The Drunken Lizard Pub

My two favorite video game genres are RPGs and Adventure Games (I can't place either at #1 definitively since I love both so dang much). RPGs have been discussed here plenty with good reason so lets talk about Adventure Games. Here are my top 5 all-time Adventure Games:

1) Space Quest 3: The Pirates of Pestulon - Sierra On-Line was my favorite game company of all time, I grew up on their games. When the company died in 1999 (It didn't officially die until 2008 but it died in spirit in 1999) a piece of me died with it. Space Quest 3 was flat out awesome. Android the Annihilator, Orat on a Stick, Rock n Sock 'Em Robots, the Astro Chicken mini game. Good times. I still play the game on Dosbox from time to time.

2) The Secret of Monkey Island - The first game in my favorite game series ever. Monkey Island is so full of WIN! it's ridiculous. Have your rubber chicken handy!

3) Grim Fandango - The second greatest Lucas Arts game ever. Nuff said.

4) Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Pursuit of the Pulsating Pectorals! - The game that introduced Larry's female counterpart. There isn't enough room in a single post to list all the awesomeness of this game.

5) Syberia - The game that saved adventure gaming. Albeit a bit short, the storytelling and imagery in this game were truly amazing. In some ways it was a cross of Myst and the old Sierra On-Line and Lucas Arts games. Top notch quality puzzle solving with amazing cinematics and story telling.

Honorable Mentions: Sam & Max Hit the Road, The Longest Journey, Day of the Tentacle, Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders, Gobliiins, King's Quest 6: Heir Today Gone Tomorrow, Syberia 2.

Is Syberia really that good? I looked at it a long time ago, but there was an awful lot of walking around, and it just didn't seem to grab me.

Speaking of puzzle-based adventure games: I liked The Longest Journey. I've been thinking of trying out the sequel (Dreamfall) as well but, probably unfairly, I'm still turned off by the all-too-cute protagonist (to say nothing of her fondness for the color pink)... as well as the "it's all a dream" premise that it appears to be using.

I've also been thinking, for a long time, of trying out Still Life. That one looks nice and serious.

Anybody have any thoughts about any of these?

I agree there is an awful lot of walking back and forth in Syberia but IMHO it's worth it because the story and imagery are both so freakin' terrific. Syberia is one of the deepest and most touching stories ever told in a video game. The Longest Journey was a really close debate to making the top 5 instead of Syberia as its a terrific game, but I found the ridiculous pixel hunting to be a bit of a turn off. Still it's an awesome game and totally worth the time for any adventure gamer.

I enjoyed all of those old King's Quest and Space Quest games. I also liked the first couple of Hero Quest games. But I especially loved the Robin Hood game that Sierra made - that was my all-time favorite adventure game! I wish I could find a copy of it somewhere... I lost mine ages ago.

The Secret of Monkey Island was certainly awesome, and I enjoyed Sam n Max Hit the Road.

I also loved the two Star Trek adventure games that Interplay developed for DOS. Great fun!

Of course, no "Greatest Adventure Games" thread would be complete without mentioning Infocom! Of course, I'm a bit biased, as Interactive Fiction is still, IMO, the height of computer gaming. :)

xolotl wrote:Of course, no "Greatest Adventure Games" thread would be complete without mentioning Infocom! Of course, I'm a bit biased, as Interactive Fiction is still, IMO, the height of computer gaming.

Very true, those Groo on me.



..or was that grue? can't remember spelling. sigh.

Dragonlady wrote:..or was that grue? can't remember spelling. sigh.

Yes, it was called a grue.

Twenty textual lashes for getting that one wrong!

I'd always loved the grue. Truly awesome invention.

Among the ones I'd managed to play, I still think my favorites were Lurking Horror and Bureaucracy! (The former took place in M.I.T. (anyone who's been inside M.I.T. knows about what the author called the Infinite Corridor.) the latter was written by the late, great Douglas Adams, may he rest in peace.)

Can anyone remind me of the original, pre-Infocom text adventures? I wanna test them out and see how much they manage to charm me . . . assuming they can be found on one of the Abandonware sites.

...Oh yeah, there was another one that unfortunately I can't remember the name of, and since I borrowed it from a friend, a long long time ago during we-were-kids time, I don't have it in my collection). I really wish I could remember the title, but one of the cooler features was that you had to urinate once in a while, lest your bladder explode thus rendering you immediately dead.

BW: You should employ that in B3. Please? Please? Please add urination to Book 3?

Does anyone agree with this? Can I start a petition to add urination to Book 3?

Oh man Infocom. I definitely sank some serious hours into the Zork games. Back when I was a wee lad in high school any time we had any free time and the computer lab wasn't being used we were all up in that piece playing either Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz or Moria. Who needs fancy 3D acceleration when there is text and badass ASCII graphics?

You know... the thought just crossed my mind... were BW to actually add urination to Book 3: he'd be forced to, let's say, more literally demonstrate the difference between the genders.

...Not so sure BW is prepared to go there.

...But if I were a developer myself: I'd definitely be prepared to go there.

(Just saying.)


Now... on to Dreamfall: I dl'd the demo, gave it a whirl... the story/narrative looks pretty good . . . certainly the graphics and animation are an improvement on the original title . . . but . . . the game mechanics are simply disastrous.

Even using different mouse button and key-mouse combinations didn't help. At all. Except with being able to call up inventory, of course, and a surprise discovery noted a few paragraphs down... .

Interacting with people and things is far more difficult than it should be. It seems you have to be in precisely the right place, and the game doesn't seem to want to move you to that place without a fight.

If you choose CAMERA mode for the mouse: the camera movement turns out to be near intolerable.

If you choose MOVEMENT mode for the mouse: the camera problems go away, but moving your character then turns into a challenging experience all its own.

I chose MOVEMENT because this seemed the most tolerable, even though choosing CAMERA allows you to move via the arrow keys, the arrow keys being more reliable, in this game, than movement via mouse.

Using this mode, I got stuck in the bathroom twice, for example. Couldn't get out. All the game would let my character do is turn around a lot. First time I got stuck I managed to finally escape by accident. Second time: I finally discovered that if you hold down the right mouse button while moving the mouse then it'll let you shift the camera so you're able to see the door and then move the mouse around until the game finally decides to let you take some steps in that direction.

So... I don't know. Maybe I just haven't gotten properly used to it, but I think this is eventually going to come down to deciding which mouse mode is the least intolerable for me, because, well, the narrative DOES make me want to play the game.

Oh, yeah, and I nearly forgot: In addition to her unsightly fondness for the color pink, our protagonist's personality is just a little bit annoying. Maybe some other people will/do feel different.

If they'd made Zoë a computer geek absorbed in her own thoughts: I'm sure I would've liked her much better.

Again: I'll probably be going back into it again, and maybe I'll learn some mechanics-management tricks that'll make the whole experience tolerable, in which case I suppose I'll give a better (not to mention more informed) commentary, and maybe even be moved enough to buy the game. The game really does look promising, it's just that the mechanics completely, completely ruin it. (And Zoë's personality really doesn't help, either.)


I might take another look at Syberia again, too. I do remember that I liked the atmosphere of that game.

http://web-adventures.org/
http://ifdb.tads.org/

The one I'm trying to think of... text adventure, your spacepod has crashed on an unknown planet, and after you escape from your pod: you go exploring.

Among the scarce things I remember about it:
- Your flashlight was called an "illuminator".
- You had to urinate every once in a while, or your bladder would explode and you'd die. At first you'd start getting messages like "A sense of urgency fills your soul". I do not remember if you also were required to drink when you got thirsty, though this would make pretty obvious sense.

Even though I liked the game a lot, for some reason I don't remember much of anything about it, except for the above. I vaguely remember escaping from the pod; I don't remember anything else in the game.

...Which is strange. I remember more about Zork & Zork II.

I think maybe it was called something really generic, like "Forbidden Quest" or something, but I haven't found anything under that title or anything similar.

Hey . . . any of you Mac users remember Uninvited and Shadowgate?

...Almost makes me want to go and dig those games up again.

Well, textual or graphical, most I've enjoyed. Really liked the latter-day graphical Zork games, and there's a fair few modern adventure games too - the Ben Jordan series, A Tale of Two Kingdoms, not to mention the remakes (King's Quest, Space Quest, Hitchhiker's) etc.

I think it's time for Evnissyen's Comparison Moment.

In Dragon Age, nobody smiles. (Except for a very slight upturn of the ends.)
In Dreamfall, everybody's always smiling. (Except for April Ryan, poor girl.)

This has been an Evnissyen's Comparison Moment.

(Not that there's really any good reason for me comparing these two games, except that one of them I've mentioned before in this thread, while the other I'm currently playing.)

I really like 'The Dig'. It's one of the Lucas Arts' adventures and is really atmospheric.

On the 8 bits, the pick was 'Time Tunnel' on the C64.