RIVEN AND THE FUTURE OF ADVENTURE GAMES

               An article from Stefan Herber

Back in the old days when graphics, if they existed at all, were
rudimentary in the extreme, adventures were all there was apart
from the equivalents of the games available in the local pub.  I
remember when I first got my Sinclair struggling with the text
adventure "Zork" (15 years later I finally finished it on my state
of the art PC) and never getting anywhere at all with games like
"The Hobbit". With time and experience and help from the Internet
skills improved and I regularly expect to finish most adventures
with minimal help in a week or so. Trouble is - are there any left
to play?

I must add that I'm only talking about adventures now, not
action adventures which I see as a totally different genre. I
mean a game when you only get killed if you do something stupid;
where arcade action plays a minimal part; and where the name of
the game is solving puzzles. I'm referring to the classic Monkey
Island games or the Gabriel Knight series.  Why so few
recently?

Well the best seller of all time, "Myst", has a lot to answer for
the current problems. When I first played it I was so frustrated
with the lack of interactivity that I gave up. Later and with more
perseverance I ended up actually admiring it. In my opinion the
genre was further improved with "Zork-Nemesis" but surely the long
awaited follow-up "Riven" was going to set the standard for this
type of game?

Maybe it has - but certainly not for me. "Riven" looks wonderful
but has nothing of any form of involvement. It may seem a strange
analogy, but I was reminded a bit of the slasher films of the
1980s. Brian de Palma's "Carrie" was a great film but did he ever
foresee that its original ending would become a clich‚?  In the
same way these current games where you can spend forever wandering
around and admiring the scenery have now become a clich‚. The
story and puzzles have taken a back seat - there's hardly anything
resembling a plot at all - and the puzzles lurch between the
absurdly simple to the almost impossible. Can anybody honestly say
they finished "Riven" without cheating? I can say that of "Myst"
and many other adventure games but at my stage of experience if I
have to cheat by accessing a walkthrough and can say afterwards
"How on earth was I supposed to work that out?" I feel entitled to
feel a bit letdown.

Now I have no doubt that the game has many admirers and it has
certainly sold very well. There may even be some of you waiting to
write me hate mail after reading this. Nevertheless my advice is
if you want to look at pretty pictures, buy yourself a book or CD
of famous paintings. Unless you want hours of self induced torture
give "Riven" a very wide berth. If this is the future of adventure
gaming I'm not surprised some feel the genre is dead.





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