By John Walker on March 20th, 2009 at 4:48 pm.
There’s a technique used in everything from reality TV shows about stranding fourteen strangers in a submarine on the moon, to Why I Love The Last Episode Of Why I Love, where the interviewee is asked to include the question in their response. Watch any of these programmes and you can hear the awkwardness as contestants and Stuart Maconie try to crowbar it in as they stare blankly beyond the camera. “I think I deserved to win the insides of a cat because the other contestants couldn’t sing the Ladder Song as loudly as me.” “My first memory of this episode of The Best Episode Of This Show Ever was being asked about my first memory of…” Never has there been a more spectacular example of this art form than Carmen Electra’s, in the new preview videos for the forthcoming Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust.
“Yes, I’ve been cock-blocked before… Yeah.”
It’s out of nowhere, there’s no context, and perhaps offers a taste of the squirm-inducing prospects of another post-Al Lowe Larry release. Box Office Bust once again features Larry Lovage, the nephew of Lowe’s Larry Laffer, trying to get his end away with the breasted beings around him. Rescued from the Sierra/Vivendi/Activision/Blizzard particle accelerator-based collision by Codies, it’s due out next Friday.
The previous game, Magna Cum Laude, was one of the most vile things I’ve had the misfortune to play. In a just universe it should have been decreed illegal to ever go near the licence again. However, that was made by High Voltage Software, and Box Office Bust is made by Team 17. Yes, that Team 17. Since they’re taking a break from releasing Worms again, should we be throwing away previous opinions of the Larry horror, and offering this one a fresh go? Well, yes, we absolutely should. However, it’s not off to a great start with the new trailers. First is the interview with Electra, in which it looks like at any moment she’s going to start begging the police to meet the kidnappers’ demands. (Er, quick warning, while this is technically safe for work, it does sound an awful lot like porn).
Titanic? Seriously? And apparently Brokeback Mountain is getting spoofed too, which just cannot be a good thing in any possible way. Let’s not even discuss “Ginger Vitus”.
The second interview is with Jay Mohr, who is currently great in the surprisingly decent sitcom, Gary Unmarried. He plays Kip, a character who appears to shout and swear a lot.
Oh heavens, it looks horrible. Not horrible in the way that made you want to scrub yourself in a hot bath like Magna Cum Laude. Just horribly not funny. Why, Box Office Bust, what a big… disappointment you look likely to be. I’ve never seen such a huge… penis. Wait, hang on, I got that wrong.
20/03/2009 at 16:54 Radiant says:
Ahh porn video games.
A whole genre crushed by youporn.
20/03/2009 at 16:55 Radiant says:
and by a complete lack of wit and subtlety
20/03/2009 at 16:57 Darkflight says:
That’s the Spectacular Spider-Man (Josh Keaton) as Larry, that’s just not right.
20/03/2009 at 16:57 Tworak says:
Wow at the first 22 seconds.
20/03/2009 at 17:00 skalpadda says:
I found myself wanting the interview videos to end around 10 seconds into each.
20/03/2009 at 17:02 Ian says:
Was it Magna Cum Laude that PC Gamer gave a stonking 3%?
20/03/2009 at 17:02 John Walker says:
Ian, yes. And I was being generous.
20/03/2009 at 17:03 EGTF says:
What next? Colonel Custer’s Revenge: Part Two? With Pamela Anderson and ohhhh I don’t know, Patrick Stewart?
20/03/2009 at 17:05 Pags says:
Yes, it was. In fact, it was John Walker who reviewed it.
Carmen Electra looks like she wants to cry, I feel like stroking the poor lass’ hair and telling her everything will be okay.
20/03/2009 at 17:32 Okami says:
The following Preview is likely to offend everybody.
Truer words have never been spoken. Written. Whatever.
20/03/2009 at 17:33 oceanclub says:
Pervert.
P.
20/03/2009 at 17:34 Larington says:
Umm, how to summarise my reaction to this game… Umm.
O_o
Ooooookay.
20/03/2009 at 17:41 Fumarole says:
Oh Larry, how far you have fallen.
20/03/2009 at 17:46 gulag says:
So, Leigh is going to review it for us, right?
20/03/2009 at 17:53 Drakkheim says:
er.. wow… just ..
*sigh* Well at least they didn’t make it a MMO.
20/03/2009 at 17:54 Andy says:
You know, I actually loved Magna Cum Laude. But I played the German version, where Larry was voiced by Oliver Pocher, a sometimes brilliant, but otherwise annoying B-List Celebrity and comedian. He was perfect for the role and the dialogue was great. The mini-games… not so much. But they were endurable to watch the next scene.
Maybe I’ll pick this new game up, too. But I basically grew up with Larry games. I could really say that I learned english through these old text based adventures. Ah, Nostalgia.
20/03/2009 at 17:54 Kadayi says:
Agreed about it looking like they’re holding Carmen at gun point or something. Game does not look good in any way shape or form either…
Also am I the only man who has never found her remotely sexually attractive?
20/03/2009 at 18:02 Dean says:
This actually looks worse than Magna Cum Laude. See, MCL was badly written crap with some dull mini-games, but well, at least it had tits in it.
That doesn’t make it a good game by any means, but if you know you’re a pretty crap game but want to appeal to the frat-boy Xbox crowd then throwing in a bit of titillation makes sense.
Whereas apparently this release has no nudity. Which suggests it’s going to alienate the last possible audience for the game…
20/03/2009 at 18:23 Steve says:
Wow. Just wow.
Carmen looks like she’s been on meth.
[But almost certainly hasn't - Ed]
20/03/2009 at 18:31 LionsPhil says:
“Ahh porn video games.”
The bitter irony is that Al’s weren’t. LSL1 (runs under ScummVM these days, woo) is an adventure like any other. The few times Larry gets anywhere, all you see is a big “censored” sign dancing around. Most of your time is spent doing those two Sierra classic activities: i) trying to use every inventory object on every other thing in the game to try to recreate the line of crazed moon logic behind the puzzles and ii) dying.
20/03/2009 at 18:35 James Brophy says:
Ok, quick survey.. how many people have played the previous version; Magna Cum Laude?
I have. It was a tenner on ps2. and it was fucking great. My Gf kicked me off it because she enjoyed the game play more then I did.
How was the innovative conversational system missed by the reviewers? Every conversation takes the exact same amount of time but depending on how you do in the mini game below the conversation your going to give good answers or Funny answers.
However you feel about the subject matter it’s an excellent system that deserves to be ripped of everywhere. It gives you choices about how you answer at the same time as keeping the timing natural for people watching you play the game.
This is the worst conversation on the game but it shows you the system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOAX0UKWQQ&feature=PlayList&p=E020AA092D7A563F&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=2
20/03/2009 at 18:45 John Walker says:
The conversation system was terrible! The most banal minigame in the world, barely worth needing to be awake to play.
20/03/2009 at 18:52 Rei Onryou says:
I shall sum up my opinion of the game with this observation: The woman’s breasts on the logo bounced. A lot. That’s all I could garner from the first video.
@EGTF: I’d buy into that. Patrick Stewart needs to do more games. Just so long as all they used was his voice.
20/03/2009 at 19:28 Markoff Chaney says:
And so goes another one. I even played the last atrocity just to see if it was redeemable in any fashion whatsoever. I must say, I do have the background loading pictures still saved in a folder somewhere, and that provides some modicum of value to me.
Nothing like the old ones though. I still think that the original LSL has some of the, if not THE, best DRM of any game ever. Its rudimentary attempt to determine age is still hilarious. The OJ question. Truly has ever any game been so predicative and ahead of its time?
This just looks like slop. I’m sure I’ll pick it up. I hope I can wait until it’s as cheap as Zeno Clash was today.
20/03/2009 at 19:33 shon says:
This may be the one videogame I have no problem pre-judging for suckiness before it comes out.
20/03/2009 at 20:37 Xercies says:
Shame Tell Tales isn’t doing it, it might be half decent then.
20/03/2009 at 21:46 Sol Invictus says:
Wow. That looks even worse than the first game.
20/03/2009 at 22:25 JKjoker says:
i was under the impression this game had been canceled, i was interested initially but yeah, it does look awful, oh, well, this remainds me i never finished lsl2 and 3, i might just go clench my larry thirst with those
20/03/2009 at 22:40 Cycle says:
An ex-girlfriend of mine actually liked Magna Cum Laude too. I encouraged her to play it because it always got her in the mood for lovin’.
Fucking fantastic game.
Unless you just played it on your own, then it was a fucking horrible game.
20/03/2009 at 22:47 James Brophy says:
“The conversation system was terrible! The most banal minigame in the world, barely worth needing to be awake to play.”
But the system allowed for naturalistic comedic flow as opposed to the stop start of most adventure game Dialogue. If you look at the potential of system as opposed to the content it delivers you can see that it’s a great improvement on classic illusion of choice adventure games where you going to be clicking through every option anyway.
Now you get every option played in a natural style. The game is simple because your supposed to be concentrating on the conversation. You can even choose to dip in to the bad results to make the conversation and the mini game more interesting.
Where was this done before? How is it not innovative? where was it done better?
20/03/2009 at 23:26 skalpadda says:
I can’t really see any great merit to it, unless you’re playing the game very casually with other people around and just want to keep a conversation flowing. For adventure gaming or role playing I’d rather have a well written good old dialogue tree. That’s my personal opinion of course, and I haven’t played Magna Cum Laude either.
20/03/2009 at 23:55 John Walker says:
James – it was done far better in Fahrenheit, when you had a very short time to indicate which conversation direction you wanted to go in. And it’s looking like it will be done in Alpha Protocol, where you again have a time limit to choose, in order to create a natural flow of conversation.
I agree it would be nice to see games smoothing out conversation. However, having you swim a sperm along a blue box doesn’t seem like progress to me. You weren’t actively choosing what to say. That what was said was utterly hideous shit didn’t help either.
21/03/2009 at 00:23 Reverend Speed says:
Gosh. Wouldn’t say it’s BETTER than trees (and Mass Effect allows for naturally paced (shit) conversations via (painfully stunted) trees) BUT it’s definitely an interesting and, I’d argue, VIABLE alternative to ye olde systems.
I’m rubbish at the MCL system (it’s based on forward planning whereas I’m a much more reaction-based gamer for side-scrolling whatzits). I despise the fart and drool reactions you can provoke (which goes a long way to explaining why I’ve never really been interested in the Larry games, anyhow). BUT:
It’s a very interesting abstraction of maintaining your concentration and avoiding distractions in order to project a suave, attractive exterior. If done well, the conversation will rarely repeat itself in the same way and if the mini-game is compelling (and I’d argue that the MCL one isn’t but different strokes etc) then everyone’s a winner.
Especially the slightly drunken frat boys and sorority girls I imagine the title was aimed at. Sorry John Walker. Sorry James Brophy.
Outside of obscuring portions of dialogue tree with labels like HUGE TITTIES and HOTNESS I WANNA BANG YOU, using Space Giraffe-style effects to simulate inebriation (and how do you work in the self-discipline to not vomit or piss yourself into that system?), using a Bloodlines RPG system to control your available responses in conjunction with your state of inebriation (how fluid!) and/or adding a timer to conversations (ala the great, hilariously flawed Fahrenheit – another good cinematic conversation system) … I’m not sure how else to manage these disparate elements in a traditional tree.
The mini game breaks the relaxed control you have when using a dialogue tree (even with a timer) and forces you to deal with undesirable impulses in real time. I wouldn’t use it in all games. But one where you’re chatting up girls while severely over your limit and sweating pure fear? Sure. Hell, that’s genius, in principle. Still not a big fan of the implementation.
Of course, this does somewhat reduce the sophistication of the original games – note worthy for being the first titles to introduce bodily function buttons.
Dear zombie jesus on a FUCKING–
Nnngh.
One day I’m going to play those games and they had better be FUCKING SPECTACULAR, y’hear?
On the other hand MCL was a silly romp with giggling friends. Wouldn’t buy it, but I can see the appeal.
Fuck those developers. Fuck them for trying something new. And innovative. And, dammit, clever.
21/03/2009 at 00:42 Radiant says:
“Magna Cum Laude!
Geddit? Cum! That’s funny!”
If you’re going for obvious funny then there better be some faces hit by frying pans.
Monkey Island was obvious funny.
If there was Monkey Sexy Island I would play that.
21/03/2009 at 00:42 Radiant says:
Wait.
21/03/2009 at 00:43 Radiant says:
Don’t make that.
21/03/2009 at 01:09 Nick says:
Comment once, shame on you, comment twice.. you can’t comment again.
But yeah, the trick is so they save on time not having to reshoot the question asking pleb later (generally they only have one camera for interviews, so they shoot the person answering them, then later they shoot someone asking the questions and nodding then edit the two together).
21/03/2009 at 01:15 Reverend Speed says:
Magna Cum Laude
Vrs.
Passionate Patti Does a Little Undercover Work
Discuss.
21/03/2009 at 01:35 John Walker says:
Nah Nick, it’s a technique used in all reality TV, where they have the participants emphasise the action by reflecting on it throughout. There’s never any intention of the producer asking the questions being seen or heard.
21/03/2009 at 01:44 Mort says:
Wait, so to talk in Cum Laude you have to LEAD SPERM TO CATCH HAPPY FACES AND AVOID FERTILE OVULES?! (they´re that or some kind of cogs… I can´t tell from the low res video; either freaks me out eaqually).
Farenheit had those “dragon´s lair scenes”… I just hate those. But the dialog system was fluid enough and you didn´t have to (dear god) play a side scroller with sperm…
About this new larry game: the voice acting seems well done, but those graphics are completely void of charm… The graphics are either “cute” enough to provide a funny context for the jokes or they´re not and the jokes have to be all that much funnier to distract you of the total lack of charisma of that “larry”.
21/03/2009 at 01:45 KBKarma says:
Oh, Team17. The first PC game I ever owned was Worms. And now you’re making this.
I’ll not buy this. It’s a comment on the game, not the developer. T17 might make it great, but I’m not one for the porn games. With any luck, they’ll stun us all with something else after this.
Though Worms Open Warfare 2 was pretty good.
21/03/2009 at 01:56 James Brophy says:
Thanks for replying.
“having you swim a sperm along a blue box doesn’t seem like progress to me.” Ahem.. yes. that’s a point, it’s got silly and potentially offensive trappings. However the game is dressed up the juxtaposition of the mini game to the speech is still an innovation and remarkable for forwarding the genre.
Fahrenheit felt very antiseptic to me. I loved it at the time but the quick time events were far too separate from the gaming experience to make them feel natural. I only understood the bug dodging sequence after I saw someone else play it … all I could see was the game of Simon I was playing that was overladed on the action. I still say larry’s game has better integration between game and scene even though I do conciede it’s trying to do far less.
While larry may be made for cheap brainless laughs at least you don’t actually play a sex game (move stick the thrust) or fight the living embodiment of the internet and a myan god. It’s trying for less and hits it dead on without overreaching.
Alpha protocol looks interesting, thanks for pointing it out.
Back to your point. Yes both games you mention do give you limited time to respond. However not couching it in a understandable game makes it feel like an external pressure and an arbitrary limit. I know one person who wouldn’t play Fahrenheit for this reason but enjoys larry; stupid dialog and all.
The most recent csi game tries to make dialog trees feel more like a conversation and less like a menu by giving you the opportunity to make yourself look like an idiot by bringing up a completely irrelevant piece of evidence. At first blush I like the idea however it does bring us back to the days of having bad click in games and being punished for exploration. Larry again wins here by not punishing you for failure but rather by giving you a different funnier answer and not letting you progress.
Granted the material is not to your taste, but it’s got a good system at it’s core that deserves recognition.
21/03/2009 at 02:33 Reverend Speed says:
At this point we’re just discussing the mechanics, f’shizzle. Leave yo’ sperm issues at the door, dawg.
Trees with time limits are great. I dig ‘em, so long as the choices are clearly defined and I have a little time to weigh my options.
Other folks resent pressure introduced into what is customarily a laid-back moment in a computer game – a time to muse and savor various options.
MCL does an end-run on this design dilemma.
Instead of an unpalatable version of the system you’re used to, you’re presented with a simple mini game (of admittedly questionable quality) – a symbolic guide-em-up with penalties and bonuses that tie directly into your conversation.
If it’s a good game, then you get the flow of an arcade game with the (variable) intellectual feedback of an adventure game.
S’fuckin’ genius.
The only question I have is to what other stories could you apply this system?
Perhaps you’ve been administered by a truth drug. Truth drugs – to my knowledge – don’t enforce a greater level of veracity in your responses to your questioners…
…they just make you more inclined to talk.
And talk.
And, oh, talky talk talk. Natter. Etc.
And the skillful inquisitor then steers your attention towards topics you’re normally disinclined to discuss and oh, snap, did I just say that?
I can’t quite see Alpha Protocol using this exact system, but I still think it’s worth a little thought. You have to avoid topics you don’t want to talk about while hitting zingers to annoy your questioners and distractions to divert their attention.
As I say, the system as described in the paragraphs above is a little… cartoonish? maybe?… for the topic, but it might actually represent the experience a little more closely than a straight dialogue tree + time limit. And given that, it deserves some serious consideration.
And in passing, I dug Fahrenheit’s QTEs a lot. Fluid, specific action, no tutorial needed, immediate fun. Barmy though. Cage, why hast thou forsaken us?
21/03/2009 at 03:27 California Superlotoplus says:
Could be worst
21/03/2009 at 04:49 DigitalSignalX says:
No comment for Leisure Suit Larry.. but wanted to add that yeah Carmen Electra has definitely found an appropriate niche to make up for modeling.
21/03/2009 at 06:26 malkav11 says:
Magna Cum Laude was probably the worst game I’ve ever wholly enjoyed. I mean, yes, it’s basically a collection of minigames, most of which are totally awful, and only one of which (the conversation one) is at all notable (and still questionable even then). Incidentally, it’s not unlike (I’m going to be stoned for this) the most recent Pirates! in this – the difference is most of Pirates! minigames are good. But both have that format and then items you can purchase or otherwise obtain to help out in minigames you suck at. I did appreciate MCL’s system of being able to skip things you just weren’t able to manage by spending some of their tokens.
And yes, a fair bit of the humor was quite crude (and not especially funny, in those bits), and there was a decidedly puerile tone to a lot of it – what do you expect, really? But here’s the thing – a lot of it was also totally off the wall and out of left field. Band camp geek girl, ha ha so funny stereotype not….wait, she’s possessed by a demon? That sort of thing hits my humor center dead on. So I found MCL much funnier than I ever did the rather groan-inducing innuendo of previous LSLs.
And, to be entirely honest, I’m not averse to a bit of CGI nudity.
21/03/2009 at 09:44 The Apologist says:
But I really liked Worms. This is…but…
/cries
21/03/2009 at 11:38 skalpadda says:
Well the influence system in Oblivion was sort of fluent as well, and certainly different, but like this it didn’t make that much sense or make the game any better.
I’m sure someone could make a system of mini games work well for making flowing dialogues, but just making something different does not automatically mean it deserves praise.
Let’s say Bioware replaced the dialogue trees with a mini game where purple unicorns in speed boats zoomed across the bottom of your screen whenever a dialogue happened and you had to beat them to death with a tube of toothpaste glued to an ironing board. The more unicorns you killed the more evil your answer would be.
I have no doubt a few people would appreciate this new approach to dialogue in games, but most would probably look on in horror and say “This is fucking stupid!”.
21/03/2009 at 12:29 Reverend Speed says:
[Key point: Have never played Oblivion. Whatchu mean by 'fluent', Willis?]
Yeah, but as I say, the very fact that it could be said to model that conversation-under-pressure dynamic better than the traditional systems means that it’s worth taking a look at AND THEN IMPROVING.
It’s not that it’s different. It’s that, in some ways, it’s better.
And the Unicorn thing is somewhat missing the point. Overexaggerating to make your case, yes, but the MCL system isn’t about being good or evil, it’s about achieving a set goal with a sufficient level of success.
If you were to introduce morality to the system, I’d weigh the quantity of obstacles & bonuses in relation to the quantity of renegade and goody-two-shoes points you’d gathered.
It doesn’t take much imagination to think of more appealing forms of ‘guide-em-up’. Have a think about other forced-forward motion in games.
21/03/2009 at 12:30 Nick says:
John – ah, well, I have little to no experience nor exposure to reality TV beyond being irritated by the adverts for it.
21/03/2009 at 13:30 skalpadda says:
Well, to explain a bit, Oblivion had a system of “Disposition”, a numeric value that decided how much an NPC liked you. This number decided if they would tell you certain things, give you quests, the price they’d sell or buy things, attack you on sight and so on.
You could raise (or lower) your disposition with a friendly NPC by playing a mini game where you basically got four dialogue choices (admire, boast, coerce, joke) with a timer ticking down (their disposition would slowly drop as you played it, so you had to be fast to actually gain any, that’s what I meant by “fluent”; keeping the conversation going), and you had to tell by their facial expression which one they were more susceptible to, and make the right choice in accordance to a kind of “meter” that shifted between the options.
The problem was that you had to cycle through all of these, meaning you actually had a virtual conversation where you would, in turn, tell them a joke, boast about your big muscles, threaten to bash their skull in and admire their beautiful hair. Or something.
I’m sorry for the lengthy explanation but English isn’t my first language and it’s sometimes hard to be succinct about things :)
The reason I brought it up in the first place is that while it is a fully functional mini game that does the job it’s supposed to do it doesn’t really make much sense and doesn’t add anything of real value to the game.
What made me wince a bit and react here was not how it’s done in the Larry game in question (couldn’t care less about Magna Cum Laude or this new one), but rather the idea that it’s a good way to make conversations more fluent (or “cinematic”, if you want) and should be used in other games.
The unicorn murder game was indeed just an exaggeration to show that just because something is novel it doesn’t have to be good. The good/evil options is simply because I used Bioware as an example and that’s generally the choice you make through dialogue decisions (light/dark side, open palm/closed fist, renegade/paragon).
Leisure Suit Larry as a game (and the crappiness or awesomeness of it) doesn’t really have anything to do with it. I understand that it’s supposed to be a comedy game where the timing of punchlines and funny dialogue is important, and I can see the merit of such a system there (though I still think it’s stupid ;)).
Then again, I fall into the category of people who genuinely love a well written dialogue tree, carefully guiding a conversation in the direction I want, and delighting in the situations where my carefully chosen response would lead somewhere I really wasn’t expecting (KotOR2 managed this a lot).
I’ll stop rambling now..
21/03/2009 at 14:23 James Brophy says:
skalpadda, I take your point that different is not automatically good and for oblivion/mass effect it would not be a suitable system; but in a game where you are playing a character attempting to play a role and stay out of bad habits it does make sense to rank the ease of selecting the bad option in conversations.
In otherwords:
Self determinate roles (tabula rassa bloke, mass effect, oblivion, kotr) need all options equally ranked
Pre designed roles (Larry laffler, crazy people, drunk people, people under interrogation) making the right choice more difficult to make make it more interesting and more of a triumph when you do get the right choice.
it’s an expression of impulse control that puts you inside the characters head in a very real way.
21/03/2009 at 16:32 Reverend Speed says:
Oblivion system sounds interesting, but you’d have to hit a certain level of granularity before I’d buy into it as a means of winning people around. And even then, I worry over the implications of the player’s skill overriding their character’s skill in the game world. =)
(That whole player-vs-character thing is a huge bugbear for me, so we’ll skip that)
Wheras, as JB points out above, in something like MCL you’re playing a character where there’s a strong authorial line from the designer (the classic adventure game). You’re being placed in a very specific scenario with a clear goal and then told to avoid well-defined hazards.
And in this way, it does a good job of modeling the experience of being disgustingly drunk and trying to chat up a girl (SEEM NORMAL! SEEM NORMAL! BE CHARMING! DON’T THROW UP!).
Better than, say, a dialogue tree where you can take your time and carefully pick out the type of response that appeals most to the rational, clear-minded you, no matter what state the character you’re playing may happen to be in at that time.
Now, I’m not trying to say that it’s a fundamentally SUPERIOR method of dialogue. Nor am I saying that it’s potentially more cinematic (if Mass Effect had got its shit together, it’d OWN that hat).
I’m just saying for the types of duress situations we’re discussing, it’s a more accurate representation in gameplay.
I mean, Operation Flashpoint was really accurate for its time. Far more accurate than I want in a FPS. So I stopped playing it. But I acknowledge its accuracy and that it’s a rich vein of gameplay that deserves to be studied and applied (with, hopefully, a few modifications to ease in the weenies among us, me included… resulting in COD4, perhaps).
I love my dialogue trees. But this kinda communication in-game has only begun its evolution. MCL’s system is a particularly outré mutation, I’ll grant you.
But I think it has a niche. And I think it has a future.
…
HUHH.
21/03/2009 at 16:44 skalpadda says:
“it’s an expression of impulse control that puts you inside the characters head in a very real way.”
I haven’t played the game so I might be missing something important, but to me it looks like a side-scrolling mini game where the icons you steer your sperm into decide your navigation through a conversation.
You might as well replace it with a mini game that randomly flashes the icons on the screen and gives you a limited time to press the “right” one.
Of course the sperm mini game might somewhat distract you away from bad writing and voice acting :)
Like I said I can see it’s merit as a way to creating fluent dialogues, I just don’t think it’s very good. In terms of creating humorous dialogue in a story driven adventure games I would much rather see it implemented through how you go about solving puzzles and other things that aren’t exactly part of the conversations.
I’m trying to think of an example here, but the only humour game that comes to mind is Psychonauts, which used good eccentric humour to drive the story, although most dialogues were in cutscene form. Oh, and Beyond Good and Evil comes to mind as a game that combined puzzles and mini games with a story and world that had a lot of warm humour in it.
Maybe my reluctance to see the good in the system comes from the game it’s been made for a game that has no appeal to me, but the core problem is that I see it as something akin to the disposition game in Oblivion, that is a mini game that does what it’s supposed to do, but which doesn’t really make any sense or add value to the experience.
21/03/2009 at 17:50 Reverend Speed says:
Nah, man, we’re not talking about whether it creates a more meritious level of conversation.
It’s about emulating conversational duress.
I mean, if you want good dialogue check out Vampire: Bloodlines. Still the high watermark for dialogue trees with 3D models.
Pff. Good & Evil. How people think this is writing is beyond me. Go play Planescape or the Soulreaver games. Nice and complex. “Good & Evil is GREAT!” should always be prefaced with “For a game aimed at the same audience as Rugrats, …” You see warm humour there, I see charmless corn. But I hates that game, so I guess I’m just a bad guy.
Go play Anachronox. Dear god, that’s such a well-written game I can still hardly credit it.
21/03/2009 at 17:52 Reverend Speed says:
Oh dear god. Flipping tags. Sorry, my point was lost there. Imagine before the bolded text a block quote stating,
“a mini game that does what it’s supposed to do, but which doesn’t really make any sense or add value to the experience.”
Accurately models experience of conversation under physical duress.
Modern timed dialogue trees don’t hack it for that condition.
That said… it IS a linear track. Maybe if there were different avenues you could explore as you guided your avatar…
21/03/2009 at 18:43 skalpadda says:
“Go play Planescape or the Soulreaver games. Nice and complex.”
I wasn’t making a comment about quality of writing, complexity or trying to rank game writing from one game to another but the methods used to incorporate dialogue into games that rely heavily on humour and charm. Point being that if you want to have dialogue that reflects a certain state of mind and keep the flow of conversation with properly timed humorous cues you might as well make the dialogue into cut-scene (more or less) form and spend your effort on game play challenges elsewhere.
If the fun jokes and dialogues are your reward it would, in my opinion, be more fun to get to them by exploring the game world, story or puzzles rather than playing an arbitrary mini game during conversations.
As for “accurately models experience of conversation under physical duress” I really cannot see how the sperm mini game in the Larry game above does this in any way, nor how you would adapt it to do better in other games.
I’d say you’re more likely to get a scene to feel right by employing very good writing and acting, but of course both of those cost money and require talent ;)
21/03/2009 at 20:42 Reverend Speed says:
Sadly, don’t have time for proper reply, hope this works for now.
*Sorry about Soulreaver / Planescape comment. Being an ass. Didn’t intend it to read like that.
*Sense of duress physical duress negated by relaxed abstract dialogue choices.
How would I implement? If I can, I’ll get back to you on that, sorry, gotta run…!
21/03/2009 at 20:44 Reverend Speed says:
Also in certain circumstances would argue that dialogue tree is more of an arbitrary and abstract system that MCL system. Really must go.
22/03/2009 at 02:35 James Brophy says:
Your both missing the fact that there Are forks in the MCL dialog.
LL: I’m a country and western producer
Girl: do you know any one famous
LL: Have you ever heard of…
Timed to match the end of your line are two different response prompt icons in the mini game. No matter what you will either hit the good music reference or the bad music reference.
the game treats your conversation as being internal to that scene so there is no knock on effect but the conversation flows well for the jumps between tracks it’s constantly taking.
Note that every time the sperm hits a bar of 3 icons it’s at a pause or the introduction of a new point in the conversation.
22/03/2009 at 05:38 Matzerath says:
Have you guys been arguing for days about the merits of a Leisure Suit Larry conversation system?!
I KNEW I shouldn’t have left the thread for The Path.
22/03/2009 at 06:15 Alaric says:
Unless it’s made by Al Lowe himself, I’m not interested.
22/03/2009 at 14:44 phil says:
As an Amiga Power veteran it’s just wonderful that the ‘silly childish hate mongers’ of old are now making such a silly childish game.
As someone who enjoyed MCL I got to say as a game it failed, as a piece of entertainment that wasn’t sexist, homophobic and horrible grime, it failed, as a Carry On movie crossed with a Quagmire heavy episode of Family Guy, it succeeded and then some.
23/03/2009 at 04:34 Al3xand3r says:
Wow. Carmen’s gotten old. I feel old.
Awful character design in this game. Awful dialogue so far. Bummer. It’s sex, they should be able to make good jokes.
23/03/2009 at 11:00 Reverend Speed says:
Just experimenting with the tags here, please forgive me if the following is gibberish.
23/03/2009 at 11:05 Reverend Speed says:
SON OF A–
I’m sorry, one more time.
That IS funny. Maybe they’ll complain that it isn’t being reviewed “in a style not affording the gravity demanded by a Leisure Suit Larry game.”
23/03/2009 at 13:40 Anthony says:
Actually, since people were mentioning Fahrenheit earlier, I have to chime in and say I didn’t actually get to see anything that was going on during the QTE’s because I was so focused on not failing them for the nth time. And so my hatred of that particular mechanic was born.
Except for in God of War, because you were usually breaking someone’s shit in a dramatic fashion at the time.
23/03/2009 at 14:08 Reverend Speed says:
Hurrah. I have mastered web design, all of it, forever. Moving on.
Addressing JB though… aren’t those ‘forks’ more a kinda penalty, though? You hit ‘em, you get a short sequence where Larry fumbles, then recovers and you’re back to the main discussion.
Can you turn the conversation towards the childhood and influences of another character, allowing you to learn valuable backstory that enables several puzzles and/or confrontations? Can you backtrack, approach the subject from different angles? If you talk to other characters, will new conversational options open up when you talk to the object of your affections?
I seem to recall there’s a gift function in the game, but that it only enhances your approach to the single track afforded to you in the guide-em-up.
I was trying to suggest some forking in the minigame that takes you substantially off the main topic (though, obviously in this case, they’ll inevitably lead to your key goal). Or…
…Hey, you could fork it so you can get the ‘easy’ route, in which Larry quickly beds the lass or perhaps you could go for a slightly more complex ‘conversation’ which gifts the player with added reputation points, etc.
Anyhow.
Matzerath… The Path had better be pretty fucking goddamn good. I mean, I dig innovative mechanics as much as the next man (see this conversation), I dig atmosphere but I’ve had it UP. TO. FUCKING HERE with melancholy in games.
Christ, people used to complain about the amount of simple emotions in games – anger, fear, humour, etc – where’s the new emotional arc going to come from? …Ah! Melancholy!
Well, I’m fucking sick of it now. Some Silent Hill does it very well, Stalker does it well, I Fell in Love with the Majesty of Colours does it well, the Graveyard is a slightly embarrassing student film of a game. It’s an interesting idea, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean you should make the game and then try to sell it.
Melancholy is so 2008.
(That is Wot I Think)
skalpadda! DUDE! Sorry for skipping out on you a few days ago, I’ll try to address your points now.
Don’t actually remember much of MCL. Not that I disliked the game (was playing a friend’s copy), just didn’t really catch my interest except for this system. Perhaps if I’d bought it, I’d have an axe to grind, but as it stands I’d agree with phil on the quality of writing and plotting:
This is slightly off-topic, but the very presentation of the minigame makes sense in the context of the audience you’re trying to sell. MCL goes out of its way to defuse serious pretensions, dressing up its conversation system as a sperm working its way through some kind’ve… blue canal. (?) For a game you’re meant to be able to play drunk with a group of mates, this is more appealing then some kinda slate-grey techno interface. I’m not saying it particularly appeals to me, but for the folks they were trying to reach it’s a nice little bit of polish.
No doubt that’d help the player deal with shitty gameplay if it exists, but let’s approach this problem from the perspective of a game designer looking to expose a general media library in an interesting, engaging way. In other words, just focus on the game loops for this conversation and not the reward structure, please. =)
On your use of the word ‘fluent’, I think you might be bang on there, from a linguistics perspective – it means to communicate quickly. However, I think there’s a slightly unhelpful association in that it implies a level of conversation competence, as in “fluent in English, fluent in French” – I can hold a fairly complex conversation with a native speaker, for example.
Perhaps ‘flowing’ or ‘seamless’ might be more appropriate, as you seem to think the reason I like the MCL system is because it allows for an ongoing back and forth between character, uninterrupted by dialogue selections and player musings and the like.
(That’s not why I like the system, by the way, but it’s a nice side-effect. More on why I like it later)
If this is unhelpful, feel free to ignore! =)
It’s worth pointing out here that I’m not championing the suitability of the system for delivering humour and / or charm.
I’m contending that this system is suitable for conversations where the player character is under duress.
That it also handles humour and charm well (depending on execution) is a bonus.
Okay, so I’m going to try to state your arguments.
1) The guide-em-up game is so abstracted from the function of conversation that it might as well be replaced with a quick-time-event (or similar).
Briefly (as I get into this fairly heavily during the answer to argument 2), the benefit of a GEU (guide-em-up) over a QTE is that that a QTE is about as linear as you can get. There’s only one correct button to press at any one time. The GEU gives you various approaches to a variety of conversational threats and boons (with respective effects on gameplay), allowing you to apply a level of tactics and skill unavailable in even the best QTEs.
I’d also argue that a pressure-and-navigation-skill system is significantly lower abstraction of conversation than selecting from a limited number of dialogue choices (I LOVE my dialogue trees, can’t beat a good one, but they DO have their limitations and the MCL system could help cope with ‘em).
To be continued in my response to point 2.
2) The guide-em-up system does not add significant gameplay and entertainment to what are essentially duel-outcome encounters. These would be better served by:
a) Removing the system and replacing them with in-world action sequences, inventory puzzles and traditional trees. This would provide a less abstract context in which the narrative could take place, in turn lending the narrative (thus humour) meaning and weight.
b) Removing the system and replacing them entirely with an attractive cutscene. Narrative meaning and weight without distracting gameplay elements.
I hope I’m stating your points adequately here. If not, er, sorry! =)
Well, I love a good cutscene, that’s true – they’re a fantastic way to change the pace of the game and reset the player’s reactions. The Legacy of Kain games triumph because of ‘em.
But, ultimately, I think it’s a healthy goal for the game designer to reduce the amount of time the player spends watching and not doing… so I’m going to propose we make the cutscene solution unacceptable for the purposes of this discussion.
So that leaves us with ‘a’. And normally, I’d agree with you. Dialogue trees work really well (as do stellar parsers like Facade).
But a lot of time you’ll find yourself where you’re under pressure to provide an answer quickly. So to handle this, we might add a timer to the dialogue choice interface. As long as the choices are easy to parse, this covers most circumstances and I’m pretty happy with it (though trying to read and click on large blocks of text is hardly perfect from an interface point of view – I’d almost prefer a controller-based approach here. But anyway)
Now we add another feature – we want to handle physical and mental distractions. You could try to obscure portions of the choices or randomly add new options or make it a little harder to select the option you want… but the system already has it’s flaws and we really don’t want to make it HARDER for the player to deal with the interface.
Handling duress is the crux of this discussion. And I fear that I haven’t been entirely clear in exposing this for you…
Ah. Okay, so this may come down to whether you’ve played MCL. Hilariously, these next paragraphs may provide the information you’re missing and bridge the gap between our positions. I wish I’d thought of this earlier. =)
During the game, Larry has different needs. It’s like the Ship, sorta. You need to eat, drink, etc. In order to approach a specific belle, your character may need to be tipsy. Well, drunk. Well, perhaps only technically conscious.
This state of inebriation brings a number of associated checks and balances with it into the main game. Like: Larry becomes 90% beer, which results in Larry stripping naked and streaking across campus. Can you urinate the excess beer out of your system before the campus guards catch you?
I know.
(And yet, in the back of my mind, I’m constantly thinking… I’ve never seen that mechanic before! That’s innovation! It’s distasteful, but it’s actually a solid mechanic based on… overdrinking and urination… oh dear, dear god…!)
Back to chasing female affection:
While chatting up one of the girls in the game, some of the obstacles your sperm has to avoid (such a strange sentence) are glasses of beer (symbolising the drinks your character is taking while discussing Proust with the Page 3 Stunna).
If you’re shit at the MCL conversation system (LIKE MEE!) you’ll start to crash into the beer glasses. Crash your avatar into ‘em enough, Larry’s quality of conversation reduces respectively. Keep crashing into ‘em, Larry’s intoxication meter and bladder fills and… well…
Streaking minigame.
This does not improve your odds with aforementioned Stunna.
Other obstacles include farting penalties, etc, etc. Too tedious to go into, to be honest. But you get the idea.
The mini game represents your desire to finish a conversation as well as possible (by hitting positive response tokens and avoiding negative responses) while managing your bodies attempt to betray you. =)
That’s physical duress. Adapting this specific mini-game to MENTAL duress… actually, I’m going to try to avoid the truth-serum idea again. I think it’s a little too easy for me. Lessee.
You’re the youngest child in a family that’s dysfunctional to the point of being psychotic. Think of Custer’s family if you’re familiar with Preacher. Say there’s an almost comatose father, a bitter, sadistic mother and three older brothers, each worse than the last, all living in some decrepit house isolated in the middle of some godforsaken moors. All your life (you’re, say, 14?), you’ve been their victim, monkeyboy, slave. But you’ve found some kinda animal, say, and you want to look after it in secret.
Corny as hell, but it’ll do for our scenario.
So. You have to make several regular runs to the captive (maybe recovering) animal, bring it food, company, allowing it to exercise. This means that there’s a higher chance of talking to those family members who you normally do your best to avoid. In fact, you may be forced to ask them for jobs which allow you to secure a hiding place for the animal, food for the animal, yadda yadda.
Now you’re talking to the eldest brother, a man torn between his ambitions for the land the house is built on, his desire to escape and his need to remain head of the family (giving him rights to the land), now that his father is comatose. He also displays a level of cruelty approaching or surpassing his father’s in order to appease his mother.
Your character is TERRIFIED of him.
But you need to get access to the grain shed in order to secure food for your pet.
So maybe you perform a mini-game or something to increase your temporary level of courage (maybe steal some of your brother’s whiskey). Before this courage marker dips below a certain level, you find the eldest and run up to him and the conversation starts.
Maybe something like Tempest opens towards the bottom of the screen, where rather than the 2D system of MCL, you have a slight perspective on the oncoming conversation tokens. For art style of the mini-game, think 2D Boy or The Path.
Tokens might include a representation of the father (so important in the boy’s life, but dangerous to mention in front of the eldest brother), the need for a friend (shows weakness), a willingness to take responsibility (positive for the eldest, means he can concentrate on his effort to leave the farm), the urge to perform a nervous action that brings you comfort but annoys your brother…
It’s like the old “don’t think about pink elephants” chestnut. Sometimes if you’re worried about or have a strong emotion attached to a topic it becomes somewhat to push those thoughts away or distract yourself. Interestingly, it’s also rather difficult to think ONLY of pink elephants for a minute straight.
And the more angry you make the brother, the fast the game becomes, the harder it gets to dodge uncomfortable topics…
Y’dig, m’man? =)
I hope that helps. I don’t think the MCL system is any kinda panacea, but I think it’s a useful tool for handling specific circumstances.
If you can reconcile yourself to some of my ravings, then let us shake hands as brothers in design and part the ways for some time. If nobody minds, I’m going to go back to lurking. Obviously, responding to something like this takes some time. Been fun, though.
Sorry if the above is horribly disorganised. There’s no way for me to edit it if I’ve made mistakes… =)
By the way — “Story elements in Beyond Good and Evil were shit.” Can I make that my sig, somehow? Actually, I should just get the tattoo. In fact, I should graft more skin onto my body so that sentence can be ten feet high, protruding from my forehead at all times.
Anyhow. Byee.
24/03/2009 at 09:32 Bassem B. says:
Love For Sail was one of the very best games I’ve ever played. I wish the whole Leisure Suit Larry franchise ended there. I saw a friend play Magna Cum Laude and it was a step way down – not to mention it saddened me to see it was done in 3D. Just like Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword and The Longest Journey ended up doing. Does it HAVE to be 3D?
25/03/2009 at 10:33 C0nt1nu1ty says:
I would say it looks like it will both suck and blow but that would be bringing myself down to there level.
I never played the old larry games but people have fond memories so they must be ok. This, this is not in any way ok, seriously if they start with the dialoge in porn i turn the sound off, why would i want a whole game of just that.
Sex in video games is about to take another massive stumble, bring on another mass effect please for the safety of our souls
04/04/2009 at 00:50 Aiden says:
I already play it, the Box Office Bust. It’s GTA-like, no nudity (if you dying for it, just wait the fan-made nude mods, LoL), looks good at the first impression. But honestly, if you want to play a good adventure game with hilarious dialogue, why don’t you try Ceville!