Adventure-Treff

Hi there....

I was invited to your board by whom I think is a moderator that uses the YouTube nick "Vanian81". I was a little concerned with this board being for German native language readers but in his mail to my YouTube channel it was suggested that you guys may be interested in my reviews and a number of you can speak English anyway.

Vanian81 hat geschrieben:If you want me to, I´ll create a thread on our message board, recommending your videos, or the other option is that you do that yourself and register on our board ( index.php. ) A lot of our readers are familiar with the English language, so the adventage you have if you do it this way is that you´ll receive direct feedback in English. But if you want me to open a thread with the video recommendations, that is no problem, just let me know.

I am a little lost as Google translate isn't very good so I was not sure where to post this. I thought the "Community-Tests" forum but I could not see a "NEW POST" link. If I have placed this in the wrong place then please just move it for me. I thought the best option for me would be to post all the reviews in a single thread so they are easy to find.. when I do a new one I will just reply to it saying there is an update and edit the first post.

Well glad to be here and "HI" and all that, I hope having a English interloper isn't a problem If it is blame Vanian81 for convincing me to come over !! heh heh. Anyway I really enjoy doing these reviews and I hope you like them.

Adventurer4Life

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

• Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father
• The Dig
• A Vampyre Story
• Shadow of the Comet
• Guide for Retro Gaming on a modern 0S
  • Part 1 - ScumVM + DosBox
  • Part 2 - Virtulisation with VirtualPC (I now use VirtualBox)
• Policenauts - - (Original Post)
• The Deathgate Cycle - - Original Post
• The Colonel's Bequest - - (Original Post)
• Wing Commander Saga
• The Legend of Kyrandia - - (Original Post)
• A Retrospective on Arcade Games (Ghouls 'n Ghosts)
• Star Trek BORG - - (Original Post)
• Penumbra Overture (Youtube) - - (Original Post)
• Conquest of Longbow - The Legend of Robin Hood (Youtube) - - (Original Post)
• Space Quest 2: Vohaul's Revenge (YouTube) - - (Original Post)
• Portal 2 (YouTube) - - (Original Post)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hey, I just watched two of your reviews (The Dig and A Vampyre Story) and liked them much! The made me wanna get and play these games although I wasn't really interested in them before.
I like your way of presenting the games. The mix of background information and your personal opinion is great.
And besides you have a very nice voice to listen to. I could pretty well imagine you doing an good audio commentary for a movie!

I'm looking forward for more of your Adventure reviews.

hi Adventurer4Life, thanks for sharing the video reviews with us. It is fun to see The Dig in Motion again, years after playing it. I still wonder why it was being underrated back then.

Nice to see you on here. I´ve obviously enjoyed your "old" reviews a lot and i think that your newest addition -Shadow of the Comet- is doing a great job once again. One thing that i´ve noticed : All the games you´ve reviewed so far are extremely atmospheric games and one thing i like about your videos a lot is the circumstance, that the viewer gets a very strong impression of the intense atmopshere these games have to offer ( especially because of the way, you´re using music in the videos).
Looking forward to the next videos.

Hey dude ,

nice reviews without a doubt!!!
They, and especially the SotC one, awakened my emotions and brought back a lot of very good memories.

To make a proposal what about if you list 3 to 5 adventures for which you could do an review too and let the community choose the next title?
Just an idea

Anyway, keep up the good work!

Billy Shears hat geschrieben:Hey, I just watched two of your reviews (The Dig and A Vampyre Story) and liked them much! The made me wanna get and play these games although I wasn't really interested in them before.

Thank you... and cool! That is kinda the point. These old games still stand up against stuff coming out right now... and my hope is that some of the newer adventure fans instead of us old blokes, might see some games that they would be interested in giving go.

Hans hat geschrieben:The Dig <snip> I still wonder why it was being underrated back then.

No idea. I think it is a fantastic game. I really think it may have been as it was a serious game, while all other lucusarts are famous for being funny and lighthearted.. it just wasn't what some people were expecting i guess.

JackVanian hat geschrieben:One thing that i´ve noticed : All the games you´ve reviewed so far are extremely atmospheric games and one thing i like about your videos a lot is the circumstance, that the viewer gets a very strong impression of the intense atmopshere these games have to offer ( especially because of the way, you´re using music in the videos).

Thank you... and yes it is prob no secret now that I much prefer serious games with intense and preferably adult plots to the lighthearted "fun / comedy" games. With the videos it is always a great stress to me on what i can show and what i can not so i do not in fact spoil the game, this was especially hard with SOTC. So I think the music is a great way of trying to convey the atmosphere of the game. I am glad someone noticed

k0SH hat geschrieben:To make a proposal what about if you list 3 to 5 adventures for which you could do an review too and let the community choose the next title?
Just an idea

Knock knock, Who's there? Kosh. Kosh who? Gesundheit!

Seriously though.. I suppose I could do this if you like. Though I am currently doing "The Colonel's Bequest" So it will have to wait till that is done. I was planing to play Bladerunner next. Also i have been meaning to do a Tex Murphy game or maybe GK2 as I wish to do a bit on full motion video adventure games. Also soon i need to address the Myst style first person "puzzle box" games, Maybe Myst, The 7th Guest, Shivers or one of the latter Zork games, maybe Zork Nemesis or somthing. So i guess you could choose from one of those 7.

I have also been working towards doing some kind of mini serialized "documentary" on the adventure game genre in general instead of just game reviews... based on years.. say 1988-1990 in a ep or w/e.. but just haven't found the time and also i would like to start at the beginning if i do that and haven't quite worked out how I can do text adventure games in a visual way.

My point is that i have a lot of stuff planned for this new hobby of mine.. though i may get board of it at any moment so no promises. Anyway i am not sure "user requests" will fit in to well, as with the reviews I also wish to cover a diverse range of companies not just do 5 sierra and 5 lucusarts. Also I am almost positive that users will want reviews for intensely popular games and the thought of doing say Quest for Glory or Monkey Island series is kinda daunting as there is so much stuff to cover. And of course I play these games and do these reviews for fun so not sure i want to get locked into playing a game when i woudl rather be playing different one.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for your support guys... I really enjoy comments, good or bad.

Cheers for watching

a4L

I'd love to see a review of Blade Runner. The movie is one of my favorites und I played the game many years ago. Thought it was really, really great but I don't remember much of it...

Hi again...

Well this time I thought I would try something a bit different to the normal reviews. I have always planned to address other areas of the adventure game scene and as my YouTube Chan gets a LOT of emails asking how I play these old games in windows vista or win7.. I thought I would do a video talking about scumVM, DosBox and Virtual PC.

Now most you you guys will prob not be into this one I guess as, well you probably all know about DosBox and scumVM and stuff... but you may be interested in it anyways.

This video discusses scumVM + Usage, DosBox + Usage and how to create ISO files from your original disks to use as virtual DVDs in your emulation

YouTube = Guide for Retro Gaming on a modern 0S - Part 1(Tutorial) (part 1)
YouTube Direct Link MP4 (32meg) - download
YouTube Direct Link HD MP4 (152meg) - download

Part 2 will be very short and just have content for Virtual PC.. I expect it to be around 3 minuets.

Anyway hope you like part 1...

Have fun and happy adventuring
A4L

Very concise and intelligent, your presentations, Adventurer4Life! I really appreciate them, looking forward to all the following ones!

*dragging a huge wingchair and a well-filled fridge near the computer, waiting patiently*

added part 2

again, great one!

Policenauts

Well here is a new review!!

This time it is for Policenauts... a very over rated game imo form the creator Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear Solid fame. This game has a very intense and interesting story that is presented as as a Anime Interactive film. You will need to expect to be passively watching vast amounts of dialogue and cut sequences with small action sequences and some very strait forward and shockingly easy point and click for the actual game play.

The story itself is very adult and spends a great amount of time in very complex character building, witch is a pleasure to watch. Though I found this game entertaining in the end I was getting more and more bored of the "game" and just wished it was in fact a 45 to an hour long film

As much of this games greatness is in fact the animated sequences again I was unable to really show much of the really cool stuff, that this game has in abundance. I didn't want this to be like a movie trailer that shows all the good bits.

Anyway, Hope you like it
A4L


YouTube = Policenauts (Review)
YouTube Direct Link MP4 (32meg) - download
YouTube Direct Link HD MP4 (152meg) - download

Very nice project, Adventurer4Life !

How did you get the videos in full resolution on youtube ?

I got a little video project by myself on youtube, but my videos did not match the full resolution window.

Frank_Baier hat geschrieben:Very nice project, Adventurer4Life !

Thank you. I appreciate it .. I love getting comments.. I know it is sorta self serving ego thing or w.e but hey I still like getting comments.

Frank_Baier hat geschrieben:How did you get the videos in full resolution on youtube ?

I got a little video project by myself on youtube, but my videos did not match the full resolution window.

I run dosbox in 1280x720 windows resolution... using HQ3 scale.. it works pretty good and then in my video edit app I work in a 720p 1280x720 resolution and use the applications scale functions to increase scale the videos. Then when I render the project it renders as a true 720p video file.. (even though the images in the video itself are "upscaled" .. It still look pretty good imo.

I render the videos as Microsoft AVI using the cinipack codec... this produces fairly large but high quality files. I then use a freeware application called AVIDEMUX to recompress it as a 2 pass XviD + mono MP3 for sound... this app can be complex but also has "idiot" settings where you just select the final file size and hit encode.... I set them to 200meg... then upload and youtube handles the conversion to h.268 MP4s

Prob not the best way to do it but hey it works.. so who cares. As long as you upload 1280x720 youtube will produce a "HD" mp4 and add the option to your youtube videos.

I use Adobe Premiere cs3 for the editing.

Hope that helps
A4L

Death Gate (Review)

Ok... well here we go again.. and this time I am doing Death Gate. A Legend Interactive game and a terrific example of how incredibly well designed puzzles and interaction with the game world can overcome age. This is retro gaming in a nutshell. Based on The Death Gate Cycle this game brings a terrific story, has extremely good conversations trees and voice over's, brilliant game design and even some genre first game devices now common place in game. Though this game did it first.

Well this is my last review for the time being (I tend to do them in 2s for some reason) and I hope you like it. The Policenauts review was a little rushed as it was an after though. I was in fact working on The Cornels' Bequest, but thought it would be good to get that review out while the game was in its current resurgence of popularity due to the recent release of the English fansub.

I think I am finally starting to get these reviews working as I wish, as in fitting in most of the commentary I wish to fit in.. I am even under 10 min this time I feel this is my best review so far.

Anyway.. I hope you like it
Have fun and Happy Adventuring
A4L

YouTube = Death Gate (Review)
YouTube Direct Link MP4 (32meg) - download
YouTube Direct Link HD MP4 (152meg) - download