Topic: The Action Adventure Genre is quietly making an ass of itself.

[DAaaMan64]

Does anyone else agree? I see more and more 360 games that entirely action adventure. Largely linear, and almost consumed entirely with just moving around killing **** for 6-15 hours against a cookie cutter story. The appeal is usually style, and how much of a bad ass you can look like and feel like.

I'm just beginning to notice how stupid this.  Maybe I"m late to the party.

Whatdya think?

This has all come around as I play Unleashed more and more.

And this isn't supposed to be about 360/PS3/Wii, it's just most of my experience with the genre is on 360 since their aren't nearly as many extreme and popular examples of the genre on Wii.

[KDR_11k]

Does that really count as action adventure anymore? Sounds almost like modern platformers, run around and hit/shoot ****.

[S-U-P-E-R]

Welcome to 8 years ago

[Bill Aurion]

What you just described I'd personally just call "Action"...

"Action/Adventure" is what I call games like Zelda and Okami...

[DAaaMan64]

Does that really count as action adventure anymore? Sounds almost like modern platformers, run around and hit/shoot ****.

Platformers have... platforms to jump on and progress with.

What you just described I'd personally just call "Action"...

"Action/Adventure" is what I call games like Zelda and Okami...

But you are still adventuring. We can call it just the Action genre, but that sounds kinda dumb.  These are games come with only action in a completely puzzle-less linear world. And they are like, the new FPS.

[Ian Sane]

Isn't this really just "what goes around comes around"?  "Largely linear, and almost consumed entirely with just moving around killing **** for 6-15 hours against a cookie cutter story." is pretty much a description of Contra, Mega Man, old-school Castlevania.  The length is pretty much the only difference as well it being in 3D.  In the old days stories were just a loose frame to justify the setting used in the levels.

Though I do think the length makes a big difference.  In the old days those games were short and could be completed in an afternoon, if you were good enough.  And usually you weren't, at least not the first time.  The problem is if these games are:

Really hard and too long.
Really easy and too long (ie: it just becomes repetitive).
Really easy and too short.
Really hard and short but the gameplay isn't interesting enough to play again and again (in the old days playing these games over and over again was fun.)

The balance is the most important thing.  But a game being too linear or having a weak story isn't a problem.  If it's supposed to be an action game then that makes sense.  Now if Zelda or Final Fantasy is too linear then that's a problem as that goes against the type of design one expects from those series.

Though my brother hypothesizes that a full on action game these days seem lame merely because what's popular today isn't very cool.  To much emo and brooding and sh!t like that.  In the 80's and early 90's it was like "Ninja Rambo vs. the Aliens" without the slightest sarcasm or acknowledgement of camp.  It was big and over the top and completely oblivious to how silly it was.  I'll admit that helps a lot.  It's largely the same problem that action movies today have.

[vudu]

Did you just call Mega Man linear?

[ShyGuy]

They're First person shooters from a Third Person Perspective. Blame Max Payne.

[Ian Sane]

Did you just call Mega Man linear?

Ha!  You're right.  I guess that doesn't make much sense.  Still the game is linear within each level.  It isn't like Zelda where you have some big world to explore.  So yeah you can pick the order of levels but the levels themselves follow a set path.

[Bill Aurion]

But you are still adventuring. We can call it just the Action genre, but that sounds kinda dumb.  These are games come with only action in a completely puzzle-less linear world. And they are like, the new FPS.

Nah, genres shouldn't be taken literally, but whether it fits into expected gameplay...For example, if you took "RPG" literally every game would be an RPG, since all games are TECHNICALLY "Role-playing"...Action focuses more on fighting while Action/Adventure has some fighting, but there's obviously more focus on the exploration itself...

[KDR_11k]

Platformers have... platforms to jump on and progress with.

Hardly anymore. It's mostly about shooting or beating stuff now, the jumping puzzles are thinning out.

I think one difference between the new action games and the old ones is the arena style level design, every so often you'll be locked into an area until you defeat all enemies. In a Megaman game you shot enemies because they were in the way, in modern action games you kill enemies so the barrier that blocks the path to the next area opens. Kinda like the beat 'em ups of old.

In fact it could be said that games like God of War are beat 'em ups with more jumping puzzles.

[DAaaMan64]

Okay well whatever you guys wanna call that genre. It's getting old.

[Bill Aurion]

Lazy game design...Which we will see more of thanks to increased costs of game development... =(

[Stogi]

Not on the DS!

[Caliban]

Can't anyone have fun with a game not withstanding its genre classification, or whether it has repetitious acts?

I look at what DM64 has written, "Largely linear, and almost consumed entirely with just moving around killing **** for 6-15 hours against a cookie cutter story. The appeal is usually style, and how much of a bad ass you can look like and feel like.", and I wonder if he likes games like Super Mario Galaxy, The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess, etc. I think the true meaning of any game is fun for the end user, whether its generic, stale, exciting, glorious, ..., so shouldn't developers in the end be only concerned with if their product is technically without flaws that make it impossible to play, and that it offers enough content to make the end user happy?

[DAaaMan64]

Caliban, Galaxy and Twilight Princess have platforming, lots of puzzle solving, character development.  That helps a lot.  TP doesn't have as much platforming, but it also has item collection, dungeons (breaks up gameplay), lots more puzzle solving and various other things making both games significantly more interesting then the games I'm talking about.

[Caliban]

So you're basically saying that these new action adventure games don't have enough content, nor detail to make them more important?

[KDR_11k]

A problem with cookie cutter stories in modern games is that they still insist on telling their story in detail in the cutscenes, no matter how bad it is.