Telltale Games take on Back to the Future and Jurassic Park

CrisGer · Post by **CrisGer** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 7:21 am

Sam and Max are part of a special niche genre and do just fine however Telltale does them in my humble opinion. I always enjoy them..and other games in a similar vein. The episode approach is necessary for the bottom line of development for some even larger companies, the 13 episodes to continue The Longest Journey Dreamfall are necessary because there were thousands of pirated copies of Dreamfall all over the place in the first week of release and FunCom cant afford to press a high quality set of release disks just to have em ripped off. I too like and prefer full length games but new approaches are necessary for now, maybe in time once the marketeers get tired of diluting the game sales market with repeat zombie and Dystopia shooters full of blood and gore we can have a balanced and profitble game industry again that also supports quality and good writing.

I remain hopeful. But Telltale is a bit light handed with some of their releases...but i still do also like Sam and Max and have ever since the first release by LucasArts. BTW, LucasArts is not struggling, they dont have to struggle. They have some of the best and most valuable IP in the biz and they are considering seriously some new adventures...and I am very hopeful about that. And excited.

KuroShiro · Post by **KuroShiro** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 8:05 am

CrisGer wrote:They have some of the best and most valuable IP in the biz and they are considering seriously some new adventures...and I am very hopeful about that. And excited.

I would only be excited if they went and hired some designers who actually know something about making adventure games. Of course, most of those people are either retired, or too jaded with the games industry in general to come back.

grim107 · Post by **grim107** » Wed Jun 23, 2010 5:16 pm

I honestly don't think it's fair to judge the new Sam and Max games if you've never played the first. I played the first and had to witness the original second game being canceled. Even with my hatred of Telltale, I'm bold enough to say that if I never experienced the original, I'd probably enjoy these games. It's just that the new Sam and Max games don't even come close to living up to the originals.

It's a common fact that LucasArts hasn't been doing so well lately. Two years ago, they had massive layoffs. It's true that a lot can happen in two years, but you nevertheless have to take that into account. Darrell Rodriguez just left the company after only a year. To be honest, he was possibly the only chance we had to see new adventure games from LucasArts. He said in interviews that he was a big fan of the adventure gaming genre.

Looking on Google News, I pulled off this headline that was only posted on June 9. "LucasArts names new president to run struggling game division." If you go onto Google and type in Paul Meegan (the new president) and click on the first link, you'll find a very short biography. It says that in the past, he's worked on several Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, and Rainbow Six games. None of those sound like adventure to me. The closest is Prince of Persia, and even that misses the genre by a mile. If you go to mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,54496/, you'll find a whole list of games he's created. A good amount of them have "war" in the title. Most of the others are commonly known fps games.

I will be amazed (if and) when LucasArts announces a completely new adventure game. However, they have no one working there that used to be part of LucasArts when they actually made adventure games. It's a very different company. I'd buy one a game and give it a shot. If it miraculously turned out to be good, I'd buy others.

From what I read in a lot of posts, even many of the Star Wars fans are starting to be dissatisfied with LucasArts' new games.

Until the day that a real company comes out with a reasonable adventure game, I'm going to have to rely on the fan community to make their own. I'm eagerly awaiting:

"Indiana Jones and the Fountain of Youth"
"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade 2"
"Indiana Jones and the Seven Cities of Gold"
"Indiana Jones and the Shaded of Odysseus"
"Forge" (sequel to Loom)
as well as another Forge project that Brian Moriarty (creator of Loom) is working on himself.

rock_chick · Post by **rock_chick** » Thu Jun 24, 2010 4:45 pm

CrisGer wrote: the 13 episodes to continue The Longest Journey Dreamfall are necessary

What are you talking about? As far as I'm currently aware it was released as a full game but I didn't look into how it was originally released.

grim107 wrote:Until the day that a real company comes out with a reasonable adventure game, I'm going to have to rely on the fan community to make their own.

What is your idea of a reasonable game? I am a fan of The Adventure Company games, they release long enough and well made games(not that I'm into all of their games but you get the point) and of course there are other such companies(albeit many with less titles under their belt) but I'm too tired to list them now.

However I do agree that a person with little to no experience in adventure gaming and mostly other game genres being heavily involved in a company designed for making adventure games makes little sense!

grim107 · Post by **grim107** » Thu Jun 24, 2010 5:15 pm

rock_chick wrote: What is your idea of a reasonable game? I am a fan of The Adventure Company games, they release long enough and well made games(not that I'm into all of their games but you get the point) and of course there are other such companies(albeit many with less titles under their belt) but I'm too tired to list them now.

I can give a list off the top of my head.

Any LucasArts/LucasFilm adventure
Most Sierra adventures
Discworld Series
Simon the Sorcerer series
Beneath a Steel Sky
Titanic: Adventure out of Time (and probably most other Cyberflix games)
Anything from Delphine software's original adventure lineup.

(Frankly, while it's not completely adventure oriented, I don't think that Another World should have been pulled from the supported games)

Broken Sword series
Legend of Kyrandia series

DeTard · Post by **DeTard** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 1:55 am

Honestly, I have been a fairly big fan of TTG ever since the first Sam and Max season, and I've never thought of their humor as being bad. But then again, they do use some of the original writers. I would say that on the first season, the voice-overs were painful, but it was the recording equipment that was the problem there for me.

I know not everyone will be a fan of episodic content, but TTG does episodic correctly (hey Valve, LOOK HERE), and that's by actually releasing on a schedule. While they aren't perfect, they do many things right, including making sure they contract with original writers and voice-over actors where possible. The controls took me a while to get used to after W&G, and they were further changed for TOMI, but I've noticed something - from someone that has problems with carpal tunnel syndrome, I barely ever have to move my hand around to control. So while I hated it at first, I thank TTG now.

I know that TTG doesn't need someone to defend them, they've very clearly grown in size as a result of very successful game releases, but what I'm trying to say is not everyone hates them. If you just look at Steam, there are lots of companies out there that are making adventure games, and most of them are just horrible. And maybe I'm just biased because TTG was what brought Sam and Max back after LucasArts canceled their game (along with Full Throttle 2

).

MapleSyrup · Post by **MapleSyrup** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 1:59 am

In my opinion Sam & Max Beyond Time and Space (Season Two) is much better than Hit the Road. It has better puzzles, better voice acting (the new Sam & Max actors really started to get in role here. They pull off way more emotion than the Hit the Road voices ever did - although to be fair, they also had 6 games before this one to get it right), and a much broader range of music than Hit the Road. It also has a much more coherent story between the chapters than Season One did. It feels a lot more like one game spread out in five chapters than the first season, whose final chapter didn't really feel like the whole season was building towards it.

Honestly, if you haven't played Season Two yet, try it even if you hated Season One. I really do believe that collectively it's the best Sam & Max game made to date (although Season Three is really good so far, so that might top it).

DeTard · Post by **DeTard** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 2:03 am

rock_chick wrote:
CrisGer wrote: the 13 episodes to continue The Longest Journey Dreamfall are necessary
What are you talking about? As far as I'm currently aware it was released as a full game but I didn't look into how it was originally released.

Dreamfall itself came out as one full game, and Ragnar Tornquist knows where he wants the story to go, but it's simply a funding issue at this point. Dreamfall had poor reviews and then was highly pirated at the same time. It was a fairly dismal happening for anyone as incredibly into the story as me and thousands of other fans are. He believes that episodic releases are the only way possible at this point.

DeTard · Post by **DeTard** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 2:12 am

MapleSyrup wrote:Honestly, if you haven't played Season Two yet, try it even if you hated Season One. I really do believe that collectively it's the best Sam & Max game made to date (although Season Three is really good so far, so that might top it).

Totally agree. While I love Hit the Road, Season 2 tops it in pretty much every way. Yes, still episodic, but also yes amazingly well put together.

rock_chick · Post by **rock_chick** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 7:20 am

grim107 wrote: I can give a list off the top of my head.

Any LucasArts/LucasFilm adventure
Most Sierra adventures
Discworld Series
Simon the Sorcerer series
Beneath a Steel Sky
Titanic: Adventure out of Time (and probably most other Cyberflix games)
Anything from Delphine software's original adventure lineup.

(Frankly, while it's not completely adventure oriented, I don't think that Another World should have been pulled from the supported games)

Broken Sword series
Legend of Kyrandia series

That's not quite what I meant. I meant what is your idea of what makes a good game. However I see that the games you mentioned are relatively old, not that that's a bad thing, I'm into newer and older games myself but what about more modern games? As technology changes so will the ways game are.

bobdevis · Post by **bobdevis** » Fri Jun 25, 2010 4:37 pm

Going a bit OT here, but this is an interesting statement IMHO.

rock_chick wrote: As technology changes so will the ways game are.

I don't think it changes that much. Newer tech allows bigger, better looking gamewords and combining different game genres, but doesn't really change what people like.

For example, the new "Assassin's Creed II" can be quite accurately described as a (very well made) blend of the old 2D classics "GTA", "Prince of Persia" and "Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines".

What changed is is games went more mainstream as more people have computers, so there are more "mindless action" games made, although there are enough old arcade style shoot-everything-that-moves games as well.

rock_chick · Post by **rock_chick** » Sat Jun 26, 2010 9:43 am

bobdevis wrote:Going a bit OT here, but this is an interesting statement IMHO.
rock_chick wrote: As technology changes so will the ways game are.
I don't think it changes that much. Newer tech allows bigger, better looking gamewords and combining different game genres, but doesn't really change what people like.

For example, the new "Assassin's Creed II" can be quite accurately described as a (very well made) blend of the old 2D classics "GTA", "Prince of Persia" and "Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines".

What changed is is games went more mainstream as more people have computers, so there are more "mindless action" games made, although there are enough old arcade style shoot-everything-that-moves games as well.

I was a bit too ambiguous with that statement. I was more talking about graphics mostly(since the games that I was commenting on are rather old). Of course the basics of point and click and such are still very much around and whether a game chooses how much of these they use in an adventure games these days is little to do with technology and more with other factors. I prefer these types to adventure/action hybrids.

Addressing your other comment about adventure games not being as popular as they once were, well there's various other factors. I'm a female and not trying to be sexist but the gaming industry is still tailored more towards male gamers and therefore the increased interest in games that appeal to them. However that's not to say that all men aren't into adventure games or that all females aren't into things like shooting games but rather the developers and publishers see an increased interested in non adventure games. I find this very disappointing.

MapleSyrup · Post by **MapleSyrup** » Sat Jun 26, 2010 11:12 am

rock_chick wrote:I'm a female and not trying to be sexist but the gaming industry is still tailored more towards male gamers and therefore the increased interest in games that appeal to them. However that's not to say that all men aren't into adventure games or that all females aren't into things like shooting games but rather the developers and publishers see an increased interested in non adventure games. I find this very disappointing.

I'm a female too, and there is no denying the video game industry is male-centric. But, I don't think that's really the reason why adventure games are less popular, since the industry has always been male-centric.

I think it has more to do with the shifting of demographics from the 30+ age range on computers to the 18-25 age range on consoles.

I do agree though that most females are not into violent games. There are definitely a lot of female adventure gamers out there. Maybe even more than any other genre.

rock_chick · Post by **rock_chick** » Mon Jun 28, 2010 12:43 pm

DeTard wrote:Dreamfall itself came out as one full game, and Ragnar Tornquist knows where he wants the story to go, but it's simply a funding issue at this point. Dreamfall had poor reviews and then was highly pirated at the same time. It was a fairly dismal happening for anyone as incredibly into the story as me and thousands of other fans are. He believes that episodic releases are the only way possible at this point.

In by my opinion what a lot of rubbish, not what you said but their take on the decision to release the 3rd game in the series through episodes. If you ask me the reason the second game didn't do as well is because it simply wasn't made as well as the first. Introducing a action part was not such a good idea and from what I've heard not even well implemented! A game like that should be a straight out game, all in one. As for piracy, whether it's released via a full release or episodes it'll still make little difference. The latter will probably get pirated just as easily and quickly. The first game was released in a time when game piracy was rarer and harder to make work, mainly via the online way anyway.

grim107 · Post by **grim107** » Mon Jun 28, 2010 4:48 pm

I think that the overall simple answer to the issue of modern day gamers not liking adventure games is simple. Adventure games really require you to think and they are not action packed. What people are looking for in their games is a lot of action.

Another key note is graphics. I'm sad to say this, but I know someone who is convinced that graphics matter more to a game than storyline and gameplay. Also, more recently, it seems that some game designers are starting to focus exclusively on multi-player aspects of games, while skimping on the story modes.

I personally am a 15 year old male. I don't like any fps games. With the exception of the Half-Life series, I think that the genre is a waste of time. When people are playing these games, they are oblivious to the obvious; the fact that they are aimlessly running around and shooting. There is nothing more to these games.