A Better Perspective

Those of use who actively work in the adventure genre and many of those who just like playing the games, are a little tired of reading tiresome reviews in which the reviewer says (ad nauseum) that "the adventure game is dead". So imagine my pleasant surprise when I read the review of the latest Sam & Max episode over at Eurogamer and found it was taking a much more balanced view and saying such things as:

"To my mind, innovation isn't a pre-requisite to gleaning entertainment, from whatever source, and I was, personally, extremely grateful that Telltale didn't attempt to fix something that wasn't broken with misguided 'innovation'."

Well said!

I do worry that the "innovation" aspect is too predominant as a whole and is part of why games are so expensive to make and therefore so expensive to buy. But that's a digression for another post, perhaps.

There is always the worry that a review which defends adventures is going to be too biased the wrong way, which is a slight tendency for "fan" reviews, probably in every genre when you think about it. However, Kristan Reed was pretty fair in his comments and even picked up on the re-use of locations as putting the game into a rut. This, though, was the kind of constructive criticism that game developers need and although it clearly had an effect on the review score (7/10), I would imagine that Telltale will be more than happy with what was said.

If every game could get such a fair review we'd all be much happier as developers and players.