NicheWords-The Secret of Monkey Island

Pirates of the Caribbean.  But, not.

Undead pirates, a bumbling hero and a voyage across the Caribbean.  Sound familiar?  There's a reason Guybrush Threepwood and Captain Jack Sparrow seem to have so much in common, as both Pirates of the Caribbean and The Secret of Monkey Island were based off the same Disneyland ride.

Now, we don't go to Disneyholm, but the very fact that one ride can inspire two such fascinating creative works is almost enough to make me brave the predations of Mr. Mouse in order to encounter it.

You see, although it's a little older than the adventure games previously covered here, The Secret of Monkey Island still retains a certain charm.  And unlike many, I never played it during childhood, so hopefully I'm a little less affected by nostalgia.

Graphically, Monkey Island hasn't much going for it, although a revamped version has been released.  However, while I may have drooled all over the graphics of Myst IV, it's the script that's the impressive thing about Monkey Island.

Created by the good people at LucasArts, before they came the underpaid, overworked, franchise-milking people at LucasArts, The Secret of Monkey Island is a traditional adventure game.  By which I mean it has puzzles that are at once completely illogical, slightly fun, and ever so slightly baffling.  Usually however, playing with your inventory does the trick.

And some puzzles haven't been seen much since - I've only ever noticed the verbal sparring replicated in the indie game Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble.  That remains one of my favourite puzzles to date - for while it wasn't especially hard, it showcases the game's special sense of humour.  Essentially, when insulted, you pick the response, and discover some epic burns along the way.

It's the humour that makes Monkey Island great, which is one reason why Telltale Games episodic sequels are stuffed to the brim with visual jokes.  And, speaking of visual jokes, meet Guybrush Threepwood.  He wants to be a pirate, and find treasure and love.  He looks hopeless, and sadly, you're playing as him.

Fortunately he has Governor Marley on his side.  Unfortunately, the ghostly pirate LeChuck is on the other.  And it's up to Threepwood to find LeChuck and slay him.

Now, two of the main developers for The Secret of Monkey Island went on to join DoubleFine, one of the few studios still creating quality adventure games.  Think of Monkey Island then as the ancestor of the modern classic that is Psychonauts.  It's the same humour too, so if you tried one, you're likely to appreciate the other.

NicheWords-Myst IV: Revelation

Myst IV - Immersion and Beauty

(One of my dream game houses - hey, that's an article!)

 

During the course of this blog I've been through The Longest Journey, Dreamfall, Syberia and it's sequel.  They've all had in common a great story, and a great atmosphere.  Myst IV is just slightly different.  It's not going to win awards for characterisation, because you spend much of your time alone - with no companions like Crow (*sigh*), or Oscar the automaton to keep you company.  Lonely?  Well, the worlds of Myst IV more than make up for that, because when it comes to design, this game excels.

(Crow, glorious Crow)

 

The Myst series revolves around the misadventures of a man called Atrus, and his extremely dysfunctional family.  Atrus has something of a special ability - he can create portals to other worlds, in the form of books.  The concept alone shows the series' respect for literature and story.

 

Now, back to that horrible family I mentioned earlier.  They aren't all the sort of people you can imagine round a Christmas tree, getting calmly pissed or laughing along to Michael MacIntyre.  Sadly, some of them have issues - and, because Atrus is a master of shirking his responsibilities, it's up to you to clean up the mess when things inevitably go wrong.

 

(Here's the beginning.  It's like Half Life's, but pretty.)

 

In the grand tradition of the series, this means a journey through worlds - and we're not talking the Doctor Who or Star Wars idea of dimensions.  Each world in Myst IV is exquisite, and unique.  They often feel utterly alien, contained and perfect.  The UI may be off putting to some - you click your way from point to point - but it's easy to get used to, and gets you some spectacular views.  You quickly forget that you're in a game at all.

 

In fact, Myst IV is a lesson on immersion.  It was one of the last games to place real life actors directly into the game - when Atrus or his daughter Yeesha speak to you, they look real to you,, and even if they can come across as a little annoying at times, this still does wonders for immersion.  It's an approach I've only otherwise seen in The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, but it was once a fairly widespread practice.  And of course, it's ideal to adventure games, where the players usually only talk to characters, rather than say, shoot them.

 

(Not that a good shooting would go amiss...)

 

The other clever features of Myst IV were the camera and journal.  It's something that I wish showed up in every game.  It was most likely introduced for puzzle-solving purposes - because the puzzles of Myst IV are deliciously challenging and often frustrating - but it also doubles as a diary.  Which is excellent, because that means it's ROLEPLAY TIME!!!

 

To me, roleplay is essential for games.  It's one of the (many) reasons that MMOs aren't my thing.  You can pretend to be an elf with a dark and soul-crushing past all you like, but then some tit is going to ask whether or not you're actually a real woman.  Other players make you feel silly in your cyber-boobs and...*sniffle*...they....*whimper*...could you excuse me a moment?

 

Anyway, whatever the gender, roleplaying is fun.  So when it comes to single player games like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, or, obviously, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, I tend to go all out.  And Myst IV's diary is an amazing way of getting into the game - as you journey through a series of beautiful worlds, you take pictures, record your troubles and your thoughts.

 

You feel like a real explorer.  Traversing the shipwreck littered beaches of an island filled with dinosaurs, in search of a fugitive, you can take a moment to savour the view and really bitch about that Triceratops thing.  And later, stuck on a lonely island of crystal caves, orbiting a green sun, you can sit back, flick through your diary and reminisce.  You feel truly alone, like a real explorer.  It's empowering.

 

(Strip me naked and call me Tarzan)

 

Of course, Myst IV isn't without flaws.  The acting, while generally good, can slip at times, whereas there are (very few) puzzles that don't so much require a diary as an army of cryptologists.  I went to the walkthrough a few times on this one.  Still, like the best games, it's worth it for the journey, and even now, I doubt the graphics look tired.

 

Give it a go then, if you like a puzzle.  Stick with it for the first twenty minutes, while you get used to the controls (and prepare to boot up a few cheat sites!)  With the enchanting worlds ahead of you, and the sheer satisfaction of completing that bastard puzzle, Myst IV still has a great deal on offer.

 

Go on, play the explorer.  Name yourself Dora.  There are worlds on your doorstep.





NicheWords-Syberia

Creepy As Clockwork - Visiting Syberia

If you're a hardcore fan of the adventure game, Syberia is yet another which doesn't live quite up to the name.  Of course, it does have puzzles, but these are fairly simple affairs, though still enough to baffle and delight the relative newcomer.  It's much like The Longest Journey and Dreamfall in this respect.

There are other similarities too - Syberia has a female protagonist, in this case an American lawyer called Kate Walker, who is sent to tidy up the takeover of an automaton factory.

(The heart of Syberia's mystery: are all the mammoths gone?)

Female protagonists seem to be a feature of later adventure games - which perhaps has more to do with the genre's increased attention to story.  After all, most male characters come into games fully formed as the eternal action man, a stereotype that was being particularly reinforced at the time of Syberia's production, when FPS and the burly metre-dicks hit their prime.  That said, while Kate doesn't do weaponry, she's good at exploration, and, more than puzzles or anything else, that seems to be what Syberia does best.

It's not an open world - far from it.  However, it is exquisitely imagined, from the charmingly creaky movements of the game's automatons to the beautiful backdrops of the places across Europe that Kate stops in on the way.  It's practically a roadtrip movie, all in search of a man who went off looking for mammoths.  Exploration is the main charm here, far beyond anything that the difficulty has to offer.  The story's not bad too, there's even a small amount of mildly amusing dialogue.

(The automatons make Syberia what it is, but are sadly lacking in the sequel)

Syberia then is all right for a rainy day, a game that you can mince through in a few afternoons.  It doesn't challenge, but some of the moments may inspire.  You may wish to avoid the sequel however, until you're sure you like the first, as Syberia 2 is by necessity set in snowier climes.  For that reason alone, exploration loses its fun a little - there's not half the colour as in the first game, especially during a horrendously frustrating (for all the wrong reasons) back in time sepia sequence.  With the main charm lost, the only thing truly memorable about the sequel is the ending, though for those who've finished the first game, that alone may be enough.

NicheWords-The Secret World

I only want to make a short post today, as I'm spending the night on a sofa, and have had my first proper exercise in over six months.  However, considering all the recent fuss about Funcom, it makes sense to engage directly with the studio's current offering.  It's been mentioned before and its name is The Secret World.

(To be honest, there had been better dates)

A so-called Massively Multiplayer Online game, The Secret World takes a different approach to World of Warcraft, in that it's set in the real world, with underlying currents of mystery, conspiracy, and magic.  This is hardly unsurprising; Funcom's previous MMO Age of Conan got a little too close to WoW territory and was absolutely murdered.  Instead, a significant selling point of The Secret World is the story, which is a blessing as the gameplay is apparently not up to much.

(Catwalk)

I say apparently, because I haven't actually played the game - I've just followed it closely, and noticed a few things on the way.  Mostly what I've noticed is how similar it is to Dreamfall and The Longest Journey.  And, more to the point, I can't help thinking that for this reason alone, it would have been better as a single-player game.

If I came clean, I'd admit I don't much like MMOs.  I tried one once - Eve Online, and I got podded (killed) within half an hour.  And that made me realise that, though there's a massive market for competitive play based on how big the numbers on your spaceship are, I'm not part of it.

(You know what they say about men with big spaceships...)

Still, it seems to me that if your main marketable point is story, then the last thing you want is to break immersion - and generally speaking nothing does that more than a temporarily confused person running his avatar around in circles.  Or say, in games like Runescape, any of the mistyped or downright distracting statements that make up public chat.

(Immersion and Lag - the eternal conflict)

Social gaming has a place, but it can taint story and atmosphere.  And for that reason alone, give me The Secret World  without the people.  You've written the lines, and built the world - so change a few codes and shut down your servers.  You can hawk this game as single player on Steam and just watch the money roll in.

NicheWords-Dreamfall

Shortly after the release of The Longest Journey, the guys at Funcom started work on the sequel, Dreamfall.  It was a game with darker themes, that reflected the growing maturity of the writers.  The story became more bittersweet, haunting, even downright tragic at times.  Right from the start, you know how the story ends, and it's just a matter of getting to that point, with one prone figure lying in a hospital bed.

Yet despite the better story, Dreamfall was a commercial failure, and though chief writer Ragnar Tornquist may promise a sequel, with the troubles facing The Secret World, hope seems slim.

But why did this chilling, touching story fail so badly?  And could it ever be revived?  With this second post, it's time to take a look at The Longest Journey's successor, and what exactly went wrong.

('Dreamfall' by ~Marrylie)
 

Zoe Castillo is young, rich, and listless.  A strong intelligence has found itself with little to do, as she is now living from home, jobless, hopeless, and not entirely sure why.  It's a situation that a lot of recent graduates might identify with, but at the time her lack of motivation annoyed me - it's something so unusual to any videogame.

 

But that oddity raises two points. 1) Dreamfall isn't much of a game, and 2) It's a story - where the overarching theme is the search for faith, identity, and meaning.

 

This is one reason why Dreamfall failed.  True adventure game mechanics were torn out, alienating the traditionalist adventure gamers who were the most likely market.  It's odd, but there isn't a single challenging puzzle here; instead Funcom opted for stealth and combat mechanics that were dull at best and infuriating at worst.  As a game it is perhaps closest to Beyond Good and Evil, but in the latter, getting spotted didn't end everything.

 

If the truth be told then, it's not the gameplay that Dreamfall still retains a cult fanbase for.  I consider the story here to be one of the best I've ever seen in the game, and to be honest there are actually two.

 

There's the story of Zoe herself, disturbed from her purposeless life by the disappearance of her former lover, and by the increasingly freaky apparitions appearing on screens.  Enter the girl from The Ring, except that this one isn't horrid and merciless, this girl is vulnerable, lost, and in need of help - help finding April.  And so, on her way to her own tragic end, Zoe begins a journey that no-one will ever forget.

 

Meanwhile, April Ryan, main character of Dreamfall's predecessor, seems to be doing fine on her own, following the second storyline of the game.  She never returned to her own world, she seems happy to lead a resistance movement against the occupying force of Azadi (a variety of overly-zealous Fascists), that are busy bringing both new technology and order to the world of Arcadia, while marginalising the magical races within.

 

And there's a third character that the player takes control of, Kian Alvane.  He's a member of the Azadi forces, basically a nice guy.  And he's tasked to save Azadi lives, by hunting down the leader of the resistance/terrorist forces who keep slitting Azadi throats.  Needless to say, said leader is April, and when the two finally meet, the conversation gets deep, and just a little bit uncomfortable.

(Graphically, Dreamfall seems more dated than The Longest Journey)

It's the interplay between these three characters that helps the story excel.  We like all of them, and, through playing as each, we can see both their opinions of the world around them and their interactions with other people.  Each has friends, from Zoe's own endearing (yet ever-so slightly suspicious) Wonkers to April's fellow resistance members.  You don't know who to root for.

 

Kian and April's story, as they play a game of cat and mouse through the occupied city, is a reflection of the time the game was developed - when the occupation of Iraq was underway, and causing serious protests and national unease, not least in Norway, Funcom's base, where troops had been withdrawn from the country only the year before.  It's a dark theme, but it's also one whose time has passed - and I imagine it will be tricky to get into the same spirit as a sequel is developed.  But that's another story.

Zoe's tale however is quite different.  While you wait eagerly for her to meet the other players in the story (particularly Crow.  Oh Crow), her tale doesn't really concern the occupation, or anything else.  It's just something that she's caught up in the middle of, as she pursues her own quest, to save a woman who doesn't seem to need saving.

(My favourite feathered friend - meet Crow)

 

In the end, the story centres around faith.  Kian's is challenged, as he begins to question his own cause, whereas, as we come to see, both April and Zoe have lost faith in themselves.  It's a story that we can all identify with, and it's a shame that it ends both so badly, and on such a cliffhanger.  A shame in a good way, because it's a tale that stays with you forever.

It only remains to be seen if, even after so long, that story can be picked back up.  But there's one reason it might not be.

 

Dreamfall was pirated, it was pirated to an almost ludicrous degree.  It's almost no wonder that after the experience of being fleeced by unscrupulous story lovers, that Funcom moved to other funding models.  You can see why the MMO looked so tempting to them - games like The Age of Conan, and The Secret World - it would require a monthly subscription, and constant online connection.  It's hard to pirate those sort of games.  Sadly, as Funcom have found out, it's also all too easy to make a loss.

 

When a sequel to Dreamfall was last discussed, Funcom suggested a more episodic format, in the form of Dreamfall: Chapters.  This again was a method of minimising the effects of piracy, but even this method has recently fallen out of favour.  After all, while companies such as Telltale Games seem to have managed well enough, you only have to look at Valve and the Half Life series to see where episodic gaming can go wrong.  Companies like Valve and Funcom spend a lot of time in pre-production, and technology advances in this time.  And if you don't upgrade your graphical capabilities, and in many cases even the game engine, then you risk falling behind.

(While an amusing irritant to music moguls, piracy did serious harm to Dreamfall)

 

It's not impossible that a sequel could be released.  It's just unlikely that it will be in episodic format.  Rather, it is hopeful that Funcom will have watched the success of crowdfunding with something of a beady eye.

Take DoubleFine for instance.  If adventure gaming had famous historical figures, you'd find a lot of them behind DoubleFine.  And so, when the company couldn't obtain funding from publishers to develop a new adventure game (unfashionable apparently), they turned to crowdfunding sites instead, and asked for fans to donate the money they needed to begin building something new.

In just over a few days, they had over £3 million, with no strings attached.  I understand that it's roughly a tenth of what a typical 'AAA' game costs to make, but as DoubleFine said, it's more than enough for an adventure.  Funcom should take note.  The Longest Journey and Dreamfall still have plenty of fans out there, ready, and waiting.

 

So take our money will you?



NicheWords-The Longest Journey

There was a world before people shot other people in fits of pique and noob rage, and that was a world where individuals came together and solved everyone else's problems, no bullets guaranteed.  Let's face it, the popularity of the FPS these days pretty much proves why the pacifist approach to world peace can never work.   So wirejack a Panzer, or fire at/fellate the inevitable invading armies until, in one fashion or another, they stop shooting and start moaning.  It's the only way to survive.

However, if you, like me, remember old text based games (the unappealingly named MUDs anyone?), then you might still retain a fondness for a peaceful old puzzle.  It's a speciality that adventure games have thrown out time and time again, often with a fantastic story attached.  And, while I haven't played a vast number (Grim Fandango, ironically, died on me), the ones I have experienced have been full of character and atmosphere, and I'd like to recommend them here, in my very first miniseries, starting with my favourite adventure game of all time; The Longest Journey.

The Longest Journey: High Camp and Wombles

Funcom are a bit like Bioware in my mind - they (historically at least) really do prize a good story.  Unlike Bioware however, the gameplay often suffers for it, and so do sales.  At the time of writing, after the general failure of Funcom's MMO 'The Secret World', it's unclear if the company can survive - a shame, because any game with both the Illuminati and mythical beasts really deserves to do better.

However, as many fans of The Longest Journey will have noticed, it means that Funcom (if it lives) will now be free to work on the long awaited next installment of the series.  Because, while the original may have had a fair share of Ewok people and sarky wizards, there was a mad charm and innocence to this fantastically creative production.

('The Longest Journey' - superb art (as usual) by ~Marrylie)

The Longest Journey came tailing after the Golden Age of Adventure Games, largely because Scandinavia is fashionably late to any party (and indeed most decades).  But oh my are we glad they came.

As you play, you're introduced to April Ryan, an art student living a quiet life in the city, with friends and neighbours, rents to pay, romances to pursue, and creepy old man named Cortez with some less than usual hobbies.  Magic, for one, an unusual find in the scientific, futuristic and rabidly capitalist cyberpunk world of Stark.

("Eurgh...Why would you want to live there?" My sister asks.  "There are spaceships, why wouldn't you?")

And so, just as you've got to grips with the wonderfully fleshed out characters and humour of April's everyday life, you're introduced to a second world, a magical world named Arcadia.  And it's in trouble.  Somewhere along the line, the glowing blue chaperone who kept the two worlds apart has vanished for unknown reasons, and now the two realities are nuzzling up together like there's no tomorrow, causing all sorts of catastrophes.

And it's up to April, one of the few who can switch between worlds, to fix the problem.  You couldn't shoot your way out of this one.



(Arcadian Super-Yachts.  Abramovich, eat your heart out)

That's the basic premise, but the plot is a lot, lot more than that.  Indeed, along with the exquisitely arty backdrops, music, and casual wit, it's the story, and the characters within the story, that really make the game.

(Forget Skyrim.  Here dragons are deep and soulful.  And they barely eat you at all.)

It's not one for those who don't care for their dialogue - half the game is in the talking, and even if you skip every line, that cuts out at least half of the content.  Neither is it a game for hardcore puzzlists - the conundrums are simple, if not always logical.  However for a visual style that's ageless, a story that's timeless, funny and touching, along with an almost uniquely long and satisfying playtime, The Longest Journey is a very special creature indeed.  Try it, and try it now.  Like every old game, it's cheap, and in this case, it's also on Steam.