After searching every video rental store in the surrounding area (which is not many, let me tell you), and failing to find either Ninja Gaiden II or Lego Indiana Jones, my boyfriend and I settled down for a nice weekend of Adventure Gaming. We bought the Adventure Collection (Volume 1!) from the Adventure Company (probably most well known for Syberia), which included five games of dubious quality:
Keepsake: I’ve played this game almost all the way through before. It is not terrible puzzle-wise, though the main character is about as dull and obnoxious as they come. It stars a girl who is going to her first day at some school of magic. I would call it Harry Potter-esque, but I know this is not a new concept, and the magic school seemed more obsessed with dragons than it did anything else. Anyway, she finds that the school is empty and has to solve a number of puzzles to traverse the school and figure out why everyone is gone.
Return to Mysterious Island: Based on the Jules Verne novel The Mysterious Island, and to some extent, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (which is a book you should never. read. Nothing ever happens for 200+ pages other than repetitive monologues about how amazing coral is. I thought there was a giant squid? Well, maybe for one page, but nothing ever happens with it.) This game, despite bad voice acting, a fairly unimpressive (though occasionally surprising) storyline, a few annoying chracters, and an incredible lack of length, is a model for how adventure games should be. The gimmick for this game, I suppose, is that every puzzle can be solved in multiple ways. However, this is an amazing thing for adventure games, because we do not have to rely on trying to read the mind of the developers. Not to mention most of the puzzles, however you solve them, tend to require actual thought and real situations rather than ESP.
Nibiru: Age of Secrets: We really didn’t make it far through this one, because the puzzles make absolutely no sense, and moving through the storyline often requires the stupid main character to talk to 4 stupid people 5 stupid times for no reason. Not to mention, the solutions to the puzzles do not really make sense, at least in the conventional way (maybe they make crazy sense).
Dead Reefs: This wouldn’t even work on my computer. Pbbth.
And the last one, Secret Files: Tunguska, we never had time quite to try.
One thing that caught my eye (but is not very surprising for adventure games) is that 3 out of the 5 games had female main characters. Syberia, as well had a female main character. This is even more surprising because all of these characters are fully clothed, and have fairly drab, gender-neutral outfits (with the exception of Keepsake). I am not sure of whether this is because they are trying to market these games to a mainly female market, or because many (or at least some) of the developers are female.
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