To find a good puzzle adventure game today is a hard task to complete. A game that only offers an exclusive story with different mind-bending puzzles without any combat mechanics or a sense of deep exploration, often isn’t enough to stand out amongst other action-puzzle- adventure games like the Uncharted and Tomb Raider series. “Adam’s Venture: Origins” isn’t really trying to compete with these big titans on the market as some people might think, but it wants to be a standalone enjoyable game that takes you back to a place where games were just simple reworks of existing puzzles set in a fantasy environment. You can compare it with “Lost Horizon”. The game succeeds in bringing an old game genre back but because of the weak story and dull characters, it will lose some of its potential to create a returning community.
You play as Adam Venture, a 1920’s wannabe Indiana Jones but without the well performed jokes. Adam is the son of an old adventurer that really isn’t ready to close the books and call it a day. The story is all about finding King Solomon’s treasure and protect all of it remains and ruins from the evil Clairveaux company. Of course, you’re not doing this alone. You get help from your father’s new assistant: miss Evelyn Appleby. As a perfect duo, you get to explore far away cities that contains mysterious ruins and forgotten tombs. The story was actually okay and it’s a good way to line up all the puzzles from beginning to the end, but in the end it came to my mind as a bit of a cliché and hard to follow.
The game is played as a third-person game but without any button mashing or combat mechanics. You have no life bar, no extra equipment and your actions are very simplistic and limited. You can swing across rooms with your grappling hook, hold certain key items and solve puzzles. Some of these puzzles were well created while other puzzles were too hard due to the lack of information. Most of the time, you’re just standing in front of a puzzle and it’s your job to solve it. It would be a bit more helpful if there was more information and kind of an “instant solving” mechanic like “Lost Horizon”. If people can’t solve a puzzle, they become frustrated and they won’t enjoy playing anymore, so it’s up for the developers to implement a panic button that solves the puzzle and motivates people to continue their journey to learn more about the story or to be confronted with other puzzles based on their same intellectual level. People will tend to stop the game for good or spend time online watching solutions for certain puzzles. What’s the fun in that? Eventually, they’ll continue the game but it’s without the help of the developers themselves and that’s a shame. It would have also helped to get some tips during the narrative or just hints flashing on top of your screen. Either way, let the game be fun to solve puzzles and motivate your gamers.
Besides the puzzle parts, there are also some stealth sections within the game. I do love me some stealth sequences if they’re well executed but with this game, it’s like you’re trying to pass “a couple of superman with a hearing aid”. All of the guards can’t hear anything of what you’re doing but they can see everything you’re doing, even if you’re well hid. It’s actually a lot more difficult to go from point A to point B, if the guard will give you only a few milliseconds to turn around and catch you.
Let the game be fun to solve puzzles and motivate your gamers.
Of course there are checkpoints in the game but some of them aren’t well placed, you’ll have to walk a long way before you’re back at track. Adam can climb, jump and crouch but he doesn’t do this smoothly. There’s always a certain delay that ruins some of the gameplay experience. In one of the first sections, I fell to my death just because Adam’s movement was slow and unresponsive. So hopefully, the developers can smoothen things up with a patch.
For a downloadable game, it looks okay but it doesn’t give me the feeling that the game’s graphics are mind-blowing. The game could easily run on less strong hardware. However, some area’s in the game look very good thanks to their good lighting and shadow effects. I do think they put a lot of effort in making this game look good, but there were some minor graphical issues. There was a bit of stuttering and sometimes objects would be fully cloaked in shadow and lose their textures but it didn’t change my gaming experience. It’s also good to have fully voiced over characters but they lose a lot of their convincing since their mouth won’t open. I didn’t like the scripting of some characters, especially Adam’s script with his annoying and really bad jokes. I also liked the fact that they’ve implemented subtitles but they have to make sure that the subtitles are being showed when there’s actually something being said. A lot of times, there were subtitles being showed, followed by a long silence due to the missing link. Some audio parts were also being left out on some sections of the game.
The game can be completed in less than five hours and since there’s no exploration but only a linear path to follow, it really doesn’t have any replay value. There are no collectables, difficulty settings or other interesting mods to replay the game for. The price is around 50 bucks and that’s a lot for an a 5 hour long game. A lot of gamers won’t swallow this price for a downloadable game and that’s going to sting. Hopefully, the developers will produce some additional free content to make the game a bit bigger and who knows, maybe it’ll be worth it but in this state, I don’t think it’s worth any higher than 20 bucks.
Conclusion:
Adam Venture was fun for a while and I had an enjoyable playthrough most of the time. It’s a change of mindset playing this game and that’s actually positive. You don’t need to worry about enemies lurking in the dark or even getting lost in a big open world, it’s like a walk in the park. Don’t stray from the path and you’ll get to the end eventually. But sometimes, all of these things give the game replay value and here’s where the game lacks in. There’s nothing more to do then puzzling around and eat up a whole “too big of a narrative sandwich with bad joke lettuce on top of it”. Every person wants worth of his/ her money and this game doesn’t offer it. The game’s ending opens up another road to another Adam’s Venture journey but hopefully it will be a bit more explorable and bigger than the first game.
