Posted October 09, 2016
I don't have a lot of experience with point and click adventure games, but I have enough to know that I need help. lol
I played a handful of P&CA games as a kid (roughly 12 years ago) and enjoyed them very much, but I was never actually able to beat any of them without a walkthrough. I blame that on being an impatient little kid. But within the last few months I've been trying to get back into the genre, and I've having a little difficulty. You see, I do fine with figuring out logical puzzles based in the environment, like the kind you find in the Myst series. But I have a hard time with puzzle games that are heavily reliant on lots of item finding.
The weird combinations aren't the worst part (though those do cause some issues). The problem comes when a game has dozens of items spread out over the entire game world, some of which might be deliberately hidden. It leads to moments where I get to an area with a puzzle I need to complete, and it's blatantly obvious that I don't have the item required. Which means I have to go looking around the game world for that one item, back tracking through area's I've already been. It's tedious, and often frustrating.
Now that's not to say I'm entirely against item based puzzles, or a bit of backtracking/item hunting within reason. But to try and give you all an idea, I'll mention two games I've played that serve as good examples. On the one end of the spectrum, Beneath a Steel Sky and Primordia were fantastic. They required item hunting, and backtracking, but it never felt like important items were hidden from me. And the inventory never felt too clogged up. At the bad end of the spectrum, I very recently tried to play The Longest Journey. Oh my god, what a mess. The pre-rendered backgrounds were very beautiful, but important items constantly blended in to the backgrounds which made them hard to spot, and I had like 20 mysterious items in my inventory within an hour.
So basically what I'm looking for are recommendations of classic point and click adventure games that have relatively logical puzzles, and are light on item hunting. Or at least that don't cruelly hide the items you need. I apologize for the wall of text, and look forward to your advice.
I played a handful of P&CA games as a kid (roughly 12 years ago) and enjoyed them very much, but I was never actually able to beat any of them without a walkthrough. I blame that on being an impatient little kid. But within the last few months I've been trying to get back into the genre, and I've having a little difficulty. You see, I do fine with figuring out logical puzzles based in the environment, like the kind you find in the Myst series. But I have a hard time with puzzle games that are heavily reliant on lots of item finding.
The weird combinations aren't the worst part (though those do cause some issues). The problem comes when a game has dozens of items spread out over the entire game world, some of which might be deliberately hidden. It leads to moments where I get to an area with a puzzle I need to complete, and it's blatantly obvious that I don't have the item required. Which means I have to go looking around the game world for that one item, back tracking through area's I've already been. It's tedious, and often frustrating.
Now that's not to say I'm entirely against item based puzzles, or a bit of backtracking/item hunting within reason. But to try and give you all an idea, I'll mention two games I've played that serve as good examples. On the one end of the spectrum, Beneath a Steel Sky and Primordia were fantastic. They required item hunting, and backtracking, but it never felt like important items were hidden from me. And the inventory never felt too clogged up. At the bad end of the spectrum, I very recently tried to play The Longest Journey. Oh my god, what a mess. The pre-rendered backgrounds were very beautiful, but important items constantly blended in to the backgrounds which made them hard to spot, and I had like 20 mysterious items in my inventory within an hour.
So basically what I'm looking for are recommendations of classic point and click adventure games that have relatively logical puzzles, and are light on item hunting. Or at least that don't cruelly hide the items you need. I apologize for the wall of text, and look forward to your advice.
Post edited October 09, 2016 by EckoShy
