Erik_Twice wrote:Personally, I don't think any of his modenr-era games are worth playing. The issue is that, ultimately, his games are very poor from a gameplay perspective and fun characters and quirkiness can't overcome that. Psychonauts, for example, resembles those licensed Disney 3D platformers, it's just better written.
To play off of this though, I'd ask how we look at "his" games. For instance, I recommended playing several Double-Fine games...but those are games from his company, not necessarily ones that were directly from the mind of Shafer. When I recommend the likes of Stacking, Costume Quest, and Iron Brigade, I'm recommending things from his studio that he likely was involved with but not the generating force. Yes, some of these titles are going to be derivative, and some play with genre concepts (Costume Quest is a western take on JRPGs, while Iron Brigade combines tower defense, mech combat, and a faux-WWI aesthetic). I think we have to look at Shafer's work as an employee at LucasArts and then later at the work of the company he heads where it comes from "Shafer"...but it doesn't come from Shafer, if you get my drift.