Action in adventure

[Heatherlee]

Interestingly, when I asked about favorite recent adventure games, some action/adventures started coming up.

I had been under the impresion that adventure game "purists" didn't like to mix their action and adventure. Am I mistaken?

[artwking]

I think one of adventure games biggest problems is that they've become "walking simulators". Someone on some forum somewhere joked that the games should be compatible with those dance pads from Dance Dance revolution in order to be "more immersive", and we could get the full effect of the distance walked by the character.

I think I used to consider myself one of those purists, though, but I've recently realized how bored I got when playing some adventure games, even though the story was interesting enough. It's just that the time between the story bits and the puzzle bits and the time it took to figure out how to solve the puzzle bits turns out to be quite awhile. Especially when the character moves soooo slow (I'm specifically talking about Syberia here...). So I'm starting to think that adventure games could use a dose of action in them. Required or optional, as long as it's nothing that would require extreme dexterity. Not that I don't play those games, too, but it just might be overkill. Or perhaps have action sequences that you can't possibly lose no matter how hard you try, even if you keep pressing the "suck" button/key. That would help move the game along during those slow moments.

I've been wondering what it would be like if a Grand Theft Auto III-style of engine were made into an adventure game. Getting to and from a destination would be more fun. And it doesn't need to be the kind of violent shooter that GTA is. But consider what it would be like if, for instance, Sam & Max were made into that style of game, where they drive around to their different missions, nearly running over every pedestrian on the way, causing untold collateral damage to public property. And it could still have adventure elements of course, once they're at the destinations, but the city map would be full of all kinds of optional action fun to be had. They could also do their highway surfing thing, too (for the Sam & Max purists).

I don't know. But I'm up for Adventures having action in them. However, I think the genre title, Action/Adventure, is inappropriately used for most games out there, since there really are no puzzles that are story-related and no character interaction beyond shooting/killing/jumping on head. So create a new genre called Adventure/Action. Or Happy Happy Fun Time.

I would not call my self an adventure game "purist" but the adventure genre is by far my favorite. I strive to be more of a game connoisseur; I try not to discriminate against games based on genre. To me, as long as the game is fun, I don't care if it's action, adventure, role-playing, shooter, platformer, puzzle or what have you. If a game sticks to what it claims to be and does it well, then I find it most enjoyable. If I'm playing a classic style adventure game and out of nowhere it throws at me a DDR type timed button press mini-game or some junk like that, then I might get frustrated. I'm not saying that if you have a mini-game like that in your adventure game then it's bad, but it at least must make sense within the context of the game. If you make a game that is an action/adventure game then I expect to be a little more on my toes, and there shouldn't be extremely in-depth hard puzzles that will completely halt the action. I think that's what it really boils down to: expectations. If I play an adventure game it's because I want to take it slow and solve things at my own pace, but if I play an action game it's because I want to twitch a little. My friend says that she could never finish Full Throttle because of the action elements. When she bought the game she expected an adventure game and she plays them because she's not any good at action. If you make a classic adventure game with no action the "purists" should love it, but if you made it an action/adventure game you'd have a different audience and different expectations.

[Alucard]

I don't think I'm a purist I'd say I'm a gamer. The lucas games were all really great and I'd play games like that. A lot of it comes down to cash. I want a game thats going to take a long time to finish everything. thats why I can buy gta games and not have any problem with it cause I know it will take me a long time to do everything. With adventure games there is little replay value where as with something like neverwinter nights or bloodlines I can play it like 5 times over using different characters. As for pure adventures I've said it before it's the humor that does it for me. All the great adventure games arn't really all that funny

I find most other genres to be pretty boring (especially FPS, I find that constant violence gets boring pretty quiclky). 2d RPGs strategy games, and side-scrollers are better than most but adventure games are the only games that really hold my attention. I think however it all boils down to story. I don't want to spend hours playing a game if the story isn't any good (that also goes for reading books). The exception to this is older side-scrollers, wich have a nice retro apeal but I usually play those for about 20 minutes at a time.

[Steve2000]

I don't care what you call it - what I can't stand is when the only way to beat a game is by being the fastest "button masher." Action elements were always a part of the old Sierra games (Roger Wilco navigating the Kerona desert in SQ1 for example), but the action elements cannot become the only part of a game. And, you can always go back and try again an infinite number of times unlike some action games with a certain number of "lives" before you have to restart the level. The way I always looked at it was if it doesn't require a gamepad then it is fine with me. As soon as you need to have a joystick or gamepad to make the game playable it has left the realm of adventure and crossed completely into action.

I think some diversity is great. It's always fun to actually control the character when the do things, as opposed to just watching a cutscene. The deal with adventure games though, is that there can't be too many little diversions. They also have to be easy to complete. I don't have a gamepad for my PC, and I'm not getting one.

[jp-30]

So long as the game still passes the 'sandwich test' (ie. you can play the game using one hand on the mouse while the other is involved soley in holding food / drink, then I have no problem with action elements - especially when it makes the game more immersive.

Oh, and following the LucasArts philosophy, you shouldn't ever die in an action segment, just be returned to the start of the sequence at worst if you fail at it.

I quite liked the Indy Jones adventures in that you could (almost?) always avoid a fistfight if you chose the right dialogue path.


And ignoring all I've said above about sandwiches and avoiding fights and not dying, KOTOR was my first (and only to date) RPG, and I play it in a more 'adventure style' - exploring, talking, object collecting. I haven't a clue about dice-rolls and hit points. And to me KOTOR is the most fun, interesting 'adventure game' I've played since Grim Fandango.

And ignoring all I've said above about sandwiches and avoiding fights and not dying, KOTOR was my first (and only to date) RPG, and I play it in a more 'adventure style' - exploring, talking, object collecting. I haven't a clue about dice-rolls and hit points. And to me KOTOR is the most fun, interesting 'adventure game' I've played since Grim Fandango.

I do the exact same thing. It really is a Star Wars Graphic Adventure with some other RGB stuff I don't understand thrown in.

Personally, the things that attracted me to all the Lucasarts games wasn't the lack of action or having to think on my feet. It was the wit, the immersion, the attention to detail and beautiful backrounds,the intricate characters, and the little touches that made it more than a story, it was an experience. I consider myself a "purist", but I still love intrigue, suspense, and a little danger if they can enhance the overall tale and immerse me a little more.

I feel that these days games that are cranked out with unbeleivable graphics and real life physics have lost that touch, the swagger that really made those early games special. If action can mesh with the rest of the game without seeming forced, I am all for it.

I think it all depends on how you implement it.

For instance...anyone here ever played Titanic: Adventure out of Time (and yes, you can laugh at me for actually having played that game--but in my defense, I hated it)? There's a segment not long before the ship hits the iceberg where you have to fight your way past a bad guy in your basic fistfight. Let me tell you, I hated that part. It was completely counterintuitive, there was no instructions or anything and no warm-up/foreshadowing that this would happen, and the bad guy moved like somebody'd lit his feet on fire, while my character didn't, no matter how fast I clicked the mouse.

That action sequence was a big part of why I ended up literally throwing the CD out the window. Drove me nuts.

Now, then we have the Old Mine Road sequence in Full Throttle. That, I loved. The manual actually gave clear directions as to how to switch weapons/throw punches/etc. If you lost, there weren't negative consequences (in Titanic, IIRC, you lost a bunch of valuable time by being unconscious). And it was just easy for me to coordinate things--timing and how you manuever your bike are a big factor in winning those sequences, and that, I could handle. Randomly throwing punches and hoping I took out a guy built like a brick blockhouse, as in Titanic? Not so much.

[Alucard]

I probably could have done without the ones in full throttle. It was interesting but I'd rather do without them.

I used to go purely for adventure games until recently, since sadly there aren't many good adventure games left. Many of Adventure Company's games are just far too bland and any unique adventure games are few and far between. I'm tending more towards RPGs right now, it is a good balance of action and adventure usually. Unless of course you're the type who likes to level up insanely for long periods of time.

It would be interesting though if there were games that were genreless, that sort of encompassed all genres somehow. Maybe slightly like the Sims only you only control one person's life from birth to death and you can do *anything* that's possible in the real world. Now *that* would kick butt.

[Alucard]

I think fable was going to do something like that but a lot didn't make it into the game. Gta comes to mind as there is so much to do in that game

Gta certainly has a lot but it isn't completely realistic. I mean being able to live a life, literally, baby onwards. And schools and everything. You can control whether you become an evil dictator, an average Joe, or the next pope. XD

[Heatherlee]

I believe I've heard of this game...I think you are playing it right now. Look in the mirror and you'll see your avatar.

So back to the discussion at hand, what constitutes a "good" action sequence in an adventure game vs. a "bad" one?

Does it have to do with difficulty level? Whether or not it breaks the flow of the story?

I dislike action in adventure games if it's there for no reason. If you finish solving a puzzle and that locks all the doors in the room and triggers like 5 bad guys that you have to fight to be able to leave the room again... that sort of thing is super weak. Especially if it happens repeatedly.

I love that the actioney bits in Full Throttle aren't really all out action gameplay as much as they're just realtime puzzles. Yes you have to beat up a bunch of guys on bikes, but the different items you collect have to be used on the different guys, and you have to pick up the fertilizer somewhere else to use as a weapon against the girl with the chainsaw... or how in the destruction derby you can bash all the other cars but you've really got to figure out how to make one of them stall and then push it up a ramp to really complete the sequence. The execution of the actioney bits in Full Throttle wasn't the best, but the idea of these sort of realtime "in the moment" puzzles as the game's action sequences is really cool. The action in Full Throttle is also unique from instance to instance - isn't like Prince of Persia or something where every half hour there's another "action" part which consists of the same rapid button techniques you've been working at for the rest of the game - each "action" piece has its own set of rules.

I guess adventure games are like that in most aspects in general though - within a game a puzzle is generally never repeated, unless its some sort of thematic thing or a "new take on an old gag" (like how you have to assemble two different voodoo dolls over the course of Monkey Island 2). It's nice that in FT they took that approach to the realtime/action bits as well.

I'm overly lenient with this sort of stuff though I suspect (well, maybe I'm not, but there are plenty of people in certain dark corners of the Internet who will complain if an AG character is capable of holding a knife or running quickly, or if there is an explosion in the game somewhere outside of a cutscene)... For me if the action is fun instead of being crap and grating and repetitive, and if it's really relevent to the events of the story instead of included under the misguided idea that including some other type of gameplay will by definition "mix it up" or "make the game appeal to those drooling idiot kids of today I keep hearing about" or "add another bulletpoint to the box" I usually like it. I don't mind if it's hard, as long as it's realistically hard. I don't think "require the player to test out how to beat the action part by dying in every possible way until they find out how to do it" levels of difficulty (EG scrolling arcade space shooter or Metal Slug type difficulty) are all that enticing in an AG, for instance.

If you're using your game to tell a real story - if storytelling is paramount to your game design - it seems you would have to do a lot of rationalizing as a game designer to justify the fact that your character gets in 30 identical fights with minions, or swings from 200 ropes across 50 gaping chasms. That's the sort of action I don't particularly like in an AG.

Sorry for repeating myself... it's hard to go back and clarify what I mean in a post when I can't find the "edit post" button .

(Crap. I just found the edit post button. Ok then.)

[Steve2000]

So long as the game still passes the 'sandwich test' (ie. you can play the game using one hand on the mouse while the other is involved soley in holding food / drink, then I have no problem with action elements - especially when it makes the game more immersive.

Oh, and following the LucasArts philosophy, you shouldn't ever die in an action segment, just be returned to the start of the sequence at worst if you fail at it.

This is the answer to Heather's question. I completely agree with this statement.

I do not think that action should be used to "mix things up". Stick to the game you are making and if it has action then okay, but don't throw in a random action sequence in the middle of the game. Don't change the gameplay half way through the game; if you are going to have action in your adventure game then make it part of the game not just a side game. Stick to your core gameplay mechanics defined from the get go and I think we'll have a good relationship.