http://gamesfirst.com/?id=1426
Nothing more than a rumor, but I’ll take it!
Certainly the Wiimote pointer would make PC-style graphic adventures very do-able. Genre renaissance ahoy!
That would be the one thing that would make me reconsider the Wii. (I figure they will not be able to shoehorn in nuncuku functionality in adventure games)
How so? It’s a genre people don’t like for very specific reasons that have nothing to do with their interface.
They also have modest system requirements, so the potential audience on the PC is higher than it will ever be for a new console.
So, what would be the benefit of playing a single-player graphic adventure on a console vs. a PC? Imagine a pixel-hunt on a non-HD TV… yikes.
Well the genre doesn’t still have to be about pixel-hunting, does it? I’m sure it could be smarter than that. Broken Sword is just about the last major GA franchise left - does that still rely on pixel-hunting?
How many point and click graphic adventures have been on consoles? The last one I remember was Blazing Dragons for the first Play Station. The game pad was a horrible intereface for that type of game.
Why not just let people hold a button to highlight the usable objects, and not all of them are actually useful for the solution to the given puzzle? (some are gags, etc)
I’ve not tried the new version of Broken Sword (I’d say The Longest Journey and Syberia are other popular franchises), but even if Sam & Max features some bold new adventure game paradigm, I’m still not sure how a Wii version could revive a genre whose conventions–story and puzzle driven, no action–seems hopelessly out of fashion. (And if it has action, it’s an “adventure” game in the sense Resident Evil is.)
I personally hope Sam & Max doesn’t suck, but I’m expecting it to be fairly conventional. The Bone games are pretty straightforward point-and-click adventures. Though the Wii mote is probably better at that sort of thing than a gamepad, I’m not sure it would be better than a mouse.
Well, that’s arguably taking away some of the “exploration” of an adventure game. But I think Grim Fandango handled this nicely, with your character turning his head to look at objects that could be manipulated. Though I think it may have borrowed the idea from Tomb Raider.
Good question, I have no idea. I know Myst and some of its sequels were ported.
Maybe the console is the place to revive the adventure, but I don’t think it’s an issue of the audience not being able to run adventure games on their PC. They mostly have modest system requirements. It’s that the audience moved on to other types of games, most of which have “adventure” elements. Hybrid action adventures and RPG adventures essentially killed the genre for all but the hardest of the hardcore. (Who now spend more time ripping apart games for not being “adventure” enough than playing them.)
The final Monkey Island, the Discworld games [not Noir], and Broken Sword III all appeared on Sony consoles.
I can just imagine how tired my arm would get after about an hour of pixel hunting with the Wiimote in a classic Sam and Max game.
I agree with you that the use or lack of a wiimote is irrelevant, and I’d say the reasons people don’t like adventure games have everything to do with the adventure-game interface. Using a mouse vs. a gamepad vs. a wiimote doesn’t improve the suck-ass way you have to interact with the world in a graphical adventure game. The problem isn’t a controller problem; it is an interface problem.
I don’t really agree that adventure games are dead on the pc nor that the fans of the genre are only the hardest of the hard core. The genre certainly is stale but they keep having releases. They all seem to be a mix of Euro-trash/crime drama.
For me Sam and Max is a return to the comic adventures that I enjoy so and bring them to the Wii is a different experence than what is currently out there for consoles. I still would rather a Grim Fandango/Escape from Monkey Island interface than true point and click but I realize I’m the minority on that issue.
Stale/dead… kind of the same thing to me. There’s a lot of adventure games, but most are pretty lousy. It’s certainly not the days of LucasArts, that’s for sure.
For me Sam and Max is a return to the comic adventures that I enjoy so and bring them to the Wii is a different experence than what is currently out there for consoles.
Oh, absolutely. Unless it was specifically designed for the Wii, and used the controller in interesting ways, I just don’t get why you (or others) want or care to see that kind of game on the Wii. You already have a PC, and the current PC interface is perfect for those classic adventures you enjoy.
If you come up with all sorts of crazy motion-based puzzles, that’s an entirely different kind of game… and I suspect there will be no shortage of those for the Wii. Just replicating PC/mouse interfaces seems a waste, and unnecessary.
Games should be designed for the system, not just shoveled into it. If it doesn’t work very well as-is, then it probably won’t be very fun. Frankly I thought Grim Fandango wasn’t a very fun game. Maybe I just hate so-called “adventure” games, as they seem to demand having a hint book to finish properly and their gameplay “value” is from repeatedly getting game-over.
Or trying to explain why it’s sore to other people. “See, I had Sam and Max playing on my Wii… boy are my arms tired from jerking it around!”
Grim Fandango was fun for the great characters, story, and humor. That’s the point. If you didn’t enjoy those, then indeed you don’t like adventure games (or have no appreciation of what Grim brought to the table as far as adventure games go).
I’m certainly not excited to play the new Sam and Max just because I thought the driving sequence breaking road signs was awesome in the first one (it was terrible). I’m excited because it had humorous dialog and funky characters existing in their own little world with it’s own rules. The fun part is the “I can’t wait to see what’s next”, at least for me. The good ones always have something interesting/funny around the corner, which is the motivation to figure out the puzzles (again, maybe that’s just me). The puzzles are just a mechanic to get you to that next bit of cool stuff and make it feel like you accomplished something.
Yeah, I’d buy it for Sam and Max. But I’m betting it’s just a rumor.
It’s not just a rumour - Telltale now have a Wii development kit and posted a photo of it on their site. They still might not port the game across, but I can’t think why they wouldn’t.
Can’t find a publisher?
I’m sure they won’t have too much of a problem. Wii licensing fees are very cheap - not a big investment.