Thoughts on walking simulators aka "First-person Adventure" games?

Do you guys think that genre deserves the bad rep some people give them?

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People with no attention span have no business playing a trekking game. That is all.

The only good walking simulator is The Outer Wilds, which arguably could not be a walking simulator

they have their own appeal

Potentially interesting genre that's been squandered by excessive kitsch and sociopolitical sob stories.

outer wilds is amazing

Haven't played many but I really enjoyed Firewatch. The atmosphere made it pleasant to just wander around seeing the sights. It had a decent amount of interactivity to make it seem like less of a walking sim too.
The Stanley Parable was also a lot of fun even if it had fewer things to touch and play with than Firewatch. Quality humor too and I had fun discovering all the endings.

They definitely tend to be more "experiences" than actual games though so I get why not everyone likes them.

I usually hate them but the land of pain was pretty good. The story and setting was really interesting.

It's a genre that's generally crippled by the very nature of the people who make such games. I honestly don't mind playing a game with no gameplay as long as it makes sure to have a good story that can compensate. But the problem is anyone who thinks they're above having gameplay in their games are too pretentious to come up with a story that doesn't itself end up being pretentious.

I like most of them.
Dear Esther
Gone Home
Firewatch
Everybody's Gone To The Rapture
What Remains Of Edith Finch
Are all great.

dear esther mod was pretty interesting back in the day as a single experiment, then it became a genre, then it became pretentious, then it became rhetoric, then it became saturated, and then nobody fucking cares anymore

Nah
SOMA, Plague Tale, S1 of TWD, and LiS are all good walking sims

>Do you guys think that genre deserves the bad rep some people give them?
Yes. Most of them are shit. One of the best game in genre is Firewatch. And even Firewatch fucked up and destroyed suspense created through entire game with shit ending.

>Everybody's Gone To The Rapture
>great.

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I actually havent played one, but I like adventure games, so I have no problems with walking sims. Theyre an interesting genre to explore mechanics other than pew pew

This. Sometimes it's a nice change of pace

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>aka "First-person Adventure" games
they are not adventure games. they are shallow walking simulators without any depth nor soul to them.

One thing I liked about Firewatch is that it was almost a literal walking sim, where walking actually was the gameplay due to you needing to use basic orienteering skills to figure out where you were. Definitely get more out of the game when you have the map marker disabled in the options.

"No!"

Honestly firewatch is one of those games that I wish I could forget about so I can go in fresh again. I don’t really like walking sims but firewatch had me hooked after the intro. One of my norrmie friends who only played FPS’s and whatnot loved it so much he marathoned it in a night

I don't like something about calling Outer Wilds a walking sim, idk.

I’d rather play a walking sim that has something to say rather than a proper ‘game’ with absolutely no substance like Borderlands or anything published by Ubisoft

how is it not
go A -> B, no threat of failure, nothing done but walking and reading. The puzzles are all solved by reading the instructions elsewhere

Firewatch is the only walking sim I've played and actually liked. It's comfy. And yes I'm aware that the devs are libshit progressives but that wasn't reflected in the game so I don't care.

Most of them are more akin to "experiences" rather than a game in my opinion. Some are enjoyable enough, but even as experiences, it's rare that any will stick with me. Games generally have poor literary merit so they aren't good for that and in terms of immersion, most walking sims don't take enough advantage of the medium and its possibility for otherworldy exploration to be comparable to actually going out in the world and having a real experience.