Need A Name

I've noticed that most of my contributions apply mainly to a certain broad category of game. These can be first person, third person, be light on action, or light on adventure. The category includes shooters and survival horror and those games where you go from room to room fighting things. It includes platformers. It includes single-player computer role playing games. (They could even be those "computer-like" role playing board games such as Hero's Quest, or any role playing game with an unimaginative GM.)

The category does not include fighting games, rhythm games, sports games, god games, sims.

I'd like to make a Domain: note for my contributions, but I could use a name for this sort of thing.

Some things the game probably must have: an avatar, a progression of terrain, and narrative (no matter how weak).

Examples of this generalization would include: Metroid, Zelda, Mario, Half-Life, Goldeneye, GTA3, Halo, Metal Gear, Splinter Cell, Final Fantasy, Grim Fandango, System Shock, Thief, Fallout, Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, No One Lives Forever, Ico, Tomb Raider, Hero's Quest.

It's only the lack of narrative that keeps Tony Hawk out.

I don't know, maybe I'm being an idiot, there's probably not much point to arboreally categorizing games.

Action Adventure? Action Exploration? Or using your main points, Exploration Narrative. Perhaps Personal Exploration Narrative to get the avatar in?

If they were movies, they would be blockbuster action movies. Wait, some of them are movies! Heavy on plot, heavy on special effects, light on character, light on moral ambiguity, mostly about escaping a maze dressed up like some kind of exotic or lurid location, where you fight endless bad guys who lack skill or personality in order to finally get to an ending that leaves you sort of empty inside. And I like these sorts of games. They are reminiscent of disassociative fugues and/or megalomaniacal episodes, when they happen to you in real life. They ocassionally diverge into the psychotic. I am being tongue-in-cheek. I think.

These sorts of games are primarily about maze exploration and/or hide-and-seek. The fighting is, in my opinion, another kind of game, making many of the examples hybrids between a tactical combat game and a maze/find-the-key game. The platform jumper variants combine button-push timing dexterity elements. Given a bunch of hybrids, you are going to have a hard time coming up with a particular name. Better to consider the ingredients and their relative proportions, perhaps?

And I suggest that there are other reasons to leave out Tony Hawk, such as the absence of fighting and killing.

Whoops! That's what I get for scanning Gamerankings.com looking for games that 'fit the mold' I was imagining. Fighting & killing is not necessarily part of the category, although it is something computer game designers fall back on with alarming frequency. (Notice I included Grim Fandango. I'd also include Loom & Monkey Island.)

Exploration narrative is good.