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Forums > Game Forums > God of Thunder > Genre?

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Dae (7181) on 7/12/2012 4:30 PM · Permalink · Report

Would you consider this an Adventure game as well as an Action game?

It's largely a Legend of Zelda clone with nonlinear exploration and NPCs you can talk to, the game progresses very much like Zelda/Metroid where key items grant you access to new areas.

I'm asking this because I feel the genre Adventure should be added to this game's profile.

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Patrick Bregger (301035) on 7/12/2012 5:20 PM · edited · Permalink · Report

You compare the game to Zelda and Metroid, two games which are not even close to being adventures, so the answer is probably no.

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Lain Crowley (6629) on 7/12/2012 6:44 PM · Permalink · Report

except that both those games are absolutely adventures, so I guess the answer is probably yes.

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Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 7/13/2012 2:13 AM · Permalink · Report

Of course they are not adventures. They are action games that happen to have more extensive item usage and exploration than usually. This doesn't make them adventures, just like an adventure game that has a fighting sequence doesn't turn into a fighting game.

Such games are now more and more often called adventures because real adventures have left the mainstream, and something needs to fill the vacuum for marketing. Before they were called adventures by console-exclusive players because consoles hardly had real adventures.

In any case, this designation is wrong both factually and historically.

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Pseudo_Intellectual (66362) on 7/13/2012 2:51 AM · Permalink · Report

In all of gamingdom, no word has been more twisted and abused by marketers and box copy writers than "adventure", right from Crowther & Woods on up. It's so diluted as to be meaningless.

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Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 7/13/2012 3:23 AM · Permalink · Report

In all of gamingdom, no word has been more twisted and abused by marketers and box copy writers than "adventure", right from Crowther & Woods on up. It's so diluted as to be meaningless

Absolutely. That's why I'm glad MobyGames still preserves some meaning in it with its genre classification.

Branding hidden object games and visual novels as adventures, however, is something we shouldn't be doing. I'm itching to just remove the main genre from such games...

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Dae (7181) on 7/12/2012 9:13 PM · Permalink · Report

Of course they're not anything like, say, a traditional point & click -adventure game, but they still share a simplified item management mechanic as well as a freely uncoverable storyline.

In GoT you interact with NPC and talk to them using a dialogue tree system. You must find use for newly claimed items to work your way to the end of the storyline.

I don't know what kind of adventure game does not have elements like this.

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Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 7/13/2012 2:20 AM · Permalink · Report

In 99% of RPGs you talk to NPCs and collect items to advance. So, now these games are RPGs, too?

Freely uncoverable storyline has nothing to do with genre. You can have one in an action game as easily as in an adventure.

We can discuss this all day, but this reminds me of how Indra tried to convince himself that any game is an RPG because in any game you play a role.

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Lain Crowley (6629) on 7/13/2012 3:15 AM · Permalink · Report

Search the internet for lists of "the best RPGs on the N64" and Ocarina of Time will be on every single one.

Do I really have to paste a dictionary definition of adventure into this thread?

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Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 7/13/2012 3:20 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

Search the internet for lists of "the best RPGs on the N64" and Ocarina of Time will be on every single one.

Search the net for the most successful jazz musician and you will see Kenny G.

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Lain Crowley (6629) on 7/14/2012 4:24 AM · Permalink · Report

Ah, so this is about snobbery. I should have figured.

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Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 7/14/2012 4:26 AM · Permalink · Report

Ah, so this is about snobbery

You don't need to be a snob to know that Kenny G is not a real jazz musician. You just need to understand jazz :)

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Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 7/13/2012 3:21 AM · Permalink · Report

Do I really have to paste a dictionary definition of adventure into this thread?

No, because we don't follow dictionary definitions. We follow established genre definitions that apply only to games.

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Dae (7181) on 7/13/2012 3:59 PM · Permalink · Report

These definitions of course change depending on who you ask, I just wanted to hear what the staff thinks.

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Rola (8483) on 7/15/2012 3:27 AM · edited · Permalink · Report

I'd say (after playing it) that the game is definitely an action-puzzle game. It isn't story-driven, despite the simple plot, quest items are rare (two in the 1st episode?) and conversations only have one useful option (the rest is for laughs). Even if we downgrade cRPGs into "games with character stats", we have very few spells and only health/mana meter.