Sunjammer

Raw. I'd stroll casually over all suave-like if i was on yonder continent. I'll toast you with a few shots of Zubrowka though. Medium Bomb!!!!!1

..is that these guys have a good heart but no fucking clue what they're doing.

The art director apparently has no idea what MI3 and 4 decided was the MI look, even though the new MI episode carried that torch right on ahead. This game just seems like it dropped out of space; I have no idea why they decided to reinvent the wheel. It doesn't help that the new art is amateurish at best and abhorrent at worst. The character art in particular is completely out of touch with the MI vibe. Guybrush went from a wide-eyed kid with no real clue what he got himself into to this cocky unlikable hydrocephalic sod with a ridiculous haircut. I'm impressed with how bad of a service they gave him.

The music and sound are wonderful. The new voiceovers give the old script new life, and the remade music really works. Totally high-five worthy.

The interface is a complete and utter joke made by someone who has apparently never played much of an adventure game before. The verb grid and inventory are hidden to show off the new art (why?), but every verb is still in there. This means you basically have to mousewheel through 9 verbs! Since MI first came out, adventure games have evolved to the point where push-pull-give-use etc are all cooked into one "use" verb, which is the only reason a mousewheel cycle or "verb wheel" as in Full Throttle worked. Trying to adopt this approach with nine fucking verbs is completely ridiculous. The result of course is that you use the keyboard shortcuts for the verbs, but i feel thoroughly terrible for the console players who don't have that luxury. Speaking of keyboard; You have to push alt or i to bring up the inventory! I don't even know wether to laugh or cry at this. It's such a thoroughly idiotic design decision. There is literally no way to access the inventory without a keyboard command. You can't play this graphical adventure mouse only!

I'm fucking depressed now. I love this game so much - It's the first computer game i bought with my own money when i was a kid - and now Lucasarts apparently decided to give the job of remaking it to people who are out of touch with both the franchise and the genre. Thank god Telltale are doing good things with the episodes.

I'll obviously play this remake through to see all the new art, especially looking forward to monkey island itself, but the game, as an adventure game, is jacked. How can you fuck something this simple up so badly?

So, on RockPaperShotgun's recommendation i picked up an indie adventure game today, called "Time gentlemen, Please!"
I'm very positively surprised! For a game thrown together in AGS by a couple mates and a few of their friends, it's like some lost relic from the adventure golden age. If only a bit more depraved. The game has a "racism" slider in its options screen, which is both the most awesome thing i have ever seen as well as a good indicator of the sense of humor the game rides on.

I really recommend people who enjoyed LucasArts adventures, especially Sam&Max, pick this up. There's no voice acting, the graphics are apparently all done in MS Paint, but the writing really makes it worthwhile.

Between this, the Sam&Max episode on XBLA and the new Monkey Island episode; dare i say adventures are becoming somewhat of a legitimate genre again?

Thanks Ryan; Magical Gun-wizard is just a totally rad name. I'm on my holidays, i got my Unity3D pro license, i got time to use my Flash skills on something FUN. So why the hell not.
At the drawing on paper stage right now. What would a magical gun-wizard do? Instantly the image i get is a kind of Discworldian Rincewind with a steampunk modded M16, shooting at dragons while casting spells.

So it's a shmup then. Probably an arena shooter as well, as i'd like to actually finish it.

I feel like ripping of Trine/Abuse a little bit. I do like the mouse-to-aim, wasd-to-move setup. I also really liked the spell system in Eternal Darkness where the runes make up a sort of predictable system after a while to the point where you can almost ad-lib spells. I also like gestures, like in Arx Fatalis, and i've been wanting to do a gesture recognition system for a while now. Perhaps something where you move around with WASD, shoot your gun with the left mouse button and start spellcasting with gestures by holding the right mouse button?

I don't know if i want to do complex spells under fire. I like the idea that slower, complex spells can be cast during the lulls, and shorter, punchier spells are useful during combat, such as a straight line up meaning a jump boost, a straight line across is a dash/teleport, a quick circle being a "macro" for a precast spell, and then have this whole rune-by-rune system when you can afford the time for it for buffing your gun.

But tell me folks; when you hear the name, what do you imagine? What's the first thing that pops into your head?

Come to Norway. Look at girls. It's neat!

Open water ranks pretty damn high for me. Also i keep having dreams where i lose all my teeth in a horrible accident and that shit freaks me the hell out. I like having teeth.

Oh and Dark Forces was utterly amazing. Don't you dare call it a Doom clone. It had a deforming world, rooms above rooms, cool guns with cool altfires, some true polygonal elements and, most importantly Denny Delk in it. On a technical level it was to Doom what Doom was to Wolf3D. And it had a story worth giving a shit about.

Show some respect, knaves.

I got into Jedi Outcast when i was in the middle of my busiest kung fu fetish, doing lots of classes and watching lots of movies. I mailed Raven about how incredibly close the game came to Hong Kong flying sword cinema, and got a really nice response saying there were lots of hong kong movie fans in the team and that was definitely one of the inspirations. First and last time a developer replied to my fan mail ;) Ah but good memories, good memories