Written by The TAG Team
With the final post for Myst, our blog has continued to grow and review many memorable games, some forgettable ones, and also some regrettable ones.
So a quick look back at what we’ve done so far (as of August 3rd):
We’ve played 274 games, not including the ones in progress right now. The breakdown:
Games played by Trickster (the early years of the blog): 45
Guest Reviews during the Trickster era: 2
Main line games after the blog became a community effort: 96
Missed Classics, which started after Trickster retired: 131
Out of these games, only 4 weren’t completed. Three have a status of “Abandoned” and another “Indefinitely Delayed”.
The first one was Captain Blood, which Trickster abandoned after 9 hours and very little to show for it.
Another was a missed classic by one of our early, more (ahem) colorful commenters, Kenny McCormick. The Scoop, a mystery game with an advanced (for the time) interface.
Next was Wonderland, played by another past commenter, The Mad Welshman. Circumstances beyond their control caused them not to be able to finish the playthrough.
Ilmari played Freedom: Rebels in the Darkness, and was unable to finish the game most likely due to a technical reason.
Which means we have a 98.5% completion rate, which isn’t too shabby! (We do have rules for reviewers abandoning a game after a certain number of hours, but we tend to be masochists and stick with it.)
Who's keeping score? We are, with an average score of 40 awarded to the games. The most common score? 30, given to 15 different games. The highest rated game? That's over in the left-hand column, along with the rest of the top 10. But some other notables:
- The lowest rated Missed Classic? Drive-In Adventure, checking in at 7. That beats the lowest main game, Psycho, which at least hit double digits for 10.
- The highest rated Missed Classic? Would you believe it's one of Morpheus's recent Japanese-language conquests? Urotsukidoji came in at 57.
Not counting Trickster, 20 reviewers have played 229 games. Later this month, it will have been exactly ten years since Trickster’s last review, marking a transition to our current blog. Two months later, Aperama set the standard for all reviews to follow with their take on Countdown.
Our top reviewers? Tied for first place for completed Main Line games are admins Joe Pranevich and Ilmari Jauhiainen with 13 each, but if we count Ilmari’s unlucky attempt at Freedom, he takes the top with 14. Tops for Missed Classics? Joe Pranevich with 58.
As for interacting with the readers, the blog has posted 1595 entries (including this one), and the readers have commented over 28,000 times. That's an average of 17 comments per entry. There's no easy way to verify this, but it appears that the introduction post for Day of the Tentacle is our record holder, with 161 comments, and all the entries in that playthrough combine for a really impressive total.
As a way to meet and greet the readers, Trickster started a tradition of having them answer a few questions for the blog. The feature titled “What’s Your Story” has 54 responses. Is yours one of them? If not, please look over on the left-hand side of this page, a little bit down, and submit yours!
And if you’ve already taken the time to do that, then we can talk about time a little. The longest game we’ve played? Well, technically, when one reviewer took over for another on a review of The Legacy: Realm of Terror. But to keep it fair, let’s skip that one, and go to the 36+ hour ordeal that was Dungeon. Well, maybe not ordeal, because it looks like Joe enjoyed it, but... wow.
Short games? There’s a handful of missed classics that didn’t even last an hour, but the shortest main line game played for the blog was 1992’s Putt-Putt Joins the Parade, clocking in at just under an hour.
Speaking of numbers, it seems our time here is numbered, so tell us your thoughts!
Someone should really finish "Captain Blood" one day! Also, "The Scoop" will be part of my next marathon (ahem, spoiler alert) so it will hopefully be re-played, finished, and rated one day.
ReplyDeleteWell, re-rated. It will be interesting to see how different reviewers see the game.
DeleteVery fun stats. and very surprised to find my name listed in the active list on the site. Lets go for more and more years of adventures !
ReplyDeleteYou just earned CAPs a few days ago, when Myst finished. That certainly counts as recently active. :)
Deletelove a good stat
ReplyDeleteFerret took me 60 hours or so (and that's with lots of help from commenters), so if someone out there wants to beat Dungeon for the time record they can go for it.
ReplyDeleteWarp was something like 30.
I watched a streamer beat Freedom once, I'll see if I can find the VOD.
I don't think I'd consider Captain Blood an adventure game (at least, I had it excluded from my list) but I might at some future time be up for doing a guest attempt here (since I won't need it for my blog!)
The sequel, Commander Blood, I think, is coming up when we finally get to 1994, so if you feel up to them both, you might want to start polishing up the emulators.
DeleteLooking at the comments on the original review, it's a time capsule -- this was just before the Two Guys started the debacle that was SpaceVenture, and the dirty dealings that plagued Al Lowe in the remake of LSL1.
Deletelooking it, up there was a third game! I didn't even know
Deletethe fan page just says "there was a third game" and gives no information
super mysterious
Do we know what ever happened to Kenny?
ReplyDeleteGiven his alias, I fear a cartoonish yet gruesome fate has befallen him, as his best friends and classmates watched in horror.
DeleteKudos to all the admins and reviewers for the great job that they are doing in all this years. Love the blog, I've read every entry. My only criticism is that I think the ratio between mainline games and missed classics should be the other way. I believe if there were more mainline games played the numbers of views in the blog would be even bigger, because they are more known games and the most interesting to read about because there is a bigger chance that the average reader had played that game and want to read about it. Don´t get me wrong, I love reading about those unknown missed classics, but is my humble opinion. Cheers to all the people that makes this great community
ReplyDeleteWe've made it a priority to focus on main games lately. The addition of two new reviewers (myself and Vetinari) have helped with this, and some of the other reviewers have temporarily paused their missed classics to help get the blog back on track. (I think Joe talked about it in one of his previous posts a month or so ago).
DeleteI think we've been good about it lately, since we've even gotten a few of the longer lasting titles down and out, plus we are trying to get to 1994. Recently it's been so good for mainline titles some of us haven't even had a chance to get to missed classics we were working on.
DeleteYeah, the past few months the blog went "a toda máquina" and the pace of the entries caught full speed, that is great
DeleteWell, the blog won't be going truly "A Toda Máquina" until 1995. 😜
DeleteSomebody give Michael some caps for that joke!
DeleteI'm so happy that this blog continued to grow and thrive once the community took over. And there are so many great games yet to come! I wonder if anything will be able to hit the 90 score. (Or lower than 7!)
ReplyDeleteA game would have to get 9s in all categories (or 10s to compenate for lower numbers). That's hard to imagine. There's certainly a few games that could come close, but I don't know. Some of the bigger future games like Grim Fandango won't make it, because of the interface. Maybe The Longest Journey? Depending on the reviewer, of course. I suppose, depending on the reviewer, CMI could come close, and maybe even Syberia. But I'm having trouble imagining it, personally.
DeleteWhen I ran through my personal hypothetical numbers for CMI, it surpassed 90. It's strong in all the PISSED categories.
DeleteFate of Atlantis, DOTT and MI2 were probably the best candidates. First hour of Full Throttle probably comes close to perfection too, but well, the arcade sequences will bring it down later.
DeleteI could agree with Longest Journey potentially scoring very high. Honestly, I think the upcoming Legend of Kyrandia 2 is an absolute gem with very few weak points.
DeleteFull Throttle will definitely be let down by the awkward action sequences, and myself I'm not the biggest fan of the verb coin interface. I don't like Grim Fandango at all, but recognise that it's beloved so would expect a high score, but yes the interface is horrific.
I have hopes for Gabriel Knight doing well.
I would think Full Throttle would be hurt by its length (or lack of), but the art and music is nice. Not a fan of the coin interface, but it's a reality of the times.
DeleteMy candidate to break through the 90 point mark is The Last Express, but we'll have to wait a few years for that one to be played
DeleteI dont think The Last Express will reach the 70s, but of course anything might happen. Gabriel Knight 1 is probably the best Sierra game, will probably be in the 70s. Kyrandia 2 is a great game, the best out of the trilogy for sure. Hard to be neutral on that one, I expect it to be similar to Simon the Sorcerer, a really good game from a company thats not Lucas or Sierra
DeleteYeah, I know that if Monkey 1 & 2, Indy 4 and DotT didn't reach 90, I don't think there is a game that would. But I love Last Express just because of Mechner's ambition. It is a game made with care and love, and it deserved much more succes that what it got
DeleteGabriel Knight is the earliest game to have a decent chance of a 90+ score (it should easily beat The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes and so surpass 70s), its least strong aspect arguably being the interface with the usual Sierra flaws (no hotkeys nor mouseover texts) but which is still fine.
DeleteMonkey Island 3 has the kind of story which is entertaining while you play it, but when you think about it afterwards, is one the weaker in the series (mostly a MacGuffin hunt which then ends in clunkily told retcons). Still, it's above average (the characters are memorable and Blood Island backstories have a bit of nice emotion to them for example) and I could see the game earning high enough otherwise to earn a 90.
The Last Express I agree with Alex Romanov on. I regard it as an interesting but ultimately a somewhat failed experiment, the lack of puzzle signposting and/or thick accents without subtitles dead-ended me when I played the game over 10 years ago. But perhaps I should replay it after all this time.
Gabriel Knight could be questionable, because all three games in the series are pretty good in most respects but all have some aspect or another that can potentially drag the game down. (Some annoying aspects in the original, FMV is still controversial for some reason, and GK3 allegedly has the best and worst puzzle of all time)
DeleteLooking at the near future, I can see Cosmology of Kyoto, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream and Policenauts reaching the top ten. I can also see some games, like Azrael's Tear and Myst 3/4 pulling off a showing people don't expect and hitting there. Also, if anyone ever uploads the sequel to Cosmology of Kyoto to the internet, that one would come out of complete nowhere. Which isn't that absurd, considering that Veil of Darkness getting into the top ten was something very few would have thought of.
Others may have different views, but for the "FMV is still controversial for some reason" I'll say this: FMV in many games felt like, to me, games using technology just for the sake of using technology. It felt like it was reducing the quality of the game, because they were limited to the scenes they could afford to film, as opposed to seemingly limitless possibilities when you were reusing the same sprites and just changing the text boxes. Also, it made it feel too much like a movie instead of something you controlled and interacted with.
DeleteSome of us preferred the unrealistic -- like, say, the Larry Laffer of game 6 instead of the Larry in game 2, or the difference between the Gabriel in GK3 instead of GK2.
I certainly think there's some top-10 contenders in the future as well. I mentioned a couple -- TLJ and Syberia, plus one I didn't mention but is an absolute gem, Sanitarium. Others have mentioned Kyrandia 2, and I don't remember much about the game, except that it's better than the first, and the first was pretty darn good. Other than Grim and CMI, I don't think there's a lot left in the Sierra/Lucas catalogs with potential, even though I think LSL7 might come closer than you think, depending on the reviewer. The future Sierra sequels tend to fall flat compared to the originals, more so than in the past.
And just after I mentioned it, the Digital Antiquarian just covered my favorite candidate for the 90-club.
DeleteMyst III: Exile is my favorite Myst game, and I could see it possibly getting an 80s-90s score depending on how capable the reviewer is with color and sound based puzzles.
DeleteI also loved TLJ, more than Syberia, although it not living up to its billing of "longest" might hurt it a little? Also it has at least one questionable puzzle, but atmosphere and story are absolutely top-notch.
Wouldn't the same faults (ahem) that Myst and the sequel have also plague this score? There's still no emphasis on dialog and communicating with others, for example. For those who enjoy this type of game, supposedly it was a step up in the franchise, but our scoring system is geared more towards traditional titles.
DeleteAs for TLJ: I had to Google to figure out what puzzle you might be referring to. Vf vg nobhg gur ehoore qhpx? Not exactly a new puzzle, I came across something like that in the first mainline game I covered for this blog. I don't know if I'd cross the line to calling it bad (or even questionable).
As for length -- well, then this text adventure should be sued for false advertising.
The Myst sequels all have far more interaction and conversations with characters.
DeleteAlthough it is surprising Alice in Wonderland is the most read it does make some sense in retrospect - it's a very beloved franchise with relatively few games made of it, and the 1985 version is particularly obscure. Googling the game does not give a lot of results, the blog's review is 5th on the list so anyone looking for more information on the subject is likely to end up here.
ReplyDelete