Point and click

 

Point and click

By Greg Howson / PC 08:55am

 

I've been playing Another Code for a review in the paper this week. The new DS title is essentially a point and click game that makes good use of the dual-screen, with the stylus used to manipulate in-game items. It makes a pleasant change to use your brain in a DS game, even if the conundrums can be wilfully obtuse at times. Solving them though is highly satisfying, which makes the death of the genre on PC even more upsetting.

 

Back in the day (early to mid 90s) the point and click adventure genre was at the pinnacle of PC gaming. Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky, Broken Sword - the list of genuine adventure classics is long. But old. The Longest Journey was the last title of note and that was released five years ago (an upcoming game - Fahrenheit - looks promising, even if it is not a point and click game in the traditional sense).

 

Since then there have been some appalling low-key European releases that lack the style, narrative and class of the 90s classics while retaining the sadistic puzzles. More interestingly a burgeoning retro scene has developed, keeping the likes of Guybrush going strong.

But why has the genre died out? Advances in graphics technology mainly. The move to 3D changed the face of PC gaming - once gamers had played Doom or Quake, the slow-paced likes of Monkey Island seemed anachronistic. 3D adventure games were released - most notably Grim Fandango - but the genre was deemed commercially dead.

 

I think publishers have missed an opportunity here. PC gaming is an expensive business. Graphics cards that become obsolete in months plus regular upgrades are fine for hardcore gamers who want their new generic first-person shooter to look good, but there is a massive untapped market for games that don't need a state-of-the-art system to run. Look at the success of Championship/Football Manager or even World of Warcraft - games that run on PCs more than a year old.

 

This is where point and click comes in. I'm convinced there is still a market for these type of games, especially to older PC gamers, bored of first-person shooters and me-too strategy games. All it needs is some decent writers, a non sci-fi/fantasy setting and, crucially, a bit of marketing spend to attract the non-hardcore gaming audience, especially as the PC games mags dismiss the genre. PC gaming has to expand and I think point and click titles are good way to do this.

 

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/games