Caltrops - System Shlock 2 - Re: SA, Home of the Underdogs, or TTLG.com?

Forum Overview :: System Shlock 2

by Damocles 07/16/2003, 5:03am PDT

FABIO wrote:

I never saw what the huge appeal of Monkey Island was. Those painfully tedious (and not to mention 100% thinking free) insult duels that were IN EACH FUCKING GAME had you wandering around until the correct insult decided to randomly show itself were pure pain. The humor was also not even one-fifth as funny as your average Space Quest game (actually, only the odd numbered games in that series were good). Hell, I always thought the comic relief in Quest for Glory was funnier than anything I ever saw in a Monkey Island game (didn't the last one, released 2-3 years ago, have an OJ joke in it? HURR). I think Murray the skull was the only thing that came close to funny in the series.

Adventure games have a far higher suck to good ratio than any other genre I can think of. Can you think of any other genre that only has 3-5 good games?

Nope, because adventure games ain't like that either. I can name off more than 3-5 good adventure games. Hell, I could do that for most COMPANIES, let alone the genre. (Sierra, for example: SQ 1,3,5, maybe 4; Both Manhunters, Codename: Iceman, Conquest of Camelot, Gold Rush, Gobliiins, LSL1, possibly 3... and that's just off the top of my head)

The problem is that you (and most others) will almost certainly NOT KNOW ABOUT THEM, because it's a largely dead genre. Mention Manhunter: New York, for example, and you usually get blank stares. That also militates against this "higher suck to good ratio"... there are a metric assload of crappy FPSes and RTSes out there, and those genres are still relatively young.

(The number of shit RPGs, for one thing, outwits the ability of the human mind to consider)

As for Monkey Island... I liked them, and a lot of other people did too. The insult duels were interesting in how they forced you to rethink how to use the response, because the "main duel" involved different opening taunts. Plus, they did a great job of fucking with the SCUMM system- witness the bits in MI1 that made fun of a) the simplicity of the interface and b) the fact that you could never, ever die in practically all SCUMM game.