in ScummVm to see that the gameplay and writing is still spot on regardless of advances in graphics, sound and waistlines ;)

WD

Johnny Walker

11/05/2006, 02:33 pm

I guess there's no getting away from the fact that we all found it easy. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, in fact it doesn't even mean that I want anything to change for Episode 2, but I wouldn't mind if TellTale tried to tweak the difficulty a bit.

Something else to consider; we're going to see Episode 2 pretty soon. The other episodes are set to follow MONTHLY after that, too. When you consider that they're coming in pretty fast, it might not be so bad that they're completable quickly...? I don't know.

All I can say is that I thoroughly enjoyed Episode 1, and quite frankly I can't imagine it getting much better, as it was already top notch!

Johnny Walker

11/05/2006, 02:37 pm

Hero: We've all acknowledged that the game is easier than your run-of-the-mill adventure game and that it's invariably going to be more difficult later on. I don't think pointing out that some selected reviews point out that a minor issue with the game is puzzle difficulty proves the point that this is the OVERWHELMING issue, you can read many posts that basically say "good puzzles overcome a good story"-- and that is basically what I'm taking issue with.

You're absolutely right! But, as jp-30 pointed out, there's more to a "good puzzle" than its difficulty. I personally don't have issues with Episode 1 that couldn't be considered minor. It's a stellar example of what made LucasArts games great in the first place, and possibly better than the original Sam & Max game (has anyone cranked up the old game since playing episode one?).

Udvarnoky

11/05/2006, 03:08 pm

Myst is actually less of a purely puzzle game than you may think. I have not played Monkey Island, but I have to say, that in all likelyhood, their way of storytelling is significantly different.

Monkey Island, I get the feeling, tells a story through what you do. You wander around and do stuff, and story happens to you.

In Myst, the focus of storytelling is different. Not much actually HAPPENS to you. All the happening has already taken place. However, the story is still there, documented carefully in the books.

Please don't misunderstand me - just because I don't think a game is story-driven doesn't mean it can't have a rich, engaging story, nor does it mean that it has no value to the game. Also, just because a game is story-driven doesn't necessarily mean the story is good or complex. There are a lot of games whose stories I consider superior to that of adventure games. I also didn't mean to suggest that Myst was "purely" a puzzle game. And, most importantly, just because a game is of a certain genre says zero about its quality.

In this particular discussion though, the "totality" of Myst's story as it's documented and expanded in books or otherwise outside the game itself is irrelevant. The difference in the focus of the storytelling that you're pointing out is, I think, why I set it apart. Storytelling plays a part in any kind of game. Many people adore the stories of games like Zelda or Final Fantasy and it may be a major selling point for them, but Final Fantasy is still an RPG at its heart.

Johnny Walker

11/05/2006, 03:17 pm

Nice effort ignoring the 13 reviews i quoted that cited the game as being easy :D :D :D

I'd just like to point out to everyone (or anyone) that, for example, in most of those reviews, the puzzles being described as "easy" was a COMMENT and not a COMPLAINT. As such, this thread's title is misleading. I think people are, for the most part, COMMENTING on how Sam & Max is, and a very vocal minority have turned this into a COMPLAINT.

I thought the puzzles in Sam & Max weren't too taxing, but that's not a complaint!

Incognito

11/05/2006, 03:20 pm

Johnny Walker: Oh silly old me. Here I thought that the fact that there are more than enough good adventures games with really high production values to play, and even more upcoming was enough to call the genre "alive".

Yes, the genre is dead in many peoples eyes. But I you scroll back in this thread and look at my arguments you see that what I say is that anyone who actually takes time and look at what games are available and how good they are will find out that genre is alive and kicking, and that publishers and developers are continuing funding new adventuregames.

This discussion is even more fun when one thinks that its being posted on the forum at a developer who has released 5 adventuregames over the last 1,5 years, and are now acting as a distributor for other adventuredevelopers. :)

Numble: As much as I respect Ron Gilbert, he has been out of the industry for quite some time now. I know that is developing some kind of RPG/Adventuregame, but his most recent game was released 1997 (Total Annihilation), and his last adventuregame.......1992 (Monkey Island 2).

And if we continue with the namedropping, we can look at what a certain developer who released his last adventuregames this month says:

"People talk about the decline of the adventure, [but] we sold the same for Broken Sword 3 as we did for Broken Sword 2, and Broken Sword 1. The market is still very much there, and it's not declining; there's still plenty of room for adventures." - Charles Cecil

Broken Sword 1 - released 1996
Broken Sword 2 - released 1997
Broken Sword 3 - released 2003

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=66614

numble

11/05/2006, 03:41 pm

Incognito: Though I've never heard of Charles Cecil or Broken Sword, he's entitled to that belief and I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.

I've never been the one going around saying I'm not willing to listen to what they say if they say something I disagree with. I was just saying that you aren't even willing to listen to what some people (Retronauts) say about Sam and Max, because you heard that one of them said "adventure games are dead." Stretching that out to prove the logical consequences of that principle means rejecting everything Ron Gilbert or Tim Schafer has to say because of one comment they made that you disagree with.

BigJKO

11/05/2006, 03:43 pm

I'm not even sure what you're arguing about anymore, Incognito.

I can't see how there's any reason to argue about any kind of death, or any genre. That has nothing to do with Sam & Max's difficulty. It's obvious that you see this living, thriving genre because you like the games that have been coming out the past years. On the other hand there are those that think it's metaphorically dead, because they don't like the way it's been the past years.

Absolutely none of this has anything to do with Culture Shock, however.

Hero1, I'm not sure who you're trying to convince. Everyone agrees that the difficulty could be ramped up a tad. Unless you feel it should be ramped up by quite a lot, I don't think anyone's trying to say otherwise.

Incognito

11/05/2006, 04:17 pm

I'm not even sure what you're arguing about anymore, Incognito.

I can't see how there's any reason to argue about any kind of death, or any genre. That has nothing to do with Sam & Max's difficulty. It's obvious that you see this living, thriving genre because you like the games that have been coming out the past years. On the other hand there are those that think it's metaphorically dead, because they don't like the way it's been the past years.

Absolutely none of this has anything to do with Culture Shock, however.

This part about the genre is related to the discussion since people have used quotes from these "experts" about the genre being dead to prove a point against us who wishes a bit more advanced puzzles in the Sam&Max-games.

And its doesnt seem to be about people not liking the genre the last year. It seems to be about people not liking the genre at all because of the challenge, which leads me to wonder why people want to play adventuregames at all if you want to dumb down the actual playing part.

dunkpork

11/05/2006, 06:31 pm

I think this "adventure games didn't evolve" angle is misleading. Adventure games didn't have a chance to evolve. True, they were stuck for a time, but hollywood FMV pushed adventure games in the wrong direction. Then FPS games came along and made it impossible for adventure games to have a commercial audience to evolve in and with.

You can't evolve if no one is buying adventure games. And during the mid-late 90s no one was buying adventure games. Yes, I'll reiterate that I was a pc video game store clerk during this time. The only things people were buying were FPS games, RTS games, and Sims.

dunkpork

11/05/2006, 06:32 pm

Yes, I just made some absolute statements. And I'm aware that not many things are absolute, so feel free to tell me how stupidly wrong I am.

Hero1

11/05/2006, 06:41 pm

Hero1, I'm not sure who you're trying to convince. Everyone agrees that the difficulty could be ramped up a tad. Unless you feel it should be ramped up by quite a lot, I don't think anyone's trying to say otherwise.

Hey that's all I'm saying, the one thing i'd like to see in future episodes is for it be more challenging. There are people who see culture shock being easy as a positive, which I dont agree on.

Its up to Telltale at this point to see where they go from here. If they agree with the people who say the difficulty is perfect and they keep it at the same level it worries me, because I think a lot of people could stop buying the episodes if the puzzles remain that easy.

jp-30

11/05/2006, 07:05 pm

I can recall maybe one person (not on this forum, I think) saying they won't be buying Sam & Max ep 2 unless it is harder than Ep 1.

Most people who are vocal enough to post on a game company messageboard would like it a little harder, but certainly wouldn't stop buying/playing future episodes if they remained about Culture Shock's level of difficulty.

The silent majority are, one would probably conclude, satisfied with Culture Shock and will most likey continue with the series.

I would hazard a guess that making the game more difficult is likely to cause more people to drop the series than pick it up, as Hero1 believes.

Having said that, I think most people would be happy if the difficulty ramps up slightly from episode to episode (as appears to be happening with Bone).

Derwin

11/06/2006, 02:04 am

I can recall maybe one person (not on this forum, I think) saying they won't be buying Sam & Max ep 2 unless it is harder than Ep 1.

Agreed. While I definitely belong to the group who finds the game a bit on the easy side, I have bought the whole season and do not regret it one bit. Even if every future game is about the same difficulty, I will still enjoy my purchase... for the money, these games appear to be a great value for entertainment.

However, if Telltale can ramp up the difficulty a bit (I have given my ideas of how in several threads) then the value of the games, for me, would skyrocket!
It's a stellar example of what made LucasArts games great in the first place, and possibly better than the original Sam & Max game (has anyone cranked up the old game since playing episode one?).

I actually have fired up the game since, and I currently find Hit the Road to be a better adventure game. Notice, I said currently. This season has six episodes. At around 2-4 hours each (depending on speed of play), we are looking at a "full" game of 12-24 hours. Not too shabby for $35 a season. While playing Hit the Road, I have noticed something, however... that during the first portion of the game, puzzles were simpler... and towards the end, puzzles were more complex. So for the first sixth of the season, Culture Shock is setting up the scene almost perfectly. As a stand alone game, it would leave a little to be desired. Not much ;), mind you, but a little.

Lazerus101

11/06/2006, 06:10 am

I'd just like to point out to everyone (or anyone) that, for example, in most of those reviews, the puzzles being described as "easy" was a COMMENT and not a COMPLAINT. As such, this thread's title is misleading. I think people are, for the most part, COMMENTING on how Sam & Max is, and a very vocal minority have turned this into a COMPLAINT.

I thought the puzzles in Sam & Max weren't too taxing, but that's not a complaint!

Actually thats a load of bull. In most of those it WAS a complaint. PC Gamer, a UK magazine known for giving very balanced and fair reviews, gave Culture Shock a woeful 61%. And I quote "A reasonable game on its own, but a sad disservice to Sam & Max"

They even described it as "heart breaking". What you have to understand is that Sam & Max are 2 of the most loved characters from the old school adventure game genre. There was a lot of expectation in this game. The reviewer, as well as myself, dont believe it lived up anywhere near those expectations.

"Its a bit Phantom Menace
It's:

Lovely-looking
Got two much-loved characters
Heart-Breaking

It's not:

Funny enough
Very Challenging
Up to pedigree
"

Directly from the magazine.

AdamWhistle

11/06/2006, 08:08 am

I registered up on the forum just to say this:

SPENDING HOURS TO FIGURE OUT A SOLUTION TO AN EVERYDAY SITUATION IN THE MOST OBSCURE WAY IS NOT FUN.

The puzzles were logical in Sam and Max, logical, hear me? You did not have to try every item with everything on the screen to actually get somewhere. Adventure games died out (and I say "died" out as they died, and are in the process of being resurrected) because very few people found it fun to get a walkthrough to find out a stupid, obscure solution to a problem that can be solved by common sense or by brute force.

Spending hours in front of the same screen, clicking on everything with everything in your inventory to find some demented, vague logic that some developer thought up while being stoned is NOT fun.

Adventure games are about adventure, not solving abstract puzzles that make no sense.

That's why Dreamfall is experimenting in combining elements from other genres. Adventure games are not marketable, people are reminded of wasting hours in front of the computer figuring out obscure solutions, developers are using graphics engines years old (graphics sell, whether it deserves it or not, and I am referring to that most adventure games use fixed camera with a fake 3D), and professional game reviewers are professionally stupid with bad taste.

Dreamfall cut with all of it, even at the expense of some shortcomings (combat).

Sam and Max is the first adventure game were I didn't have to get a walkthrough to find solutions. That's a good point in my book. The graphic were also great, nothing unnecessary (though, I would have liked if more things are effected by the gun, like it leaves decals or some other funny animation).

Old-school adventure games are dead, leave it be. And no, it cannot survive. The fact that the Adventure Company was brought by JoWood proves this.

That company specialize in old-school adventure games, and now its brought by a shitty publisher that is known to release games either early or without proper quality testing (Gothic 3, look at the forums, the fans are screaming about the hoard of bugs, they needed two patches just to make the game playable).

Adventure games should be about plot, characters and interacting with the environment , not finding out solutions that you need to be stoned just to think about it. Deal with it.

Incognito

11/06/2006, 09:20 am

I registered up on the forum just to say this:

SPENDING HOURS TO FIGURE OUT A SOLUTION TO AN EVERYDAY SITUATION IN THE MOST OBSCURE WAY IS NOT FUN.

No thats sounds quite dull. Good thing that there are many good adventures out there where there is logic behinds the challenges.

What the critics here says is that if you takes the challenging puzzles out, then you have to replace it with something else, since its games we are talking about here. Adventuregames are welcome to evolve, but just cutting things its not evolution. Thats just......cutting things. ;)

jp-30

11/06/2006, 09:58 am

Who on earth is asking for things to be cut?

BigJKO

11/06/2006, 10:06 am

Instead of bickering in circles about this issue, why don't we try this exercise? Take a puzzle you thought was too easy and give us an example of how it could be more difficult, while not being obscure and illogical.

That's a whole lot more productive than what's going on right now.

Incognito

11/06/2006, 10:07 am

Who on earth is asking for things to be cut?

Those who wants the challenging bits from adventuregames cut, since they dont have the time to play such games.

jp-30

11/06/2006, 10:41 am

Those who wants the challenging bits from adventuregames cut, since they dont have the time to play such games.

Can you quote some of that from this discussion please? I think you're misreading what's being posted.

Instead of bickering in circles about this issue, why don't we try this exercise? Take a puzzle you thought was too easy and give us an example of how it could be more difficult, while not being obscure and illogical.

That's a whole lot more productive than what's going on right now.

1. The cupboard door in the office could have been locked.

2. The tear gas launcher could have needed ammo to be found (onions)

3. The antenna on the helmet plans could have looked more like a real antenna than a coat hanger. You could have had to find the helmet portion too, not just have Bosco make it from one item.

Johnny Walker

11/06/2006, 11:37 am

Johnny Walker: Oh silly old me. Here I thought that the fact that there are more than enough good adventures games with really high production values to play, and even more upcoming was enough to call the genre "alive".

Staggeringly, I'm actually shocked to see that you completely missed the point of my comments, and ignored my other observations. Silly me!

Incognito

11/06/2006, 11:48 am

Johnny Walker: I didnt ignore them.

Don Kuan

11/06/2006, 12:40 pm

It is absolutely NO-WAY Sam & Max is too difficult. Personally, I am shock to find Sam & Max to get the difficulty level just right. Most of the recent adventure games have lost the spirit and the touch, IMHO. The company has done a great job to keep the fun up. Story is excellent and most of all, the game really brings me back the fun from the golden days of Lucart Arts adventures (Days of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, Indiana Jones). If you have played those games, the difficult level is about the same as this one.

My only complaint of this game is far way too short.

Incognito

11/06/2006, 12:44 pm

Most of the recent adventure games have lost the spirit and the touch, IMHO.

May I ask for examples? :)

Vesh

11/06/2006, 12:47 pm

Dreamfall! =]

DoubtedEdwardo

11/06/2006, 01:36 pm

Okay, look. Yes being stuck on a puzzle is frustrating which is why the old Lucas arts games and even newer ones like The Longest Journey made the effort to create an interesting and compelling world where, even if you were stuck, you still had lots of interesting things going on around you. I used walkthroughs on both Grim Fandango and Syberia (two random examples pulled out a hat) but the difference was that in Syberia it ended up feeling like a chore to complete the game but in Grim Fandango it was joy to play start to finish. Possible the reason for the downturn in adventure gaming popularity is not that the puzzles got too hard, but that there wasn't an interesting enough world to explore when you were stuck. Sam and Max got the cool world bit down but without the difficult puzzles forcing you to look around you have to make a concious effort to stop and find the funny bits, it's very easy to miss them in the race for the finish and the first time you play an adventure game the end is the most important thing, at least for me. I know not everyone found the game as easy as this thread seems to want to make out which is why I think that the easy/medium/hard approach is the only way to satisfy everybody. THE ONLY WAY!
<whew>
I'm just presenting an idea on why you might want to be stuck once in a while. Forced rose smelling if you will.
Discuss/

Johnny Walker

11/06/2006, 01:41 pm

You've ignored the fact in my original post: All of the original adventure games you describe as being released are being produced by minor companies aiming for a niche market...

The MMORPG genre is alive and kicking. The FPS genre is alive and well. Even the RPG has some fight left in it. But adventures? They're in a very tiny minority.

You quote Charles Cecil (you do know that Revolution went through a massive down-sizing after Broken Sword 3?), and I'm sorry, but as much as I love Charles Cecil, he's had finished software refused to be published because publishers don't think there's anything to adventures anymore, he's been deep into production on games he's had to cancel... so he's bound to try and "big up" the genre (which is all cool by me). Secondly, if Broken Sword 3 only sold the same amount as Broken Sword 2, when the amount of people gaming has increased greatly in the gap between 1995 and 2003, then I don't think that's such an amazing claim.

This is a shame, but you're right to point out the excellent non-LucasArts/Sierra titles that have been released in the last six years by new developers.

There's several reasons why people might say that the adventure genre is "dead" though, and they're all pretty much valid. For a start, it no longer has the mass-appeal it once did, or if it does, why do games like The Longest Journey remain virtually unknown outside of adventure fan circles?

Maybe you forget that adventure games used to be hugely popular?

This discussion is even more fun when one thinks that its being posted on the forum at a developer who has released 5 adventure games over the last 1.5 years, and are now acting as a distributor for other adventure developers.

You're twisting the truth. They've released one full "adventure" (I take it you mean CSI?), two mini-adventures, and one sixth of another. They're not Bioware or Bethesda just yet! ;)

This is all besides the point, though. At the end of the day, this whole thread seems to be you pushing your personal agenda: That Sam & Max was disappointing because of the ease of the puzzles.

While, yes, I agree that the puzzles were easy, I was in no way disappointed by Sam & Max, and it seems that most people agree with me (even the reviewers). But your thread starts "Are Telltale listening to the complaints about the difficulty-level of their games?", which, for a start, isn't even a question anyone can answer, but when people try to tell you that they're quite happy, you seem to leap up and explain to them why they shouldn't be.

(Which is all very odd, because of all the people on this forum, you seem to be the one who is happiest with the plethora of great adventure games available!)

Don't get me wrong, though, if Sam & Max gets a little harder, I wouldn't complain. But at the same time, I don't fancy getting stuck! I'm sure TellTale are trying to find a happy medium, whilst trying to do something different to what has been before. In the meantime, though, you've got tons of other adventure games to play and keep you happy! ;) (And maybe I'll check some of them out, too!)

Johnny Walker

11/06/2006, 01:46 pm

Okay, look. Yes being stuck on a puzzle is frustrating which is why the old Lucas arts games and even newer ones like The Longest Journey made the effort to create an interesting and compelling world where, even if you were stuck, you still had lots of interesting things going on around you.

I used walkthroughs on both Grim Fandango and Syberia (two random examples pulled out a hat) but the difference was that in Syberia it ended up feeling like a chore to complete the game but in Grim Fandango it was joy to play start to finish.

Possibly the reason for the downturn in adventure gaming popularity is not that the puzzles got too hard, but that there wasn't an interesting enough world to explore when you were stuck. Sam and Max got the cool world bit down but without the difficult puzzles forcing you to look around you have to make a concious effort to stop and find the funny bits, it's very easy to miss them in the race for the finish and the first time you play an adventure game the end is the most important thing, at least for me.

I agree with you, Ed! It's quite possible that that's why we forgave those games when we got stuck in them. I think TellTale have done such an amazing job with the world of Sam & Max, that maybe we could quite happily get stuck in it again!

Don Kuan

11/06/2006, 01:51 pm

The very last Monkey Island, Dreamfall (thank you Vesh), recent Broken Sword. Syberia is good but I won't say it is excellent.

Most of the recent adventure games target on storyline twists on twists, thriller, or detective stories. They all try to be atmospheric but this is only short lived.

It is easier for me to point out why I personally find the others are good.
Of course, first thing content is the king. However, I found other adventure games lack of THEMES. This is the main reason why I really like Lucart Arts adventures. Each title is unique in its own way with excellent story line.

Full Throttle - Harley Davidson biker, double hard bxxtard, I still remember the stylish ending with the sunset.

Day of the Tentacle - Past, Present, Future. Enough said.

Grim Fandango - Unique characters (Although I don't find it as good as other Lucast Art titles)

Jokieman

11/06/2006, 04:55 pm

I guess what it comes down to for me is that TellTale is claiming that the Episodic nature of their games is good for the player, and I find that to be total B.S. because they haven't capitalized on the nature of Episodic Content.

One of the few pluses about having Episodes is that you can theme each segment of the game to a particular holiday or a season or something like that. And Telltale hasn't picked up on this yet.

The thing is people say "Oh this isn't xfiles, this isn't a tv show, it's a GAME" Uhh, Hello, it's a game that's being RUN as a T.V show.

And honestly when you have special effects houses like Digital Domain looking to set up their own gaming company--- When Lucas Arts has merged it's offices with ILM in order to better share technologies between the two houses, what you have is a bunch of companies looking to make their games more like movies and T.V. series then ever before.

So far the only advantages to TellTale's gimick of using the episodic format is to give themselves the advantage of being able to recoup their expenditures over the course of the project, but I have seen nothing that makes it advantageous to the player, and I think TellTale's game developers need to get on the ball and find ways to make it more advantageous for the customer. --- They need to be careful here because if they start believing their own Spindoctoring about how players prefer a 2-3 hour game played once a month to completion over a full length game that they might play once an week for 3 hours over the course of a month, then they will become lax in finding other ways to keep the customers interested, because it's simply not true. It's marketing hype, but there is LITTLE basis to it.

This is why I feel people have some valid complaints. Anyone who says the game is PERFECT is lying. Because nothing is perfect.

For an Episodic game to really come alive, it helps to theme each episode towards the season or of it's release. IE: An episode released around November 1st should really have had more of a halloween feel to it to help draw people in and immerse them in the game. It makes their job as a game developer that much easier as well because people are already FEELING and SEEING the halloween stuff all around them, so throwing that into the game draws them in that much quicker and easier.

This is why you will never see your popular T.V. shows releasing a new episode at christmas about how So and So goes to Hawaii for the SUMMER. hehe. It's like "Hello, this is christmas time, where's the CHRISTMAS episode!".

jp-30

11/06/2006, 05:44 pm

While the ability to theme a game is a good one, it's hardly fair to accuse Telltale of ignoring this option in their games when only one episode has been released (Bone hasn't got that freedom because it's following an already constructed narrative). Who's to say what's in store for the med-Dec/Early Jan Ep 2?

Also you might find Halloween means nothing to a good percentage of non americans. Similarly when the US is in winter, 1/2 the earth is in summer. A lot of Hit the Road is lost to people who haven't experienced US Road Trips (or live in US culture).

I will concede though that as Sam & Max is set in the US, UScentricity is a given. But overdoing jokes / themes that are unfamiliar to 1/2 the games audience could, in certain circumstances, be offputting.

I find a lot of these suggestions extremely egocentric - it all seems about (in the words of Brady Culture) "me, Me, ME" with little to no consideration given to wants / needs of the audience as a whole or that Telltale do actually have a marketing plan, years of cumulative experience in all facets of the industry and an idea of how the games will evolve in due course.

That's not to say suggestions aren't great - we saw a huge number of user suggestions implemented between Bone 1 and Bone 2 (and between Bone 2 and Sam & Max), but there seems to be a prevalence of people who think they know better than Telltale, which, basically... they don't.

Emily

11/06/2006, 07:12 pm

One of the few pluses about having Episodes is that you can theme each segment of the game to a particular holiday or a season or something like that. And Telltale hasn't picked up on this yet.

Ah, but we will. Wait until you see what we have in store for President's Day. :D

jp-30

11/06/2006, 07:52 pm

What is this President's day of which you speak?

Meaningless historical public holiday?

:confused:

Pvt._Public

11/06/2006, 08:03 pm

The President has his own day!? Why? I thought all Americans hated Jee Dubya?

As for the episodicnesserosity of the games, as somebody else pointed out, that's pretty much the reason that there aren't so many puzzles. Give yourself a smallish amount of time to make a game which will be replaced by another in another month (or thereabouts) and chances are you're going to go for a smaller amount of good logical puzzles as opposed to a multitude of slightly less polished ones. Before someone violently argues though, I too would quite like to see a few more puzzles and maybe have the difficulty ramped up a bit. But, I won't pick up my monitor and throw it through the window if there isn't much change. Mostly because it's an expensive monitor and it's quite heavy. Plus, I don't think my parents would be impressed if I borke a window.

numble

11/06/2006, 09:40 pm

The President has his own day!? Why? I thought all Americans hated Jee Dubya?

We'll find out tomorrow...

numble

11/06/2006, 10:03 pm

I guess what it comes down to for me is that TellTale is claiming that the Episodic nature of their games is good for the player, and I find that to be total B.S. because they haven't capitalized on the nature of Episodic Content.

They need to be careful here because if they start believing their own Spindoctoring about how players prefer a 2-3 hour game played once a month to completion over a full length game that they might play once an week for 3 hours over the course of a month, then they will become lax in finding other ways to keep the customers interested, because it's simply not true. It's marketing hype, but there is LITTLE basis to it.

One thing you leave out of the equation is Gametap. Culture Shock is still the most played game on Gametap, after nearly a month. I would say that that's pretty solid evidence that people remain interested in the game between episode launches. And Gametap has been marketing the interim Sam and Max machinama shorts that will be coming soon much more than Telltale has (I think Telltale, as a tiny company, has been a little more busy and focused with the site redesign, game premiere, and you know--making more episodes than to focus on the in-between content), but that stuff is also potentially going to keep customers interested. I will concede that Gametap offers the original cartoons and Telltale doesn't, but I'm willing to bet that Gametap customers would still be playing Culture Shock even if Gametap didn't offer the old cartoons.

But nevertheless, Gametap has revolved everything Sam and Max around the idea of episodic release, with a monthly game release, weekly cartoon release, and weekly machinama short release that is looking very robust and popular. Gametap is basically an episodic service--the whole business model revolves around the idea of a steady stream of new content with access provided via a subscription service, and hey, they're probably seen a jump in customers once they announced that the subscription fee will give customers Sam and Max once a month. It could still be just hype and spin-doctoring, but it looks like its working.

Which is why I really wish Gametap would be more forthcoming with their user data, so that we can tell what kind of gamers are playing Culture Shock without speculation. I contend that I think a lot of the people that used to put Tetris and Pac-Man at the top of the list are also now helping to put Culture Shock there, but who knows--maybe its the people that used to put Tony Hawk or Sonic the Hedgehog up there.

---
Note: I really hope nobody brings up that "Gametap is US+Canada only!" since that fact is largely irrelevant to my argument that there exists data to suggest that the Sam and Max attention span remains high within the window between episode releases, even with the "shortness" of the game.

(And Gametap will be worldwide soon...)

dunkpork

11/06/2006, 10:25 pm

Maybe you forget that adventure games used to be hugely popular?

This is where I remind everyone that adventure games were so big they had the backing of Lucas, Spielberg, and just about any big name actor who had a few spare months and any interest in video games.

dunkpork

11/06/2006, 10:32 pm

Oh, let's not forget Orson Scott Card and other big sci-fi heads.

Incognito

11/06/2006, 11:35 pm

You've ignored the fact in my original post: All of the original adventure games you describe as being released are being produced by minor companies aiming for a niche market...

The MMORPG genre is alive and kicking. The FPS genre is alive and well. Even the RPG has some fight left in it. But adventures? They're in a very tiny minority.

You quote Charles Cecil (you do know that Revolution went through a massive down-sizing after Broken Sword 3?), and I'm sorry, but as much as I love Charles Cecil, he's had finished software refused to be published because publishers don't think there's anything to adventures anymore, he's been deep into production on games he's had to cancel... so he's bound to try and "big up" the genre (which is all cool by me). Secondly, if Broken Sword 3 only sold the same amount as Broken Sword 2, when the amount of people gaming has increased greatly in the gap between 1995 and 2003, then I don't think that's such an amazing claim.

This is a shame, but you're right to point out the excellent non-LucasArts/Sierra titles that have been released in the last six years by new developers.

There's several reasons why people might say that the adventure genre is "dead" though, and they're all pretty much valid. For a start, it no longer has the mass-appeal it once did, or if it does, why do games like The Longest Journey remain virtually unknown outside of adventure fan circles?

Maybe you forget that adventure games used to be hugely popular?

Of course I know that the genre is smaller than others. Much more. But with the amount of good games that has been released/will be released I cant see that the genre being "dead" is a......how shall I put it........ "correct" opinion. Its understandable that many think so. Yes. But its also an opinion that is based on ignorance of all good games being released in the genre, and the effort made by very talented game developers.

As for Charles Cecil, you hardly being fare. The gamesindustry is a hard place to work for anyone, and people are having trouble selling their games in all genres. Just think of Richard Garriot, Ultima Online 2, and the MMORPG-genre.

The quotes about sales was about the genre still being profitable, not being the absolutely one the biggest. The only reason that he actually made a fouth Broken Sword-game was that the publisher (THQ) pushed him to do so because they saw the genre as being profitable. The Broken Sword-series was orginaly just gonna be a trilogy.

Again, I can see why many people say that it is dead. I just think that in a discussion like this where you actually take a good hard look at how the genre is doing now, I cant see the genre being dead as a valid opinion, since its based on that you ignore many good adventuregames. Thats why I dismiss retronauts´ opinion. But everyone are of cause entitled to their opinion. The question is just about what value it has in this kind of debate. :)

Johnny Walker

11/07/2006, 05:07 am

Incognito, you've ignored the second part of my post again :)

I appreciate your response to the first half, but I don't think you should go around dismissing people's opinions and then expect them to see your point of view. I understand what you mean about there still being a wealth of "good" adventure games out there, and I'll probably go and check them out, but I also understand what is meant when people who say the genre is currently dead or ailing.

numble

11/07/2006, 07:01 am

Ok, here's the example.

Many people have been saying since the 1980s that "Disco is dead," but these people are ignoring the fact that there are still some very successful disco artists out there (even new ones), making some very good disco songs, and there are still a couple of old-fashioned disco clubs that are still open and profitable. For this reason, I can only conclude that they are wrong, and must dismiss their opinions since they are clearly ignorant and choose to ignore these facts. DISCO LIVES.

--Update--
Note: This in no way precludes the fact that I don't believe Disco, or adventure games for that matter, can be resurrected to their previous mass appeal, though I'd prefer the latter...

--Update 2--
If you actually believe that Disco is not dead, we'll then I have nothing else to say...

numble

11/07/2006, 07:43 am

Emily Morganti, Telltale Games (http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1005&highlight=interview)
This is not exactly on-topic, but... I was reading a King's Quest article on a retro gaming website the other day, and Ken Williams was quoted saying that King's Quest 6 sold 400,000 copies in the first week. That just blew my mind. (Remember, that was in 1992!)

Compare that to The Longest Journey, which Funcom says has sold about 500,000 copies since it came out in 1999... seven years ago now.

More context.

Incognito

11/07/2006, 07:50 am

Johnny Walker: My intention was to answer the part about adventuregames not having the mass appeal in the first part of my anwer - where I acknowledge that the genre is indeed a small one compared to others like FPS , but still thinks that it is a fact that still lives a quite healthy live since there are many good games out there with production values that rivals the games in bigger genres.

About me dismissing opinions, you have to look at what context Im dismissing it in. It is in these deep discussions about the genres. Im not talking about people in general not being allowed to have opinions. :)

One thing I have forgotten to mention here. When Sony showcased PS3, they had an adventuregame as one of the demos (Heavy Rain), and that demo had quite large coverage on the major gamingsites like Gamespot and IGN. It is things like that, along with ex-LucasArts people founding new development studios like Telltale and Bad Brain Entertainment along with promising upcoming games like Overclocked from Anaconda that makes the declaration of adventuregames being dead more "wrong" now than ever. :)

Vesh

11/07/2006, 08:33 am

I apologize for the amount of awkwardness and offtopickery that is about to ensue, but I gotta say this in response to this entire thread:

All you guys rock. Even with all the bickerin', snippishness (which is usually just preemptory defensiveness), heavy declarations (which seem to come off as high-horsin', but usually aren't) and all... you all obviously deeply love both the old guard of [good] adventure games and seem to have your own broken shards of the whole of what the genre is slowly evolving toward.

But as much as you guys rock, you need to calm down and realize that your ideas and opinions aren't really all that conflicting.

(ETA: No, I'm not drunk or high. I just love that amount of vehement passion I'm seeing about adventure games, game development, all the applicable theory and of course, Sam & Max themselves/itself - AND - I would love to see people dropping thier swords to work together to think of how to combine all of these perspectives, ideas and opinions into a working concept with rewarding gameplay and great storytelling.)

Hero1

11/07/2006, 12:49 pm

- AND - I would love to see people dropping thier swords to work together to think of how to combine all of these perspectives, ideas and opinions into a working concept with rewarding gameplay and great storytelling.)

I think we're leaving that up to Telltale. Lets see what they can do with this mess of a thread :D :D :D :D

Pvt._Public

11/07/2006, 08:48 pm

I think we're leaving that up to Telltale. Lets see what they can do with this mess of a thread :D :D :D :D

Close it with luck. That's what happened to the voices thread :) Both sides seem to not want to change their perspectives and we've been going around in a few circles now that I look back.

jp-30

11/07/2006, 09:31 pm

numble

11/07/2006, 10:06 pm

Well, I think this is one of the best reading discussions on the board. Lots of good, passionate people sharing their opinions. Some of it even backed up with links, examples and references.

Sure, people are unlikely to change their opinions, but so what? It's all about swaying the 'undecided', isn't it?

Yeah, if you were an American, I would say, "how appropriate you fight like a cow, there was an election today."

There probably are lots of silent people among the close to 5000 views that this thread is getting.

numble

11/08/2006, 12:42 am

Okay, okay, unless there is anybody that says something so egregious for me to want to refute it, I'll say I'm done as well.

Here's my realization, as Telltale is really starting to pioneer a completely different manner of gaming--story-driven episodic games, there really is nothing else to compare Culture Shock to, only regular games. This is compounded by the fact that the IP from which Culture Shock is based on was also the subject of a much-revered game from 13 years ago--the epitome of "old, regular game" if there ever was one.

With lack of peer titles to compare it to, viewers invariably turn to comparing the episodic games with either old games or Hit the Road and in some cases both, whilst Culture Shock seeks to be neither a regular game (or a regular adventure game, for that matter), or even a logical sequel to Hit the Road.

First the episodic point: there really are no other episodic games (or very very very few) out there, so gamers invariably will compare it to full-length games. And people will compare it to full-length adventure games no less. It's understandable, you can only compare things to what you know. When the Simpsons came out, people compared them to Flintstones and the Jetsons, but when a King of the Hill or Family Guy comes out nowadays (after shows like Simpsons and Futurama have been firmly established), nobody really compares those shows to Flintstones anymore--nobody expected cartoons could be different from "normal" cartoons back then, but now we have things like Adult Swim (cable channel with mature cartoon lineup), something unheard of 10 years ago. So there's really nothing that can be done until episodic games really reach a critical mass; you can't blame people from evaluating things based on what they know.

Secondly, the legacy of Hit the Road. The truth is that Sam and Max: Season One is neither a true sequel to Hit the Road, nor does it really seek to be. The collection is called Season One after all, similar to how Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Movie and Buffy: The Television Series are completely different--you don't compare the movie to the television show; even though they use the same characters and are in roughly the same universe, the presentation, stories, and even the actors are completely different and seek to stand on their own rather than in comparison to one another.

And this is why I think there is so much more discussion than you might get from using IP that does not have as much baggage. Both the issues of the new paradigm of episodic gaming and the legacy of Hit the Road combine and compound into this potentially messy situation that stirs passions and elicits extremely long forum threads. And Telltale took a tremendous risk in actually pushing through this potential barrier and went ahead and pushed through their vision of story-driven episodic games.

Tremendously risky and tremendously crazy for such a tiny little upstart company to do. But the crazy thing is, I think it's working.

Great reviews nearly everywhere and Culture Shock remains atop Gametap's most-played list for over 3 weeks running, a service not known for adventure-gaming customers. Complaints seem to be balanced--one review will say Sam's voice is better than Max's, while another will say the opposite, same with length, and same with difficulty. Near unanimity on humor, characters, and the episodic format. While the fanbase used to worry about Telltale's handling of the humor and characters, it's really basically been reduced to nitpicking about gameplay mechanics.

But the baggage of the newness of episodic gaming, coupled with the legacies of Hit the Road and the adventure game genre in general, will continue to exist, and it really is hard for either opinion to be really correct until we see where everything is a year from now. I can say as much as I want that Telltale has a great vision and really knows what it's doing to be very successful, and I really can't know that for sure until I see how things look after it's all said and done. Similarly, others can argue all they want about what changes are needed and required for success and how Telltale would be completely wrong to do X or Y, but, just like me, they really can't prove that until they look at how things are when it's all said and done.

All along, Telltale will have to continue walking this tricky rope.

But like I said earlier on:

Tremendously risky and tremendously crazy for such a tiny little upstart company to do. But the crazy thing is, I think it's working.

Rock on, Telltale.

--update--
Sorry for the US-centric analogies. I did this on purpose because of till receipts.

You can perhaps replace Buffy with Ninja Turtles or Ghostbusters if you don't know what Buffy is, but I think the Buffy analogy is a much stronger one.

balloftwine

11/08/2006, 02:02 am

you don't compare the movie to the television show; even though they use the same characters and are in roughly the same universe, the presentation, stories, and even the actors are completely different and seek to stand on their own rather than in comparison to one another.

I do, I think a lot of people do, and usually they dont compare well. If culture shock was to hit the road like anything ive ever seen syndicated like that does I would be horrified. Thankfully its not, the presentation is much better (thanks to advances in technology) and the universe is the same. The story hasnt been dumbed down - if all 6 episodes are good it will be better. I dont think TV conversions do seek to stand on their own, they just want to milk the success of a film (with the exception of Buffy, but that was only after it was a success). The new sam and max doesnt fall into that category. Its been created by people who have been involved in trying to get S&M projects going for years.

All people have been trying to say on this board and the others is what improvements they would like to see. I dont understand why some people are so defensive and take constructive criticism as an attack on the game. We all just have this picture in our heads of what we would like the game to look like and somehow were trying to put it all together. You'd think we were suggesting altering the bible to the pope because we thought a couple of bits could do with improvement.

Its got nothing to do with episodic gaming being a new paradigm. Thats helping, if the game had been released as a whole we wouldnt be able to talk about what we'd like to see in future, would we?

Nobody has said I hate this, I cant believe what youve done with the 'legacy of HTR', this is rubbish I want my money back. Almost everyone has said I love it, cant wait for the next one, well done.

So whats wrong with that?

numble

11/08/2006, 02:19 am

The things have been said, and I can scrounge up quotes to prove it if you like, and PM them to you if you want, but I'm not going to publicly do it here out of a desire to avoid restarting arguments in case people want to react to said quotes all over again.

So anyone if they want, can PM me if you want said quotes.

update---

Anyway, a dirty little truth is that Telltale wants to do the same thing as with Buffy, milk the success of licenses for products that also happen to stand on their own. That's why they made CSI and Bone as well. We don't talk about CSI that much, but from what I glean from interviews, its doing very well due to the popularity of CSI. I've heard Dan Connors casually mention "The Simpsons" in at least two interviews as examples for episodic gaming, and though I wouldn't expect it to happen, I'm willing to bet that Telltale would be happy to have that license.

And Kevin Bruner, CTO of Telltale offers this statement that kind of tells you that they plan on doing a lot more milking in the future:

Next Generation interview with Kevin Bruner, CTO Telltale (http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1531&Itemid=2&limit=1&limitstart=1)
Looking a few years down the road, Bruner has big plans for the company and for properties that are ignored in today's market. "I hope we're bringing out a new game every month on a number of different franchises and making the television metaphor really work. We want to be a channel like HBO or Bravo and really seeing licenses that don't play well right now in the game space, find a home at Telltale.

"You can imagine there are all sorts of things that don't map well to driving and shooting. We think that we can do some good treatments for that stuff."

The fact that they basically will be milking licenses for money does not preclude the possibility that Telltale actually will do a good job. They had zero experience with Bone or CSI, and turned out good products. Dave Grossman, the putative guy in charge of Sam and Max at Telltale, had nothing to do with Sam and Max (he left Lucasarts after DOTT) until he arrived at Telltale. So I'll still say Buffy is Buffy.

But I'm now going wayy off-topic. And I don't know what I'm saying anymore. I'll just PM you the quotes.

balloftwine

11/08/2006, 04:43 am

I dont see this kind of milking as a bad thing. I meant in a cynical money grabbing way. A simpsons game could be great. The fact is when most people do this kind of thing it stinks though. The TV example from film you used is the personification of that.

I dont see that people having problems with an episodic game is the same as people having a problem with a paradigm shift to episodic gaming. Thats not what paradigm means. My point was to try and illustrate how a paradigm shift is a positive thing in this instance.

More info here (Wikipedia) (http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradigm)

I dont see why a few people whinging about the content of the game is the same as people saying they hate the game and want their money back. I know a couple of people didnt like it but there isnt anything everyone likes.

You seem to have a serious problem with people in anyway challenging what you say about things. I think other people have noticed this before and I fully expected this response from you. I only post things on here because I really enjoyed the original sam and max game and I thought that the way an interesting community built up around the release of the new one was great.

I notice you havent picked up on what I said about constructive criticism. Please dont send me anymore PM's like that... Chill out... :cool:

BigJKO

11/08/2006, 06:24 am

1. The cupboard door in the office could have been locked.

2. The tear gas launcher could have needed ammo to be found (onions)

I'm not sure if that raises the difficulty of the puzzle. That's just stacking puzzles, of equal difficulty, on top of each other. It's also assuming that the player is certain that using the tear gas will work on Peppers, or that the cupboard contains the cheese. Unless you mean something more clever than just an onion from the store and a key on the desk, then I don't see how this would raise difficulty rather than just annoy people. Just finding stuff isn't clever, and doesn't make you think.

3. The antenna on the helmet plans could have looked more like a real antenna than a coat hanger. You could have had to find the helmet portion too, not just have Bosco make it from one item.

Agreed about that one, it was too easy. I did like how they introduced the antenna of the TV before, though. Hadn't even noticed it until that Waking-Up-Sam sequence. Making the antenna look less like the coat hanger, and introducing that helmet-like object earlier on in the game, would help in that one. Especially because it's near the end.

DoubtedEdwardo

11/08/2006, 07:10 am

I still think it comes down the number of hints given in game. As BigJKO suggested one of the puzzles that could have been made harder, without just adding more puzzles, was one which had an obvious answer. The easiest way for Telltale to make the games harder would be to add an option to remove some of the in game hints.

numble

11/08/2006, 10:27 am

Yeah, it seems from the hints forum that the few people that did get stuck got stuck on the non-hinted portions of the game--last puzzle, knocking out the poppers, and the psychoanalysis stuff. So even an acknowledgment of a hint system might help Telltale in that regard, since people seem to have no problem with the cheese (both Sam and Max give BIG hints for this) or antenna. Some people got stuck with the driving game though... which is kind of annoying given that I think they pretty much point you in the right direction with hints.

numble

11/08/2006, 12:14 pm

Since I don't know what the topic of this thread is anymore (we've gone on so many different tangents), this may or may not be topical:

Here's an article published today (at least I think it was today) by Mygamer.com, that includes an interview with Telltale designers Dave Grossman and Brendan Ferguson on their thoughts on the state of adventure games:

Days of High Adventure: The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of the Adventure Game (http://www.mygamer.com/index.php?platform=&publisher=&developer=&game=&page=articles&mode=viewarticles&id=327)

Jake

11/08/2006, 12:52 pm

Just one guy's thoughts...

One thing that interests me about all of this talk about difficulty and length is peoples perception of scope.

When all six cases are out, released as a full "complete season" experience, the scope will feel very different than it does now. I mean, in a way, "defeat Brady Culture" will become the first big puzzle goal in a far bigger game, versus now where that alone is the story of a game on its own. I think peoples feelings about the scope of what they need to accomplish will sort of move up, or expand a level just because the structure of what they're playing (a 12-18 hour game) will be different, even if puzzle to puzzle it's the same string of events that was once distributed as an episodic experience. I think at that point peoples perception of what is and isn't hard and what is and isn't short or long will be at least a bit different than it is now.

I don't think that's any better or worse a game design structure than presenting each as a separate episode (I personally prefer playing them one at a time because I like the more short-form storytelling and the rapid clip the game moves at from story beat to story beat and act to act, and I like actually finishing my games - if it was a full length single game I'd probably put the game down half way through "for a week or so, for a rest" and never pick it up again like I do with almost every game I buy), but for people who want things to feel like their challenges are more long form and intricate, they may appreciate the change in scope and perception that occurs when all six episodes each become essentially large puzzles in a bigger singular story experience.

...

Bonus side note: Actually, I suspect that at least some peoples perception of scope, length, and difficulty will probably start shifting a bit even as early as when they get to play episode 2 or 3. Not necessarily because one or both of those two games on its own will be a head-scratching arm-twisting brain-deflating puzzle assault, but just because the relationship each individual episode and its challenges has with the whole season will come into focus a little more.

It only just clicked for me a couple days ago the implications of the next chapter of the game coming out in just over a month, and then four more of them following one after another right after that. Even working here in the office, and occasionally on the games themselves, it's hard to shake my ingrained perception that Culture Shock is the game and the next episode is the sequel. That's really not what's going on. They're not all "the same game split into chunks" either. It's somewhere in-between, and it took a long time to all click properly in my head.

But anyway, as I said earlier, even if it doesn't click for some people in the next six months, they'll be right at home with the season set, where essentially the first objective in a very long game is a 2-4 hour long puzzle about how to figure out where Brady Culture's hideout is.

Derwin

11/08/2006, 01:51 pm

Good perspective Jake. That is how I started to look at the game about a day after finishing it. It finally sunk in that this was just like the beginning of a larger adventure game. It hasn't fully sunken in yet, but like you said, it should when the full season is finally out..

doom saber

11/08/2006, 04:33 pm

From reading bits and pieces of the thread, I agree with Nimble on how the difficulty level in games can frustrated the gamer as to stop playing.

I also agree on what Jake said abou the scope. I for one take it as an episode and it was satisfying. Knowing that the game is going to be around 2-3 hours long, I basically took my time playing the game, trying to savor the funfactor and it seems to satifsy me quite well.

After preordering the series and finishing episode 1, I thought that if Telltale ever expands its team, they should try to make a "movie length" game, release it after the last episode of a season and charge it with a separate price. I like how episode 1 of Sam and Max plays both in puzzles despite being easier than previous adventure games(more on that later,) and storyline, but it would be fun once in a while to play an "epic" adventure based on the dog and rabbit duo. I like the format of the game being episodic, so I am not really complaining about that. This might only be me, but I like movies that relates to a television/anime series if done right. My two favorite anime movies are Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist. I like how they fit into their tv series storyline loosly with subtle references within the movie(normally, an anime movie is a stand alone storyline that doesn't effect the character developement or the actual storyline and hence the stoyline can be weak.)

I kinda want to see Sam and Max on a case that effects them in a great way. Sort of like Hit the Roa, but more in a dire movie-like situation.

I digress. The puzzles in episode 1, overall, are easy in Culture shock, but it doesn't mean I am disappointed. It is the opposite. I am 23 and have played adventure games ever since I can remember. I remember being stuck on a puzzle for weeks, if not months or even years on something like not knowing to check behind the church's door in chapter 1 to get the key(if I recall correctly, if you don't check the door during this chapter, the key is no longer obtainable,) to open the beer to use in chapter 3 Freddy Pharkis.

As for internet hints, sure they are helpful, but the bad things about them is that some players do not want to resort to them, which is why some sites made programs that would give you clues in what to do next. But those can be frustrating since the clues they gave are ones you may already know. Furthermore, hint faqs are addictive where as once you use it to solve one problem, you may be using the entire faqs afterwards to get through the game, which eliminates the fun factor. It happened to me on the fourth Monkey Island game. Lastly, you may be lookin for a way to solve one puzzle in the faq and accidently read a solution to a puzzle you haven't encountered.

Sam and Max culture shock played quite fluidly in terms of puzzle solving. I was stuck on some areas, epecially the later ones, but it wasn't too long where I wanted to gave up. I was stuck on the last puzzle even though I knew what the situation would be where Sam would trick the villian in having the soda poppers attack him, but the way the combination of dialoge threw me off It was fun solving the puzzle w/o the use of guides since guides are huge spoilers and the puzzles were highly logical. I remember passing kq5 w/o hints and how I amaze myself by solving a puzzle through dumb luck; after being frustrated in a puzzle in trying to get the wizard's wand, I decided to leave the computer in a safe place where Garaham wouldn't be killed by the wizard or put into prision by his guards(the library) and talk to my brother, forgetting to pause the game. After 15 minutes, I came back and while still at the same room, trying to see what to do, the wizard appears in a room away, getting into bed. The puzzle may be creativefun, but the time it takes to wait increases the frustation of a gamer. I mean, I wouldn't think someone would actually spend 15 minutes the first time playing the kq5, to wait that long.

There is more I want to say, but I will end my thought here since I didn't get enough sleep from the day before.

IronCladChicken

11/09/2006, 06:12 am

I´m playing Broken Sword 4 now at the same time, and that is one game that really requires one to think, and adds some very neat minigames and puzzles. Maybe that game can be a source of inspiration for Telltale, to raise the quality of their games from "really good" to "downright excellent"? :)

I wouldn't mind a couple of trickier puzzles myself (though I suspect each episode may become a little harder than the last, in the same way the Bone games seem to be (have been?) going)

However, every review I've read for Broken Sword 4 seemed to conclude it was a little too hardcore? And that many of the puzzles a little too obscure? & that this would alienate many people trying to play the game?

While I'm all up for a few brain teasers - I don't want to be stumped by puzzles that are only there to satisfy/challenge the sort of person who can complete the Times cross-word puzzle in under 5 minutes.

RMJ1984

11/09/2006, 06:37 am

Well i find the diffuculty okay. It would just be nice with more puzzle's and funny ways to get items.. Because there are really more than enough talking to different persons in the game.. And another mouse cursor with options to look, take and such as in the original instead of having to cancel item and go back in box to get it.. but yeah its a great game.. But i will always nice Full games more. I dont hope this episodic game type is how the future is gonna be, because it just sucks to be honest.. :P

bashar

11/09/2006, 08:44 am

As to wither the game is great or not, I dont believe many will disagree its a great game. As for the time, it really affects the overall impression of the game, specially for the people who dont know the history behind it.

Are the listening to the comments? They sure do. I have personally contacted them about the issue of buying separate episodes, and whether there is away if we buy all episodes to get a full CD after then, plus the pricing relative to the game length. The fixed it with the pre-order thing.

As for the game length and difficulty, I think if we look at it from their side, the adventture gaming industry has been more dying in the recent years, and for the staff who quit their job to start a new company to work full two years on 1 game, and then it might not boom as expected. They might go out of business soon, so this (although I dont like it) might be the best solution. Thet have brought us back laugh and joy after 13 years! Now, when there are limited scenes in an adventure game, its natural it will be easy. So, at the end, its a WIN WIN Situation for both of us on the long run. As they get more stable they might be releasing longer episodes. Keep in mind they will build on the existing.

mandor

11/09/2006, 02:47 pm

Just one guy's thoughts...
but for people who want things to feel like their challenges are more long form and intricate, they may appreciate the change in scope and perception that occurs when all six episodes each become essentially large puzzles in a bigger singular story experience.

I think two basic adventure game mechanics are changed through the episodic approach and that makes the game too easy for some or creates a feeling that the game has not a large enough scope:

First the number of places and thus the number of objects you can collect/interact with at a given time is smaller.
Secondly there is no transition of early game collectibles to the late game. In many great adventure games objects you picked up very early in the game could be of use in the mid or late game.

I really enjoyed Culture Shock and am happy that episodic gaming could be a very viable way to recultivate the adventure genre - but I think those two things could hinder the games from becoming like those of the "good old days". But I figure that is not what you are aiming for (and it is probably not a viable business option) and I respect that.

Hero1

11/09/2006, 02:49 pm

I'm not sure having episodes coming out regularly is going to change the difficulty level of the game. Does the full 6 episodes being 18-24 hours make the puzzles harder? I doubt it. even if the first puzzle is to find brady cultures hideout.. A series of simple puzzles to get that solution does not help..

As for putting games down halfway through and never picking them up again..that only happens if you are not interested in the story of the game, and don't want to find out what happens next.. I doubt telltale would ever do that since they regard the story aspect of their games very highly. My opinion is they just need to balance out the gameplay of their products a lot more.. Commercial games these days are all game, no story. Telltale is a lot of story not much game.. I think theres a happy medium somewhere in between.

jp-30

11/09/2006, 03:46 pm

As for putting games down halfway through and never picking them up again..that only happens if you are not interested in the story of the game, and don't want to find out what happens next...

Actually, that's not the case for me. I only buy 2 or so games per year thesedays, and let's see, these are some I've bought in the last couple of years;

Indiana Jones & The Emperor's Tomb. I was enjoying playing it, but came up to a section where there were a lot of jumps over a pit section. As there's no quicksave, everytime I mistimed a jump I had to play 10 or so minutes to get back to the same point, which, after a couple of hours, made me take a break from the game. I never returned to it and eventually uninstalled it.

KOTOR - loved the game, loved the story. Went away on vacation or something, forgot what the sidequests were about, kind lost track of what had gone on. Now a year later I know I'll have to start all over if I ever want to finish it, and I just don't know if I can commit the time to do that.

Beyond Good & Evil: Got so pissed off at the lack of y-axis mouse-invert that I had to stop playing, even though the story was really shaping up.

So, for me it tends to be getting stuck, forgetting the story after a break or sheer frustration of gameplay mechanics that causes me to stop playing - not a lack of interest in the story.

Udvarnoky

11/09/2006, 03:56 pm

I never understood why Ubisoft didn't offer gamepad support in the PC version of Beyond Good and Evil for those who had one.

jp-30

11/09/2006, 04:02 pm

I know. It's tragic. The dumbest thing is they have 'invert mouse' option, but it bloody inverts the x-axis too. AND you can invert-Y in camera mode, but not in movement mode. Gah!

Hero1

11/09/2006, 05:20 pm

hmm I've wanted to get beyond good and evil for years.. prince of persia: sands of time was one of those games, where the story was great.. I couldnt put it down..wanted to find out where the story was going..finished in a few days.. warrior within though I found appaling..its a pity ubisofts most creative games wern't commercially successful so they resorted to making games that every1 else was doing..such is the video game industry these days..

Alucard

11/09/2006, 08:15 pm

kotor didn't seem that difficult but it was fun I was going to play kotor II but it got mixed reviews and there are many other games I still need to play. The interesting thing about kotor II is that there is a mod in works to restore all the stuff that was cut from a game that was rushed.

thom_h

11/11/2006, 06:56 am

I think, if they jumped in at the deep end with hard puzzles on the first episode, newer gamers might not buy the further episodes. It's a good starting game, and I think through out the episodes Telltale will be able to make them increasingly harder and experiment with a difficulty level that everyone can agree on?
If that makes sense? Which I don't think it does, but oh well.

Reno

11/11/2006, 11:34 am

I haven't played the full version yet, but I got an impression that Episode 1 might be an easy one for me. I like complex puzzles as long as there is a logical solution. In my opinion, storytelling, dialogue and interaction are the most important factors that make some adventure games good. I really don't care whether Telltale folks are going to/are not going to make harder puzzles. As long as storytelling and dialogue are top-notch and "Sam & Maxesque", Im a very happy customer.

Rubber John

11/11/2006, 04:52 pm

I agree with the 'More Inventory' suggestions.

Inventory combining is good. I also think more inventory red herrings would help the difficulty level.

One dissapointment with the puzzle gameplay was the making of the helmet to repell the hypnotic rays. I thought I would be going on 3 or 4 seperate puzzle missions to find all of the ingredients, but alas, it was never required.

Still, Culture Shock was a massive improvement on Bone, but we still need more inventory, more inventory, more inventory.

MarkErikson

11/15/2006, 04:35 pm

I'm just a subscriber to Old Man Murray's theory for the death of adventure games (http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/79.html). If only targeting hard core adventure gamers was enough to make adventure games successful, Lucasarts and Sierra would still be churning out those babies left and right.

...

I do expect the episodes to be more difficult in the future, but people should not expect the extremely difficult and complex puzzles of the past--use paper cup with golf ball retriever and make a bungee rope with twine so that you can bungee jump with it to retrieve a piece of tar.

Old Man Murray's theory is based on the fact that a whole lot of adventure games (including King's Quest, which was kinda the paragon of adventure games for a good long while, although I never understood why) has completely illogical puzzles. Shake a tambourine at a snake? Use cheese on the magic machine? Either the people building those adventure games were really struggling with the whole concept, or someone had decided that the most fun paradigm was 'trial and error'.

The twine + golf ball retriever + paper cup puzzle was logical. There were more than enough clues in the game to suggest that combination. A game can be entirely wacky, and filled with really wacky objects and people, and still be internally logical. Sam & Max wasn't one of the reasons why the adventure game genre died.

I see no reason why Telltale can't build an audience up to that level of puzzle solving. Sure, make it easy at first so people get the hang of the whole thing. Make the first few item-combo puzzles easy. Put the audience in the right mental state to start thinking that way.

I really liked the talking puzzle early in the game where Sam & Max played good-cop bad-cop with the rat. I was hoping there'd be a lot more like that.

They should also put Max back into the inventory so we can use him on things.

I also would have liked some more wacky other characters in there. The swearing psychic, the boring moleman storyteller, evelyn morison, the jilted mad scientist, the cute kitten with the adsurdly deep voice - I missed those guys. The Soda Poppers and Brady Culture were not quite wacky enough.

However, the game was excellent. The dialogue was spot on. And I _loved_ how much they used the same locations over and over. I'm a huge fan of those games where you go back to the same spots over and over again to find more and more puzzles as the game progresses. It's like some small but intricate knot, or an unfolding puzzle-box or something. I loved it.

And the artwork. Fantastic. I loved wandering around in that world. It was awesome.

All in all, I am most pleased and excited for the next episode.

MarkErikson

11/15/2006, 06:27 pm

I'm also not clear on exactly how the episodic thing works. Does each episode sit on top of the previous one? As in, can they add more locations because we've already got the data for the episode 1 locations on our comps? Or will they each be standalone modules?

Erwin

11/16/2006, 03:19 pm

Does each episode sit on top of the previous one? As in, can they add more locations because we've already got the data for the episode 1 locations on our comps?

I don't think so.

--Erwin

IronCladChicken

11/17/2006, 01:50 am

I don't think so.

--Erwin

But if you do have all six episodes installed on your computer at the same time, they merge together to form a evil A.I. bent on world domination (also providing a rather natty screen-saver)

Hero1

11/28/2006, 11:39 pm

Can I add a bit of fuel to the fire here and quote dave grossman from the adventure game developer chat in response to numbles question about daves comments on the future of adventure gaming being less geeky..

DGHah! Yes, I did say that. Well, I suppose what I mean is that a lot of traditional adventure games have focused on the puzzles, and on making them fairly difficult to untangle. This is very, very satisfying to a small segment of the population who really enjoy having to think hard about a puzzle, but tends to turn off the majority (no, really, ask around). While I think the puzzles are necessary for the form, I also think that for adventure games to gain the wider adoption they need to succeed, they need to focus a bit more on things like story and character and a bit less on the brain teasers (= "geeky"). And once they HAVE a broader audience, there will be room for some games to have brain-busting puzzles and some not to, which will make everybody happy.

Sometimes I think about crossword puzzles, and I wonder if they would have become as wildly popular as they were in the early twentieth century had most of them been as difficult as the Saturday New York Times puzzle is now. I think probably not.

swissrebel

12/25/2006, 06:28 am

Lazerus101

12/29/2006, 11:25 pm

To be fair, the difficulty of a puzzle is unimportant. I can play through the original sam and max game without getting stuck once, because obviously i've completed it so many times.

The only things that matter to me, are the experience - and, mostly importantly of all, wacky, wacky humour.

Once you've solved a difficult puzzle, it's never going to be difficult again. Why does the difficulty matter? :)

Telltale have filled this game with a ridiculous amount of replayability for an adventure game, loads of little hidden easter eggs. I barely found any, and although I did get stuck once or twice, the logic in finding them is mostly pretty zany - much like old-school S&M.

I'm happy with how things are going, and although slightly concerned that apparently the second one is shorter, i'm looking forward to it being funnier. Bring it on :)

But you said it yourself, once you have solved a puzzle, it's never going to be difficult again. So in truth there is NO replayability, especially for those that haven't read this very forum and found out the easter eggs are there. Easter eggs and secrets are the sort of things are the things that NORMALLY appeal to the hardcore gamers. Though many of which are simply found by doing things in a slightly illogical order.

And lets be honest, who is going to play through the same puzzles (which by now they already know the solution to) god knows how many times to hear maybe 10-20 extra lines of dialogue?
ONLY the Hardcore gamers and die hard fans, yet the easier gameplay is geared to encourage more casual gamers.
Seems like pretty fuzzy logic to me.

numble

12/29/2006, 11:39 pm

But you said it yourself, once you have solved a puzzle, it's never going to be difficult again. So in truth there is NO replayability, especially for those that haven't read this very forum and found out the easter eggs are there. Easter eggs and secrets are the sort of things are the things that NORMALLY appeal to the hardcore gamers. Though many of which are simply found by doing things in a slightly illogical order.

And lets be honest, who is going to play through the same puzzles (which by now they already know the solution to) god knows how many times to hear maybe 10-20 extra lines of dialogue?
ONLY the Hardcore gamers and die hard fans, yet the easier gameplay is geared to encourage more casual gamers.
Seems like pretty fuzzy logic to me.

I think you're correct in your assessment of how easter eggs appeal to the hardcore and easier puzzles appeal to casual gamers, but I don't think it's necessarily fuzzy logic to have both. It actually helps prove that you don't have to sacrifice one for the other.

I would say it's analogous to a Pixar movie (or some of the better Disney movies in the past) or even the movie Shrek, where there are separate elements that appeal to kids and adults.

Hero1

12/30/2006, 02:35 am

one of the benefits of getting stuck..is you explore the world more.. I think even the casual gamer would benefit from this experience..

IronCladChicken

12/30/2006, 05:11 am

Seems like pretty fuzzy logic to me.

Whatever happened to fuzzy-logic?

I remember in the ninties, everyone said it was going to be this huge thing that would change the way everything worked in the 21st Centruy... And then it justy kinda vanished? - Which, thinking about it, is surprisingly similar to my sex life... whatever did happen to that?

numble

12/30/2006, 09:46 am

Whatever happened to fuzzy-logic?

I remember in the ninties, everyone said it was going to be this huge thing that would change the way everything worked in the 21st Centruy... And then it justy kinda vanished? - Which, thinking about it, is surprisingly similar to my sex life... whatever did happen to that?

Unfortunately, the Y2K bug is responsible for both disappearances.

Hero1

12/30/2006, 07:41 pm

Is telltale responding to the criticisms of your sex life? damn they cant do anything right :p

Platypuss

01/03/2007, 03:31 pm

A great comment from one of the Ep2 reviews that I found chimed perfectly with my view on the genre:

"But if these monthly Sam and Max installments can't be any larger, they should at least take some effort to figure out. The jokes will be all the funnier if I have to work for them."

Hero1

01/04/2007, 08:50 pm

from the ign review

Whereas the puzzles of the first episode presented little challenge, those in the second episode are virtually challenge free. There's nothing even approaching the complexity of the trap you had to lay for Whizzer in the last game. This time around your brain will barely break a sweat trying to figure out how to hide a cow, where to get a picture of an alien, or how to bake a cake. The few multi-part puzzles are generally solved during the course of the story, so you won't need to backtrack if you come up against a roadblock; just go explore the rest of the areas and finish your other tasks and you're sure to find a way around your current obstacles.

Again, as with the first game, we're not asking the designers to include complicated, 7th Guest-style logic puzzles here. We're merely suggesting that the game would be more rewarding if it didn't feel like it played itself. To be fair, you'll have to make a few intuitive leaps here and there to accomplish your objectives but, for the most part, the puzzles in Situation: Comedy require little more than a bit of patience and some old fashioned trial-and-error.

situation comedy got a 7.8

indraunt

01/05/2007, 05:02 pm

Higher difficulty would be fantastic... so long as it were done like in Monkey Island. Rather than it being harder, just chuck in more puzzles or add some depth to puzzles in normal difficulty.
The advantage of this is it would give the games an extra day or so of replayability.

Princess_Frosty

01/05/2007, 05:31 pm

Yeah the puzzles are too easy, I've just completed Episode 2 in just a few hours, I was not stuck on any puzzle at any point I just cruised through the whole game enjoying the ride.

I feel the game would be better with some more thinking involved, I realise that I'm an oldschool gamer and have enjoyed games such as the original monkey island series, the original sam and max, Day of the tentacle (especially) and other such classics as The Grim Fandango. And that such experience is great for gearing my brain towards solving these puzzles, but I can't imagine anyone having any kind of difficulty solving any of these puzzle as long as they actually think about it for a minute or two.

The problem with ep2 was that it was like a slightly interactive movie, I could see how to solve the puzzles way ahead of time, even before it was obvious what needed doing

*spoilers below*
For example it was obvious even through only 30 seconds of chat with the woman who runs the tabloid about aliens, and then running into the guy that can change colour, that the puzzle was to turn him green. The game was then about walking backwards and forwards between these 2 areas, waiting while areas load etc.
*end spoilers*

When you can reasonably guess ahead of time whats going to happen it becomes a bit boring/tedious walking between areas and loading the areas since all its really leading upto is something you already know.

I think a good starting point in making it harder would be interaction between inventory items, and also having a lot more items to pick up. A good Idea would be to add inventory items that you simply don't need for anything that just throw you off the scent.

Monkey island 3 was great for this you had tons of items to carry around and some of them were very "generic use" type items, nails, glue, cork, hammer, that could be potentially used in a lot of areas which made finding the right answer fairly hard without thinking about it, partly because the amount of combinations of items to add together not to mention also adding to the environment made trial and error tedious and just not worth it because it took too long, you had to THINK about what the best idea to the puzzle was and then try a few things.

Overall I think the new sam and max adventures are really good and Telltale studios have nailed down a lot of the areas which might have potentially been problematic such as recreating cartoon effects in 3D etc, but to make these games truly great and extend their play time significantly, the puzzles need to be harder and the inventory needs to be bigger and more complex.

Also forget about multiple difficulty levels, but if the puzzles become quite hard then add in a hints system, other puzzle adventures have done this just like the grim fandago and monkey islands 4 (both 3d) the characters head would turn to look directly at anything important in the imediate area. Max could also give hints after being stuck for longer than 20 minutes or something like that (these should also be toggle option for old school gamers who want no additional help)

numble

01/05/2007, 05:37 pm

There actually is a pretty subtle hint system--just talk to Max when you're stuck. Obviously it doesn't help everyone, as the many posts in the Hints forum reveal.

MrSneeze

01/05/2007, 08:32 pm

I don't really mind that the game is so easy to complete (and so short). Sure, I'd prefer harder puzzles & maybe a longer game, but I don't have the free time I had when I was younger 10-15 years ago, playing all the LucasArts classics, so it kinda works out in the end.

The only problem I have with the games is that the whole thing is too linear. Anyway, I don't regret buying the game. I'd buy it either way as part of the collection (definitely opting for the CD-ROM version when it's out).

And here's an idea. If TellTale wants to get even more people looking their way, they could make a GTA-Clone out of Sam & Max. Huh? What do you guys think? Hello? Is this thing on? *tumbleweed*

numble

01/05/2007, 09:25 pm

The only problem I have with the games is that the whole thing is too linear. Anyway, I don't regret buying the game. I'd buy it either way as part of the collection (definitely opting for the CD-ROM version when it's out).

And here's an idea. If TellTale wants to get even more people looking their way, they could make a GTA-Clone out of Sam & Max. Huh? What do you guys think? Hello? Is this thing on? *tumbleweed*

Yeah, one thing with the episodic format is that while there is some flexibility in solving things (you can knock out 3 soda poppers, fake 3 symptoms, get 3 celebrity features, win over 2 judges in any order you want), there is still a very linear goal to each episode.

The idea of a GTA-clone is intriguing--run around solving cases in a very non-linear way, but it might be beyond the scope of what Telltale can develop as a tiny company.

I guess more realistically, some people would rather have the ability to solve 6 cases at the same time instead of the episodic, 1-at-a-time version you get right now--imagine the scope of a game in which you've knocked out 2 Soda Poppers but are stuck on how to get rid of the 3rd Soda Popper, and since there's so much other things to do, it isn't a matter of trial and error to figure it out--so you go and try to figure out how to win a singing contest in the meantime.

But then you can't really utilize recurring characters as much--you can't have the Soda Poppers be judges in one puzzle while you're trying to knock them out in another, and it's less realistic to have Sybil change her job or Bosco disguise himself within the same game.

And well, I think it being episodic probably makes it more likely that people are willing to give it a try. The $9 cost really makes it almost a no-brainer for people to try and give it a shot, something people probably are less willing to do with even a $35 game.

Anyway, they seem committed to creating a new type of game that can have a story while remaining underneath a 20-40 hour saga. Right now games seem to be divided between the very short and story-less popular games like Bejeweled, Tetris, etc. and the very long and story-full (and costly) games like GTA and Zelda. Telltale seems to be striving to create that new middle ground.

Alucard

01/06/2007, 03:09 am

Episode two was too easy. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that by episode 3 we will start to see some improvement in the puzzles. (the rest of the game is great btw)

Derwin

01/06/2007, 03:49 am

Seriously? You guys feel that this game is easier than the first?

Even if you didn't have to break a sweat, there still were a few puzzle gems. Especially the last one. Giant spoiler ahead, explaining the final puzzle... beware!

**Ok, so you go into the talk show, and there is no way out. You cannot even move... what to do? How to stop the evil bear?
**You notice the microphone sparking. Ok, so maybe that will be useful, but for what?
**You start talking to the host about the tabloid picture... someone else is involved... she brings out other guests to dispute... hmmm... she moves the mic to them...
**She has a glass of water on her desk... but you cannot drink it.
**You see your banjo. Try singing? Nothing happens... maybe I should sing with a high pitched voice. Doing such breaks the glass. Just like what happened to Specs' glasses in the Idol contest... nice hint!
**Ah, sparking mic and water, now we are getting somewhere. You remember she moved the microphone to the guests as they came in. So you bring out one of the Soda Poppers... but the water doesn't touch the mic in that location. Tricky, TTG, nice touch.
**You remember that the cow caused the mic to be put in the middle of the desk... right where the water is!
**Sparks fly, mission accomplished.

What is nice, is that you still had to use all of these items and props, even if they weren't in your inventory. That puzzle is not as straightforward as any of the puzzles in the first game, and if you analyze it a little, rather than just guess-and-click, you will see it is a pretty good puzzle. In fact, another hint is that you need to use something from each of the 3 facets of your stardom.

Spoilers on the last puzzle again!
You had to have a record contract, tabloid coverage, and a major TV show. The record contract is "used" when you play your banjo to break the glass of water. The tabloid coverage is used to get her to move the microphone. And the major TV show is used to call out the cow so that the microphone is moved to the middle of the table, since a cow cannot sit in the chair.

Now tell me that isn't a clever puzzle. It is logical, and isn't blatantly laid out for you.

Hats off to you TTG! And by hats I mean lampshades.

Alucard

01/06/2007, 04:55 am

that puzzle was interesting but took no more then a couple minutes to figure out once you had a look at your options.

Longinus00

01/06/2007, 08:33 am

Unfortunately for me, I find these games a tad too easy. If it wasn't for the fact that I go through all the dialog options and click on every single thing because I want to hear and see everything the writers wrote for the game, I'd probably have finished the game under two hours. Usually I'll figure out a puzzle before I've exhausted my options in a given area so I'll try to not finish the puzzle in order to explore an area further. A good example of this is in the sit com filming section of episode 2. The puzzle is set up so that doing one inventory interaction will progress the show onto the next stage and only one interaction is the correct choice for each stage. Since it's quickly obvious to me what the "correct" interaction is, I try all the other ones (like using the shaving cream on the chicken or something).

Exploring in adventure games is, for me, one of their biggest draws, but because these games are so easy I find that I skip many things because the puzzles get finished so fast. This was a bigger problem in the first game because I wasn't ready for that but I've adjusted my playing style for the second game to try to extend the time it takes me to go through it.

I think a big improvement for this game would be to increase the number of puzzles in a given area. In most 'rooms' there is only one puzzle to solve and/or one inventory item to acquire. It makes traveling through the areas not as interesting as it might be because once you've done something in an area, you don't really need to go back to look around and see if you've missed something. Also, most (if not all?) inventory items have only one use. Perhaps using the same item or thing for multiple puzzles might help.

I realize these suggestions are perhaps beyond the scope of a episodic adventure game but I think if some of them were incorporated the game might feel more "free" or non-linear because there would be a reason to revisit past areas more than twice (once to get the puzzle, and once to solve it after you have the right item).

Astro Gnocci

01/06/2007, 09:10 am

Also, most (if not all?) inventory items have only one use. Perhaps using the same item or thing for multiple puzzles might help.

YEAH ! LET US USE THE GUN AND SHOOT RANDOMLY AT THINGS MORE !
When will we see a sam & max fps ? ^^

(i know no one cares, but that was my first post on that forum, and i'm so happy i think evreryone should know)

LuigiHann

01/06/2007, 11:55 am

YEAH ! LET US USE THE GUN AND SHOOT RANDOMLY AT THINGS MORE !
When will we see a sam & max fps ? ^^

(i know no one cares, but that was my first post on that forum, and i'm so happy i think evreryone should know)

I'd actually like to see more objects react to being shot at. It's downright bizzarre to stand in a room, shooting everything in sight, and have absolutely no effect on anything. It's understandable that we're not dealing with real-time destructable environments, but it seems a bit odd that there aren't a few more silly animations or lines activated by shooting stuff.

Astro Gnocci

01/06/2007, 12:00 pm

that beaing said, in every adventure games i played where you had any weapon (i haven't play a whole lot, except the old lucasart's ones tho), these weapons usually weren't used much.... So i guess it's perfectly normal not to use much sam's gun ^^
But according to Sam & Max's characters, i think it could be fun to have them shoot a little more ^^
Maybe more mini games like the driving sequences would do ^^?

Mother Superior

01/06/2007, 12:01 pm

I'd actually like to see more objects react to being shot at. It's downright bizzarre to stand in a room, shooting everything in sight, and have absolutely no effect on anything. It's understandable that we're not dealing with real-time destructable environments, but it seems a bit odd that there aren't a few more silly animations or lines activated by shooting stuff.

I agree. I'd also like some more reactions to different object (I don't expect fifty responses to every object, but a little more than "Nah", and "No dice.")

Bruno83

01/06/2007, 12:33 pm

yes, the game was easy, but I guess thy can't be much more challenging in those short episodes. In other adventures, you are carrying a lot of things with you for a very long time, without having a clou on where to use them. And in such a short game, you can simply try to use every item of the few you've got everywhere. It dosen't bother me that the games are so easy, because they are still very entertaining. Harder puzzles would be even harder for me I guess, because my english is not that good

balloftwine

01/06/2007, 12:51 pm

This episode is much better. Thats all I have to say.

Except that if more puzzles like the one with the cake and the one with the cow pie were in the game it would not only be more hilarious but more challenging. These were the best moments of the game for me and the most enjoyable I have had since the days of monkey island. Sniff.

PS The rat game was rubbish. I want to whack them with something. Please dont make us drive down that street again in the next episode. Or ever again.

Ygurr

01/06/2007, 07:07 pm

I'm playing through episode 2 now, stuck on how to get the answer to the quiz question.

I love it, didn't get stuck for more than a minute or 2 in episode one.

Keep ramping up the difficulty each episode, you guys rock !!

vitriol

01/07/2007, 05:07 am

have to say ep2 is a big improvement over ep1, mainly due to the dialogue being a lot snappier and funnier. Also as before the graphics and camera panning do look really nice.

However the world is too claustrophobic and, partly as a result, the puzzles are much too easy and linear (I was shocked to realise 3 hours into playing I had finished the game!). As a result it really seems more like an interactive movie which while mildly entertaining, doesnt have as much staying power as say pretty much all the lucasarts games (sorry! i'm sure telltale are getting a bit tired of the comparisons now!)

Some people seem to suggest that harder puzzles would alienate newcomers to the adventure genre. But it seems that most people buying sam & max, are doing so because they liked the original, and so are probably well-versed in the language of adventure games. And it seems a free option to have harder puzzles if you provide some form of hint system, which isn't too easy to access and doesn't totally feel like cheating.

It might also be interesting to note that part of the reason Lucasarts Grim Fandango was so good (imo) was that they had a (scripting engine (http://www.grimfandango.net/?page=articles&pagenumber=2)) which meant they could concentrate on the game play and create complicated environments quite easily...