Action-Adventure Games and Why You Should Play Them.

As we enter into week 4 of our Twitch experience, our group thought it was time to introduce you guys to some of our favorite Action-adventure games. Action-Adventure (AA) games have been around since the early Atari days and have continued to be one of the top played genres across all platforms. The biggest difference between (AA) and your typical FPS styles is that adventure games usually contain a bigger storyline, player inventory systems, and side quest that allow you to unlock features to better your experience. FPS games like Call of Duty or any of the Halo titles, do feature campaigns but are typically focused more on multiplayer rather than storyline. One of mine and Maslim’s favorite Action-Adventure games is Sea of Thieves. If you’ve ever had the urge to be a pirate or steal buried treasure, this game is for you. Released in March of 2018, Sea of Thieves offers players the opportunity to captain their own ship and complete voyages from different pirate legends. On your quest, players will encounter different creatures of the deep including the Megladon shark and the notorious Kraken.

If you thought that’s where your sea troubles would end you’d be wrong. Included in your lobby are countless other pirate ships captained by other players around the world. Without any warning players can start firing on your ship with cannons and firearms all with the end goal of sinking your ship and stealing your loot. In order to fight back, you and your crew have to repair the ship of any holes caused by enemy cannons and even bucket out the water. Even in the middle of all that chaos, you and your crew must find a way to fight back in order to prevent enemies from boarding your ship. If any of this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. 

Sea of Thieves is easily one of my favorite games to play because it’s an experience that very few games provide. The last pirate game I played before 2018 was Pirates of the Caribbean Online which debuted back in 2007. Sea of Thieves also provides Cross-Platform capabilities which nowadays is often very important to future buyers. This week’s stream will include Maslim and I taking on the open sea and providing our honest opinions of the game.

Another semi-recent Action Adventure game is Pokemon: Sword and Shield. Though one of the more poorly received Pokemon titles, a large part of SwSh is adventure based. I personally believe the action comes more from Max Raids where you try to obtain legendary and illusive pokemon with your friends on and offline, and from the DLC storyline. The DLC in SwSh introduces two new areas as well as quests that, in my opinion, provide some of the games best action based gameplay as you combine both the exploring aspect and the action aspect to chase down the Legendary Birds Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres. 

Photo: Eurogamer.com

The main game line also has action but I find the main story line action to be a bit predictable in the nature of a Pokemon game. The action is a bit formulaic but still present. The cutscenes though are full of action and lovable characters (Raihan being my favorite). If you want multiplayer action the best way to achieve it is to join a Max Raid in the DLC. It’s like a dungeon where you go through with a team with the ultimate goal to catch the legendary or pseudo-legendary at the end of the dungeon after 4 other battles. If you don’t defeat it in time it disappears and you have to reassemble a team. The time limit is honestly a great addition which adds to the urgency of the adventure, making you plan out every one of your Pokemon’s attacks; added difficulty comes with the fact that you don’t choose which pokemon you get to use, it’s randomly generated. It’s honestly a fun, yet frustrating (without the right team or without a good team) but I personally believe it is one of the most addicting action aspects of Sword and Shield.