The Chatter
Box
Volume 2
December 17, 2001

by Adam Rodman

Action-Adventures:
Why Hyphens Suck

And welcome to the second
incarnation of The Chatter Box. I was thinking about writing
on the socioeconomic condition of the Czech Republic since it split
with Slovakia, but I’m on the second sentence of this column and already
I’ve extinguished my, uh, what’s the word I’m looking for? Smartivity!
Anyhoo, y’all can read about a slightly less intelligent topic – the
action-adventure. Bon voyage! (For you uncultured, that means, “keep
truckin'” in ancient Aramaic or something.)

I have had a revelation.
It came to me whilst sitting beneath the branches of a papaya tree,
clad only in my skivvies (that’s slang for underwear, right?), meditating
for fourteen hours with no food or drink. The sky darkened, the western
wind ominously gusted, and a disembodied voice revealed unto me perhaps
the greatest revelation in almost five days: action-adventures really
suck.

Okay, okay, so I jest.
Not only have I not talked to a supreme being lately, I also haven’t
been wearing my skivvies (which I still think means underwear). But
I have been playing a whole lot of action-adventures, and they do
in fact suck.

I wasn’t always this way.
I originally liked Tomb Raider, I thought Drakan was
a blast (fire-breathing dragons and wet T-shirt-like feminine chain
mail, just like the real Dark Ages!), and Soul Reaver was a
bearable sort of game. The concept of an action-adventure is great
— mix the thinking and problem solving puzzles of an adventure game
with the gunfights, itchy trigger-fingers, and suspense of an action
game. So what happened?

I
played a game that fit the ideal of an action-adventure so perfectly
it made me cry. I played a game as addictive as Nico-Cola (my future
business venture that will make me the richest soft-drinker manufacturer
in America.) I played a game that required the wits of Bond, the stealth
of Cat Woman (don’t ask), and the guns of Rambo (no buns of steel,
unfortunately.) I played Deus Ex.

For those folks who’ve
been living under a stone for the past year (I say stone because “living
under a rock” is a cliché and clichés are bad so
they say, eh?), Deus Ex is the conspiracy theory fueled first-person
shooter that lets you solve problems your way (sorta like Burger King,
except they let you order crappy food your way). Locked door into
an enemy compound? You can hack into the security system and deactivate
the lock, sneak into the sewers and enter right behind the door, bribe
a corrupt guard to let you in, or (my personal favorite) blow the
hell out of the door with a rocket launcher.

But that’s not the point.
Deus Ex exemplifies an action-adventure. It mixes the right
amount of wanton killing and thinking to keep the veteran adventurer
or actioner (which I seriously don’t think is a word) drooling for
more. And it has no jumping puzzles.

Other action-adventures
never really exercise the noggin’. Oh sure, there’s the occasional
find-a-key puzzle, maybe one or two “use inventory item on location”
problems, and the ever-pleasant and time-consuming maze, but something
that really makes you think? Nah.

Action-adventures also
aren’t too great in the action field either. Unlike a true action
game, where you can flank
enemies, lay traps, snipe, and crawl, action-adventures generally
limit your character to walking aroundand pressing the shoot button
while facing in the general direction of the beastie you’re about
to turn into salmon pâté (if the monster you’re about
to kill happens to be a giant salmon).

To make up for their short-comings
in the action and adventure parts of the word action-adventure, the
genre utilizes the most evil, disgusting, and down-right smelly practice
in the history of gaming: jumping puzzles. The first jumping puzzle
discussion probably went something like this:

Game Developer: We have
a problem; our game’s too short and it sorta sucks.
Game Publisher: Well, why don’t you put jumping puzzles in the game?
That’ll add a good kajillion hours (10 * 10^97).
Game Developer: I guess I could do that, but wouldn’t that make our
game suck even more?
Game Publisher: Are you kidding? All the other game companies will
laugh and make fun of us if we don’t have a really long game, and
that hurts my self-esteem.

And to think, I didn’t
realize all the shortcomings of the action-adventure genre until I
played a really really great game. But disillusioned action-adventurers,
worry not. Several games can whet your desire for cerebrating, slicing,
shooting, and surmising. Infogrames’ Outcast, Electronic Arts’
System Shock series, and Eidos’ Thief series are all
some of the best action-adventures on the market. And with Deus
Ex 2 and Thief 3 just around the corner for PCs everywhere,
action-adventures just might start sucking a little less.

By the way, the Merriam-Webster’s
definition for “Skivvies” is a female domestic servant.
Of course, the word “skivvy” means underwear, but hey, who
am I to argue with the experts?