Written by The TAG Team
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| What happens if I put playing cards into the spokes? |
Back when the blog became a collaborative team effort, we started posing questions to you, the readers. If you don’t remember about this, that’s understandable. It’s been a little bit longer than we anticipated since our last post.
But we’re back, and plan to make this a regular feature of the blog once again. And we’d like to start the conversation with one of the most polarizing additions to adventure games: the arcade sequence.
They started creeping into our genre back when computers weren’t quite so powerful, so maybe they weren’t as challenging. Or were they? No mice, instead just clunky keyboards that went click-click-click.
So many questions:
Did they add any value to the adventure games?
Would the games be as fun or as well revered without them?
Are they better or worse than gambling sequences?
What were some good arcade sequences?
Are there any games that could benefit from having them added?
Or, what other thoughts do you have?
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| Some arcade sequences seem to, ahem, DRIVE gamers crazy. |
I enjoy them in general, Im an all terrain gamer so I like when genres mix a little, like playing a platformer and suddenly having some adventure like puzzle. But like every other mechanic, it's easy to get bored of it by repetition.
ReplyDeleteI think most adventure games that inserted arcade sequences, forced the engines in ways so unorthodox that either the controls, or the recurrence of them are just a chore. Like, a fun original arcade sequence (that you can skip if you really want), that lasts 2 to 3 minutes, that's amazing. Having the same, repeated multiple times because the developers wanted to maximize its use .. that's a no no.
An example of one arcadey sequence, with no risk of death but that it's a complete wreck, it's the balloon and specially the submarine sequences in Fate of Atlantis, my favorite game ever. The controls are completely unintuitive, no tutorials, you are just thrown into it and you have to guess what where they thinking.
The Full Throttle ones were fun back in the day, but nowadays, again, confusing. Not clear objectives, that mine road is just a puzzle of random weapons or items to beat bikers. And the demolition derby with the Death Rally graphics, but horrible UI .. and that weird solution with the ramp, seems more like a bug than the real intended solution, but there it is.
Casino ones, I dont like them at all, worst aspect of Larry 1, and 7 as well for me.
There's others like the shootouts in Gemini Rue, which are very arcadey. I think the full game has 7 of them, it's fine. Not super hard, and it makes sense ingame, they are not just forced into the game.
In the end, I think it's easier to screw up with this sequences than adding value to a game. Im trying to think of great examples, but honestly I can't remember any right now
Also, yeee me, longer comment than actual post lol
DeleteCasino ones, I dont like them at all, worst aspect of Larry 1, and 7 as well for me.
DeleteI'd argue that in LSL1, it was okay, because it was the setting -- Lost Wages (Las Vegas). LSL7, at least they kept it a little interesting with showing some leg, but yeah, it was annoying. The way they handled it in LSL5 might have been the best. If you went broke, there was a way for you to get some more money to gamble again, every time.
Staying with Sierra as an example, LSL3 was perfect: not too difficult, but also, you could skip it and just lose a few points, but have no impact on finishing the game.
I generally hate arcade sequences in adventure games, because sometimes even with difficulty turned all the way down I may find them very hard and can get stuck. It seems like an unnecessary roadblock in the story.
ReplyDeleteI'm less bothered by gambling because at least that doesn't require me to have quick reaction time and precise clicking/keyboarding. And every one I can think of that I've played didn't block save-scumming, so at least there's that. So generally I would say gambling is "better" than arcade, but it can still kinda feel like "come ON, let me just get on with the puzzles/story".
My problem with arcade sections is that they are rarely done well. Coding arcade gameplay is difficult, and engines like SCI and Scumm just aren't optimized for responsive controls or precise collision detection. This is honestly a much bigger problem than action sequences just coming out of nowhere.
ReplyDeleteGood ones:
Full Throttle - Mine Road. It's not the most fluidly controlled fighting, but it's okay - the fighting is easy, and looks cool. And it's secretly a puzzle!
Space Quest IV - Ms. Astro Chicken. Weirdly fun, and completely optional.
Cyberia - the entire rail shooter midgame.
King's Quest III - mountain climbing near the end. Yes, it's frustrating, but for me, the actual sense of danger, something rare in adventures, is worth it. And it isn't as bad as climbing the beanstalk in KQ1.
Quest for Glory - fighting, in the entire series, but especially II and IV. But not QFGV, where the fighting is pretty crap.
Alone in the Dark - fighting. It's awkward, sure, but it's meant to be.
Bad ones:
Full Throttle - Demolition Derby.
Space Quest - Desert Skimmer. This would be fine if it controlled okay, but it doesn't. VGA remake version is less bad, but it's still bad.
Space Quest IV - Skate-O-Rama. Aaaargh!
Space Quest IV - Skate-O-Rama. Aaaargh!
DeleteAmen.
Space Quest - Desert Skimmer. This would be fine if it controlled okay, but it doesn't. VGA remake version is less bad, but it's still bad.
If I recall, you can skip it, at least in the VGA version, so that makes it a lot better to me.
Let me add to the bad list: KQ4, the whale's tongue.
They can be good, I guess. I enjoyed the space battles in Star Trek: 25th Anniversary, except for the last one which I found to be way too hard. (I was very happy when I saw that Judgment Rites added a difficulty setting.) They fit with the game, and felt like they were made to be fun to play.
DeleteBut often they're not. It's been ages since I played them, but I remember the arcade sequences in Future Wars and Operation Stealth to be uniformly horrible.
And sometimes they're a mixed bag. I don't want to spoil anything about Border Zone because it hasn't been played here yet, but one gimmick of the game is that time passes even when you're not typing anything. In some parts of it, I think this works beautifully and adds a lot of tension. In others, I think it's just annoying.
As for gambling sequences, I can't remember any off-hand that I found actually enjoyable. The slot machine in Space Quest 1 was just awful. At least in the original version, the VGA version added a puzzle to let you cheat at it.
I died so many times on Skate-O-Rama, as much as I like the Space Quest games the arcade bits are often the low points. Skate-o-rama in particular I think had some issues if you used DosBox or something, I seem to remember it being more difficult if the game speed wasn't right? If your settings weren't correct the Sequel Police were like elite snipers.
DeleteI would say that Space Quest 3 does OK tho with the spaceship shooter section but less so with the robot fight which can be tricky (for me anyway I'm terrible at arcade sections).
Now of course I have the Astrochicken theme song in my head!
@Torbjorn, I would say something like Border Zone is different to something like an action mini-game. Whereas a competent developer can make action work, I can't say anyone has made something like Border Zone or The Hobbit not crappy to play.
Delete@Andy_Panthro it wasn't just a problem in modern times. It was a problem back in the vintage days as well. If I remember correctly, the Skate-o-Rama caused so many phone calls and complaints to Sierra, that in some reprintings of the game, they included a hint or solution in the box. Sierra wasn't very fond of doing that; probably the last time they did it was for "The Wizard and the Princess".
DeleteIt was a problem even at the time, yes (IIRC there was something about the CD version vs. the floppy version that was an issue?); but faster computers make it worse, to the point of being impossible. The perils of tying some script timing directly to CPU ticks and not to some abstraction of them...
DeleteRunning the thing in DOSBox today, yeah, if you let it run at "max" you're basically going to recreate the problem that the emulated CPU is way faster than the game could dream of, and need to manually throttle it. So not a DOSBox problem as such, just one of settings.
@MoroheusKitami The second chapter of Border Zone is where I think real time shone. In the first chapter it was just there, and in the third it was more of an annoyance.
DeleteMaybe the difference was that in the second chapter, while there are parts where you have a limited time to achieve something, I never ran out of time for the chapter as a whole. I don't even know if you can.
@Torbjorn, perhaps it's something you don't have an issue with when it isn't something you hit on the first play. Real-time is something you only really notice when it's working against you rather than just being told it's there.
DeleteI'm reminded of the time limit in LSL1 AGI. Most people never learn about it.
DeleteI think it's a pretty generous time limit given the limited game area and possible actions. I've only seen it in videos because I've never had the patience to make it happen "organically" by waiting out the clock.
DeleteI'm torn about it, too. It's a rather detailed game over screen for an early Sierra game, but something we wouldn't joke about anymore with our modern sensibilities.
DeleteThe thing about arcade sequences in arcade games is that if we wanted to be playing twitch reflex games, we probably would be doing so. Nothing is as frustrating as knowing how a puzzle needs to be undone and finding yourself unable to physically make it happen, due to a lack of coordination or timing. I'm looking at you, boar hunt in Conquests of Camelot. I'm looking at you, whale-tongue climbing in King's Quest 4. I'm looking at ... well, there are a lot of these. Sometimes they're clever, usually they're not. At the time, I would have considered them filler to pad a game's playtime in an attempt to justify a higher price tag.
ReplyDelete(Combat in Quest for Glory is excepted. They did a good job and it was fair, overall.)
@Rowan Yeah, all of this. The KQ4 tongue is bad, but at least once you've learned the trick/pattern, it only takes careful slow execution. Whereas the boars in Camelot take timing even on the supposedly easiest level. That's one of the places I've sometimes gotten stuck with no way to proceed for a frustrating amount of time. At least in Conquests of the Longbow they let you entirely get out of such things, although it still feels like a bit of an insult in an adventure game for them to dock score points for "you weren't also good in this totally other genre". I would rather go the LucasArts way of eschewing a score entirely, and then if you knew you had passed some skill test, well, you'd just know that you had.
Deleteearly king's quest games you had to sometimes avoid enemies, and the worst part to me (playing them as a kid) was them not pausing while you typed, making certain sections action-like! I recall the dracula section in KQ2 being difficult for me as a kid. Taught me to type quickly though I suppose!
DeleteReplays of PQ1 got me real fast at typing things like "stop" and "hands up" for when you pull over Hoffman.
DeleteI think we did a good job with Mage's Maze in Hero's Quest (Quest for Glory 1). It's a slow-moving arcade game in which you need to encourage your blob to move, rather than being able to move it directly. It also ties into game play in that your spell skill and available mana points come into play. Maybe too hard initially, but with no negative consequences.
DeleteI think so too, of course, in a game like QFG you expect more of that than other games, being a hybrid.
DeleteBut you make an important point -- it needs to fit in. That's why I stand up for the gambling in LSL1, for example. It fits for a game set in Las Vegas.
When I played them in the „old times“, I usually hated them and tried to cheqt myself through them. However, over the years my taste has changed and I have become to enjoy many sequences for the sake of immersion and originality. After all, it is a feat to program an action sequ/mini game in an engine that wasn’t even remotely designed for it.
ReplyDeleteThus, I now actually like the fighting in Indy III & IV - maybe even more in III. They feel also very much „in charge“ when I think of the movies and the gameplay is actually quite clever.
Full Throttle was also fun - but this I take from memory and didn’t replay anytime in the last decade or so.
Sam & Max was wacky and fun. The battleships was awesome (even though these are not action games, but just mini games).
Manhunter - brrrrr. Let’s not talk about them.
Hero‘s Quest/QfG: Well done and essential for the atmosphere of an RPG turned adventure.
Shannara: the fights here are tactical not action. They captured the RPG feel very well, but were not hard enough or of any relevance.
Sam & Max was wacky and fun. The battleships was awesome (even though these are not action games, but just mini games).
DeleteBut thankfully, also not required, except for the whack-a-rat..
Thus, I now actually like the fighting in Indy III & IV - maybe even more in III.
I prefer 4, because there were paths around it. You couldn't avoid fighting 100% in 3, although sometimes you could use the sucker punch. You could play 4 without a single fisticuff.
"You could play 4 without a single fisticuff."
DeleteIf you want to play all of the three paths (and you'd be missing a lot of content if you didn't) then in one of them you have to fight a couple of fights, but those are against very weak opponents who drop with a single punch.
@Michael "You couldn't avoid fighting 100% in 3, although sometimes you could use the sucker punch."
DeleteLast Crusade didn't have the sucker punch, did it? The only unavoidable fight I remember in it is against Biff (the big guy in the castle), and even that is more of a puzzle than a fight.
I think Fate of Atlantis is a much better game, but I'm willing to cut Last Crusade some slack for being an early Lucasfilm adventure. (Loom and Monkey Island 1 is where I think they hit their stride.)
@Torbjörn You're right about the sucker punching, my memory is just failing me. And you could avoid a lot of the fighting by using alternate solutions to many puzzles, but it wasn't as obvious at times. When you were told, it made for a reason to replay, but I suspect some people were just discouraged and didn't bother.
Delete@Michael I've had to play Last Crusade (specifically the Mac version of it) a lot lately for ScummVM testing, so it's fresh in my memory.
DeleteIn fact I've had to play it so much that it's the DOS version that's starting to look strange to me. 😁
I usually don't like when a computer game from a specific genre introduces sequences of another genre; usually these "genre intrusions" are arcade sequences in graphic adventures or RPGs, but sometimes they are RTS, platform or puzzle sequences.
ReplyDeleteMy dislike comes from my opinion that, if I buy a graphic adventure (or an RPG, an FPS or whatever) I expect that game to present me challenges as a graphic adventure, not as some other genre with which I'm not good at all! An example of this would be "Shadow of the Comet", which towards the end forces you to solve an slider puzzle, and that's a type of puzzle which I don't expect to see in a graphic adventure (and also a type of puzzle in which I'm specially bad).
I think I only like "genre intrusions" if they're deliberately easy or optional. I enjoyed to "Road Rash" bike sequences in "Full Throttle", but the colyseum battle was horrible and had to use an "Skip" button which I don't know if it was available in the original version of the game. I also liked the puzzle minigames in RPGs like the "Knights of the Old Republic" and "Mass Effect" series, but, again, these puzzles are very easy and almost always optional.
"Genre Intrusion" is an excellent term for the phenomenon. Hey, who put this Tower of Hanoi into my Zork Zero (or, to my disgust, at the climax of the second Legend of Kyrandia game!)
DeleteMike Snyder's 1991 "Spore" alternates half text adventure, half Arkanoid clone. And Turtle Wax is both a car polish AND a dessert topping!
I hadn't even thought about the whole "times puzzle" issue. You could argue that the first third of KQ3 is just one big arcade game, running up and down the mountain, making sure you don't get caught with magic in your pockets ..
ReplyDeleteBut somehow, I found that more enjoyable than timed turns in a text adventure
oh if we are counting all the climbing precision screens on sierra games, like KQ1, Larry 2, KQ3, KQ4, etc etc etc, then yeah, those suck .. a lot !
DeleteI think he means KQ3 is like arcade because it's dangerous AND it's a timer. You have to run back fast before Mananan notices you're gone or have the ingredients. Kq4 is annoying but thankfully not timed.
DeleteHmmm... I think having an overall time limit is different than an arcade sequence, although it's annoying or stressful in different ways. I think this device worked quite well in KQ3 actually; it really drives home how risky it is for Gwydion/Alexander to do what he is doing.
DeleteAlex's mention of LSL2, I call shenanigans. That's subverted within the game; you can't actually fall and die in that climbing sequence, and they make a visual gag out of it.
Stairs in any KQ game, well... I'll just point out Stair Quest.
Yeah, Anonymous understood me. The mountain in KQ3 feels like arcade to me, because you had to do it safely, and fast, to beat the clock. In KQ1, 2, and 4, various dangerous walks could be solved just by save-scumming.
DeleteWhen I was younger I always thought less of the programmers after a botched minigame. Now I understand that it was a lot to do with the underlying engines. But that doesn't change the nagging feeling with all those minigames, that if I wanted an arcade game I'd much prefer "Xenon 2" than "Terrible controls snails pace spaceship".
ReplyDeleteFor me even when they were good they were kinda crap.
I hate arcade sequences in adventure games. On the other hand, I love puzzles in action-adventure or fps games. The problem with the arcade sequences in adv games is that they are almost always awful. Best example for me: the fight sequences in that superb game that is The Last Express. This also goes for quick time events, I really don´t see what are good for. The player is just a monkey test lab pushing the button prompt by the UI, there is no brain or skill aptitude doing that. On the other hand, the reason I love Half Life 2 (the game that made me play other games that are not adventure games), besides of the incredible fps mechanics, are that the puzzles are very good and made sense in the context of the game. That also applies to Half Life 1 (another excellent game) or the Tomb Raider and Resident Evil series. I believe if those games didn´t had puzzles and were only action oriented I would not like them as i do
ReplyDeleteI hadn't really thought about this, but based on your game choices, I'm guessing I have about 7-10 years on you.
DeleteWhen I was maybe 11, a friend of mine got a couple of new LucasFilm games, Pipe Dreams and the adventure Last Crusade. Neither of us said anything out loud about them being different genres. We played them both, along with other favorite titles of his, like EA's Skate or Die and Summer Games.
I was a big shareware user at the time, since the budget for a pre-teen isn't very large, and I don't remember any memorable shareware adventure games at the time, and especially not graphic ones. There were some text adventures, which I lost interest in, and ZZT, an action-adventure hybrid that wasn't as memorable to me as Apogee's Kroz games, which were pure action.
This is just random thinking out loud, as I get to my point: I think Apogee was the game maker that caused me to appreciate other genres the most, leading up to their developer-turned-independent iD game DOOM. After that, action games started to get more challenging than I wanted, so other than the first two top-down GTA games and a couple of other driving games, I was almost exclusively into adventures at that point, even eschewing well-regarded hybrids like Quest for Glory.
Combining Ahab's observation with yours, its not very difficult to add in adventure gameplay to an action game as it is vice-versa. You just need to put in some simple use item on object stuff. IIRC, the first two Resident Evils are almost exclusively these kinds of puzzles. But if you do something more complex than that, it tends to stick out in people's minds, like the Shakespeare puzzle in one of the Silent Hill games.
DeleteNot much to add to what has been said here. I generally dislike arcade sequences in adventure games. If I wanted to play something reflex based, that's the game I would have bought. There are occasional exceptions, but most are pointless at best and insanely frustrating at worst. I remember having to save scum for what felt like hours to get past the robot fight in Space Quest 3, for example. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteArcade sequences in an adventure game may not be terrible in principle, but in practice, they are inevitably designed by people whose talents are not in arcade game design, and implemented in a game engine that isn't able to handle it. Often, they're also written by people who have active contempt for arcade games.
ReplyDeleteAdventure games on the whole don't have the game systems that other games have. They have the interface, and that's about it. While arcade minigames are usually out-of-place in an adventure game, sometimes they can help establish the systems that adventure games lack. For example, while police quest 1's driving system is difficult to get a grip on, it gives the game a unique flavor. Players quickly grow to know what to expect while driving and that establishes the feel of the game. Similarly, Quest For Glory has a battle system as well as a stat system that establishes the expectations for the game (borrowed from the RPG genre).
ReplyDelete