Old Adventure Game No Longer Thrills

[Azel]

Last night I was thinking about many of the older adventure games I loved to play so I pulled out Myst III Exile (a Myst sequel), loaded it and started playing it. What a difference 10 years make. The old thrill was not there. The screen images seemed so static and dead.

I visit Second Life almost every night and the SIMs are full of movement. Flowers, trees, water, rain, fog, fire; everything is moving. In Exile a few things moved, but not many. The overall screen had the feeling of a slide show. I could look in any direction (node), but that did not help the overall feeling much that this was a static world.

I closed the Exile game down with a feeling of great loss. I don’t know if I’ll continue playing it or not. I remember how ‘real’ the environment felt to me the first time I played the game back in 2001. Now, nothing.

I wonder how many of you have had this happen?

Azel

[Erwin_Br]

Yes, I've had similar experiences. In my case it's often the 3D games that don't age well in my perception. It's the low-res 2D games that stick with me the best. Probably because my brain fills in the little details, just as it did 20 years ago.

I've also had a reverse experience, by the way. I recently played Sam and Max: Hit the Road (1993) again, and came to the conclusion that the writing was so much better (sharper) than its modern sequels.

[ad7venture]

I haven't replayed any of the old Myst games.  I don't have them anymore.  I replayed Broken Sword 1 recently and it was as good as I remembered.  I don't think having a lot of things moving really improves the game that much, myself.  For me, it's the writing and the puzzles.  Games that put me off are the old 3d games because there was such low texture quality and few objects in the game back then compared to now.  For whatever reason, adventure games seem to work better when the scenes are cluttered.  I guess because it gives more of an unexplored feeling.

[Igor Hardy]

I never felt like that. I still feel like the world around me is alive even in text (sic!) adventures.

@Erwin Funny thing, but I had a similar experience last year, only with the new Sam&Max seasons. Previously I couldn't really play them - they felt so dull, with constantly reused locations, characters, graphics. The stories seemed built on "ad hoc" ideas and the humor didn't seem that good despite huge amounts of dialog. The terrible lighting in season 1 was also a major turn off. But I finally got into them, played through them all, and while they are different and not as strong as Hit the Road I found out there's an art to how they are made as well. I really underestimated the heart, creativity and humor that went into them.

[Azel]

I will have to say that Syberia and The Longest Journey still give me the enjoyment I got when I first played them, where-as Exile does not.

Azel

[Agustin]

I think games like Exile relied too much on their environments and visuals to be successful, whereas story-based games did not. Like Erwin said, you can load Sam & Max anywhere, anytime in your life and you'll always get a kick out of it. Same goes for Broken Sword, Gabriel Knight, Tex Murphy and many text adventures that have proven to be timeless games.

[nigec]

I just got the revamp version of American McGees Alice and I still find it fun to play, Syberia is timeless (apart from the over use of the name "Miss Walker" that got annoying after 5 minutes the first time!)
Its good to see games like Aice, Scratches, MI etc getting update for newer OS's

[Trumgottist]

Yes, it is interesting how many things influence what we think of a game.