So I was just watching Noah Antwiller's longplay (with insulting commentary) of Ripper, an old adventure game.

I am amazed at how the producers of that game evidently spent a lot of money (for a game) on hiring a lot of actors and having a lot of script lines, but at the same time, the actual game elements of that game are extremely contrived puzzles that seem almost impossible to solve.

For example, in one part of the game, you are supposed to look around someone's apartment, see from their birthday card that they are a Pisces, look at the symbol of Pisces on a horoscope chart, and then use a knicknack where you arrange small crystals into the Pisces symbol. This makes a skull shoot light from its eyes and designate the title of a book that you could have seen anyway when you were just looking around the apartment and the title of that book (they don't tell you) is the password to access that person's website. Also when using the crystals to make the Pisces symbol if you're off but just a little bit but have the overall correct shape the game won't let you advance. It has to be exactly a certain way with no margin for error.

To me, that doesn't sound like fun. That sounds like torture especially in the pre-internet days. The last way I would want to spend my precious free time is trying to arrange little crystals in a box in an adventure game.

The other aspect is that the puzzle is so unlikely and so contrived that I feel it hurts immersion. They spend so much money on actors, graphics, etc. to try and create immersion, and then when you have stuff like this which would never realistically come up during an investigation. If you really needed to access someone's website that was password protected, why would you spend hours playing with a crystal set? Why wouldn't you try to crack the password on the website itself? Or look for the source code for the website on the person's computer, if you're already in their apartment? Or simply check the apartment not for tangential clues about the password, but simply see if there is another copy of the info that you are looking for in another form, like some notes or something?

I realize that not all adventures games are this bad. I want to say, for example, that "Phantasmagoria" was something where I could mostly figure things out myself. But I don't understand the appeal when a game gets to the point where it forces the player to do things much more difficult and complicated than what they would do if they were going to solve the same problem in real life. It should also go without saying that making you play with crystals for a long time will really reduce the sense of the flow of the story and probably make you forget some story elements or why you were doing certain things.

Did anyone actually play a lot of these old adventure games and like them? Did Deus Ex, combing a FPS interface with adventure puzzle elements, but allowing several reasonable solutions to each problem, make the classic adventure game obsolete?

Lucas Arts Games? I loved these! *shows age*

They were good and bad adventure games.
Ripper is part of the FMV era. Just like with any new tech in video gaming (or in cinema, or many fields), it focused mostly on that tech rather than on what would make the game good. Some players were fooled and enjoyed the game just because it had FMV (like some gamers today will love a game just because it has nice graphics that use all the latest tricks), but some players took it for what it was.. which is why FMV video games disappeared quickly.

Do you think that improved 3d graphics, facial imaging, and implementation of expressions had made FMV obsolete?

Or, if someone put together a well written FMV game with good actors, do you think people would still want to play it?

(My intuition is that due to disconnects between the flow of action and a pre recorded video clip, action game FMVs wouldn't work, but something that was more like a Choose Your Own Adventure might.)

PS: THE PAGES! BRING ME THE PAAGGESS!

What made FMV obsolete was that there are very tight limits on gameplay compared to what you can do with computer-generated graphics. There was a transition period where cutscenes used FMV and the game itself was using 2D/3G CG graphics. Besides, the budget needed for good FMV was higher than the typical video game budget back then.

There has been a recent FMV game, "Her Story", which has been pretty well received. I haven't played it so I can't judge, but from what I've heard, it has a clever use of FMV and pretty good acting (and a setting that doesn't need a big budget). So I guess that answers your question.

I also suggest you check out Spycraft, which used FMV but didn't completely rely on them and was a pretty interesting game. Plus I think it's the kind of game you'll enjoy.

There actually are action game FMVs. Tomcat Alley is one, as is Sewer Shark. I owned both of them, once.

The thing about action FMVs is that they were rail shooters. Sewer Shark did a really good job of it. In a future where humanity has been driven underground you're a member of a military force that cleans monsters out of the giant labyrinth of tunnels in which the surviving humans live. Your the gunner in a rather fast-moving two-person craft that flies through those tunnels. You have a pilot who is played by an actor and communicates to you in real time, constantly appraising your abilities and giving you information. You've got a nice little video phone display on your control panel that he talks to you through and its all seamless.


Tomcat Alley did a crappy job by comparison. Mostly because the shooter gameplay sucked. You've never have more than two or three enemies on screen at a time, and your missile launches were done in FMV, so combat was really slow. And the fact that you couldn't control the plane made it boring. The FMV also wasn't well integrated.

I bought both monkey island games in a steam sale a while back. I enjoyed the stories, but the a lot of the puzzles weren't fun. Usually it was pixel-hunting followed by trial-and-error until you found the right item to continue. A few were clever once you figured out the answer, and a few I couldn't figure out after I had the question and the answer. The second isn't a sign of good game design.

I think your choices were Lucas Arts puzzles that I just described, or Sierra's puzzles that occasionally required an item you missed way back at the beginning of the game and can no longer get.

Maybe the story is why people enjoyed them? Some of the videos of people who know what they're doing going through the games is pretty entertaining, without having to spend time on the unfun puzzles.

I really liked Maniac Mansion. And not just because you could microwave the manster. It was insane, and there were so many different ways to win, and most of the puzzles made sense. It had actual replay value.

Maniac Mansion was fun when I was a kid and it is interesting to look back and see hints to the culture of the time.

That being said, I recall that it was only possible to win with 3 combinations of characters. I don't think I ever beat it and my friends who had essentially referred to strategy guides. I also recall that it could become impossible to win if you missed out on subtle but key details like noticing the stamps on the package were not cancelled and then stealing the stamps to use later.

I recall that the puzzles did tend to at least make some intuitive sense, though, so that was good. Another thing that made that game fun was how you could essentially waste time doing silly fun things, like microwaving the hamster or playing with the doorbell. The wackiness was definitely memorable.

I guess it was still hard in the manner of the genre but at least it was fun to play around with even if you weren't winning.

The later LucasArt adventure games (including Maniac Mansion's fabulous sequel "Day of the Tentacle") got rid of the deaths/dead-ends.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis even had multiple solutions to a problem, including an "unbreakable" one so that you could always pass even if you broke one of the possible solution.

A very interesting case of an adventure game that could be made unwinable but was fun to play around with was KGB (also known as Conspiracy).

Every character had a way to win, except for Jeff (and Dave, of course) so it was possible to succeed with any combination of characters. You just had fewer options if you picked Jeff, or both Razor and Syd.

But yes, it was really easy to make the game unwinnable.

My faves are Sierra titles mostly XD but I'm quite happy the genre is getting a healthy re-awakening. (Thanks Telltale!)