Articles

As a game
journalist, it’s my job to tell you, Dear Reader, the truth.  Sometimes
that’s an easy gig, and sometimes it’s hard.  After this year’s Electronic
Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, I’m afraid I have a dark tale to
tell.  It isn’t pretty.  But if I pull any punches I’m not doing my
job, am I?  And I care about you far too much to sugar-coat anything
as ugly as the following tale of woe.

So let
me just come right out and say it.  The game companies don’t care
about you.  They don’t care about your families.  In their heartless
pursuit of cash, they are unleashing upon the innocent adventure gaming
crowd a torrent of games so intriguing, so exciting, so lovely to
look at, so dog-gone fun that the non-game playing aspects of your
lives are bound to suffer terribly.  What makes this tide of evil
even more insidious is that it is being done with the full participation
of some of the most notable adventure game designers – the ones who
got us hooked in the first place.  Yep, the creators of Jewels
of the Oracle, Myst, Gabriel Knight, Broken Sword, The Longest Journey, Syberia, Traitors Gate and several
others are part of this ugly conspiracy to suck the time out of your
personal life.

So give
your spouse a backrub.  Tell your kids that they’re smart and good-looking. 
Clean out that old closet you’ve been putting off.  Because pretty
soon you aren’t going to have time to do anything but play dandy new
adventure games.

MERCILESS
MICROIDS

The first
perpetrator in this ghastly onslaught of good games is from the talented
folks at Microids, who aren’t letting a tiny bit of financial trouble
stop them from continuing work on the sequel to last year’s spectacular
Syberia.  This time around, American Kate Walker has
joined forces with the mysterious Hans to search for the lost island
of Syberia.

THE
RETURN OF RAND MILLER

Need to
help your kids with their homework?  Better get it done before the
launch of Uru: Ages Beyond Myst. 
You think UbiSoft cares whether your child makes it into the gifted
and talented program or not?  Not a chance.

Visionary
mad genius Rand Miller, who created Myst with his brother
over a decade ago, has been working on this project for years.  And
it’s finally upon us!

Uru
is several things, all intriguing.  First, it’s a full-fledged single
player game that takes you through new and beautiful, puzzle-filled
worlds in the Myst universe.  Next, it’s a three-tiered
online game with private, semi-private, and public areas to explore,
meet people, and engage in tag-team puzzle solving.   and
several others are part of this ugly conspiracy to suck the time out
of your personal life.  You’ll get to customize your own online avatar,
and create clubs that only your best puzzle-solving friends can join. 
With new downloadable content every month, it’s truly an online pure
adventure game. 

HELL
AT FULL THROTTLE

Does LucasArts
care if you get that gardening project finished?  Not at all.  They’re releasing sequels to not one, but TWO
of their most famous adventure games:  Sam and Max Hit the Road
and Full Throttle.  The Sam and Max sequel is only in
the early stages, but Full Throttle: Hell on Wheels
is well on it’s rowdy way.  Now of course,
some shrill adventure purists will complain that they’ve heard that
the Full Throttle sequel isn’t pure adventure; it’s
got – shudder – action sequences.  Well, these complainers
don’t have a very good memory:  SO DID THE FIRST GAME.  Trust me,
it’s still an adventure.

NOT
WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER!!!

My tale
gets even worse.  The fiendish team at HerInteractive,
drunk with the amazing commercial success they’ve been having with
their sturdy Nancy Drew franchise, want your daughters.  Their
eighth Nancy Drew mystery, The Haunted Carousel, will
have all of the features that have made the series so popular:  crisp
pre-rendered graphics, fun storylines, entertaining puzzles and honest-to-Nancy
atmosphere.   How will little Tiffany finish her algebra homework
when she’s playing Nancy Drew instead?

RAGNAR
ROCKS

Ragnar
Tørnquist, whose spectacular point-and-click epic The
Longest Journey gave the beleaguered adventure genre a huge
shot in the arm, is hard at work on the sequel to that beloved game. 
This time around it’ll be in full-3D, which DOESN’T mean it’s going
to be an action game, trust your Uncle Ray (see my upcoming rant article,
“Shut Up!” in a few days).  Ragnar is very excited about the possibilities
3D will provide.  He sees it as a way to open the adventure up.  The
new title, The Longest Journey: Static is still in the
early stages, and we’ll follow its development with great interest.

AN
EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES

By far
the most heartless of the game publishers, however, is DreamCatcher’s
The Adventure Company.  I don’t know, I thought I knew these people,
and they always seemed so nice.  But clearly they don’t care
a whit about all of the day jobs that will be put into peril by their
staggering raft of upcoming adventure titles.

The biggest
news, I suppose, is that they are working with Jane Jensen on a brand
new game!  No, it’s not Gabriel Knight, but it’s adventure, and, well, heck, it’s Jane Jensen. 
What more do we need to know?  The game is in its very early stages.

Charles
Cecil is also hard at work on the third Broken Sword
game, subtitled The Sleeping Dragon.  It seems that
our hero from the first two, the American lawyer George, has buffed
up and butched up a bit since The Smoking Mirror.  This
makes sense, actually, because just think of all he’s been through! 
He’s back at work with his trusty partner Nico, and they’ve got to
solve another dastardly, world-threatening plot.  The game uses a
beautiful 3D engine and allows for the puzzles to expand into environmental
challenges – getting off of a ledge, getting out of a falling airplane,
etc.  And honest-to-goodness adventure game, despite the ravings that
appeared on a certain forum not too long ago, it looks like The
Sleeping Dragon will bring back the venerable series in high
style.

Then there’s
the lovely Crystal Key II: The Far
Realm, the sequel to Dreamcatcher’s big adventure hit, The
Crystal Key.  It seems that, even though we did push
him into the middle of the sun at the end of the first game,
naughty boy Ozgar is back to wreak havoc with the universe, and it’s
our job to stop him!  A kidnapping sends the player on an odyssey
through beautiful worlds of mystery.

And for
those adventure game players who like to invite over their Mensa friends
to solve puzzles in graphically stunning environments, there’s Mysterious
Journey: Chameleon, the drop-dead gorgeous sequel to Mysterious
Journey (Schizm).  This time the fantastical environments
are in real-time 3D, and let me tell you, the screenshots do NOT give
the visuals in this game justice.  As in the previous game, the gorgeous
environments will help sooth your aching head as you solve the very
challenging puzzles that abound.  The themes are connectivity and
unity as you attempt to save an ancient colony from destruction.

And for
those of you who enjoyed the insanely fun Traitors Gate
(and Safecracker before that), there’s Cypher:
The Sequel to Traitors Gate.  This
time Raven (the agile and brainy hero of the last game) is
having to make his way through a series of ancient tombs that
are designed as deathtrap puzzles.  Only his wits (and yours) will
keep him alive!

Also in
the works is the story-rich Egyptian Prophecy: The
Fate of Rameses.  It’s a follow-up to Egypt: 1156 BC and Egypt II: The
Heliopolios Prophecy (but a completely stand-alone story). 
The game centers around Maia, a young priestess
who must solve a series of mysteries plaguing the Pharaoh.

And don’t
forget Atlantis: Evolution.  In this graphic adventure
you follow the story of Curtis Quick, a photographer who after a shipwreck
is transported by a mysterious vortex into the heart of Atlantis. 

In
the mood for something darker?  How
about Jack the Ripper?  It seems you can’t keep a good
prostitute-filleting killer down, and Wanadoo Studios has transported
the elusive fellow to New York’s Lower East Side.  In 1901, a young
newspaper reporter investigating a series of murders in Manhattan’s
infamous slum begins having the terrible realization of just who the
killer is.  Eek!

I CAN’T
GO ON, I CAN’T GO ON, I’LL GO ON

I wish
I had some insightful, helpful advice on how do deal with this hideous
avalanche of good gaming that’s coming your way.  Like you, I’ll just
have to grin and bear it.  Our jobs and families aren’t that important,
anyway, are they?

PS  Sorry
for not providing specific release dates for each game.  Not all of
them have fixed dates.  They will be released over the next twelve
months.

Coming
Shortly  Ray’s E3 Report Part Deux: Beyond Adventure!