Hi gordon24,
I took too long writing my post so you snuck in there without my seeing your post first.
Yes, life is like an adventure which may account for the reason why I like adventure games which satisfy my curiosity and not those where you fight enemies or pesky mechanical puzzles (I'm not an engineer) and also why I prefer third person. Who wants to go through life alone?
As for the SAVE feature, that's what my memories are all about and I visit them often. I also edit them so only the best part remains, right?

Love that thinking SM. Super idea!

Thanks very much for the article Reenie - that appears to have some initial results that are encouraging.
I have to disagree with some of you though - just because action is required in a game doesn't make it a reflexive action. Even in a fast paced shooter game, there is still assessment, correlation and response.

I wouldn't know about shooters, I'm an adventurer! Shooting is a boring activity as far as I'm concerned.

Okkkk, what I was saying is that action - even in an adventure game - is not reflexive action. Just because you find it boring doesn't make it any less a cognitive action.

Hi

I don't play "Shooters" so I can't comment on those but I do play some Action RPGs and quite a lot of the gameplay in those requires organising your team "strategically" in order to win a fight.

There is a "pause" button which gives you the time to do this.
Reflex speed alone will certainly not guarantee you victory.

So, you have to think and not just merrily keep pressing the "fire" button

Cheers.

Mad

Oops, I meant shooting is boring for me, it can be very exciting and challenging for others.
I suspect liking the challenge of shooting something has to do with an adrenaline rush rather than any cognitive action. A feeling of power maybe, the high of victory, whatever. It isn't there for me though so it's boring.

I was answering a previous post, as for RPG's they are boring in yet another way, speaking for me only. Strategy requires thought but on a subject that I do not find interesting because I'm not into the fighting action. In role-playing games one gets better at the action, magic spell casting, or stealth by repeating and repeating the same old thing. Okay, one learns to do it better, I guess, but why bother is my reaction. Where is the curiosity here, the surprise of something new and unexpected?

Hi sierramindy --

Although I don't play shooters, I've watched others play them, and (at least for the ones I've watched) there is often a strategy involved. Succeeding because of the strategy is (from my observation) as satisfying or more so than succeeding by running around blasting randomly at everything. I think what I'm trying to say is that the games can be cerebral, though certainly in a different way than solving a slider puzzle (for instance).

We all enjoy different things -- shooters don't appeal to me personally because I don't like (even virtual) violence with bodies falling everywhere as you shoot them.

All games require some degree of repetition. Adventure gamers become better at distinguishing small but significant visual differences (pixel hunting, you could say). This drives other gamers crazy. We often have to go back and forth, retracing our steps from location to location. With practice, we get better at thinking of how items can be creatively combined. We encounter jigsaw puzzles, Towers of Hanoi (I remember one of these that required more than 100 moves), sequencing puzzles, and so on. And we (hopefully) get a little better at them each time we do them.

I think that adventures do bring a wide variety of challenges, and that's one of the reasons I like them.

Granted we all have our own reasons for playing adventure games, that's a given. I do not like the puzzles you mentioned, that's why I use a walkthrough to get past them. The reason why I sound so against shooters and RPG's is that I feel they are infiltrating adventure games and I don't think that is fair, even though I can see it is a good commercial move with so many gamers playing ALL these types of games. Maybe I'm too old for all this as so far those who have mentioned their age have never yet posted an age older than I am!

I agree. I have played games with mixed adventure/action, and enjoyed them. The disagreements expressed herein may be arise only from gradation.

My impression is that, when people say they don't like action games, they are referring to ones like Doom or Wolfenstein or other "splatterfests." Those don't generally involve much strategy, although I have watched hubbie play them, and he does have to think about his approach to a battle, which weapon to use, when to amp up his health, etc. But the chatter around those games seems to center on the cool weapons above all else.

Other games that are more RPG-like in content involve significant strategy: long-term planning, designing your characters and adjusting attributes in order to progress in the game, husbanding resources, and lots of other "cognitive work." Diablo, for one, has had significant staying power and has generated a devoted and extensive fan community because it tests a gamer in a wide range of ways. Chatter about those games encompasses a much wide range of issues, and clearly the game's complexity (and graphic beauty) accounts for its longevity and replay value.

When you get to the Adventure Game category, weapons and timed combat are (thankfully, in my opinion) generally not relevant issues. The focus is almost entirely upon reasoning. Adventure gamers get upset when an adventure game inserts adrenalin-based scenarios. (On the other side, my hubbie would be irritated if one of his action or RPG games inserted a puzzle of almost any kind. lol)

As for repetition, the "Action" genre certainly holds no monopoly, in terms of game play. One need only play Broken Sword 3 to know that! (the endless shoving around of crates...)

So, I think we all have to be conscious of how we define these genre and our reaction to them, clarifying what we mean when we say we like one form and not the other. Whatever challenges you mentally is good, and if that is seeing how many monsters you can blow to smithereens, well that is still better than zoning out to prime time reruns or reality TV shows.

The title of this thread is "ANOTHER great reason to play Adventure Games!" I'm detail minded and I'm zoned in on that word ADVENTURE in the title! I have no quarrel with other games and yes, they are fine for others to play, but count me out. It is when these other games start crowding out the adventure in ADVENTURE games that I cry "Foul!" and "Uncle!" I am very happy to read that there is "ANOTHER reason" for playing ADVENTURE games besides the reason that I have for playing them. Mine is simple, I play for the fun of it.