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

[Incognito]

I haven´t finished the first episode myself yet, but every text you read about the game contains the same pros and cons: Absolutely wonderful presentation, but is soooo easy. Which is the same response the Bone-games got.

Are Telltale listening to this critic, or will the coming episodes have the same diffculty-level?

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"? :)

[Duate]

Yeah raise the difficulty a bit. I've only been stuck twice, and both of those for like 5 minutes. Inventory combinations would help bring the difficulty up.

[Junkface]

Anyone who ties quality to difficulty is an utter moron. Even so, I do agree that from what I've played Culture Shock seems to lack something of Sam & Max's lunacy in its puzzles. I've actually found them more straightforward than The Great Cow Race's.

[Hero1]

I hope they are listening.. :cool:

[Incognito]

Anyone who ties quality to difficulty is an utter moron. Even so, I do agree that from what I've played Culture Shock seems to lack something of Sam & Max's lunacy in its puzzles. I've actually found them more straightforward than The Great Cow Race's.

Moron? Geezz...

An adventuregame with great presentation and no difficulty = interactive movie
An adventuregame with great presentation and a healthy difficulty-level = classic.

Im not saying that Telltales games are interactive movies, but every adventuregame needs a bit of a challenge since adventuregames are games.

[Hero1]

That's how I feel I wanna play a game not a story.. but if telltale upped the difficulty level for the next episode sam and max would be near perfect..

If I can go off on a tangent here.. It does kind of bug me that developers are so afraid of making people think.. Even prince of persia:sands of time had a few "adventure game" type thinking elements..when they did warrior within the prince was quickly a generic bad ass, it was now an action game and all those fun puzzles were quickly removed. It's a sad state of gaming is all I can say.. Grim fandango has been the last great adventure challenge (as far as the puzzles) ive played.

[Tobias]

Yeah, Culture Shock only lasted me around 2 hours, a bluescreen + reboot included. It was pretty disappointing to see the end credits roll just as you were starting to get into the game, and then when the dedication to Karyn Nelson, some 41 years young woman who died, showed up at the end I got even more depressed.

As for the difficulty, I'd like to suggest something along the lines of the Monkey Island 2 approach where you get to select between the "full" experience with more puzzles and a "lite" version for inexperienced adventurers.

I'm willing to bet that the better part of your customers are people who have already played the original Sam & Max (and many other adventure games) back in the days, so don't patronize us with easy puzzles - after all, adventure gamers is a pretty hardcore target audience.

[numble]

Tobias: If you go to Gametap.com, you'll see that Sam and Max has been the most played game on that network for the past three weeks, and there has not been any adventure games--as far as I recall--in the top rankings, so you might not be entirely correct with your prediction that most players of Culture Shock are experienced adventure gamers. After all, Gametap includes a whole bunch of Sierra's adventure games, a bunch of the Zork adventure games, as well as the Last Express.

[Tobias]

Tobias: If you go to Gametap.com
I can't. GameTap is only open to panamericans. Apparently, I'm not welcome over there.

My reasoning still stands though, it's fully possible to trim out some of the bigger puzzles for a "lite" option in the game, as previously shown in other adventure games. No need to disappoint long-time fans just to make it accessible to inexperienced players.

[numble]

As to the "light" and "hard" modes, I'd rather Telltale have people get comfortable and then slowly ramp up the difficulty. First off, it's been tried in previous adventure games, but people were still turned off from adventure games as the market showed--people won't try something if it's too hard for them, but definitely don't want to feel that they're too dumb to play the "complete" game.

Secondly, it adds additional work for the team with very little payoff--they've already stated that they're shooting for 4-6 hours per episode, and even the most experienced players are taking 2-3.5 hours already, make it longer and, assuming most people take longer than experienced players, and you end up with game length that is outside their desired goal for episodic games--and many people, especially Gametap players, have been telling Telltale that they find the gameplay length just about right.

There are some people that can beat Super Mario in 10 minutes, but that doesn't mean Nintendo should make an easy/hard mode, or make the game harder for those players.

[numble]

I only said to visit Gametap.com, not to subscribe to their service--the website tells you their popular games as well what games they offer. But maybe they block the website so non-americans/non-canadians aren't allowed to visit--I wouldn't know about that.

[jp-30]

Trimming puzzles from an episodic game is counter productive. There's little enough to do anyway.

Best way to ramp up difficulty would be;

1. Inventory combination puzzles (eg. having to find ammo for the tear gas launcher)
2. Extra steps in puzzles (eg. needing to find a key to open closet in office)
3. Have Max give hints to make harder puzzles passable for novice palyers (this was done in Bone).
4. Have option to turn off automatic cursor, and use right button to cycle look/interact/walk. I'm always accidentally clicking my right-button where my fingers rest and accidentally skipping dialogue.

[Tobias]

There are some people that can beat Super Mario in 10 minutes, but that doesn't mean Nintendo should make an easy/hard mode, or make the game harder for those players.
First of all, people do not beat Super Mario Bros in 10 minutes the first time they play the game, and secondly to reach that time you have to use alot of short cuts. The game does take more time to clear if you play all the levels, the content is there if you opt for the full experience. So it is kind of a moot point.

Also you might remember that Nintendo did in fact include a series of harder levels in Super Mario World called "Special World". And just recently, in New Super Mario Bros on the DS, Nintendo included a special challenge mode that turns off backtracking on levels to make it more challenging.

I'm tired of being spoonfed when it comes to difficulty, or lack thereof. I paid for the game too, don't I have a say in what's "just about right"?

[Yandros]

I agree. Puzzles were too simple. And it was very linear. I felt like I was watching TV; not that I don’t like watching Sam and Max, but really I was expecting more oomph.

Any experienced adventure gamer will tell you about that feeling you got when the next monkey island *JUST CAME OUT* and you just sat down to play it. Explore, and enjoy, and start nibbling away at some of the easier puzzles. Well that lasted about 15 seconds with culture shock.

Initially upon competition I felt relatively satisfied, but after thinking about it a little more, really this was entirely due to the fact this is Sam and Max. The actual quality of the adventure wasn’t really very good. Very entertaining, as Sam and Max always are, but it definitely lacked the feel of an early 90’s Lucas arts adventure game.

Set your sights for one of these three: Monkey island 3, Day of the tentacle, or Grim Fandango. They were all quite different interface wise but they all had the correct feel of an adventure game. Freedom, hard puzzles… a game which keeps you up at night… a game with atmosphere… a game with character… a game with oomph.

[numble]

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. Many of those games tried to implement both hard and easy modes, but the market still didn't bite. There's a certain innate skill set hard-wired into experienced adventure gamers that isn't in all gamers. An example would be the look-at/pick-up response in the old games--almost everything you looked at you would also try to pick up, but even that isn't hard-wired into inexperienced gamers. A podcast I listened to discussed one such problem with Sam and Max Hit The Road, where nobody would ever expect to tell Sam to "pick up" the mousehole, and thus would never know where to get money from. Culture Shock simplifies this because looking at things and picking up things are the same command.

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.

If you want adventure games to be continued to be made, you need them to be successful. For them to be successful, there needs to be certain changes made to engage with a wider audience. It may be a sharp razor to swallow, but it's true.

[Major_Higgins]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[jp-30]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

Well I completely disagree with that.

[0renji]

Well I completely disagree with that.

Your evidence is overwhelming. I surrender!

[Hero1]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Inso]

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]

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]

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

[Pvt._Public]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[therobbot]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

I haven't played Psychonauts yet

Do it now.

[therobbot]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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...

[numble]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Viz79]

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?

[RTF]

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]

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

[Hero1]

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

[Pvt._Public]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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

[numble]

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.

...there is a critical mass around episodic gaming that needs to be achieved, so that it's not foreign to consumers. 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.

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.

There seems to be some confusion about where they want to take Sam & Max, and what Audience it is for.

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.

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.

[Jokieman]

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]

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]

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.

[Jokieman]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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