Cing Out

Game types come and go, last year the survival horror genre experienced a bit of renaissance since their high during the 32-bit era. I wonder when will adventure games get their turn?

Adventure games are about as niche as they come these days. Every major studios that specialized in adventure games are now either dead and buried or making other type of games. Nintendo's second party studio CING had a memorable run of games on the DS and Wii (Trace Memory and Hotel Dusk) but they too went bust before the start of this generation. 

As I struggle to solve the mystery of Hotel Dusk, it occurs to me that adventure games will have a hard time making a comeback without undergoing some major overhaul. The chief problem with adventure games are the puzzle or the structure of the storytelling. You missed a vital clue or failed to solve a riddle and the whole structure breaks down and comes to a halt. It's really easy to get stuck in an adventure game and no one likes referring to guides when playing a game.

I started to wonder why can't adventure games be more open-world? You get stuck in one part then maybe you can go and do other stuff while the story branches off to a different outcome. Sadly I have never really seen that in any modern adventure game. The storytelling are usually far too rigid and focused to allow such radical changes. 

I love adventure games and playing Hotel Dusk reminds of those old Lucasarts and Sierra heydays. But I remember I tend to use guides even back in those days to finish those games.

Going through the Motions (and Minions)

I have been playing PxZ for almost 80 hours now and have yet to finish the game. Now I'm beginning to understand why the Xenosaga games during the ps2 era always shipped on two discs. And to think, I originally intended to go back and play these Xeno games (lol).

As honest paying gamers, we naturally prefer our games to be as long as possible. After all we are paying our hard earned money and games aren't cheap so the longer it is the more value we see in the product. I'm not sure if I agree with that sentiment anymore, the value simply cannot be judged by the length. Vanquish is just a 5-hour game and anyone who played through it are likely be satisfied with the game.

PxZ is just a tediously long game, each chapter lasts close to 2 hours of gameplay with no shortcuts allowed. You fight minions after minions and the same bosses over and over again. Each boss usually have about 10 minions with them and there are more than one boss in each level. The fan service starts to wear thin after a while. I started to skipped the silly banter at the start of the fight because I just want to get the level over with.

The grinding is compulsory as the objective is always destroy every enemy so you can't take a shortcut by just finishing off the boss. Grinding is one of the things I hate most about RPG and here it's forced upon the gamer. The biggest problem with the combat sytem is the enemies display no AI whatsoever. The minions are there to just get beaten up by the super-team. Even the bosses feel the same way albeit with a lot more HP and cool finishing move. It's like a strategy RPG where the gamer has to strategize against a mindless opponent.

I was surprised that a sequel to PxZ was announced as fans weren't exactly demanding one. In fact most have yet to finish the game like myself partly because of how tedious it is. The sequel will feature Kiryu and Majima from the RGG series and that is probably one of the few reasons why I would even bother with the next game.