Stupid, pointless puzzles, Stupid, pointless dialogue, Cookie-cutter story

In case you are wondering what the best-selling pc game in North America was for the third week of July 2008 – according to the retail sales figures compiled by NPD – well, it wasn’t Devil May Cry 4, which received a score of 8 (awesome!) from Games Radar, nor was it Mass Effect which received a score of 9 (awesome!) from Games Radar. Nope, it was little ol’ Nancy Drew: The Phantom of Venice. Now isn’t that a crock of seven-out-of-ten!

Originally Posted By Shany (29 JUL 2008 4:30pm)
Well that could've been much less insulting.

It’s a symbiotic relationship that’s full of male critics and curious little girls.

In celebration of our seven out of ten week, we’ve listed what we feel are the worst offenders that managed to scrape by with an undeserved seven.

Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek

Originally Posted By An_Inkling (1 AUG 2008 2:47pm)
 
I disagree with many of JA's review scores, and think that overall they are too high.

However, I disagree even more with mainstream sites inflating scores for mainstream games. Most of these games are just as much a rehash as many Adventures, it just seems that many reviewers either ignore that fact, or have just not played the older games. The much praised Bioshock, while a decent, maybe even good game, was largely a simplified version of System Shock 2 in a different setting.

I also feel the text of JAs reviews are of a good standard and length, whereas many of these mainstream reviews drool over the graphics, tell us over and over that the game is awesome, but often neglect to tell us why.

With the poor quality of writing, the pathetically sycophantic reviews and even more so previews, of mainstream sites like GamesRadar, their hypocritical criticisms are just laughable.  

The article he responded to was extremely insulting, ignorant, and downright libelous.

Need some proof? How about this quote from Tyler Nygate's review of Secret Files Tunguska - "you'll find yourself skipping through the game's lengthy and frequent dialogues as fast as your right-clicking finger will allow in this good looking, yet derivative adventure title."

Unfortunately, even with the aid of the magnifying glass, the pacing of Tunguska's plot still crawls at a snail's pace. The mystery surrounding Nina's father's abduction and the Tunguska event is revealed all at once during the last few minutes of the game and is a major letdown. The voice acting will also grate your ears, with Nina's squeaky teenage voice as Tunguska's worst offender. Couple that with unconvincing performances from the rest of the cast and you'll find yourself skipping through the game's lengthy and frequent dialogues as fast as your right-clicking finger will allow in this good looking, yet derivative adventure title.

who cares much less about graphic sizzle and more about substance.  

Originally Posted By onemanandhisdroid (13 AUG 2008 5:08pm)
 
Longterm part-time lurker here.

The article he responded to was extremely insulting, ignorant, and downright libelous.

What comes around goes around. I remember a series of JA+ articles full of prejudices, all for the sake of keeping perpethual myths into place. In their author's world, the gaming media consisted of nothing but twitch jokeys, the #1 enemy of the known adventure gaming world. In their extremely defensive mentality, these articles dug a hole to take cover in and continued to hiss at everybody who dared to even touch their precious, the adventure game. Only that, well, adventure games aren't special. Somebody forgot to told them long ago. They're not in their special class. They're not the fine wine or gourmet cuisine just for being there and trying. Nope, not even close. They're in the same playing field as every other game. While comparing Myth to Serious Sam is obviously a little daft, there's no reason whatsoever to not expect the same crisp writing and plotting from an adventure game than what is found in Psychonauts, Bloodlines or Kotor, for instance.

Sitting in their dark holes, hiding their precious little adventure games from the bad gaming media existing for one simple reason: to wipe adventure gaming out once and for all, it never occured to them how this moronic twitch crowd could give glorious praise to Shadow Of The Colossus, Viva Pinata, LocoRoco or Darwinia alike, while awesomely sophisticated point&clickers like Runaway, Tony Tough, Gilbert Goodmate And The Mushroom Of Phungoria et all apparently didn't even tickle their fancy once. How dare they.

This article belongs to said series of articles, by the way. Not only does it keep re-telling the same old story over and over again until it hopefully rings true to its audience. It also sinks down to the Quandaryland levels by taking quotes totally out of context, since within context they wouldn't fit the picture the article's trying to paint anymore.

 
Need some proof? How about this quote from Tyler Nygate's review of Secret Files Tunguska - "you'll find yourself skipping through the game's lengthy and frequent dialogues as fast as your right-clicking finger will allow in this good looking, yet derivative adventure title."  

Here's the full paragraph:

Unfortunately, even with the aid of the magnifying glass, the pacing of Tunguska's plot still crawls at a snail's pace. The mystery surrounding Nina's father's abduction and the Tunguska event is revealed all at once during the last few minutes of the game and is a major letdown. The voice acting will also grate your ears, with Nina's squeaky teenage voice as Tunguska's worst offender. Couple that with unconvincing performances from the rest of the cast and you'll find yourself skipping through the game's lengthy and frequent dialogues as fast as your right-clicking finger will allow in this good looking, yet derivative adventure title.  

But maybe that's just the kind of stuff an audience

 
who cares much less about graphic sizzle and more about substance.  

is really thirsting for. It's about time to put this madness to rest.  

Originally Posted By onemanandhisdroid (13 AUG 2008 6:00pm)
 
Mind you, a response to the article over at GamesRadar is one thing, the way it was done, publicly even, is another. A review is an opinion, there is no RIGHT or WRONG to be found in here at all. And while The NEW State Of Adventure Gaming #1 rightfully demands respect for such a piece of opinion, it also fires back with the exact same kind of ammo - prejudice, assumptions and really, really awful generalizations. And yes, that won't get you terribly far.  

the majority however prefer to stick with classic-style PC adventures BECAUSE they are slow-paced, focused on puzzle solving and have relatively low system requirements.