Any Adventure Games for the DS, Anybody?
It's as if the console was MADE for this type of game. (I fervently hope TTG will eventually make a couple of games for it. Particularly Sam & Max).
I've noticed a surprisingly large number of games which I have suspected to be Adventure games (far more than I would have expected for a console so new in such a short time and in this day and age) come out for it. (Also, have you ever noticed that no adventures have a message on the back of the box saying "This is an Adventure Game"?
Far more than I can actually afford to buy, since the recession. I've been making a list, mentally, of the games to look out for and buy when I have some cash together, but its hard. (For one thing the games on the shelves are never in the same place twice, especially if some have been purchased).
So I thought I'd look up a list of DS adventure titles online and go through it for the ones I'm most interested in. Sadly most of the lists aren't just for adventure games, but various different types of action games. Soon it becomes hard to tell which is which.
If anybody knows of an adventure game fan site that has a DS section or even a DS fansite that has a [proper] adventure game section then PLEASElet me know. Until then, here's a list of games collated from this thread
Original DS Titles;
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Touch Detective 1 & 2 (For some reason called 'Mystery Detective', here in the UK. The bundled games are referred to as 'Touch Detective' but I've only seen these available online).
The 'Ace Attorney' series (Not entirely certain this is an adventure game but most adventure players recommend it).
Secret Files: Tunguska (At first I thought the dialogue in this game was terrible. Then, when I accounted for the language barrier (I discovered that the game was made in germany), I realised that some of the weird lines were actually jokes).
Another Code (I'm told that the Wii and DS versions were originally intended for release on both systems so I'm not going to regard this as a ported title).
CSI: Dark Motives
Miami Law (Haven't seen this anywhere online or in shops. I assume it's real as it was mentioned by TTG's own Emily and that it's probably just not yet available in the UK).
Flower, Sun, and Rain (Something of an 'interactive novel', from what I gather).
Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery Of The Mummy
Probably Adventure Games (if there's anybody who can verify any of these that would be great
);
Mystery Mansion
Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Not yet released)
Mystery Stories
Mystery Case Files: Millionheir
Unsolved Crimes
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew: The Deadly Secret of Olde World Park
Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase (All 3 of these Nancy Drew titles appear to be from differant publishers).
Ported Titles
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Director's Cut (also on Wii)
Syberia (just the first one),
Myst
Ankh
Jake Hunter
Undercover : Dual Motives
Thanks in advance
I've noticed a surprisingly large number of games which I have suspected to be Adventure games (far more than I would have expected for a console so new in such a short time and in this day and age) come out for it. (Also, have you ever noticed that no adventures have a message on the back of the box saying "This is an Adventure Game"?
Far more than I can actually afford to buy, since the recession. I've been making a list, mentally, of the games to look out for and buy when I have some cash together, but its hard. (For one thing the games on the shelves are never in the same place twice, especially if some have been purchased).
So I thought I'd look up a list of DS adventure titles online and go through it for the ones I'm most interested in. Sadly most of the lists aren't just for adventure games, but various different types of action games. Soon it becomes hard to tell which is which.
If anybody knows of an adventure game fan site that has a DS section or even a DS fansite that has a [proper] adventure game section then PLEASElet me know. Until then, here's a list of games collated from this thread
Original DS Titles;
Hotel Dusk: Room 215
Touch Detective 1 & 2 (For some reason called 'Mystery Detective', here in the UK. The bundled games are referred to as 'Touch Detective' but I've only seen these available online).
The 'Ace Attorney' series (Not entirely certain this is an adventure game but most adventure players recommend it).
Secret Files: Tunguska (At first I thought the dialogue in this game was terrible. Then, when I accounted for the language barrier (I discovered that the game was made in germany), I realised that some of the weird lines were actually jokes).
Another Code (I'm told that the Wii and DS versions were originally intended for release on both systems so I'm not going to regard this as a ported title).
CSI: Dark Motives
Miami Law (Haven't seen this anywhere online or in shops. I assume it's real as it was mentioned by TTG's own Emily and that it's probably just not yet available in the UK).
Flower, Sun, and Rain (Something of an 'interactive novel', from what I gather).
Sherlock Holmes: The Mystery Of The Mummy
Probably Adventure Games (if there's anybody who can verify any of these that would be great
);Mystery Mansion
Cate West: The Vanishing Files (Not yet released)
Mystery Stories
Mystery Case Files: Millionheir
Unsolved Crimes
Nancy Drew
Nancy Drew: The Deadly Secret of Olde World Park
Nancy Drew: The Hidden Staircase (All 3 of these Nancy Drew titles appear to be from differant publishers).
Ported Titles
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars Director's Cut (also on Wii)
Syberia (just the first one),
Myst
Ankh
Jake Hunter
Undercover : Dual Motives
Thanks in advance
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Comments
If you like Hotel Dusk you might also like Trace Memories/Another Code, which was made by the same people.
Myst on DS was a huge insult to everyone.
I played a game called "Time Hollow" which was kind of like an adventure game with almost no puzzles at all. It had very little gameplay of any kind, it was a Japanese-style visual novel. It had a good story, and mostly plays similar to the "investigation" parts of Phoenix Wright.
The DS port of Runaway 2 was handled notably well. You hold down the stylus and the whole screen zooms in for double resolution. It makes it a lot more playable than most PC-to-DS adventure game ports.
And of course if you have one of "dem cards" you can run classics like Monkey Island through ScummVM DS.
Funny, I sat through the intro of Runaway 1, then completely lost any interest in playing it at all. Seriously, the game starts with the main character chilling in the chair and telling us the back story as a bland monologue? Kudos to you for forging onward, that's some serious will power.
Subs only in the DS version.
You know, it's not much of an adventure game, but it is worth discussion. It has a ton of adventure game-style character and environment charm, and the puzzles are fun enough, it's just the complete and utter segregation of story and puzzles that make it feel like not-an-adventure-game-at-all.
It is the sort of game that many adventure game fans would enjoy, though, so I would encourage people to play it. Just don't expect any story-puzzle integration, because there is virtually none.
What was wrong with Myst?
Also, what are the puzzles like in 'Prof. Layton's...'? I got the impression that they're more the kind of puzzles you'd generally expect to find outside the adventure games (like on IQ tests or pub bets. By pub bets i mean like "remove 2 of these matches to leave 10" or "pick up 5 bricks with 1 hand" or "how can you make a bridge with 3 planks that are too short without nails, ropes or any adhesive substances?")
Don't let it. That was a shameful and effortless port (ported by Midway, not Cyan or anyone with a soul), one of the worst ports I've ever seen. I stand by my insistence that Myst could have been done well on DS if it had been handled by a competent team, or a team that cared about Myst. The people who developed the port were clearly neither.
I wrote up some of the specific problems I had here: http://mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=227976&sid=537b6de304edde3eebd63785b307c526#227976
Man, I can't get over how angry that makes me. The idea that some people who had never played Myst bought that, and got their first impression of the series from that garbage port... it's just wrong.
There are plenty of decent and several great adventure games on DS. Don't give up on it because of one bad apple.
Marduk, the puzzles in Professor Layton are exactly as you describe, little mind-teasers. Several of them involve matchsticks, even.
This is an older review of mine, so it's pretty crappy, but it gets the point across: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkBGu4KMZCw
But it's still the best Myst DS review on Youtube!
That's exactly what it's like. I played it for a few hours and then it got very boring and tedious very fast. There's a game called Lux-Pain you might want to check out. Here's a video review: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PW7nFqAg9do
I broke my first DS because of the harder puzzles in Layton.
I don't think that SCUMMVM will be supporting Myst anytime soon. Part of getting SCUMMVM to work was having the source code from a few SCUMM games, and I don't think that Myst is open source.
I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying that it's hard.
Still, another code seems to be doing quite well so we may well be seeing original titles on the wii if not other consoles.
I hadnt played that yet i held off because i thought it may have been like the old pc game "In the First Degree (PC)" the idea on that was to interview individuals pretrial to charge the muderer with his hanus crime. Then when finished, place in the 2nd disk and pry the real truth out of them. Best i had done was
2nd degree, been a while
You don't need the source code to support games if the engine is possible to be reverse engineered. SCI, for instance, was reverse engineered. As was AGI. And there is somebody actively working on Myst and Riven compatibility in ScummVM with tangible results (you can read his blog). It's still a long ways off but hey, we thought we'd never see SCI support in ScummVM either! And honestly, the notion of Myst support would have been a lot more realistic than the notion of SCI support was before it was incorporated.
Don't get me wrong; I have been guilty of small acts of piracy. But I really think that it's wrong in certain situations, like if the company creating the game is quite small or in financial difficulties. That might be not be the case, here, but when so many large game producers are dropping all of their Adventure games wouldn't you want to see them get the best possible sales revenue?
ScummVM isn't for piracy, it's about running your old games on your new computer. I'd love to be able to play Myst and Riven on my computer without having to mess with rolling Quicktime back to an older version, and stuff. Even if they add support in the main ScummVM build, I doubt Myst and Riven would be supported by any of the ports, though, especially the handheld ports, due to their complexity. But I could be wrong.
Just as an aside: Cyan, the makers of Myst, most certainly do fall into the "quite small or in financial difficulties" category.
EDIT: Ah, I see I've been sarnath'd.
I run it myself to play out dated games which aren't compatible with modern PCs and almost all of those games are out of print (hence why they're incompatible).
It's because those games are out of print that I make the distinction between this and piracy; those games aren't otherwise available unless second hand and getting them used doesn't give revenue to the producers of the game.
On the other hand it's still possible to buy new copies of Myst. (I don't know about Riven and subsequent sequels, though. If they're no longer in print then anything you do to them is fine).
If the rights holders were to allow the Myst series to become open source I wouldn't have a problem with it (and, as I said, I don't have a problem with making a version that's compatible with ScummVM of any game that is no longer in print).
Read my post again.
Done. Now what?
I don't think anyone has ever had any troubles getting MYST in the past...
Sorry for the huge post...Yes! I scanned that myself!
I explained why it wasn't illegal. Game resources (pictures, sounds, music, story, characters) are illegal to distribute but there's nothing wrong with reverse engineering an engine to allow it to be played on multiple systems. Source released or not. I've already said that AGI and SCI game engines have been reverse engineered as has the GOB engine (Gobliiins, Lost in Time, Ween: The Prophecy) and a lot of the others supported and going to be supported by ScummVM including SCUMM itself (which is still in active use today). You can't do anything with these engines anyway as you still need the game resources to make anything work. So, it doesn't matter if you personally have a problem with it or not. It's not illegal.
also anyone know if theres any acronym for point & click adventure games please as i kinda get tired of typing it all the time lol!
but realising you never said you would redistribute it highlights my demonstration ignorance in thread.
well, when you're on a forum that is largely dedicated to adventure games, or using a site that happens to have a lot of them, you don't need to type the words 'point and click' each time. People will understand what you mean simply by typing 'adventure games'. (Though, tbh, I still think this could use shortening. I think that, over the years, the genre has (sadly) become too obscure for people to easily recognise it in an acronym or abbreviated).
thanks for the reply!
lets make one up then!! P&CA easy peasy!!
I though the Touch Detective games and the CSI port were okay. Ankh had a lot of problems, Jake Hunter... I wouldn't recommend that one. I'm still playing Miami Law, so the verdict's still out for me, but I'll be reviewing it for Adventure Gamers in the near future.
Flower, Sun, and Rain is another one... I haven't played it, but I've heard it's a bit weird.
I really, really liked Time Hollow, by the way.
For some reason 'Touch Detective' was called 'Mystery Detective' in this country. Had I realised sooner I'd have realised that more or the clues were in the textures she describes... There's Touch 2 now, you say? Excellent
[EDIT] thanks for mentioning those other games, too, I shall look into them post haste
I already decided to avoid the PC version of Jake Hunter as I heard it was from the makers of 'The Runaway'.
And this and also this... [EDIT], ok i googled that last one and it does seem to be an adventure but I think I'll wait until its been out a few weeks and other people have tried it before getting it so that somebody can verify it doesn't have any professor layton type puzzles.