Rarely am I so severely disappointed in games that I’m excited to play because they look unique. I usually end up finding some aspects about them that I love which are just so great that they overshadow the flaws. Adam’s Venture: Origins initially looked like a unique blend of action, adventure and problem solving but the numerous technical flaws, especially when it comes to its graphics, are too troublesome to overlook. Just out of curiosity I purchased the Steam version of the game to compare it to the Xbox One version. The difference is night and day. The Xbox One port is quite possibly one of the worst to ever come to the console, or to any console in fact. It’s a poorly performing blurry messy.
Adam’s Venture: Origins follows, as the name suggests, Adam Venture on his exploits around the world. The title features clever puzzles that range from those that are easy to some of the most difficult challenges ever placed in a video game. There are other action moments where you have to traverse the environment or sneak around. The title features no combat so you have to play it sensibly. That was one of the most refreshing parts about the game. In an experience like Uncharted or Tomb Raider, despite being a treasure hunter, you go around murdering hundreds of people. Maybe thousands. This is the exact opposite as Adam’s Venture: Origins focuses on puzzles to keep players engaged.
While the puzzles are phenomenal, the voice acting and overall character development could use some work. There are moments when the story takes a turn for the supernatural and the characters react like it’s nothing. There are also certain areas where the use of comedy ruins twists which would’ve come across as rather shocking had they been properly realized. A good way to describe Adam’s Venture: Origins would be to think of it as a serious puzzle game wrapped in a third-person adventure title. While the adventuring parts might be simple, the puzzles definitely aren’t.
Had I been reviewing the Steam version of Adam’s Venture: Origins, I would’ve easily given this title seven out of ten stars. Unfortunately, I had to play the Xbox One version for many days and had to suffer through it. Let’s start from the beginning shall we?
The first thing you notice about the title on Xbox One is how blurry it looks. While the graphics are crisp and the text is sharp on Windows, on Xbox One even the text makes you question whether you have a problem with your eyesight. It’s downright ugly and clearer text should’ve been overlaid on the graphics if achieving a clear image wasn’t possible. There’s no reason to make the whole experience appear blurry and terrible. It seems like the developers are punishing gamers who prefer to spend $300 devices rather than an expensive gaming machine.
When you play the game the next problem that pops up is the inconsistent frame rate and the severe screen tearing. It’s quite possibly some of the worst I’ve seen in a video game on Xbox One apart from Yasai Ninja. There are also problems with textures being blocky. The anisotropic filtering is also very low and there is a lot of texture pop-in.
The last bit of annoyance comes from the way the character moves as the animations seem rather basic. Sometimes when the characters are speaking, it appears that their lips don’t even move. Additionally, the details on their faces are washed out. The majority of these problems are nowhere to be found on the Windows version. I realize that gaming on a computer is superior to gaming on a console but there should’ve at least been some sort of effort put into the Xbox One code. It seems like it hasn’t been optimized properly and the developers just lowered whatever they could to make it work. There are numerous tricks you can employ when it comes to consoles and it appears that none of them were used. This game has so many issues that I’m not even sure a patch can fix them. I think it may require reworking from the ground up.
Summary
Despite its problems, Adam’s Venture: Origins is still playable unlike some other games that recently came out. For example, Lichdom: Battlemage can’t seem to go above fifteen frames per second on Xbox One and the fact that Adam’s Venture: Origins touches sixty most of the time is commendable. However, maybe lowering the frame rate to thirty would’ve made the graphics better while still maintaining great gameplay. The game is not frantic so it would’ve worked. 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. I hope the developers take notice and fix the problems because it’s a Herculean task. The fact that it’s $50 makes it even worse. How could they put the game out like this and charge so much in its current state?
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.