Re: "Sierra made the games of my childhood. Are they still fun to play?"

Ant <ant@zimage.comANT> wrote:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2025/05/sierra-made-the-games-of-my-childhood-are-they-still-fun-to-play/

I read that article and saw it as vindication of my decision back in the
day not to play the Sierra games.  I've never played one, but I heard
they where hard, that the solutions to the puzzles were often obscure,
and that you died a lot.  People would recommended these games to me,
but the only good thing they could say about them was how funny the death
scenes were.  I remember one friend showing me one of those scenes and not
being impressed.  It seemed like a cheap death, and not really that funny.
I also got the impression he hand't managed to get far in the game.

They basically came across to me as less fun Infocom games, but with the
addition of graphics.  I found the Infocom games fustrating enough, and
the addition of graphics wasn't enough to make up for the worse gameplay.

Thinking back on it, what really turned me off on adventure games in
general, and still does today, is the lack of player agency.  There was
only one route through these games.  You were never deciding on your own
what to do, gameplay was limited to just figuring out what you had to do.
It seems to me that Sierra games in particular, with their cheap deaths
and arbitrary puzzles, would have quickly destroyed any illusion of
player agency.

I much preferred RPGs and strategy games.  Compared to adventure games
they had simpler stories and more abstract graphics, but I felt much more
like I was actually in their imaginary worlds because I had meaningful
choices to make.

--
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