Harry Potter 9 votes (19%)
Planet of the Apes 8 votes (17%)
Star Wars 7 votes (14%)
Lord of the Rings 6 votes (12%)
Toy Story 6 votes (12%)
The Godfather 5 votes (10%)
Pirates of the Caribbean 3 votes (6%)
The Chronicles of Narnia 1 vote (2%)
X-Men 1 vote (2%)
I kind of assumed that it would be a battle between Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and while they were both very much in the running, it was Harry Potter that took the title. My first thought was that perhaps the readers of The Adventure Gamer are younger than I thought, but after realising that’s not really relevant (I’m a fan of the series after all and I’m 34), I came to the conclusion that the Harry Potter series would actually lend itself to the adventure genre extremely well indeed. It has its fair share of action, but the majority of the storyline is driven along by mystery, which the heroes work through using logic and investigatory techniques rather than brute force or physical prowess. I can very easily imagine a Day of the Tentacle style game where the player needs to use all three characters’ talents to progress. The world that J.K. Rowling created would give a developer endless gadgets, spells, characters and lore to pull from too!
Interestingly, a lot of the Harry Potter games look like adventures but are labelled action. Has anyone played one?
What was even more surprising though was Planet of the Apes coming in second. It was the last series I added to the list and I wondered whether anyone would choose it, but eight people clearly think it could work. As for me, well I’m just a sucker for anything Lord of the Rings related, and I’d love the chance to play an adventure game in Middle Earth, even if it was just to experience the environments and characters brought to life in that format. One can dream!
If you haven't seen Rise of the Planet of the Apes yet, I highly recommend it!
This week’s question is less fun I’m afraid, but it’s something I wanted to ask you all to make sure I’ve got a good feel for what you want The Adventure Gamer to be like into the future. I started thinking about it after my Shadowgate – Demon of the Fall post, which was very long and detailed. I pretty much described everything that happened during my ninety minute session along with all the thought processes I went through on the way. This is in stark contrast to how my early posts were which didn’t go into much detail at all, and were much more focussed on game mechanics than puzzles and story. So...what do you guys enjoy? Long and detailed, short and to the point, or somewhere in between? I’d love to hear any feedback anyone might have in the comments of this post too (or sent to my email).
Hopefully I’ll have the next Shadowgate post up tomorrow. I haven’t had much time to play in the last couple of days.
50% off all the Zork games this weekend on GOG.
ReplyDeleteMore detail is fine as long as your posts can be finished in, say, a 15 minute window such as I have between chores/errands/classes/jobs/etc.
ReplyDeleteMore detail is fine. I would be thankful though for a visible distinction between walkthrough/spoiler part and your comments on the game.
ReplyDeleteI also wondered about this. Speaking strictly from the POV of someone that intends to play along whenever possible, posts that go down to the puzzle level present a problem because of spoilers. While I have the option of entirely ignoring those detailed postings, the more general ones allowed me to just take a peek to see where you were generally at.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm also a fan of extensive & detailed adventuring AARs (the genre is oriented to the solitary experience, but much fun comes from sharing frustrating or a-ha! moments with fellow adventurers). Since I don't think there's many of us playing along, my vote goes for the "balanced" approach.
I don't know if I am the only one with this request, but I would really appreciate it if you could insert even more screenshots in your posts (twice as much?). Especially for games that I have not player myself, it would make your posts even more enjoyable for me!
ReplyDeleteRegarding the length of your posts: I really like your style, so... the more the better!
Seconding the request for more screenshots -- I enjoy detailed posts, but when it comes to games I haven't played/seen before, it can be very hard to make sense of them or envision what's going on. An image when there's a major change of scene would be very helpful, as would one at the beginning of each post to jog the memory for those of us following a few different retro-gaming blogs.
DeleteYou're the artist, you should be the one deciding if you want to write a lot or not. I can appreciate both.
ReplyDeleteThe Harry Potter games are action games because they include real-time spell casting and platforming. I've been going back and forth about this in my own postings. While there may be those intending to play the games, I seem to have more that have either already played them or don't ever plan to; in those cases they seem to appreciate as much detail as possible. When reading your blog, I fall into this latter category and enjoy more detail.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, the YouTube show, All Your History Are Belong To Us, had an episode on Adventure Games. I haven't watched it yet, but I know it is Part 1 of a series: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEQLcSvjLbA
ReplyDeleteI was the one with the X-Men vote. *blushes and hides behind a stack of comic books*
I've never played a Harry Potter game, as I've heard that they suck royal. Maybe the reviewers were not Potter fans, and the level of enjoyment rises if you are a fan. I'm a Potter fan too, just a bigger X-Men fan. *hides again*
Rise of the Planet of the Apes was a great movie! I was pleasantly surprised, as I've never liked the old films. Something about apes speaking with a British accent always threw me.
I'm voting "more is better." (Of course, I'll click the survey too!) I like hearing about the games' eccentric and/or interesting details. Especially with a game like Shadowgate.
I played the first three Harry Potter games as a kid and enjoyed them. Don't remember much now except some difficult stealth missions (like avoiding Filch while sneaking Norbert the baby dragon up to the Astronomy tower) and the games putting great pressure on me and my siblings to 100% them, which was remarkably difficult and I think that's why we never bought the fourth one.
DeleteOn the PC at least, from the fourth game onwards the games were completely different in design and style, possibly due to being made a sifferent company or something. Shame as I would've liked to see the games continuously evolve instead of being suddenly revamped. :-(
DeleteLONG and Detailed. That way we can relive them with you.
ReplyDeleteI'd suggest continuing as you are, unless there's more interesting stuff you want to say.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really reading this for a complete LP of the games, just to re-live some old memories and find out about games I missed.
Do I really need to say how I voted? ;)
ReplyDeleteI voted in favor of a balance... Details can be fun, but I've seen bloggers take that approach without describing much of anything so that their posts started looking like they belonged on a bullet list. My vote would be "whatever you find the most enjoyable at the time so you don't burn out."
ReplyDeletePersonally, as someone that's barely proficient at games, I also wouldn't mind if you made mini-posts (or even rants) sharing whatever unpleasant, frustrated, snarky, etc. thoughts are going through your head when the game isn't going well.
I put Planet, but only because I didn't think the other franchises would be best captured by the adventure genre.
ReplyDeleteI fully expected to be the only one, hahaha.
Balance, for the most part. I really like the detailed introductory posts for the games, but I'm afraid to read some of the gameplay posts incase they get spoiler heavy.
ReplyDelete