Articles

Judging
by the number of people attending this year’s ects at Earls Court,
London, the computer gaming industry is thriving. With an anticipated
attendance of 23,000 trade and press visitors the event was described
by the ects 2002 Preview literature as “the biggest European
promotional platform [for the] industry this year”.

Unfortunately this encouraging
trend does not appear to include traditional ‘adventure’ gaming and
finding anything connected to the pure adventure genre at this year’s
event was a bit like searching for the Holy Grail.

Action, shooter, strategy,
RPG and simulator games were to be seen in abundance. Brilliant, neon-coloured
posters with names like Splinter Cell, Ravenshield,
Bandits and Devastation splashed across every surface.
The sound of laser guns, explosions, animal snarls, shrieks and groans
provided a constant background reminder of the more commercially successful
genres.

However,
despite the poor representation from the ‘adventure’ gaming industry,
I was delighted to have an opportunity to talk to Stephen Carrière,
Arxel Tribe’s Creative Director, about their new release Ring II
and also to be able to attend the preview of Broken Sword 3: The
Sleeping Dragon.

Stephen was predictably
enthusiastic about Arxel Tribe’s new release, and I have to admit
his enthusiasm was contagious. This is not the place to give a full
preview of the game, but I would like to make a couple of comments:
The team have put a great deal of thought into the playability of
the game and moved away from the traditional puzzle/inventory based
adventure, in favour of a situation-solution-driven story. In order
to progress through the game a challenging set of circumstances is
created in which the player will have to ‘think’ his way out of the
situation by using problem-solving skills rather than mathematical
principle, feats of memory or simple trial and error. Stephen anticipates
that this new formula will capture the essence of exploratory adventure
without the over subscribed puzzle formats and repetitive searching
for inventory items of traditional adventure games. The news release
advertising the game describes it as “The art of Philippe Druillet
combined to Wagner’s music. An astonishing heroic-fantasy graphic
universe.” In my view this perfectly describes the look and feel
of the game and requires no further elaboration for this report. After
just a short preview of the game I was hooked and will be eagerly
awaiting its release – scheduled for October in the UK and December
in the US.

Despite the stark statement
by Charles Cecil, managing director of Revolution Software, that “the
point and click
adventure game is dead” Revolution’s preview of Broken Sword
3: The Sleeping Dragon was so well attended that it was standing-room-only
soon after the doors were opened. Broken Sword 3 which is in
development for PlayStation 2, Xbox and PC is the game Charles Cecil
has “always wanted to write” and claims that it “visually
breaks new barriers”. This game has metamorphosised from the
original 2d cartoon-style point & click of Broken Sword 1
& 2 into a direct control 3d adventure with action captured
by cinematic camera angles. George and Nico return with a whole new
set of abilities – some of which are rather Tomb-Raider-like
e.g. climbing, jumping and shimmying. The basic adventure theme survives,
although once again the developers are aiming to attract a new audience
by creating a hybrid requiring a mix of skills in order to succeed
– including stealth, combat and puzzle solving. The game has been
purposefully designed to be less challenging and will probably only
take approximately 16 hours of game-play. More details and screenshots
can be viewed at www.brokensword3.net.

Sony and Screen Digest
held a Keynote Press Conference at which Ben Keen of Screen Digest
gave a detailed presentation on the commercial state of the industry
and predictions for the next few years. There was great enthusiasm
over the developing ‘wireless’ game market, with the introduction
of downloadable games written with Java support animation and colour.
These games will probably incur a one-off fee per download. The console
gaming arena will inevitably receive a boost from on-line connection,
and Playstation 2, Xbox and GameCube are already broadband-enabled.
PC online gaming will also be invigorated by the advent of broadband
but this represents a very small slice of the predicted overall growth
and the statistics presented predicted that the market in PC game
sales will just about hold its own over the coming year whereas Playstation
2 game sales will outstrip all others. Further information is available
at www.screendigest.com.

Despite evidently structured
movement away from the traditional adventure game by several developers
and the apparent lack of interest from the industry in this genre,
this year has seen the tremendously successful launch of Syberia
and The Watchmaker both of which represent adventure gaming
in its purest form.

Perhaps the demise of true
adventure is Loom-ing but it’s not quite come to the Final
Scene yet. Those of us that still yearn for the Little, Big
Adventure can take comfort from the fact that games like Riddle
of the Sphinx II and Pharaoh’s Curse are both well into
development and scheduled for upcoming release.

Maggie Holt
31/08/02