"This whole setup feels like a really poorly placed movie rather than a video game. As players, our inputs just move us to the next scene. No puzzle pushed me to scratch my head and really think. Without objects to find and interact with, I just kept clicking, and the game kept going."
If the story is the focus of the game, yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Sand-box games ruin the pacing of a story.
Look at Rockstar's games. They usually have fantastic stories, but the style of gameplay kills it. Nothing ruins John Marston's desperate quest to complete his mission and get back to his family like spending four hours picking herbs and going on fetch quests for tangential characters. Quick, you're a cop in 1940's L.A. and you've just found out that a woman was murdered by her husband and you need to arrest him before he skips town! What a tense moment! ...except it takes you ten real-world minutes to drive across town to the guy's house and that's even if you don't stop to answer those three unrelated police calls that you get on the way.
This Jurassic Park game was all about telling a nice, tight, Jurassic Park story. A sand-box game would have ruined that.
Red Dead Redemption is one of my favorite games ever, but I completely agree that the story elements were mediocre to poor for various reasons. The solution is for Rockstar to let go of the idea of telling stories like that, not to change the gameplay.
The solution is basically the same for a Jurassic Park game. Have a bare-bones story about having to accomplish a bunch of things to fix the island, or escape the island, or whatever, and let us go wild. Dramatic tension and all that stuff you want would come naturally from moments during the gameplay (and there is probably room to script some things as well). The top priority of a game developer should not be story.
IGN is definitely biased. So is GameSpot, GameSpy, GameInformer, etc. and more than likely a majority of gamers who read those sites. And they're biased all in the same direction, to wit: modern video games (in stark contrast to movies) are judged on the extent to which they allow the player to define his or her own experience.
This is the ultimate root of just about every non-graphics-related criticism of JP:TG I've seen, whether coming from gamers who boil it down to the word "sandbox", or those who favor games with deeply-branching plots, and even those adventure gamers, such as myself, who relish the experience of exploring an environment rich with mysteries to solve -- rather than shit-easy, one-at-a-time, escape-the-room type puzzles -- no matter how good the story is.
Open-world environments and Heavy Rain-style non-linearity are not just fads or the province of the immature and shallow; they're the current pinnacles of the direction video gaming has been heading since its inception, the very thing that distinguishes video games from movies -- increasing the degrees of freedom players have to meet whatever challenges are embedded in the gameworld and thereby flesh out the story with their own actions.
Moreover there are plenty of games that don't go so far as open-world or branching plotlines yet still offer players opportunities to tailor their own experiences. The supposed dichotomy between "sandbox" and "story-driven" is not only false, it's absurd. You're kidding yourselves if you think that substantive, flexible gameplay has to be sacrificed in order for a Jurassic Park game to have a high-quality, true-to-the-franchise story. Anyone who says that sandbox games skew the "pacing" of a story could only be approaching gaming as an exercise in consumption. In contrast, most non-casual gamers see themselves as participants, not consumers, and as the source of all manner of details in the writing of the story, including its pacing. Who's to say that your or my telling-by-playing story would be less faithful to JP than Telltale's?
So to all of you casual gamers, JP fans who are happy to just "be there", and adventure gamers who believe story is more important than gameplay: Suck it up. Stop pretending that negative reviews are about genre or any other kind of bias rather than widely accepted standards. The gaming press knows when it sees a title that falls far short of what most non-casual gamers are looking for in games -- including so-called story-driven games -- these days.
Great couple of posts - at first I thought you were going in the opposite direction with your point.
I would say that JP is getting low scores because its exploring the medium in a way that mainstream critics aren't equipped to deal with. The medium is not accepted as an art form yet, and in such a position you really can't expect the mainstream critics to be qualified to judge works outside the scope of their limited understanding. JP reviewed by IGN, is like having Einstein's paper submitted for peer review at some college fraternity.
The post above mine is perfect. The fanboyism in this thread is hilarious. I enjoy most of Telltales game as much as any of you, but i think IGN's review is spot on. This "game" was somewhat enjoyable, but mediocre. I am glad i pre-ordered back in april, so then i got the coupon code and only had to pay $5 for this.
in honesty, i found it kind of annoying i had to play at all. i really enjoyed just watching the story unfold. there were times when i'd be watching and enjoying myself with my hands nowhere near the mouse of keyboard when, all of a sudden, i'd have to mash a bunch of buttons to do something simple like tip-toe or hack at the jungle.
I think we're ignoring the fact that Telltale just can't do all that much about free roam and graphics. If I were rich I'd give them millions, just so they could meet the needs of everybody, but the plain and simple fact is, I don't think Telltale is at the point of making a Free Roaming Jurassic Park game with all the bells and whistles of side missions, alternating tours, and...urm...karmic shifts...(Infamous anyone?) But look. All of that sounds AMAZING! I would love for that to happen, but I'm happy just to know that we have a fresh NEW Jurassic Park Game to play.
I think we're ignoring the fact that Telltale just can't do all that much about free roam and graphics. If I were rich I'd give them millions, just so they could meet the needs of everybody, but the plain and simple fact is, I don't think Telltale is at the point of making a Free Roaming Jurassic Park game with all the bells and whistles of side missions, alternating tours, and...urm...karmic shifts...(Infamous anyone?) But look. All of that sounds AMAZING! I would love for that to happen, but I'm happy just to know that we have a fresh NEW Jurassic Park Game to play.
AGREED!
I want a free roam Jurassic park game too! I'd kill for a JP game Arkham city style!!!!
I still love this game though. Its the best Jurassic Park related game in 8 years in my opinion.
Without a doubt it is the best JP game there is but it think its fair to say IGN had a few valid points even if i didn't agree with the final score it was given.
When I heard it was to be point and click I was extatic as i freaking feed on that genre like theres no tomorrow. Firing it up, I found I love the graphics, the acting, the dialouge, pretty much every thing really is great except there seems to be no point and click puzzle solving what so ever and on a souly personal note I really dislike QTEs.
I'd hoped there would be more investigation and problem solving which is the core of adventure games.
I enjoy the game certainly but to do that I have to stop looking at it as an adventure game and more as an action game.
Comments
Very discouraging.
Red Dead Redemption is one of my favorite games ever, but I completely agree that the story elements were mediocre to poor for various reasons. The solution is for Rockstar to let go of the idea of telling stories like that, not to change the gameplay.
The solution is basically the same for a Jurassic Park game. Have a bare-bones story about having to accomplish a bunch of things to fix the island, or escape the island, or whatever, and let us go wild. Dramatic tension and all that stuff you want would come naturally from moments during the gameplay (and there is probably room to script some things as well). The top priority of a game developer should not be story.
Great couple of posts - at first I thought you were going in the opposite direction with your point.
AGREED!
I want a free roam Jurassic park game too! I'd kill for a JP game Arkham city style!!!!
I still love this game though. Its the best Jurassic Park related game in 8 years in my opinion.
When I heard it was to be point and click I was extatic as i freaking feed on that genre like theres no tomorrow. Firing it up, I found I love the graphics, the acting, the dialouge, pretty much every thing really is great except there seems to be no point and click puzzle solving what so ever and on a souly personal note I really dislike QTEs.
I'd hoped there would be more investigation and problem solving which is the core of adventure games.
I enjoy the game certainly but to do that I have to stop looking at it as an adventure game and more as an action game.