Adam's Venture: Origins

 Xbox One
User Score
2.1

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 36 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 36
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 36
  3. Negative: 28 out of 36

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  1. LifeisXbox
    Apr 7, 2016
    4
    Unfortunately I can’t say much positive about the game. Puzzle solving fans will surely have some fun with Adam but that comes with lots of frustration. With terrible voice acting, bad graphics and overall weird design choices it’s very hard to recommend this game. (sorry developers)
  2. YevheniiHura
    Oct 24, 2022
    5
    Sometimes this game is annoying, especially in missions with mazes and guards. But, surprisingly, I liked the story)
  3. GBHBL
    Apr 20, 2016
    5
    Adam Venture: Origins is a third-person puzzle solving adventure. It’s style of gameplay is more point & click than anything else because it lacks action & you effectively transition from one puzzle to another.

    The game reminds me a lot of the Broken Sword series but without even a quarter of the charm. That’s not to say it’s a bad game but unless you like these kind of linear, story    Adam Venture: Origins is a third-person puzzle solving adventure. It’s style of gameplay is more point & click than anything else because it lacks action & you effectively transition from one puzzle to another.

    The game reminds me a lot of the Broken Sword series but without even a quarter of the charm.

    That’s not to say it’s a bad game but unless you like these kind of linear, story driven adventures you’re more than likely to not get much out of it.

    The story begins with Adam Venture, an arrogant young man being woken from his slumber in his fathers office. His father wants him to go find his assistant & than track down a book he needs within the library. This is where control is given to the player & the first problem becomes apparent…Adam moves so stiffly. Moving him around doesn’t feel like you’re moving a person, he’s slow & irritatingly chipper.

    Every word that comes out of his mouth is laced with some kind of pun or sarcastic remark. I don’t know if he is supposed to come across charming but it doesn’t work. In fact his dealings with the opposite sex borders on sexism at times (when escaping the airport, listen to the conversation he has with Evelyn about who should drive). I know, it’s set in the 1920’s & things where different then but it just feels unnecessary & hardly endears you to him as a character.

    In fact I found myself regularly muttering abuse aimed at him every time you opened his mouth to utter another charmless sentence.

    Anyway….so your first task is to find your fathers assistant in the huge house. A chance to explore & get to grips with the tank-like controls, right? Not quite…you see this is where the second problem with the game arises. It’s very linear, almost every door in the house is locked forcing you to take the only path available. Doors that open only reveal small rooms where you can’t interact with anything.

    This is continues throughout the entire game as later you’ll be in huge underground caves but unable to explore as there is just one route & that’s the route you have to go. As I said above this ends up making the game feel as though you’re just moving from puzzle to puzzle.

    So Adam meets his father’s new assistant Evelyn & together they find the book. Using it they discover a secret cave below the house which Adam explores uncovering a secret that will see the pair travelling across the globe to halt a religious battle that threatens the entire world.

    Now it has to be said that this game 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. The game suffers from a lot of texture pop-in & seems to worsen the closer you get.

    With so little to do in each location though you’ll just rush through them, you can’t really interact with anything or anyone save for a little piece of pointless dialogue.

    The majority of the game is made up of puzzles & there are a lot of them with some real brain-teasers thrown in. I enjoyed a lot of these & I liked that the game didn’t hold my hand for most of them. Initially confusing it quickly turns to satisfaction as you begin to unravel the solution. Guess work isn’t going to fly here, you need to work for your reward…which is often just another puzzle a short while ahead.

    Ultimately Adam’s Venture: Origins major selling point is its story & it keeps you interested for the most part. Adam & Evelyn’s blooming romance is extremely unconvincing especially considering how much of a **** he is. Worst of all though is the ‘bad-guy’ whose dialogue is horrendous, his motivation sketchy & threat extremely unconvincing. Seriously, during one of his speeches at the end of the game the character of Evelyn started doing stretches as if she was bored even though he had her captive! Even she wasn’t worried about him!

    If you’re coming into this game hoping for a mesh of Tomb Raider style puzzles & action with Broken Swords epic story-telling you’re going to be disappointed. It lacks so much in so many departments but does tell a interesting story & doesn’t over-stay it’s welcome (can be finished fully within 4-6 hours). The puzzles are fun, challenging & visually the game looks pretty good.Adam Venture: Origins is a third-person puzzle solving adventure. It’s style of gameplay is more point & click than anything else because it lacks action & you effectively transition from one puzzle to another.

    The game reminds me a lot of the Broken Sword series but without even a quarter of the charm.

    That’s not to say it’s a bad game but unless you like these kind of linear, story driven adventures you’re more than likely to not get much out of it.    … Expand
  4. SuperkenGaming
    Apr 8, 2016
    8
    Adam’s Venture Origins
    A surprisingly awesome adventure
    Adam’s Venture Origins is an action adventure puzzle game where you play as Adam… and are accompanied along your journey with a lady named Evelyn. That’s right a story about Adam and eve set in the 1920s And as you may or may not have guessed, this game tries its hardest to be uncharted with puzzles, and it surprisingly comes    Adam’s Venture Origins
    A surprisingly awesome adventure
    Adam’s Venture Origins is an action adventure puzzle game where you play as Adam…
    and are accompanied along your journey with a lady named Evelyn.
    That’s right
    a story about Adam and eve set in the 1920s
    And as you may or may not have guessed, this game tries its hardest to be uncharted with puzzles, and it surprisingly comes quite close to pulling it off
    at least with the relationship of Evelyn and Adam..
    They are constantly going back and forth with each other giving the other a hard time, and I loved it...
    Their lingo did break the immersion a bit
    the banter seemed extremely modern for being set in the 20s
    I think it would’ve been even better if they threw in some copacetic and bees knees
    And while I loved the copacetic setting these chapters took place…
    Some laziness would coincidentally ruin things like the water for example…
    it’s completely non interactive...
    Even when it’s part of the main story path… no splashes… no weight…
    again breaking the immersion a bit…
    To add to the uncharted similarities, chapters go across the screen when a new one begins… there’s platforming, ropes to swing across… and then there’s the ancient treasure…
    you’ll take a trip to the garden of Eden as well as Solomon’s temple
    But unlike uncharted, there’s no combat here.. There are some sly cooper like stealth sections... but the meat of this game is its puzzles... admittedly some puzzles felt a little too close together.. But for the most part I felt like they were spread near perfectly through this 4 and a half hour journey.
    These puzzles are all fairly simple to understand and are ever changing throughout the game...
    sure you may do the same styled math puzzle 3 times in a row in one chapter… but you’ll never see it again later on…
    Some puzzles you may not get the rules too..
    I for example never understood the 2 dynamite puzzles...
    luckily I still got through them by winging it…
    so even if you’re stumped, you can get through most if not all puzzles by trial and error
    While Adam’s Adventure’s budget and lack of care for detail does show every once in a while..
    I completed the game wanting more...
    I laughed at the jokes…
    I cared about the characters... and I loved solving the puzzles
    Witch careful crafting, there’s some potential magic here…
    I give Adam’s Venture Origins
    a 7.5/10    … Expand
  5. slycooper20
    Jul 21, 2019
    3
    Interesting puzzles and decent environments are marred by bad character models, stiff animations, and a supremely annoying protagonist. By the time I was done, I wanted to punch him in the face so hard. Other than that, it's largely short and inoffensive.
  6. SenorKoquonfaes
    Mar 28, 2020
    3
    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,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 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. This 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 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 cuts to Evelyn, who is not only not bound or secured the way you'd expect a captured victim to be, but 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 let that slide since memorable moments in games are still important to me.    … Expand
  7. TheDovahkiin
    Mar 27, 2021
    3
    It lacks in everything, bad graphics, awful puzzle solving, absolute garbage voice acting, etc.
  8. neomoonsevin
    Aug 20, 2023
    6
    An ok game good graphics and reminds me of Indiana Jones meets the tomb raider there was a glitch I ran into with a floating slave in air
  9. spockivi
    Jul 11, 2022
    4
    "It’s a dated game in every aspect, with an abundance of graphics and story issues. It doesn’t help that it’s supposed to be a puzzle game and yet most of its puzzles are fairly obvious.

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
48

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 5 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 5
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 5
  3. Negative: 3 out of 5
  1. GameOver.gr
    May 5, 2016
    40
    It’s a dated game in every aspect, with an abundance of graphics and story issues. It doesn’t help that it’s supposed to be a puzzle game and yet most of its puzzles are fairly obvious.
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  2. ICXM
    Apr 25, 2016
    40
    In its current state I can’t recommend Adam’s Venture: Origins to anyone on Xbox One. If you have a decent gaming machine, go and buy it on Steam. It’s cheaper and a much better experience even on modest devices.
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  3. Wccftech
    Apr 17, 2016
    66
    Adam Venture is a good attempt at an exploration puzzle game. Although it isn't perfect, there is a lot to like within the game. Whether this can be improved in the future is yet to be seen, but for now there is enough to enjoy, although maybe not for the price tag on release.
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