Tim Maly talking about the design, theory and business of video games.

Quiet Babylon

Swamped

June 18th, 2008 by Tim!

Falling behind on my completely arbitrary and non-enforced posting schedule. So here is a link to a classic Old Man Murray article. Who Killed Adventure Games.

Filed under: links

5 Responses

  1. Bruce Says:

    *snort*

    Yep, that’s pretty bang-on. I remember running my invisible-ink revealing sharpie over the clues in the Space Quest (I) hint book more than a few times after nearly putting my fist through my Apple IIe’s monitor in exasperation. Frackin’ spider droid…

  2. Tim! Says:

    Even Grim Fandango (one of my favourite adventure games) had a sequence where you had to drive a forklift through a slot in an elevator to jam it. There were two plainly visible slots on screen so I spent 17 tries trying to get it through what was the closest one, I then gave up on that and tried dozens of other things, none of which worked. Finally consulted the walkthrough and discovered: Oh, it’s the stupid OTHER slot you need to drive it in to.

  3. Alice Says:

    Are adventure games dead? I am so enjoying Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on my DS!!

  4. Alice Says:

    Ok, having read the article now, I can definitely concede that the writer has a point.

    In fact I’m nearly done the Zelda game now, and I haven’t resorted to checking online walkthroughs even once, and I’ve been actively noticing how well-designed the puzzles are. Like, I’ll be stuck for a while and then I’ll think of something that I could try that actually makes intuitive sense, and it’ll work, and I’ll be all “Yay!”

    The contrast with the adventure games of my past is sharp, in this way.

  5. Tim! Says:

    So sharp.

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