Comments on: Legend Of The Crystal Valley Demo

By: Helm

Helm — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:05:05 +0000

A speculum has an other primary meaning besides that of a tool for gynecologists.

By: bonuswavepilot

bonuswavepilot — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:12:58 +0000

@Helm
“The psychology of the main character was shallow therefore through that speculum anything the game attempted to convey felt intellectually dishonest.”

That *speculum*? Is this a typo, or some kind of damn disturbing metaphor you’ve got going on there?

By: Igor Hardy

Igor Hardy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:45:34 +0000

Well, TLJ does certainly have a more epic story than most other adventure games, but it isn’t particularly good – it’s rather standard fantasy fare. More interesting adventure games are being released all the time.

By: windlab

windlab — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 20:04:39 +0000

I believe that Dreamfall was a vast improvement over the previous game, I believe it was certainly a lot more emotionally involving than TLJ, even if April did turn so impressively emo that I felt like yelling at her to snap out of it.

I guess I should really use the forum instead of the comment thread if my posts are going to be off-topic.

By: khorse

khorse — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 19:20:26 +0000

The problem with TLJ and most of these games is the interaction/puzzles are never very good so you depend on the story to keep you playing. And the fact of the matter is that the best story in any of these games, which most people agree was TLJ, is still worse than just about any book you could blindly grab off a shelf at your local library.

By: El Producto

El Producto — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:38:18 +0000

I’d hit it.

By: Markoff Chaney

Markoff Chaney — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 14:30:11 +0000

Heh. More discussion about other games than the one that’s posted. Oh how you’ve fallen, great adventure genre. One would almost think they have fallen into a place from whence they just can’t recover. The conventions we grew up with and know and love as and Adventure Gamer are still present and haven’t really been refined past when we dropped parsers for a clickable skill set.

Culpa Innata wasn’t bad and at least it did try to innovate. Nothing against So Blonde and Ceville (2 of the newest adventure games) they are beautiful and work to keep engaging you with witty dialogue and sometimes humorously drawn characters, but they still just feel like more of the same. We go back to absolute masterpieces like TLJ and BS over and over because they hit every note so well. When just one thing is off though, it can really derail a project, even if we can’t quite put our finger on exactly what’s off.

I think I miss the parsers. Something was nice about not really knowing what that blob I just walked up to was and trying to figure it out as part of the puzzle. Having everything turn into a pixel hunt seems to have taken a lot of the joy. I spent about a month figuring out I had to jump to get on that bird in KQ (I was NOT calling that hint line). If I could have moused over it, I would have been done in minutes.

When all you have is hunt the pixel and combine the stuff, all that’s left to propel the story IS the story. This is where TLJ and BS really shine, still to this day. I’m glad the genre isn’t dead, but it certainly has stagnated. Then I see something like Pathologic and I still have hope, even if a lot of people wouldn’t consider it an Adventure game.

By: Lord Skwizzal

Lord Skwizzal — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:13:06 +0000

I miss the days back when broken Sword was an actual GOOD series.

Oh BS.
How I mourn thee’s demise.

By: Jarl

Jarl — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:08:07 +0000

That’s some seriuos charcter design theft, a lawsuit is on the way. ^__^
http://game.hgo.se/projects/3d-games/in-other-words/

By: Mr Penalty

Mr Penalty — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:54:27 +0000

That picture looks a lot like a game we (databox Games) made for about 2 years ago called “In Other Words”. The game is probably not the same, but when I saw that picture I first thought -”who have posted a picture of that game?”

Here’s a picture of that game -”http://databoxgames.com/games/img/inotherwords/pic1.jpg” I hope you don’t see this as spam (I apologize if that’’s the case. I just thought it was fun :)

By: aufi

aufi — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:18:57 +0000

i think TLJ offered some of the best writing i have seen in a game.

some of it is cheap; some of it seems a little disparate. but it was very engaging in ways that i don’t really feel like going into here. the fact that the writing even undergoes such scrutiny not commonly placed upon game narratives proves, in my opinion, that it has breached some upper level. for it to have dived even further, more exposition would be needed which would no doubt prompt further derision for long-winded self indulgence.

By: Matzerath

Matzerath — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:11:00 +0000

Well, apparently The Longest Journey is good enough to spawn a long geeky argument about it on an otherwise unrelated thread, so that’s something … I guess.