The Indefatigable Adventures Of Ben and Dan

People!

I feel as if it is my sworn duty as a diehard fan of Adventure game classics to inform any and all about British independent game developer, Zombie Cow Studios. Founder and chief artist/coder/writer/all-around-gaming-whizz, Dan Marshall, deserves a ceremonial placard engraved with a golden Lucasarts logo man for the phenomenal games he has made.

With the help of a few friends, Dan has created four games so far, the most notable being “Ben There, Dan That!” and its sequel,  ”Time, Gentlemen, Please!,” two relatively short gaming experiences crafted in the vein of Lucasart and Sierra Adventure classics. The games chronicle the hilarious adventures of Dan himself and his heterosexual lifemate/co-writer, Ben Ward.

The series is pure comedic gold, and already has me itching for a third installment. Ben and Dan are bringing back a very welcome and much needed dose of high quality humor to adventure gaming, an element that seems to have gotten lost somewhere during the endless outpour of half-assed mystery and conspiracy themed Adventure games we’ve seen released this past decade.

Regardless of your gaming preferences, I can guarantee you’ll find a taste of the Zombie Cow experience well worth your time.

Check out the demo for “Time, Gentlemen, Please!” on Steam, or purchase both games in a bundle for a very reasonable price!

What Happened To Quality Adventure Gaming?

When I was a freshman in college, I remember playing The Curse of Monkey Island on my dorm room PC in a moment of nostalgia. My friend Mike approached me and eyed the various dialogue choices, the richly detailed backdrops, and the pirate-y quips of Guybrush Threepwood. After a minute of observation, he said, “Yeah, that looks really cool! I just don’t think I could ever have the attention span for a game like that.”

That pretty much sums up the defining line between adventure gamers and others. In my experience, we are strange birds. We are a curious, good humored, creative, albeit nerdily so, and patient bunch, far more willing than most to put up with convoluted puzzles, pixel hunts, and unskippable and repetitive dialogue as long as we can continue to play out the story at hand. There’s nary an itch in our trigger finger, we don’t keep tabs on our HP or trip out about leveling up, and we harbor little to no bloodlust.

But the plain truth is that adventure games have almost always been the underdog of gaming genres. Games like Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max, Day Of The Tentacle, The Dig, and Full Throttle will forever be heralded as iconic adventure games that proved that games could be intelligent, witty, challenging, funny, and moving. They showed that beyond all the variations of gameplay out there, the most important element of a good game is an intriguing and well thought out storyline. And that’s what these games were: cool-as-hell interactive stories; electronic aural and visual narratives; games that focused not on AI or pixel count, but instead offered a sense of warmth, intrigue, and endearment.

Sadly, however, adventure games have lost much of the magnificence to which they once held acclaim. Long gone are the days of games like Grim Fandango, Blade Runner, and The Longest Journey. More often than not, we’re stuck with the unstoppable slew of low-budget, poorly realized, and uninspired adventure games. Yeah, I’m looking at you Adventure Company. I’m talking about horrible blunders such as Moment of Silence, Overclocked, Broken Sword: Secrets of the Ark, The Sinking Island, and Culpa Innata.

Horrific voice acting, insipid and wooden dialogue, and trite storylines seem to be the main culprits in the new wave of adventure gaming. When you start hearing voice actors that sound like German foreign exchange students and play puzzles that seemingly have no explanation or relation to anything in the game’s storyline, it can be enough to make even the most passionate adventure gamer opt for a round of Halo instead.

So what can be done to bring back the bygone glory of adventure games?

1) Adventure Games need a return to realism. I don’t mean realism in a strict sense, I’m still down for many more talking freelance police lagomorphs and megalomaniacal purple tentacles. Surprisingly, with even with the technology available to developers today, some recent adventure games such as The Sinking Island don’t even feature lip synch for talking characters, and games like Overclocked severely limit your roaming potential. Adventure Games are supposed to encourage explorative tendencies, not have the protagonist mumble something about there being “no point to go over there.” Shit dude, that’s like Dan Brown mentioning some fascinating relic or location and then writing, “but…no, nevermind. That has no relevance to my story.” Adventure games need to take a hint from those chicks from the B-52s and let gamers roam where they want to.

2) Adventure Games need to maximize their inborn humor potential (where relevant). Given their focus on storyline and attention to character traits, adventure games can be uproariously hilarious and clever. In the somewhat recent Culpa Innata, the protagonist’s friend, Sandra, makes repeatedly lame grade school class sexual innuendos in every single one of her responses. A standard piece of dialogue between these two polygonal wenches transpires like so:

Phoenix: Oh Sandra, I think I made a breakthrough in my case today
Sandra: What? One of the witnesses was a male model and you got to frisk him?
Phoenix: Oh Sandra, why do you have to make sex a part of everything?
Sandra: Hahaha; Oh Phoenix, you’re such a fuddy-duddy!

I don’t care how low your comedic standards are. This inane banter is way too far below the bar to bear. Even Andy Dick would scoff at this writing. Games like Monkey Island or Grim Fandango proved that games can be funny and clever with subtle and intelligent humor, and that’s part of the reason why these games are heralded as classics.

3) Adventure Games need to make a return to deep characters. Cardboard cut-out characters such as the protagonist of The Sinking Island are impossible to get attached to, and shallow characters such as Phoenix in the aforementioned Culpa Innata are far too unlikable to even care about. Just as in any good movie or novel, good characters are multi-dimensional, complex, and more than just a zingy catch phrase. April Ryan from The Longest Journey is a perfect example of an exceedingly well written character with her own past, psychology, fears, dreams, and vulnerabilities that make it so easy for the player to identify and become attached.

4) Finally, adventure games need to combat the idea that adventure gaming worlds are static, simple, and nearly uninhabited. More than any other genre, adventure games are so aptly suited to create a completely unique, detailed, and fully realized universe. Complex characters with scripted albeit interesting routines, day-night cycles, and weather patterns could add tremendous amounts of intrigue and realism to the occasionally unsatisfying 2.5D point and click worlds of most adventure games. Hey, if it works for games like GTA IV, Oblivion, and Fallout 3, why wouldn’t it work for adventure games?

It may be just a start but once these four issues are addressed, I think we adventure gamers can help give the genre the grand comeback it deserves.