As for the painting puzzle, I guess I approached it a little different than you did. My first priority was to set up the projector, so it made sense to me that I had to do this first. I thought I was going to look at the projected image and paint from that, instead of painting directly on the projection.

(I haven’t tried doing anything like this in real life, but I would have thought that unless the PC is the invisible man, the actual solution would be a bit impractical, as he’s standing between the projector and the canvas. but whatever. i agree it’s not a very good puzzle).

Because I’ve had this argument before, and the usual first response is, “You obviously don’t care about adventure games. Go back to your FPSs, scumball.” I wasn’t addressing you directly, but rather the larger dissenting voice in the thread.

I agree that being noded does not mean a game cannot be good. I meant, originally and now, that it tends to indicate that it won’t be.

Re. this painting puzzle, I think there’s some confusion over which bit sucks. Painting the pic itself is fine, if rididulous (he paints a black and white painting?). It’s the idiocy before it, where you’re forced to project onto a screen you can’t use, even though anyone with a third of a brain knows to project onto the canvas.

I would say Return to Mysterious Island was a very good game. If it hadn’t been so short, it would have been a clear 8/10 in my book. I’ve also mentioned Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy, which I found very enjoyable. Also, to complete the Kheops-trio, Journey to the Moon. Great stuff, though a bit more Myst-y than the other two here. Actually, I can’t think of a single post-Mysterious Island Kheops-release that I would have scored below 5, though there are clearly some average/somewhat uninspired games in their lineup as well (Cleopatra, for instance – mildly enjoyable, but never anything more). I could also throw in Amerzone, which was the first game from Benoit Sokal. It wasn’t as polished as Syberia, and it was terribly short, but I did enjoy it.

But, see, the problem is this: You obviously don’t like the games I like – we have different tastes (another example: I don’t think the new Strong Bad-game is nearly as good as the later Sam & Max-games). So, as with Mysterious Island, you might just dismiss these examples as poor or mediocre, because you didn’t like them as much as I did. There’s not much I can do about that, except to say that I disagree.

“You have to remember – I come at this with a passionate love for adventure games. And I’ve played a hell of a lot of them. Key word: hell.”

I don’t know. Why do I have to remember this? I have the same passionate love for adventure games, and I’ve also played a hell of a lot of them – both good and bad. Like you, I review games for a living (and done so for many years, though my reviews are in a language you’d probably not understand), and like you, I play (and cover) many genres. I’m no more eager to forgive a bad game – regardless of genre – than you are.

Anyway, having played the Nikopol-demo, I think there are two main problems with it. The first problem is the mouse pointer is very small, making it harder to identify important stuff (so we get some pixel hunting, and that’s pretty much never fun).

The second is the chase sequence, which is just horrible. It doesn’t give you any freedom to experiment, the solutions are contrived and it doesn’t give enough clues as to what to do. The monster has no problems waiting for you to do all sorts of crap, but the moment you do the one thing any sensible person would do (run), it instakills you. So here I agree with you.

As for the painting puzzle, I didn’t think it was that bad in itself, just poorly clued.

But my main point is that these are game/puzzle design problems, and haven’t got anything to do with the fact that the game is a 1st-person, node-based adventure.

Afaik Nikopol is a node-based 1st person game for budget reasons. The transitions aren’t animated, the scene you came from just fades out and the new one fades in.

Oh, and The Quivering may also be a good node-based adventure. It has some weaknesses in the technical department, though. I barely understood the voiceacting since the sound files are so badly compressed and the graphics are also annoyingly pixelated. And it’s hard impossible to get it running on modern systems But you should try it out!!

Also, I’ve noticed that an adventure in third-person is over 20120% less likely to replace its story by making you read appallingly written ‘books’.

Let’s consider two key issues, identifying with the protagonist, and directing the player’s attention.

In terms of identifying with the game’s protagonist, there’s no way a node-based system of spinning in circles can compare to either a 3rd person perspective, with free or fixed camera, or a free movement first person game. None. Unless maybe your character was a Dalek. You have no sense of physical presence, not even a floating gun, and the lack of any movement is even more alienating.

Alright, text-based IF is effectively node based, but it’s not the same, because your character can wander around and interact with objects within that node freely, and the game talks to you, typically in the first person. You go there, you combine these two items. First person perspective is even more about ‘You’, it’s where it’s strongest. Consider Thief, the classic first person game of robbery and bashing people on the head with black pudding. The first person perspective makes it scary, because you can’t see a damn thing, but it also makes the game more involving. Apart from the storybook cutscenes which set up your missions, you’re always in control, and Garrett’s not some dude you’re controlling, you’re Garrett, because you see through his eyes and you make his every move. In first person games, if you want to look behind the tree, you can look behind the tree. First person games should celebrate and use their perspective intelligently or reconsider their approach.

Ultimately I don’t think anyone can seriously argue that being able to control your avatar and express some form of creativity with them isn’t much more powerful than being limited to a fixed position. The really silly thing is that node based games would work fine in third person perspective, where you have a panoramic view and a character that can wander backwards and forwards within the view and walk off towards the next node. That is, literally, 1000% better than teleporting around the place. (Oh, and that doesn’t mean you have to show characters walk off screen. watch some movies, learn some editing.)

Which brings me to point two, directing player attention. Now adventure games are often quite bad at signposting, but at least with a fixed camera angle, you can guarantee that with some planning, you can create the best possible scene to create an emotional response in the player and also show them a clear hierarchy of information. This stuff here, this is important. That stuff over there? Not so essential to the plot. And yes, you can do something similar with 360 nodes – but it’s not as good, there’s less control of where the player looks, you can’t really do things like put detail in the foreground. The player has more freedom to look around, but so what? It’s like saying Robert Jordan is good because he wrote lots of books in which not a lot happens. Free roaming first person perspective on the other hand (and ass-shot third person perspective) also runs into problems for the designer directing the experience, but allows the player to genuinely explore their environment, and as Half Life 2 showed, it’s still possible to make it obvious enough, most of the time where to go next and where side missions are.

Well, maybe Return To Mysterious Island to some degree. It stuck out from the crowd by not being abhorrent, despite being yet another nonsensical interpretation of a Jules Verne novel. Very short, but the survival stuff was kind of fun. And you befriended a monkey! Sadly this all rather fell apart by the point I was shooting flying robots with a bow and arrow. But it was definitely one of the more interesting attempts. I gave it 59% when it came out, which while obviously not good, was a league ahead of its peers.

You have to remember – I come at this with a passionate love for adventure games. And I’ve played a hell of a lot of them. Key word: hell. There were, and occasionally still are, so many good ones, that there is no room for the dross that appears in this demo. The projection screen/canvas puzzle is demonstrative of very poor design. The idiotic chase scene is just dire. I’m not willing to compromise good design and intelligent solutions because there’s not many games like it about.

Because that’s just wrong. :)

And the problem with the painting puzzle wasn’t the question why you had to draw the picture of your father, but that first you have to do it wrong before you could do it right. And the protagonist doesn’t even nudge you in the right wrong direction.

Well, you could say the same thing about IF. There’s no reason for games to be text-only any more, but you know, sometimes it works very well. And yes, I would definitely consider paying for a well-done IF-game – as I suspect I will, later this year.

Variety is the spice of life, they say. I appreciate node-based adventures, if they’re done well. I appreciate full 3D (Tex Murphy, Penumbra, et.c.) adventure games if they’re done well. I appreciate 3rd person fixed camera (Monkey Island, Syberia) adventures if they’re done well. And so on.

(and this year, I’ve played several node-based adventures that were very good. Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy, for instance. so I guess I should download this)

Most of the devs. cant pull it off so i prefer them to stick with this method. It works.
Apart of the Tex Murphy series i dont recall alot of full 3d 1st person adv games. Alot have changed from then and i’m not totally convinced it will work. Just like some other games and genres who made the jump from 2d to 3d and failed.

Anyhow, back to the game. Nikopol is one of the best adv. this year (from the demo). I usually check out most of the games that are coming out and Nikopol grabbed me.