A Vampyre Story

[toblix]

The demo is apparently out. Anyone play it?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Interesting! Not yet, though.

[Marek]

I've heard that the demo is totally not packaged up properly and that there's folders with loads of .png files used in the game, as well as files with scripting code. That makes me a bit sad.

[vimes]

I've played it for 5 minutes, long enough to have an opinion about the cosmetics unfortunately, not enough to judge the gameplay .. So, unsurprisingly, the background art is very impressive but the 3D art is a bit disappointing so far : the models are good, but their animations are a bit stiff and their integration in the background could be far better - ah, also, the parallax scrolling is just completely fucked.

In terms of audio, the music are awesome and Frodrick's and the bad guy's voices are quite alright. Mona's voice on the other hand ... is very, very irritating. I just noticed that this demo is the first time we hear her voice and given her look I was expecting something more sensual an mature... maybe it fits her character, but that undermines some of the magnetism given by her stature, gaze and way of moving around.

[toblix]

ah, also, the parallax scrolling is just completely fucked.

I can't play it yet, but this sounds interesting -- what do you mean?

[vimes]

The scenes are composed of several planes of 2D art : 1 for the foreground object, 1 for the location where Mona moves and 1 for the background. They tried to give a better impression of depth by having these plans move when the character does (ala

[jump to 4.30 to get a proper explanation and 6.38 for the bambi openig using this]) ... but the relative movements seems just plainly wrong to me.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Man, I loved that video

[toblix]

It seems almost unthinkable that someone would get parallax scrolling wrong in 2008. I can't wait to see for myself.

[Scrobbs]

Christ. I remember when parallax scolling was included in game advertising literature.

[vimes]

It seems almost unthinkable that someone would get parallax scrolling wrong in 2008. I can't wait to see for myself.

Too bad, you're not English, this would have been pretty appropriate. At least the first 30 seconds.

[toblix]

What? Oh, it's not like I want the parallax scrolling to be bad. I just can't imagine what one that's "off" would look like, and I'm curious to experience it. I've never seen "bad" parallax scrolling before, I think, and I love a good parallax scrolling. To me, it sounds about as interesting as the Dead Space HUD did -- I gotta see it to know what the fuck you're talking about.

[lobotomy42]

I really want to play this! I had better get myself a new PC right quick. There are so many adventure games I've been missing out on! Hopefully I can get one before Vampyre Story becomes old news.

(Note to publishers: Please port all your adventure games to Wii. It will make my life that much easier!)

[Erkki]

Oh god, Mona's voice is incredibly annoying indeed. I'll get back to the demo when I'm in the mood for being annoyed. Also, don't like how the demo just throws you into the game with no introduction whatsoever.

[Roderick]

Vimes, please don't hesitate to post more awesome videos of animation behind the scenes.

[David]

I played through the demo. I think it might be one of those adventure games that makes me dislike adventure games. The background art is unsurprisingly stunning, but I had issues with almost everything else.

I feel like... if you're going to do the verb coin, you need to throw in bonus funny or custom responses when people mash objects into other objects that don't solve a puzzle, or use the wrong verb.

In this demo, it seemed like apart from when you chose correctly, the responses were very canned like "that won't do anything useful" or "I wish I could do that, but no". I understand the need, as far as resources and development sanity are concerned, to include default responses like that. However, it seems like in the demo, they could have beefed it up a bit by including some more responses when you unsuccessfully attempted to solve a puzzle with the wrong object.

You're presented with the familiar "locked in a room" situation that is fairly common in adventure games and their demos, but there's just not enough compelling stuff to explore. I kept thinking back to the demo for Curse of Monkey Island, which had a similar scenario (busting out of the brig on LeChuck's ship) with a comparably wacky solution. CMI's demo was extremely compelling though because, along with the crazy inventory combination solutions, there was also a lot of insane and awesome dialogue to be had with Murray and Wally/Bloodnose which drove the puzzle solutions rather than seeming superfluous or even grating (such as how I felt when entering into dialogue with Froderick the bat).

Also, a massive adventure game pet peeve was invoked by the fact that you definitely need to do a random-ass thing to change the conditions outside of the room you're locked in, without knowing that's remotely what you had to do. Solving a puzzle you didn't know existed is super annoying.

The full game may well be much better than how the demo portrayed it, but I'm definitely not convinced that I should buy it now, and for that I am very sad.

[Ben X]

Very irritating voice acting, ugly character models, random and illogical puzzles. Basic stuff like letting me know what I'm supposed to be doing, or what the controls are, are overlooked.

Embarassingly, I'm stuck. I've

got the frozen water in the bucket, and overturned it, and I've got the pickaxe under the door. I have no idea what to do now, or why I did any of that. I suspect I need to melt the ice so it seeps under the door for some reason...

Help?

[Erkki]

I agree that the puzzles are somewhat nonsensical.

You need to lift the door a bit with the pickax, then heat the shovel to melt the ice

The goal (which wasn't apparent to me either until the puzzle was solved) is to

put out the fire so you can fly out of the chimney

[Ben X]

Ah, thanks Erkki. I managed to solve it by randomly using items on other items, which I hate resorting to.

In retrospect, I should have realised what the goal was, but the demo doesn't bother making the game dynamics clear at all.

Rubbish rubbish rubbish.

[toblix]

This is so fucking sad. I used to love adventure games, and I've played all the Sierra and Lucasarts games, etc. to death. Is there a secret ingredient they stopped making in the 90s, or have I just become jaded, surly and tired of having fun? I still love playing Fate of Atlantis, and I think it's genuinely fun, but is that just nostalgia? All the newer adventure games, like the tons of European ones that have appeared the last five-ten years have been absolute rubbish.

OR HAVE I BECOME RUBBISH?

[Chris]

I've

got the frozen water in the bucket, and overturned it, and I've got the pickaxe under the door. I have no idea what to do now, or why I did any of that. I suspect I need to melt the ice so it seeps under the door for some reason...

Haha, oh God. ADVENTURE GAMES. Jesus.

[Ben X]

This is so fucking sad. I used to love adventure games, and I've played all the Sierra and Lucasarts games, etc. to death. Is there a secret ingredient they stopped making in the 90s, or have I just become jaded, surly and tired of having fun? I still love playing Fate of Atlantis, and I think it's genuinely fun, but is that just nostalgia? All the newer adventure games, like the tons of European ones that have appeared the last five-ten years have been absolute rubbish.

OR HAVE I BECOME RUBBISH?

You'll be glad to know, toblix, that there's at least one company making excellent adventures. And I hear their upcoming adventure sequel will have a few homages to FoA...

[toblix]

Also, I of course forgot to mention Telltale. Which reminds me, should I buy Strong Bad? And Ben There, Dan That, which I was supposed to play, but haven't yet. Well, there's no time like the present.

[Erkki]

Strong Bad is nowhere near as good as Sam & Max imho.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Dave Gilbert is still making intelligent and enjoyable adventures

[vimes]

Strong Bad has a very different humour and a very different approach of the adventure genre than Sam & Max : I don't like it, but I wouldn't say it's inferior.

Edited November 22, 2008 by vimes