Some good points about what appeals to fans of 1st person adventures. The solitary adventuring is at the core. I'm not sure if it's the level of graphics, the voice acting, the writing, all three, or something else entirely, but I've not come across many games where the in-game characters were convincing. IMHO, the gamer's imagination does a far better job here in conjuring up other "characters" from old texts, diaries and notes found in the game environment.
Too, some don't like "pixel hunting" but fundamentally, an adventure is analogous to a search for something in your own home. Would you expect to be led to a an overly conspicuous hotspot in each room you entered? No--you'd conduct a methodical search, item by item, corner by corner, inch by inch, until you turned up something potentially useful. Intuitively, that's the way we do things. That's why third person games have never logically made sense to me. It feels more like watching someone else do something than doing it myself.
First person games that allow this kind of intensive searching offer a level of satisfaction, IMHO, I can't find in a game that leads me through it in a narrative fashion that feels more like I'm a character in a film. I appreciate being able to pick up all of the overpriced junk in the gift shop in Lights Out, for example, that Jonathan Boakes has painstakingly taken the time to put on the shelves there, even though it may have no significance to the plot. It creates and builds atmosphere. Racing through that setting to find one or two clues or puzzle pieces and moving on somehow wouldn't seem as much fun.
Last edited by Argyle1968; 06/05/12 10:14 AM.
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