Adventure games have been with us from decades ago. It is hard to believe how far the genre has survived since the old Sierra days. Adventure games had primarily been a story-focused affair with players being inundated with more developed graphics, videos, puzzles and a complex story. At first, I was at ease with this kind of trend. How much more game play can you really add to games of this ilk? Most of these games were laid-back gaming affairs, choosing to let the player play at his own pace and at the same time throwing strange and often frustrating puzzles as an indication of levels of difficulties. While at the time, I thought it was fine, my interest in them started to diminish.
My problem was primarily in that there's no real form of immersion. The pretty screens can only go so far, and the kind of game play involved harkened back to the early 90s. My thoughts about these games started to shift in that this can no longer be the same kleptomaniac style play of picking up all you can pick up and sticking the square plug on a circular hole till it fits. It's a shame that the gameplay has gone stale since then, opting to give you video cutscenes which in my opinion, isn't really a bad idea. But it cannot be the be-all-end-all of the game contents. Videos are good ways of pushing the story forward, but it surely does not make the game any more interactive.
I think adventure games need to have a higher level of interactivity, and a lesser level on throwing puzzles for the sake of it, and hinging your game success on videos. Games are interactive form of entertainment, and adventure games tend to have the least amount of them.
In recent memory, I remember two adventure games that have given me that kind of satisfaction and reinforces the thoughts for me. The first is Indigo Prophecy.
Atari and Quantic Dreams created a stellar of a game that dwelled on a great plot, as well as keeping a good flavour of adventure in it. It had a more engaging element to the way you played it and it certainly was all I had hoped for. It certainly was not a laid-back type of adventure game, which I believe lead to it being a hit or miss title for adventure gamers, but it gave a new level of interactivity to it, even though the ideas used aren't very original. Though the PC port had a bit more questionable controls layout, over all, it did not become a detriment in my enjoyment. That Quantic Dreams had focused on creating a game that gave players more to do than just picking up items and solving puzzles had earned them some respect in my books.
The second is Hotel Dusk: Room 215 on the DS. From the first screenshot and the catchy title, I had already marked the title as a must buy. Hotel Dusk though dwells a little bit more in the traditional adventure sense, but creates a satisfying dialog system that you don't mind talking to these well-written characters. It had created a good sense of immersion in the game. Unlike other adventure games were the dialogs only drop clues on what to do next, Hotel Dusk makes the dialog system part of its focal point in the game. The dialog choices have consequences, and it gives the player that bit more thought and interaction with the game. Even though Hotel Dusk follows adventure games a bit more in the traditional sense, it knows its strengths and focuses on that to give players a more engaging experience.
After playing these two titles, I am convinced that the genre can thrive, but developers have to try and put more thought and effort to the products they do. In my opinion, the traditional sense of adventure games is purely pre-historic. The genre has to evolve into something much more than the conventional sense. And I think it mainly involves a clever way of interactivity.
