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General discussion29 must-play adventure games as picked by Richard Cobbett(93 posts)(93 posts)
(93 posts)
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Posted May 22, 2017
Did your favorites make the cut?

There was a time when everybody was looking at adventure games to introduce crazy technical innovations, explore unconventional stories, or just give us a strong argument against our dismissive parents who considered all games juvenile and insubstantial. Since the golden years of the graphic adventures, we've seen certain trends come and go, foreign genes spliced into the genre's DNA, and adventure games evolving into a variety of experiences that sometimes have little in common with their early predecessors.

Richard Cobbett, a longtime fan of adventure games and their close offspring, has recently compiled <span class="bold">a comprehensive list of 29+ titles</span> that all fans of the genre should check out. Newcomers and veterans are treated to an introduction to the history of adventure games, some advice on how to get started, and a list of the standouts, broken down into sub-categories for convenience: The Classics, Story-driven, Puzzles & Exploration.

Take your pick: there are all-around legends like The Secret of Monkey Island or Beneath a Steel Sky, masterpieces of storytelling like Grim Fandango or The Walking Dead, brain wreckers like Myst or Zork: Grand Inquisitor, and deliberately paced experiences like Gone Home.

Plenty of developers continue to be fascinated by the narrative possibilities of adventure games, even if they don't feel like adhering to their original formula. These 29 games (and the additional honorable mentions) are both celebrated classics and the product of experimentation with innovative ideas and are all more than worth your time.

So, how many of these have you already played and what others would you add to <span class="bold">IGN's list</span>, fellow adventurers?
Post edited May 22, 2017 by maladr0Id
Posted May 23, 2017
My own faves are, I guess:
Bad Mojo
Harvester
Mirage (1995)
ScruTiny in the Great Round (1992)

Reminds me that there's a lot of old adventures I wanna play!
Posted May 23, 2017
I'm really glad Syberia made the list as extra credit. Syberia was one of the first games I played that absorbed me into the story and made me care about the characters. It's also the first game I ever played where I remember being impressed by the cutscenes and thinking, wow, this is like a movie -- I meant that in complimentary way.

After playing Syberia I went hunting store shelves for my next great PC adventure.
Posted May 23, 2017
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Green_Shade: Well last I heard Richard Cobbett was a freelance writer for hire. So GOG could have just hired him directly, rather than going through IGN. I'm also holding IGN accountable, as Richard put in his best-of adventure game list for PC Gamer:
"And Myst? Not appearing on any best-of list composed by Richard Cobbett."

http://www.pcgamer.com/the-best-adventure-games/ (Page three is where that quite is taken from)
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HunchBluntley: Well, I just noticed that this article is from last Friday, so I'm willing to concede that GOG might not have had anything directly to do with the choices (I would think they'd have posted this the same day the article went up if they had a direct stake in it). It just seems suspicious that all 29 "essential" titles are on GOG.

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Green_Shade: [...] So it's possible GOG just has a lot of Good Old Games in the adventure genre.
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HunchBluntley: Not just possible -- it's a fact! :) And lots of good new adventure games, and plenty of mediocre and bad ones, as well. ;)
What my real suspicion here is is that they limited to games that are currently available, as every single game on that list is available. And there's not really any better place for old games than GOG (As I'm absolutely sure you know, being as this is on GOG's forums).
Posted May 23, 2017
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Green_Shade: What my real suspicion here is is that they limited to games that are currently available, as every single game on that list is available. [...]
Well, I'm sure that's the case -- the article seems to be intended partly as a kind of primer for people new to adventure games. If it's meant to advocate games that can be acquired easily (and legally) by genre newbs, I can see why they wouldn't speak much of ones that people would have to go to the gray zones of the Internet to acquire (Cobbett did mention Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon as one such hard-to-find gem, though).
Posted May 23, 2017
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mqstout: Email those authors. There's at least one game (The Dig, penultimate on the list) that's on here that says Steam only.
I hadn't caught The Dig, but I noticed The Walking Dead in the same situation.
Posted May 23, 2017
No love for The Bizarre Adventures of Woodruff and the Schnibble? loved that game when i was growing up.
Posted May 23, 2017
Nice, even if I'm not sure if these belong to an "essential" adventure list:
_ Dreamfall
_ Kentucky Route Zero
_ 80 Days
_ Gone Home
_ The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
_ Miasmata
_ Ether One
Posted May 23, 2017
low rated
Worthless, horribly-written shit like The Walking Dead, To The Moon, Gemini Rue, Heavy Rain, Life is Strange, King's Quest 6 and Myst should not be on this list.

Dropsy should be in the classics part.

Those games in the first paragraph could be replaced by K.G.B, Spellcasting, Superhero league of Hoboken, Randal's Monday, Space Quest Incinerations and Vohaul Strikes Back, Al Emmo and The Lost Dutchman's Mine, Gateway and Dune, all of which deserve to be in the classics.
Post edited May 23, 2017 by brilliance
Posted May 23, 2017
Well, I never liked these type of games (point and click adventure games) and to be honest, I didn't play them.

However I admit, that I always liked the look of the graphics/art styles of LucasArts, Sierra etc. adventure games.
Posted May 23, 2017
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The_Gypsy: Is there an adventure game titled Consortium that I've never heard of?
There sure is, and if you want, you can find yourself in possession of just such a game on this here platform (just let me know if you're interested). Game doesn't get enough love afaic.
It's actually a pretty fun game, although I'd not necessarily consider it an adventure in the stricter sense of the word. It's rather unpolished and a bit buggy at times (combat is... far from perfect), but again, very enjoyable if you like dialogue-heavy games with a bit of 4th wall-breaking and some ARG stuff. I remember I spent a couple of hours during my first playthrough just sitting in some booth researching "the lore" :)
It ends on a major cliffhanger, but the game's sequel has been crowdfunded on fig. It's been rather quiet on that front though, recently, so I'm not holding my breath for it to show up any time soon...

Edit: As far as the list goes, an honorable mention should probably be given to Dracula: The Path of the Dragon and Dark Fall - The Journal, which are hands down probably the two best no-handholding spooky adventures I've played. I feel this is especially relevant today where "horror adventure" means something akin to "of low quality but has crappy jump-scares" and the market is quite literally flooded with terrible games of that subgenre.
Post edited May 23, 2017 by WildHobgoblin
Posted May 23, 2017
Off the top of my head, I would definitely add to the list: Day of the Tentacle, Sanitarium, Discworld: Noir, Edna & Harvey The Breakout, Technobabylon, and possibly Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon or Faust: Seven Games of the Soul. Blade Runner was also pretty great.
Post edited May 23, 2017 by maladr0Id
Posted May 23, 2017
Perils of Akumos
Spider and Web
Loom (not the GOG version)
Botanicula
Sorcery!
Posted May 23, 2017
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Green_Shade: It's pretty clearly a GOG-sponsored article (all 29 of the primary recommendations, and all but 7 of the secondary ones, are available here in some form). I can just about guarantee they had some influence, as well.
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maladr0Id: Actually, we had absolutely nothing to do with this article's creation. Surely the fact that GOG is not even mentioned as a purchase option under some games that are in our catalog should be enough evidence to that, no?
Of course you did, don't even try to deny it! I strongly suspect Gog used its connection to the Lizard people to enhance sales...
Then again, the quoted post doesn't actually seem to contain that quote, and doesn't show up as edited either... sneaky censorship?

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maladr0Id: Off the top of my head, I would definitely add to the list: [...] Faust: Seven Games of the Soul.
I'd never heard even of that one, and as a German I'm obliged to know about things that have the name "Faust" in them... It also doesn't seem to be available anywhere (hint!) ;)
Posted May 23, 2017
Ok, I don't know exactly what happened there but I seem to have messed stuff up while trying to quote people, post replies and handle other stuff at the same time.
So I accidentally deleted HunchBluntley's original suggestion that Richard Cobbett's article on IGN was sponsored by GOG and then his quote in my reply was falsely attributed to some other poster and now it's all just a big giant mess.

Apologies, this was most definitely NOT on purpose. I'm trying to sort this out as we speak :/

EDIT: So this was the part I was trying to reply to and ended up deleting the whole post:

HunchBluntley wrote:
"It's pretty clearly a GOG-sponsored article (all 29 of the primary recommendations, and all but 7 of the secondary ones, are available here in some form). I can just about guarantee they had some influence, as well."

I'm really sorry, HunchBluntley. Hopefully, we'll manage to restore post #28 soon. Until then, it shall live on in our quotes, and our hearts :(

EDIT2: So HunchBluntley's post #28 has sort of been restored. Sadly, it only contains the part I remembered (and tried to quote). So, HunchBluntely, if you can recall the rest of the contents, please feel free to edit post #28 and add them in there. Again, apologies for this mess :/
Post edited May 23, 2017 by maladr0Id
Posted May 23, 2017
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maladr0Id: Off the top of my head, I would definitely add to the list: Day of the Tentacle, Sanitarium, Discworld: Noir, Edna & Harvey The Breakout, Technobabylon, and possibly Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon or Faust: Seven Games of the Soul. Blade Runner was also pretty great.
And... no Primordia?!
I mean... I'm serious! :P
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General discussion29 must-play adventure games as picked by Richard Cobbett(93 posts)(93 posts)
(93 posts)