Why do we call it the "adventure" genre? When did wandering around a world filled with awkward pathing, clicking every single thing on the screen repeatedly to trigger the required events necessary to progress, and solving unrelated puzzles count as an adventure? "Ok, I got my sword, a shield, some herbs... yeah, it's time to go out and shove some boxes into a specific pattern, rearrange canned goods, and complete a 20-step challenge of Simon Sez." In RPGs and action-adventure games, brain twisters are usually scattered throughout the game to help break up the monotony of killing and looting.The best excuse for having them would be to stop intruders from robbing a tomb or a treasure room that, for whatever reason, your character eventually explores out of curiosity, because you can't put a place like that into a game and not expect the player to visit it. Side-questing? The Hell it is! The moment I come across a new location is the moment it becomes part of the main objective. Gunning down a gaggle of Garys? Lightsabering a crazy man holed up in a locker? Rubbing salt and pepper on Katt's half-naked body? All of this becomes necessary because it's there. The term "side-questing" would be best used with those achievements specifically meant for perfectionists wanting to complete the same tasks in record time, with unusual power restrictions, and, in some cases, for the sake of obtaining some item that only drops once every thousand battles. With that in mind, side-questing should be for those too young to realize how short their lives are, unaware of how many great games they will inevitably miss out on because they are obsessed with obtaining a shiny version of every Pokemon.
The fans of true adventure games are an odd bunch. They clearly want to suffer. It's not that they won't play something different, but they definitely prefer to play it differently. After all, why make coffee for Dr. Bitch when you can first check the maker (because you absolutely have to in order to proceed), steal a bowl of seeds from a museum exhibit, attempt to give them to the janitor, fail, go back to the lab, ground the seeds up, go back to the janitor, fail again, find a used coffee bag in a trash can, fill it with the seeds you crushed, then take the bag back to the janitor, and finally return to Dr. Bitch with a fresh cup of whatever the hell you stole from the exhibit? See, that's them. They're probably the reason why we have challenges like the Ironman play style of Diablo. "Yeah, I could rest, repair, and buy items, but wouldn't it make more sense to just go deeper into enemy territory regardless of how badly hurt and ill-equipped my character is?" I don't care. Even if I go through all that added trouble, I'm still going to be treated to the same ending. All I'm concerned about is reaching the end within the "rules" set by the game's developers. That's about as challenging as I wish for a game to be. I want to finish a raid in Warcraft, but I won't rely upon an add-on to do it. I still want to beat Karnov, but I don't want to use my Game Genie to give me unlimited lives and more items. I want to finish Contra, but... alright, I'll admit that there are exceptions. Because a straight adventure already puts in the effort, there's no real need to come up with handicaps to make things more "interesting" for the player, and many of the best titles that the genre has to offer (Grim Fandango, Riven, Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle...) all include clever, multi-layered puzzles that don't do them justice to be lumped together with the likes of Tetris, Puyo Pop, Beje ...Candy Crush. I'm not insulting Tetris, mind you. I'm merely pointing out the significant differences between matching colors and a basic understanding of touch spatial relations to that of Rube Goldberg contraptions, anagrams, and MacGyver logic. I detest them (especially when they use anagrams), yet I will admit that adventure games cater to a couple of niche audiences who would likely never play video games if not for them. I may not enjoy the nonsensical process involved in obtaining a cat mustache on Gabriel Knights 3, or winning the fictional love of a 2D lady from Let's Meow Meow! who arrived at my doorstep naked and curled up in a package, but I know some other screwball does, and it's thanks to games like them, along with other stuff like Ai Cho Aniki, School Days, Seaman (We love you, Nimoy!), Typing of the Dead, et cetera that allow me to confidently tell non-gamers that there is something out there for them, too. They just haven't played it yet.
Prior to typing this, I decided to indulge/torture myself by participating in three types of adventures. I also watched a longplay of Myst. ... That game is so. fucking. boring! I was looking at some of the comments talking about how the people in most Let's Play videos are childish and get in the way of listening to the "awesome music" Myst provides. What fucking music?! Most of the game is silent! Why even make a soundtrack if the developers are barely going to use it? And why watch a Let's Play just to listen to the music? Idiots.
Ugh, my first of the three was Magical Diary. I have no clue as to what possessed me to play this, even if it was for the sake of the blog entry. It's an adventure title falling under the sub-genre of visual novels centering around a fat girl I named "Love Hungry" who attends a school for witches and falls in love with one of five individuals that she hopes will indulge her cravings for cake and pretzels during lovemaking. She is a wildseed witch, meaning she was born into a family of muggles. This is done to allow for the perfect excuse as to why your professors and fellow students will explain everything you will need to know to play. After a lengthy introduction, you plan out your week, choosing between five types of magic, going to the gym, studying, and rest. During the weekends, you can go to the mall (because that's what cool girls do!), study some more, or sleep. There's also the possibility of detention on Saturdays, which is necessary for one of the love routes. This process continues for a full school year (from September 1st to May 1st) with holidays and various school activities in between. I've played similar games for free, but this one definitely earns its pay. It also features the fewest images of poorly-drawn penises throughout the experience, so that's something to think about as well.
Magical Diary is a welcoming start for those new to the sub-genre. There are multiple solutions to the exams, including an option to give up that doesn't result in an immediate bad ending, the stress-building feature is much easier to manage here than what I've experienced from similar games, and the dialogue is both well-written and genuinely interesting. The player will be able to take part in all of the necessary school events regardless of how he/she develops, bypassing the luck factor seen in other visual novels and dating sims that involve being in the right place at the right time, and any relationship one wishes to pursue will offer a deep and rewarding love story. Plenty of save files are available, too. Gotta love having multiple save files in an adventure title, right? There are a few minor issues to address, however, because you might play it for yourself and say something like, "Why didn't you type about this and that in your award-winning, Nobel Peace Prize nominated blog?! I am now perturbed and prone to snarky remarks!" Well, Love Hungry's dialogue choices, along with her overall character design options, don't allow for too much variety. This is more of a limitation than an actual flaw in the game. If there's a specific, somewhat peculiar type of personality one wishes to express through Hungry, it's not likely going to happen. Also, nearly all of the interesting stuff revolves around finding love (and consuming pie). There's no major plot unfolding throughout the year and no grand finale of sorts to look forward to. If you're not working towards a relationship, it's going to be a somewhat dull experience. Oh, perhaps you'll spend your time becoming an all-powerful witch, right? MD does allow the player to learn several spells, but many of them do the same thing and aren't all that impressive. The only time to really use a spell is during the seven exams and that's only if you've managed to train enough in a particular field of magic to learn one of the spells necessary for success during a particular exam. I focused on white magic (I was aiming for an achievement) and ended up failing my first two exams and the fifth one, because there was absolutely nothing I could do to succeed. Even if I decided to learn a few other types of magic, will I know enough in one of those to have learned the magic necessary for the exam? For a game with "magical" in its title, I'd be lying if I didn't feel a little disappointed. I still got my achievement, so suck it, Grabiner! Likewise, for a game featuring a mall, there is very little to buy, and the selection doesn't change (the glasses aren't that wacky, either). Lastly, the visuals bother me a little. The girls come in two types and look the same within each, requiring superficial differences to help tell them apart (like the cast of Sailor Moon or Oriemo), while the males are all effeminate in appearance. The style of the entire game is that of amateur Anime. It looks like the early results of a "How to Draw Manga" book. Heck, it probably is.
Moving from one title to the next felt like I was jumping out of a hot shower and into an ice bath. I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a psychological horror, point-and-click adventure that has no business being paired up with Magical Diary. Inspired by a short story written in 1967, you play as five unfortunate survivors who have been tortured for 109 years by a sentient supercomputer calling itself "AM". AM was built for war. Even after it became sentient, AM realized it was only capable of understanding death and destruction. Unable to move, speak, and think freely like human beings, it becomes furious and takes its hatred out on mankind by wiping out life on Earth. The only reason five individuals survived this catastrophe was because AM wanted to keep a few playthings around for it to punish over and over again for all eternity. Here, we get to participate in one of AM's sick games. There's nothing special about what you'll get to do. All the usual problems pertaining to half-assed logic puzzles and an unnecessary abundance of cryptic remarks plague I Have No Mouth's gameplay. What makes this a treat for the player is the story that unfolds. It provides the sort of questionable content not commonly seen in a video game back in 1995, including rape and suicide (the option to eat a baby was removed from the final product). This is thanks to the author of the original short story, Harlan Ellison, who not only co-created the game by providing new dialogue and back story, but also offered to voice AM itself. He does a phenomenal job of that, by the way, as is evident within the first few minutes of the introduction and is continued throughout the whole thing. His performance is a bit hammy, but you'll genuinely hate the machine before it's all over. Ellison truly captured the essence of an all-powerful machine that is also a total asshole psychopath.
My final attempt to really get into the adventure genre was released back in 1993. The 7th Guest distinguishes itself from my other two choices by being an interactive horror movie that heavily relies upon standalone puzzles, live action cut scenes, and 3D graphics that far exceeded the visual quality of Star Fox, which was released a few months prior. With that said (and typed), I would like to point out that those puzzles all suck ass, the live action is notoriously bad, and a game that looks good means nothing if the main character has trouble moving around the mansion. Moreover, the puzzles don't really coincide with the story. You cannot progress unless you solve them, but there's no plausible excuse as to why that is. "Stauf created puzzles and built a mansion with the wealth he obtained selling them and dolls." That's it. He doesn't even put much effort into his work. You'll run into the typical stuff, like the slide puzzle, follow the leader (for a chain of eighteen friggin' notes!), a handful of Chess puzzles (two of which are the same thing), and even a long maze for you to get lost in. Between exploration and puzzles, you'll be treated to what appears to be a competition for the coveted World's Worst Thespian award. The winner, of course, was Robert Hirschboeck (Stauf) who also played in the sequel The 11th Hour, and as Gargamel's stunt double in the live action Smurf films. As a horror, The 7th Guest pales in comparison to I Have No Mouth. It's tough trying to scare somebody when all you do is make stupid puns while he or she is fooling around with slices of cake and cans of soup. You probably don't have a clue how many times I heard him say, "Don't take all knight!" while I was fiddling with a dumbass Chess puzzle on the bathroom floor, cause that's not gross or anything. On the other hand, The 7th Guest has the most enjoyable music of the three games. "Skeletons In My Closet" is a decent song to listen to during the credits, and there is a commonly played tune that includes random piano keys being struck which spooked me for a few moments. I wish I could compliment the music in Magical Diary, because that seems like the one that would have the most enjoyable soundtrack of the three, but the song selection in that game is a bit off, and some of them don't match well with when they are played.
I might go further into The 11th Hour, though I really just want to play something I'm more familiar with. Also, being poorly insulted for restarting my puzzles and having to figure out a bunch of anagrams doesn't exactly encourage me to continue. In case your were wondering, I don't care much for Sierra, either, which is why I didn't choose to play anything from their collection. If anything, Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded might be worth a try. It might be. It might. Maybe. Doubtful.
I hope you all enjoyed this text-based blog adventure of mine. If you actually read the whole thing, you can consider that the bad ending. Also, you died. Would you like to load a save file?
