"REAL adventure is waiting for you, DS."

I’m the type of gamer who mostly plays old Sierra and LucasArts adventure games. Some people might not even consider me a gamer at all, in fact. I didn’t have a console until very recently. My circa 2002 computer may be running like a champ, but it had some lagging problems running Psychonauts… in 2005. So, modern computer gaming is also out. I was lucky enough to be visited by the Wing Damage Fairy a while back, who blessed me with a DS.

I was excited about rumblings of the DS being the promised land of adventure gaming; I’d read on many a message board and blog that since the console’s point-and-click stylus interface was ideal for the genre I would have a bevy of adventure games to choose from once I had a look around. I was bummed to find out, however, that there is not, in fact, a whole lot of quality adventure games on the DS. At least not the kind I’m looking for.

Read after the jump to see my findings.

It started out promising. WingDamage-a Claus gifted me a copy of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney and I loved it, despite it not being a straightforward adventure game. I was thirsty for more. After a basic Google search I had assembled a sizable list of games to check out. I was drawn to the game Trace Memory. I liked the look of the art and it’s plot. A ghost story that takes place on the ominously named Blood Edward Island? Yes, please. But what I found when I played the game was an easy-as-pie adolescent drama that lasted two brief evenings. I had caught wind of these flaws in online reviews of Trace Memory previous to purchasing it, but my optimism had blinded me to them.

Going back over my list of possible games, they all seemed a little off. Professor Layton is apparently a puzzle game in adventure game clothing. Reports of diminished graphics and a poor interface have scared me off of Syberia. Middling reviews have caused me to shun Insecticide. Ugly art, and the threat of the same developer that released Trace Memory, kept me from checking in to Hotel Dusk: Room 215 (although this review of it almost made me change my -bad pun alert- tune). Time Hollow gives off a tween vibe similar to Trace Memory. Hey wait, the Secret Files games look good, I’ll take them! Ah, no, not available in the US. Of course. I felt like I was spinning my wheels, so I set my DS down for a few months.

I recently came back to it, and found a game that looks okay. Broken Sword: Director’s Cut. It’s ported from PC, but it looks like it was redesigned for the DS and not just clumsily shoved into a new format. It looks like it makes good use of the DS interface, which is important to me.  I’m not a big fan of straight forward dramas however, which it looks like Broken Sword might be, and the comparisons to The DaVinci Code are kind of scaring me. But I clearly have to take what I can get here.

If I were the Don Corleone of the Adventure family on the DS, I would get Dave Gilbert on the case. I would play Emerald City Confidential or any of his Blackwell games on the DS in a heartbeat, and they’d look great on the shelf. I’d get Telltale with the program. I can’t imagine Monkey Island or Sam & Max not making a total killing if properly ported. I don’t think the Days series would do well on the DS, but wouldn’t an original Yahtzee game blow everyone’s minds? He really knows how to make limited graphics and sound sing. I think any of these entities would make a big splash if they released something on the DS, a system that I don’t think gets a lot of high profile, original releases that are of interest to the mainstream gaming community. There’s endless potential here, and I’m dying to seeing it realized.

Don’t get me wrong, the DS is a great system. It’s got a fun personality, a unique interface and a lot of games that make it worth having. I think it’s the only system I’d really want to have. But I am disappointed that it doesn’t have more of the specific type of adventure games I was hoping for.

Am I totally off base? Are there some amazing gems that I’ve missed? Am I wrong about any of the games that I dismissed above? Am I a cranky old man, asking the new world order to get off his lawn?

Let me know, internet.

On a very special forty-sixth episode of “Barrel Roll! A Video Game Podcast”, we are rejoined by long lost cohort Colin Panetta, who fills us in on his gaming over the last few months as a DS owner. Colin also brings us up to speed on the latest comic in his series Dead Man Holiday.

Our weekly “What We’ve Been Playing” consists of Jesse’s completion of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers, Colin having taken some time with various adventure games like Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney on the DS as well as WarioWare: Touched!, and Jonah finally giving Modern Warfare 2 a try. He has also been checking out the space strategy game, Gratuitous Space Battles.

In the news, we discuss the delay of several upcoming Capcom titles, the next Legend of Zelda, and Prinny 2 and it’s ridiculously silly plot revolving around the return of a pair of stolen panties.

We also discuss this week’s “Friday Old Games” game, Flashback: The Quest for Identity, and cap the show off with a discussion of download services like Steam and how amazing their sales have been lately.

All this and more on Barrel Roll #46!

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Show Notes:

Intro Music – “Dig! Dig! Dig!”

Mid Show Music – “Veo Lu Sluice”

Ending Music – “Crystal Locomotive”

All three of the above songs are available on The Crystal Bearers soundtrack

Dark Void 8-bit Trailer

Coropata

"Burn it all down, Colin..." "Yes, Colin. Make them all pay!"

I’ve been playing adventure games since I was pretty young, and I believe they’ve wired my brain to deal with obstacles in my everyday life in a unique and efficient way. Traditionally, this “adventure game logic” has helped me to solve simple tasks, but recently I’ve been confronted with a new adventure game that is making me wonder what other parts of my life this type of problem solving can be applied to.

Although it now exists pretty much only as an aspect of various other types of games, adventure games were once one of the most popular video game genres going. In them, the player followed along with the story and solved various puzzles in order to advance the sequence of events. So, to use the most overused and basic example possible, if the player needed to get something or someone that was locked behind a door, they’d have to find a key to open it.

Adventure games operated under this principle almost exclusively; King’s Quest, Day of the Tentacle, Myst and even Doug TenNapel’s surreal The Neverhood all held fast to this basic formula. You were introduced to the characters, then you’d find objects and use them to advance the story. You would often use the objects you found to overcome an obstacle that was holding the main character back from the next step in their journey. Finding a battery to use for your phone to call for a ride because your car broke down or finding a list of ingredients to make a magic potion that would let you grow wings and fly home. That sort of thing.

As time went on I started to notice myself utilizing this same type of logic in my everyday life, kind of like how Tetris players see tetriminos everywhere they go. After a problem would present itself I would start to scroll through a mental Rolodex of all of the immediately available objects (known to adventure gamers as their “inventory”). “Okay… can’t shave at the sink because my girlfriend keeps too much stuff around it and I don’t want to get it covered in hair… Where would it be okay for me to get stubble everywhere?… The shower!… But there’s no mirror in there… I can grab the hand mirror out of the bedroom and hang it from the shower head!” or “We had to put the couch on it’s back to get it through the front door, but it’s too heavy to lift and we don’t want to tear the back up dragging it across the bottom of the door frame… we can fold up the tarp that Mark lent us last week and put it under the couch, and then just drag the couch out by the corners of the tarp!” A problem solved using a series of items, letting the events of the day advance.

And so it went for a long while. Then, I was given a copy of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. I remembered seeing it mentioned on the Internet as a bizarre adventure game. Apollo Justice (actually the fourth in the “Ace Attorney” series of games) is not what you would conventionally think of as a video game, but is actually what’s called a “visual novel”. Most of the time you’re not “playing” in any sense of the word, but reading conversations between the judge, defense and prosecution and cross-examining witnesses with elaborate dialogue trees. The game is Japanese both in origin and tone; the courtroom is a dramatic, flamboyant place where particularly intense revelations are met with shielded eyes and wind-blown hair. It has a complete disregard for the way the legal system actually works.

Everyone, including people on the stand, yell “Objection!” whenever they feel like talking. But what’s really interesting about the Ace Attorney series is it’s variation on the classic adventure game formula. In order to advance in the story, you don’t need to solve an incidental puzzle. The story IS the puzzle to be solved, and your ability to process and interpret all of the information contained in it determines your ability to succeed. For example, in order to get stubborn witnesses to tell you more of the story, you have to find the evidence (or rather, the object in your inventory) that you know will force that particular character’s hand. In this way, the Ace Attorney series integrates it’s puzzles directly into the story of the game. Traditional adventure games’ puzzles are action based. Ace Attorney’s are story based.

I only just recently found out about Ace Attorney, so it’s effects on my decision making process have yet to be determined. Honestly, I didn’t really think it could be applicable. When would I encounter a dramatic mystery that I could use evidence and testimony to solve? Am I going to track down the people who smashed my car window, or find the parent of the baby that was left on my doorstep? I didn’t see it happening. But then, a few days ago, my girlfriend got sick. “What could have made me so sick?” she groaned. And my mind started turning in that familiar way: “What time did you start feeling this way? What did you have for dinner? Have you eaten that before? Did you have wine? How many glasses? Do you usually have that many?…”