Hi all,
Well, it's finally happened. I just got done playing an older game, Mopheus. I liked the game a lot. I even enjoyed the interface, and how you could zip along from place to place. I realize this was due to older limitations, but I enjoyed not having to walk over every inch of my territory (like Kate Walker in Syberia) because I needed to look at something.

One thing started to bug me, and it's never happened before. Morpheus was described as a beautiful game, when it first came out. Many of the scenes still have a mysterious, evocative quality, particularly the ship scenes. The game is nicely drawn. However, I found myself noticing that there wasn't enough detail in those images. I kept hoping for the game company to re-release the game, using new technology (I know, no market, and the company is out of business anyway). This has never happened to me before, even though I am overly aware of how a game looks, it's supremely important to me. I'am also in the middle of Sanitarium; I play it when I travel. Sanitarium is an older game, and how it looks doesn't bother me. I still love how Myst looks. Maybe it's because I played Morpheus with the full screen option on my laptop. When I played it "small screen" it was so small I couldn't see anything!

Has this happened to anyone else? Are elements of older games starting to bother you. I'm not talking about technology, getting the games to play. I'm talking about playing the games.

I know that some of you may laugh when I describe Morpheus as an "older game". I've newish (4 or 5 years) to adventure games.

What do you think?

Hi mszv

I have found that the same with me, i use my laptop alot for the adventures and the depth seems to be missing in the older games. I have just finished Obsidian and was getting bugged by how little detail.

Well hopefully I will be able to get some newer games to play!!

Chel

And here I am on the other side of the coin completely. I actually prefer the older games. Probably because graphics and even sound are not a priority with me. I could really care less if there are stick figures walking around - if the game has a good story and it's interesting - I'm hooked. Passage: The Betrayal is a prime example. If you stopped playing because you didn't like the graphics you would miss out on a wonderfully, clever game.

Well I played Morpheus... after playing loads of newer games... but it still blew me away. I didn't worry about the graphics as the stopry gripped me totally. OK, the only place I found 'old' was the outside views, inside it was just too compelling!

OK, the same game with new graphics would be nice, but you can say that about 80% of adventures.. ie knock out the new stuff and the cartoon ones!!

Tig

I agree with Syd. I love playing the older games. It usually takes a little time to adjust to the graphics, but after getting into the story, I tend to forget the difference! And, realizing that the "adjustment" is necessary, I tend to play several of the old games in a row before going back to the newer ones.

I hate to think that as a late-comer to adventure games I might have missed the Space Quest series, the Tex Murphys, King's Quests, Gabriel Knights, Laura Bows... I just have to play them all!!

Hi !
Most of the games I have played have been the 'older' ones anyway, or newer cartoon ones, because I always play them along with my children. As a result I'm most accustomed to the 2D, and some 3D, cartoony games anyway, though there have been quite a few exceptions - Riven, Outcast, Atlantis 2, Nightlong, and some others. It's the newer ones we're trying to get used to.
The main thing in any adventure to us is the story, then the graphics and music/sound. Even puzzles aren't crucial to the game when we're all playing, otherwise I'd be forever asking my kids to leave the room rather than them lose their patience with my insistance on solving (eventually !), and I'd always be 'walkthrough-ing'.
If I played alone I'd concentrate far more on ones I'm dieing to play like Morpheus, Amber, Pilgrim, Faust, etc.. I'm talking my children around to playing some of them with me now !
One thing I do notice about the very much newer games, as a general rule, however, is that they're often much shorter than the 'older' ones. Atlantis 2 was quite short and Road To India the shortest I've ever played. I know they're not all that way though.
As for "do elements of the game bother me, such as graphic quality ?" Well, they definitely don't. I justify that by saying that when I played the Monkey Island series from 1 to 4, each was very enjoyable due to its 'other' qualities - story, humour, music, etc.. After the first scene or two we forgot it's technical deficiencies and loved it for what it was. I suspect the same is true for those of you who have played all three Gabriel Knight games. If the quality of the game is high in that it's obvious that it was created with that 'loving touch' then that's all I personally need. Next 'old' game up . . 'Loom'.
.
Sorry to ramble on yet again !

Please don't get me wrong, I do like the old games too! As long as it has a good story to it. I have 3 sculls to play yet, love the cartoon ones like Monkey Island 1, 2, 3, was not keen on 4 though. So there is some new ones that I don't like ether. But it might be because of using the laptop rather then the PC.

I find it easier to get used to graininess in 2D graphics (as in Morpheus or ROTS) than weird polygons in 3D graphics.

I don;t really notice as I play and replay a lot of my older games along with the new ones. I replayed Under A Killing Moon and decided it was so much funnier than I remembered and better than Overseer - though I liked Overseer too.

I thought the indie game Aftershocked was witty. I didn't care about the barely there graphics cause it was so clever. Drug dealer dudes selling crackaine and giant soul eating fish, midget henchmen - it was very well written.

I enjoyed the first 2 Monkey Island games more than the lst one. On the other hand I was also wowed by the graphics and music of Schizm and Atlantis 3. So I just go for a game in whatever mix that attracts and keeps my attention, is fun or entertaining.

Laura

Chel,

My older games look better on my laptop than my desktop. Of course, the laptop has the better video card and the LCD screen seems to have richer colors than the regular CRT screen. Interesting you think the quality degrades on your laptop...

I love the older games. Graphics aren't a big thing for me. I don't care what they look like if I'm having a good time. I don't like any games on my laptop, they just don't look right. <img border="0" alt="" title="" src="graemlins/pacify.gif" />

~Dee

Hi all,
I'm not talking about a game that has a cartoon like style. I think those hold up quite well. That's what the game developers intended. They look good as cartoons. Aftershocked is a fine looking game. I'm talking about something else. Morpheus had a different style, imaginative in a realistic sort of way. The games was supposed to look beautiful. You were supposed to see yourself in the middle of those dream worlds, and on the ship.

I'm not saying it didn't work. It worked reasonably well, I was often transported into the story, and I was moved, more so on the ship than in the other places. I just couldn't stay there, as hard as I tried. How the game looked got in the way of my game immersiveness. Maybe I'll play a few scenes on my desktop to see if that makes a difference.

Many gameboomers on this forum have remarked that they play adventure games for the story. I would assume it's story and something else, interactivity, good puzzles, along with visuals and music, something - puzzles usually come out high on the forum polls. It can't be just story. If only the story was important, why would anyone bother to play a game? I'm not trying to be obstinate or dense here, I just can't get it. Other mediums are better at telling a story, you know, works of fiction. You aren't limited by the mechanics of gameplay and technology. The stories can be longer, more nuanced, more complex, and you aren't limited by problems with the visualizations. I love a good game story, but, for example, if you would ask me to read the story behind Syberia, it wouldn't work for me. I don't think that's true only with games. Graphic novel stories don't work very well when you can't see the pictures and the words together. It's the same for movies.

I did get my start in adventure games, playing Myst. That may explain something. I expect adventure gams to look and sound great. I never played text adventures. If I can't look and listen to something wonderful, I don't want to play.

I started game playing with text adventures so maybe that's why graphics and sound don't mean all that much to me. Plus, I read a great deal. Guess I'm of the old school that tends to use my imagination to visualize things rather than my eyes. My son is just the opposite - he's a visual kind of kid. Which is why I guess I'm always disappointed when I see the movie remake of a book I've read. They never make it they way I visualized it.

All in your perspective

I guess I'm on the other side of the coin as well. I love the older games. I've recently found one of my very first graphic ones: The Black Cauldron. Now anyone looking at this game from todays point of view technologicaly would say
Gee.......This game's graphics are terrible.
But I don't think so, not for what it is. And as long as I'm enjoying myself....I'm fine.
Take for example DarkSeed or GK1; boxy graphics,
small window but, hey.......I got swallowed up by the storyline.
Same for the Sherlock Holmes Coleection I have.
Whether it's the Lost Files collection, Consulting Detective or even 221Baker ST.
I love the stories that they tell.

Dark Eye, Ghosts, Ripper, Myst, Riven ...the static graphics lend more to the dream like quality for me.
IMHO I think it's my personal choice and preference than anything else.
It seems to me that some of the older games were made with more TLC like the "Garage Games" of today. Plus, I love to get games to run on my machine that aren't supposed to. heeheeheeehee (gleeful chuckle)

Inferno

Mszv! It is not the age of the graphics that is bothering you in Morpheus. The same thing happened to me when I played it; something was disturbing me all through the game.
Not until later did I realized that it was deliberately built into the game to give you that unsettled , little off, not quite what you expected quality. It is part of the mystic, the unique interpretation of the uncertainties of the sorties and the unrealities of what is happening as we are playing along.

Just think about it a little and you will see what I mean. You would never feel this way playing LightHouse or TimeLaps.

Hi lasanadine,
Well, I'll give Morpheus another look, to see if I can see what you see! Thanks.

I really recognize that feeling mszv! I'm, like the others, really not THAT bothered with graphics, if it's a good game, it's a good game, if you know what I mean. But not too long ago, I decided to replay Shivers. One of my ol' favorites, had so much fun when I played it the first time, and I thought the graphics where GREAT! I installed it and started to click around, and to my horror I realized that I found the interface clumsy (!?) and the details blurry... Okay, so I've played a lot of games since then, so of course my perception of games has become more... "sophisticated" for a lack of a better word. I quickly uninstalled it, very much wanting to avoid ruining my experience from the first time playing it. It was a total surprise that I actually thought "less" of it (in a manner of speaking) this time around!

Hi Scout

I went back to my laptop and had a fiddle with it and low and behold my settings were up the creck. Had a shouting match with the kids and found that one of them had been mucking about with it about 2 months ago. So I am off to play an older game to review the graphics.

Chel