Comments on: Atlantis: The Lost Tales review: that sinking feeling https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/ XP comes with age Mon, 01 Jul 2024 06:07:51 +0000 hourly 1 By: Kim https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1252 Wed, 14 Feb 2024 07:41:27 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1252 In reply to Ty.

I’ve just had a look at the Wikipedia page to get a quick overview, and: ‘The sequel to Atlantis: The Lost Tales, it follows the story of Ten, a mystical being that travels across time to defeat the Bearer of Dark.’ That sounds crazy enough already!

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By: Ty https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1248 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 13:56:30 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1248 .]]> In reply to Kim.

I think the 2nd game as a whole is pretty strange, but the last couple minutes are so… hard to describe. I’m still not sure what was meant to be happening 😂.

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By: Kim https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1246 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 07:44:57 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1246 ]]> In reply to drmabian.

Interesting… so, it’s almost as if the second genre should become a kind of mini-game which can be bypassed if the player doesn’t want to join in? That makes sense. I’d give any action sections in an adventure game a go to see if they added to the experience, but I’d really appreciate if it I could skip them when they didn’t sit well with me.

And now I’ve mentioned mini-games… that’s a whole other subject I could rant about. 😆

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By: Kim https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1245 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 07:41:05 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1245 ]]> In reply to Ty.

Ok, even more ‘bizarre’… I must say that I’m now tempted to watch playthroughs of the sequels just to see how weird they get. I’m not sure if anything could be stranger than the weird alien octopus thing at the end. 😆

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By: Kim https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1244 Mon, 12 Feb 2024 07:39:29 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1244 In reply to darkshoxx.

Thanks for picking up on the sexual harassment and slavery topics – these were things I completely failed to mention when writing this review. As we discussed on Saturday, the treatment of Anna (you were right about her name) was horrible in terms of both character development and situation. I know Atlantis was released in a different era but surely it could have been handled a little more sensitively, even for back then…

You’ve had so much practise with the planetary puzzle now that you’ll get it first time in every speedrun! And I look forward to seeing how to get around that flowerpot section more quickly. 😉

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By: drmabian https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1240 Sun, 11 Feb 2024 00:35:57 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1240 In reply to Kim.

You know, I was having a discussion about this with some friends related to a recent…umm…really bad bit in a different game. Basically a similar sense of “I was playing one game, and then it switched things up on me and I hated it.”

To try and shorten it all, it depends. But mostly the two “genres” should directly mesh well. Players should be led to expect that there will be this kind of switching. If you’re making an adventure game for adventure game players with non-adventure game content, then your players should have some freedom to determine how much of that non-adventure content they engage with.

And maybe most importantly, each sequence should be done well mechanically. Even if we were to theoretically argue that the ‘action’ sequences in Atlantis were actually just part of the standard adventure genre…they can still be so poorly designed and annoying to interact with that it sucks.

Something like the new God of War games technically have puzzles interspersed with the action, but those puzzles are light, short, and mostly optional. Don’t like ’em? Don’t need to do ’em. And you’re taught to expect these puzzles fairly early on and they’re clearly set up as part of the overall gameplay. There’s a lot of work done to integrate them.

But if instead I was asked to stop and read several pages of text and then use that text knowledge to locate a key to open a door? Congrats, the game is ruined.

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By: Ty https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1238 Fri, 09 Feb 2024 10:14:49 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1238 Atlantis is such a weird game. I think I liked it a bit more than you did, but it definitely has its irritating moments. From what I know about the other games, The Lost Tales is the “normal one”. The others are bizarre haha.

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By: darkshoxx https://laterlevels.com/2024/02/09/atlantis-the-lost-tales-that-sinking-feeling/comment-page-1/#comment-1237 Fri, 09 Feb 2024 08:48:45 +0000 https://laterlevels.com/?p=11411#comment-1237 What an exciting start to the project!
This game was a lot more than we expected in several ways, and I agree with your overall verdict.
Myst definitely made the trope of “You’re thrown into an unfamiliar situation without context” in adventure games popular (but definitely didn’t invent it), though it is usually also accompanied by “no inventory” and “next to no human interaction”. While the first one holds true here, the other two certainly do not. And I stick firmly to the theory that the reason so many games back then have either FMV or no humans is because it’s damn hard to model and animate humans. Case and Point: Atlantis.
Could it be that the commercial success is partly due to its console releases? The controls seem wonky enough that I feel like mouse control doesn’t have too big of an advantage, and the market of console-adventure gamers is one I often forget about.
I’m more mad at having to solve the planetary alignment puzzle multiple times than the flowerpots, but I too at some point just played by the guide-book.
I agree with the frustration over one-dimensional characters. There may be some uncomfortable truth in the silence of the city about the unfolding story, but the revelation of “Your daughter is dead, by the way I was in love with her.” was absolute nonsense. No indication of that whatsoever in the interactions. That was just weird.
Speaking of weird, my biggest gripe with the plot was the very casual way we were introduced to the very serious topics of attempted sexual harassment and slavery. But surely all is good because we saved that one girl from the hands of the King and the attackers.
I’m not saying other games don’t deal with darker topics (looking at you, 11th Hour) but they usually fit the mood better. Atlantis is supposed to be a friendly fun adventure, no?
I don’t think I’m coming back to the series either, but I’m tempted to speedrun it…hopefully without my PC crashing 🙂

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