I've been watching a bunch of Game Grumps episodes recently where Danny goes solo and plays old Sierra adventure games. They've been great to fall asleep to because Danny is a chill dude at the best of times, and when he doesn't have the bundle of chaotic energy that is Arin next to him, he's especially comfy to listen to. (I don't have a problem with Arin, I hasten to add; I just find the contrast kind of fascinating!)
Danny's playthroughs of various …Quest games remind me of the fond regard in which I hold the point-and-click adventure game genre — and indeed its immediate predecessor, Sierra's "3D Animated Adventure Game" subgenre, which combined a text adventure's parser with the animated graphics of what would become point-and-click adventures.
I also find these games quite fascinating from a modern perspective, since they highlight how differently we handle games as players these days. I remember having games like King's Quest and The Black Cauldron for literally years and never finishing them, yet if you know exactly what you're doing in each of them they're maybe 1-2 hours, tops. These days, I suspect that pretty much everyone who plays a game like this will almost immediately refer to a walkthrough if they find themselves getting stuck, which means these games won't last very long at all for modern audiences.
Is that a bad thing, though? I don't know. It's certainly a different way of enjoying games to how we used to, and I have to say I kind of miss the feeling of really having no clue whatsoever as to what to do next, and having no other option but to make a save game with the name "stuck" and come back to it later. Or perhaps talk to a friend about it and discover that yes, literally the only thing you were missing was closing one specific door so you could find the bunch of keys stuck in the lock on the back of it. Damn you, Day of the Tentacle.
It might be interesting to revisit some of these games sometime and deliberately resist using a walkthrough at all. It might make for an interesting video series. Some of these games I'll be able to get through partially from memory; others that I've never played before (notable examples being the Leisure Suit Larry and Police Quest games, along with the later Space Quests) I'll have the challenge of attempting to drag myself through them for the first time.
Hmm. The more I think about this, the more I like the idea of it. I might have to try and find some time to experiment with this idea!
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