alt Hacker NewsThe Sam and Max episodes were pretty good... partially because the episodic format forced the designers to keep things reeled in. A single 3 hour episode can't get to the point that you have a couple hundred possible solutions to the problem and nothing but brute force to resolve it.
This style of game died for a reason. I'm not saying it needs to stay dead, but I do think every entrant to the genre needs to grapple with those reasons and have an answer to them. The episodic format provided one decent answer, even if I don't necessarily love it as a monetization technique. Adventure games all tend to pass through episode-like gates anyhow because the combinatorial state space becomes overwhelming without them, but they often still carry over state from the previous phases of the game. The full clean-slate wipe of the episodes prevented that from becoming a problem.
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What these games need is a good old-fashioned Aperture Science Material Emancipation Grill.
(Though I guess in the context of these games, that would be considered new-fangled.)
They need an editor who will go through and identify the puzzles that must be solved through brute force, and require alteration.
Interestingly, with AI/LLMs now the large combinatorial state space problem could be somewhat fixed (alongside having much richer dialogue trees).
This style of game died because the median attention span across the population decreased over the last 2 decades and something. I don't see a problem in getting blocked and try to brute force your way out of it. Games should be fun but this trend to have perfect, non frustrating gameplay 100% of the time is also part of the problem, IMO.
And now, I'll go back yelling at some cloud.
> Fate of Atlantis was the best
A better Indy movie than the last 2, IMO. I go back and replay it every so often.
> The Sam and Max episodes were pretty good
Some of them were funnier than others. It helps if you were attached to the characters having read the comics or watched the show. (The comics had the most concentrated humor - see: the comic about Dracula)
I recall the episode featuring the Abraham Lincoln statue running amok was very funny.