In good company
A couple of days ago, IGN posted a top ten list of point & click adventure games, and The Longest Journey landed at the bottom of page two, just above Grim Fandango. I’m not sure if it’s an actual countdown (there are no numbers), but if it is, and TLJ is #2, then hurray!
And it’s not just good company – it’s great company. The Monkey Islands, Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, and the aforementioned Grim Fandango – all the classics. It’s like starting a band and being compared with The Beatles. I’m not saying we necessarily deserve the honour (it’s all subjective anyway), but we’re very happy about it regardless.
EDIT: There was a big, fat #2 pasted on top of the image accompanying our entry, so, um, yeah. #2! Huzzah! It’s also heartening to see IGN sticking with the “disappointing sequel” editorial stance, despite the world thinking otherwise. Not saying Dreamfall belongs on the list (particularly since it’s not point-and-click), but ‘disappointing’ may not be the common perception. I always look to player reviews as an indication of what most people actually think, and an 8.7 average from 2337 votes at GameSpot – which is very much a console oriented site – ain’t bad at all.
If a game gets plenty of sub-50% ratings you better have a deep look at those reviews to get what went wrong
I disagree on this point specifically, although not with the general idea. Back in the world of 2000, the internet was still pretty elitist & civilized in terms of the people who were running it. These days, we have a lot of the “downvoter” types running review sites, and I don’t think you can take extreme negatives as seriously as you once could – especially for niche genres.
It’s hard to dodge the fact that The Longest Journey didn’t have to make any excuses for the basic nature of it being an Adventure game.
Jo, thanks so much – you’re a lifesaver
Ragnar, DarkElve and I are having an argument – how old is Kian?
90. His faith and the mystical power of the Azadi fill him with youthful vigour.
“Ragnar, DarkElve and I are having an argument – how old is Kian?”
Old enough to know about girls like… April :p
“90. His faith and the mystical power of the Azadi fill him with youthful vigour.”
That would almost make sense….
“Old enough to know about girls like… April :p”
Rats, he’s worked out my secret desire…
Finally, I got into this site!!!
For some reason, this, and this only site, has been unaccessible for me.
Until now. Thank god.
Okay, here is my report for 0.9.35.
Instead of the usual breakdown, this time I’m going to talk about what still has to be fixed before the game looks and plays the same as natively. If you are interested in Wine development, this is the latest newsletter: http://www.winehq.com/?issue=329
So what still needs work:
- Get Bink videos working correctly (the in-game videos)
- Make Dreamfall Loading screen appear
- A couple of DirectX improvements:
* When selecting a person with using focus field or by standing next to a person.
* make the cell phones have the correct color (textures missing or something?)
* Savegame previews show up as black rectangles (no content)
* Just maybe, some other DirectX features? (although I think the graphics already look just like in Windows)
- Get copyprotection working (Wine tries to emulate the copy protection too, to make this protection work under Linux just as it does under Windows… but it’s hard to do this).
I think that’s all of the problems.
The “yellow menu” problem from the previous game is solved in latest CVS (meaning should be solved in 0.9.36). Also, the cursor problem I mentioned, since no one else reported that problem, it seems that it is only because I tweaked some settings on my systems (hardware cursor).
It looks pretty great, visually. Sound is also okay. The biggest “bummer” of course are the (Bink) videos (which show sound and a black screen).
I’m going to keep an eye on any progress Wine makes in running Dreamfall.
### I don’t think you can take extreme negatives as seriously as you once could – especially for niche genres.
There are of course from time to time reviews that just don’t get it and should be ignored (prime example: God Hand scoring 3.0 at IGN), however I don’t think this is the issue with the Dreamfall reviews. Those reviewers looked for gameplay and simply didn’t found it, thats why you got the low ratings. TLJ on the other side did have plenty of gameplay, not the kind that the average twitch gamer might like, but something every reviewer could understand, those who didn’t like it, still gave it a 70%, not a 35%.
In terms of gameplay Dreamfall simply was a failure in way to many areas, its starts with very simplistic/non-existent puzzles, goes on with lackluster sneaking, brain dead fighting system, terrible keyboard/mouse controls, problematic camera, etc. In TLJ there simply isn’t much you can improve, a few details here and there, but overall the game simply does what it does extremely well. In Dreamfall on the other side there is a *ton* of stuff that not just needs a bit more polish, but either completely removed or completely reworked. Dreamfall isn’t anywhere near the perfection that TLJ had.
### It’s hard to dodge the fact that The Longest Journey didn’t have to make any excuses for the basic nature of it being an Adventure game.
The strength that TLJ had was that it took good old adventure game tradition and enhanced it a little bit (i.e. diary). Dreamfall on the other side repeats plenty of well known mistakes for no good reason.
I wouldn’t even have a problem with this when they at least would admit that some stuff of the game just wasn’t right and will be fixed in DF:Chapters, but so far I haven’t really seen much of that. Just compare Ragnar’s Dreamfall postmortem with David Cage’s Fahrenheit postmortem, there is a world of difference, Cage doesn’t do much fluffy talk, but simply states what he wanted to achieve and where things went wrong.
Still, can’t hurt playing it again
Common… we’re not all bad
Yeah, i had the same problem exactly. Maybe it’s been down for everyone.
“Still, can’t hurt playing it again”
).
You’ve got that right, I still have not completed it with english voice (but I wish I had a better grapchic card though
And grumbel, I don’t think Ragnar is bragging (the betyr å skryte ikke sant?) or whiny about the score the game got at all. He said that they focused on the story and then made the game, and he did not say that the combat was good in any of his “blogging” (though I personally did not mind that or the sneaking), instead he actually agreed with the most people who said it was bad I think. When a game has good story, good graphichs, good sound, mediocre controls (Fahrenheit had much worse), and mediocre challenge its not bad to give it the rating it got. And I don’t see that Ragnar is whiny about the average rank the game got (gamerangkings is down so I don’t remember the exact)
“Disappointing sequel” pretty well covers it.
Ophelia said:
“[H]ow old is Kian?”
Could you please also say when his birthday is? Since I’m not religious I like to celebrate my favorite characters birthdays, instead of all the religious holidays. It would be nice to have a day I could dedicate to obsessing about Kian.
### He said that they focused on the story and then made the game, and he did not say that the combat was good
The question isn’t so much if the combat is good or bad, since well, without question its just terrible and that is something basically all reviews agree up on. The real question is: Why did they bother to implement it in the first place? Lackluster combat never worked in adventure games and especially in the case of Dreamfall its just totally useless and unneeded, so you could have just cut it out. I mean you are fighting a bunch of same looking clone-soliders in one fight, how much more stupid can it get?
“how much more stupid can it get?”
it can get stupider, belive me!!!
The combat is short, what is the problem then? I thought the combat was entertaining after all, even though if you did not want to act cool and dodge and punch you could just buttonmash. It gives you a break from running from the one place to the other and it don’t happen often. Is it better having to run back and fourth, collecting ingredients for a drink for a poor guy?
And it is cool when you can solve a solution with different was, like combat, which is the last choice.
Just compare Ragnar’s Dreamfall postmortem with David Cage’s Fahrenheit postmortem, there is a world of difference, Cage doesn’t do much fluffy talk, but simply states what he wanted to achieve and where things went wrong.
I disagree entirely with this part. That’s like comparing Back to the Future to Star Wars and then trying to dumb down the grand vision of the Star Wars Trilogy to the level of the “oh hey, let’s rework this fun little movie/series until it works as a quality piece of entertainment” production process that Back to the Future had.
Dreamfall had a specific artistic vision behind it. That was the driving force of the game. Fahrenheit had no such thing. It was just an experiment in making a compelling story telling method – it wasn’t even about the story itself. (although for a while there at the beginning, it sure had me going)
It is therefore more appropriate to treat Dreamfall as what it really is, while you can carelessly dissect Fahrenheit to learn from it and not offend anyone. Besides, I’d rather see George Lucas finally come out and admit that he’s been wrong for the past decade rather than have Ragnar Tornquist (how do you do the cool slashed-O thing?) expicitly state things he’s already made us aware of that he’s aware of.
Those reviewers looked for gameplay and simply didn’t found it, thats why you got the low ratings.
I’m aware of that, but even those same review sites were more interested in the overall experience back when The Longest Journey was released. In the mainstream of the industry, there is a stronger bias against Adventure now than there was in 2000.
(gamerangkings is down so I don’t remember the exact)
An actual faith in the idea behind the Gamerankings system makes me lose my hope in humanity.
Lackluster combat never worked in adventure games and especially in the case of Dreamfall its just totally useless and unneeded, so you could have just cut it out. I mean you are fighting a bunch of same looking clone-soliders in one fight, how much more stupid can it get?
Well, in Fahrenheit it got even worse…
“An actual faith in the idea behind the Gamerankings system makes me lose my hope in humanity.”
And what do you mean by that? You can never trust a site for giving all games the right score. Take for example gamespot, which I think gives good ratings to most games out there, like dreamfall. BUT, they gave nearly all game of the year awards this year to gears of war, which got a 9.6, while zelda got 8.9 and wario ware for the wii got a 9.1 (WTF?). If you want to compare games, gamerangkings is the best site to use, even though if different sites uses different bars (like a 5 of 10 is 8 of 10 for somebody else)
### It gives you a break
It gives you a break, well yeah, but it does so by breaking the immersion. The combat in Dreamfall simply is a joke, it looks like one, plays like one and feels like one. If you are trying to create an immersive video game, you better don’t place “neon signs” that scream, “I am just a stupid video game” all over the place, which however is exactly what Dreamfall did with its combat.
### Is it better having to run back and fourth, collecting ingredients for a drink for a poor guy?
It would be better to have some actual puzzles in the game. You don’t fix an adventure game that lacks puzzles by adding combat, that only makes matters worse, much worse. Which however is exactly what Dreamfall did.
The 35% reviews aren’t there because people hate adventure games, but because Dreamfalls gameplay simply sucks in large part and that is something all reviews can agree up on, even the better ones, the only difference is in how they fight the important of the issue, the issue however is there and clearly visible.
Just to make things clear, I love Dreamfall for all it does right, but there is simply no denying that the game has faults, plenty of them and plenty of obvious ones that could have been avoided without all that much additional work.
It is challenging enough in the first half of the game, come on. It is only that it gets easier and that you nearly only run forward in the second half of the game. When you was in the cave with april the challenge was at its top, then it got easier and easier.
I dont get why everyone is bashing Dreamfall? Yes, the combat system was a bit annoying when thinking about it, but I didnt mind at all when playing it. Different game, different style. Calling Dreamfall “dissapointing”? I guess we all have our different opinions, but I absolutely LOVE Dreamfall. I had not played The Longest Journey before I tried Dreamfall, and I was instantly sucked into the storyline. And that is what Dreamfall is, an ingeniously well written game that deserves all the credit it can get. As for you guys bashing it. Well, lets just say I dont share your opinion.
Dreamfall brought me to this page, it brought me into the “Longest Journey” story, it was the game that made me buy “The Longest Journey”, and it is THE game that has made the greatest impact on me, ever!
@Thomas S.: My thoughts exactly. ^_^
### Calling Dreamfall “dissapointing”?
Thing is: Could I imagine a game better then TLJ? Nope, not really, it was close enough to perfection. On the other side, could I imagine a game better then Dreamfall? Well, definitively, Dreamfall without all the bad things would simply have been a better Dreamfall. That doesn’t mean its a bad game, it however does mean that it could have been *better*, much better in some aspects.
Dreamfall simply left a little to much room for obvious improvements to make it fully satisfying sequel.
And what do you mean by that? You can never trust a site for giving all games the right score.
All the more reason not to trust a statistical average running on a very poor algorithm that even YTMND’s rating & sorting system can beat.
Now if you’re just using it to link to a wide range of reviews taken in their own context, then that’s something else entirely.
You’re Norweian and have a big, fat Ø there right on your keyboard.
That or you use the numpad. Press down Alt, type 0216 on the numpad and realease for the big one (Ø) or 0248 for the little one (ø). Or you use the symbol map (or something like it in Windows) or you use a program like Microsoft Word and select insert –> symbol and finds it.
Well, lets say I don’t agree then. If I’m about to buy a game, I think that that is the best site to see how good it are and compare it to others.