Adam's Venture: Origins Reviews

Soedesco bring on Xbox One his new adventure game like Indiana Jones with exploration puzzle game.

Adam's Venture: Origins
Developer: Vertigo Games
Publisher: Soedesco
Release Date: April 1, 2016

Adam's Venture: Origins is actually a remake of a trio of games that were released between 2009 & 2012. Here the game has been streamlined, updated & given the next-gen once over. Locations are varied & often very nice to look at…from a distance.

In Adam's Venture, we play an explorer who some ways recalls the famous Indiana Jones with a game system inspired by the old adventure, full of puzzles.

Since the beginning, we will make the knowledge of the game system that the developers have created for all those who are fans of puzzles, we can almost say that at every step there is a puzzle game that will leave the player sometimes for several minutes to think how to get out, giving at the same time freedom of exploration for the search of the key items for their resolution.

No weapon or special equipment will accompany Adam during this adventure, but only a grappling hook that will serve to jump obstacles. In a few moments we will find ourselves having to avoid the guards using stealth sessions, although the AI is virtually nonexistent, because the enemies will make the exact same way, ignoring the player located in close proximity, making it easy a nice jaunt between them, despite not possess weapons with which to face the threat in case of alarm.

The goal is to find the Garden of Eden lost in the current Jerusalem.

From the technical point of view Adam's Venture: Origins tries to show his teeth with well-made lighting effects and a graphics cure after all enough.

The Good

- Puzzles interesting
- Puzzles fun
- Very good lighting effects

The Bad

- Extremely short
- Exaggerated price

Final score

7,5/10.

Hurry to embark on a bold adventure in Adam’s Venture: Origins.

Everyone likes a good bit of wordplay and a joke. And then there are plenty more bits of wordplay which make you sigh. Naming a character Adam Venture, (Ad for short), belongs firmly in the latter category. When brainstorming and naming the protagonist (and game) it’s as if the developers either didn’t bother with feedback, surround themselves with people who agree with them, or were too lazy or arrogant to change it. My money is on arrogance, which also seems to seep into the game and characters. I can almost hear people telling the developers that the game isn’t good, so if I can hear them, why didn’t the devs listen?

The game then, is about an extremely unlikeable fellow, who seems to be in some nightmarish adventure where he has to solve puzzles in the 1920’s in order to save the World. Now as this is an episodic adventure, I imagine we will see him wake up in the next part, as we didn’t see that happen in this game. We know it’s a nightmare because whenever there is a cutscene the characters mouths are glued shut, or they use camera angles to show backs of heads, even in what are supposed to be tense, important situations. Also, the nightmare seems to have stripped Adam of personality, and all that is left is a shell of a person, who seems to be 10% intelligence, 40% arrogance, and 50% overconfidence. It's like Lara Croft and Nathan Drake had a kid, who tries his best to live up to their expectations but is just a disappointment to them, after they spoilt him.

The game then, is essentially guiding Adam through a linear adventure solving puzzles along his way. At one point a professor draws a gun on Adam and shouts at him to solve a puzzle. Only in a dream would a professor ask such an utter twat for help with a puzzle.



The puzzles are mainly bland, uninteresting, and repetitive. The path is somehow straightforward to follow but annoying to navigate. Adam can jump from massive heights and sustain no damage but struggles to jump over rocks that are knee-high. He has a trusty grapple hook which helps him pull down an extreme amount of bridges conveniently placed in the levels. The zip sliding and mine cart sections are as fun as the game gets, (not much), and some of the outdoor landscapes such as Jerusalem are not offensive on the eyes. I just don’t see the point of putting in the work and effort to make all the scenery and areas, which were never going to be on a par with bigger budget titles. This game could have saved a lot of time and effort and just been minigames and cutscenes, instead of trying to be something it was never going to be. Adam’s overconfidence and arrogance then, is a nice reflection of the developer’s attitude towards the game – trying to be something it is not. Even near the end, where we have barely seen another human being because we have mostly been in caves, the game tries to make us believe that Adam is somehow saving the World by solving these puzzles. In nowhere in the game before that was there a hint millions of people were in mortal danger, but hey, as I said, it seems to be a nightmare, and therefore the rules don’t apply. In the awful stealth sections we also see what a coward Adam is, because for all his bravado and faux charisma, whenever he gets seen by enemies, he puts his hands up like a rocket, to surrender like the true pussy that he is.

Whatever music there is can be described as unforgettable as the characters are. As a nice nod to days gone by, it is great that casual sexism is in the game too, to give it an old-fashioned vibe. Adam at one point is asked by his companion Evelyn whether he packed food, only for Adam to retort that he thought she had packed her make-up instead. The voice actors evidently were taking the piss when doing the acting, because it is terrible. The script may have had something to do with this though. Even more surprisingly, after zero tension or chemistry between the characters, probably because Adam loves himself so much because he is a douchebag, the game hints at them coming together at the end by him brazenly asking her, ‘Is this the part where I get the girl?’.



Thankfully, the achievements are straightforward, all linked to the story apart from 3 collectables, of which 2 are right at the start, so would be difficult to miss. Back in the 360 days 5 hours for 1000 gamerscore was good, but now it isn’t, and this nightmare is not worth 5 hours of anybody’s time, even on lockdown. The only people I can see enjoying this are nerdy 7-year-old boys, whose parents put them in a bubble, think their kid is special, and don’t allow them to play anything with guns in. And who think casual sexism is still fine. So, a really big demographic then.

I quite like playing rubbish games, but this is worse than most crap out there, just because the other games that are crap know they are crap. With one of the most annoying protagonists I have even encountered, Adam’s Venture remains memorable for all the wrong reasons. My girlfriend actually asked ‘Is that it?’ with disbelief when the ending happened, and more than once looked up to comment on the dialogue.

Thankfully, nightmares end. So if I were the developers, I would have a quiet word with myself, do an equality class, learn to listen to feedback, and then disown the horrible love child that is Adam’s Venture. Do yourself a favour and skip this one, unless you want to punish yourself out of guilt for something.

1 star because I have seen worse graphics.

I picked this game up on sale for $3.99 CAD when it popped up in the "Easy Gamerscore..." article from March 3 2020. I had no knowledge of this game's existence, so based on screen captures, it looked like it was some sort of Indiana Jones style game. On that premise, I was sold. Sadly, that's about where my positivity largely ended with this game.

Adam's Venture: Origins is a third person, point-and-click, adventure, puzzle solving game that ultimately comes across as... a budget Indiana Jones game. The story is incredibly linear with no real incentive for replay-ability; no choice and consequences, no collectible items etc. The game's release structure was a 3 part, episodic deal with episode 1 being released on October 2, 2009, episode 2 being released on April 8, 2011 and the third and final episode being released on March 9, 2012. Adam's Venture: Origins release is a remake of those previous episodes, cobbled together for next-gen consoles.

Set in the 1920's, you play as the titular character: Adam Venture, a young and arrogant explorer searching for the Garden of Eden and Solomon's Temple. You're first tasked with searching your father's mansion to find his new assistant, Evelyn Appleby. Two solved puzzles later and the two of you are now able to enter the mansion's library, where Adam discovers a book that leads him into an underground cave beneath the mansion. There, Adam discovers a secret that leads him and Evelyn on a globetrotting adventure in the sense that they get shuttled along from one set piece to another by solving puzzles.

Trying to control Adam feels really stiff and awkward. His jumping ability feels kind of floaty and his mantling ability feels unresponsive. The animations feel really janky and wooden. Lip synching is borderline non-existence as you can barely see characters' mouths moving when they speak.

The game's dialogue and voice acting are largely terrible. A lot of Adam's dialogue is filled with sarcastic comments or puns that mostly come across as unfunny or irritatingly boisterous; I found myself cringing nearly every time he spoke. I'm not sure if this was an attempt for him to sound courageous or charismatic, but it fails all the same. A few of Adam's interactions with Evelyn are so cartoonishly misogynistic to the point where it's not even remotely offensive, just straight up cringey. For instance, their conversation about who should be driving the car when they escape from an makeshift airport: "This situation calls for a man behind the wheel!" or when they're inside Soloman's Temple, "...I'm the brains, you're the looks. Nothing wrong with that." Now I just kind of chalked all that up to "It's the 1920's and that's just kind of how things were back then." But when you already have a unlikable and irritating character, this sort of dialogue certainly doesn't make Adam feel more relatable or endearing. Despite all of this, the game attempts to force Adam and Evelyn into a romantic relationship, which goes over like a tonne of bricks, given Adam's obnoxious and arrogant personality and Evelyn having almost no personality at all.

The overall gameplay experience feels really mediocre at the best of times. It's very linear the entire way. Doors and gates are locked except for the one that you need to pass through. There's invisible walls that prevent you from exploring anything further. The underground caves suffer from this as well, which is unfortunate because the cave environments are somewhat well done in terms of lighting and graphics, but you don't get to see or explore much of them beyond the linear story path. Ultimately, you're really just going through the motions of following the game's pre-determined single path with very little if any extra interactivity. The one saving grace are the puzzles. There are quite a few of them and the game is not going to hold your hand through any of it. Some of them are fairly straight forward, other's feel a bit more challenging and rewarding that really make you stop and think for a few minutes. They do end up recycling a few of them, however. There's a grid layout addition puzzle that revolves around adding 3 roman numerals to the sum of 10 that pops up at least 3 or 4 times in the same level area.

Performance wise, the game is a bit of a mess. Textures are of mediocre quality and suffer from obvious pop in. Some of the graphics are badly aliased, like character's hair and foliage. The game also suffers from some clear screen tearing as well, specifically during the mansion level.

Arguably, the funniest and most memorable moment from this game has to be when the main villain captures Evelyn and they're navigating their way through the temple. There's a cutscene where he talks about his endgame in a poorly contrived attempt to sound evil or convincing. The camera then cuts to Evelyn, who is not only not bound or secured the way you'd expect a captured victim to be, but she then proceeds to starting doing some stretches as if she's been sitting hunched over a computer for too long. All while this bad guy is revealing his evil plan... I'm going to give the game an extra .5 star for that, since memorable moments in games are still important to me.