Cool adventure games

[DrSpike]

Final Unity was the really good Star Trek game.

[mactbone]

Psychonauts was good fun! I also enjoyed Sanitarium - it's been awhile but I remember something buggin me about the ending. The different areas were really something though. Creepy and interesting.

I consider Indigo Prophecy (Fahrenheit in Europe) a good adventure game too. Apparently they thought it would be a trilogy but something fell through so the last bit of the game is completely disjointed from the rest like they took Star Wars and right after the Death Star blew up for the first time - they cut to Endor and the Ewoks.

I've heard Syberia is really good and the new Sam and Max stuff is getting rave reviews from everyone.

[DrSpike]

Yeah I'm surprised no one mentioned Syberia before - it's a really good game.

[Nostromo]

Indigo Prophecy is also on my wishlist. But it seems that they messed up the PC version. I heard that the controls are abysmal. Sometimes, I wish I hadn't sold my Xbox...

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by nostromo
Nice to hear from you, Mike

You worked for DreamForge Intertainment? Didn't know that. Did you work on Sanitarium? If so, great work! Isn't there a patch that fixes the bug? I like the game a lot so I think I'll buy it. Anyway, its cheap and I'll get the music and cutscenes...

'Psychonauts' and 'Beyond Good and Evil' are available for the PC, BTW. You can get the first one on Steam and the other one on direct2drive.

Yes I worked on Sanitarium (probably my favorite game I've worked on actually). I implemented a number of the game's chapters (not 2!): 3, 4, 5, & 6 + a number of sub-levels within the chapters, as well as the options screen and main menu (and parts of our editor!). There is a patch that fixes the bug but it probably will make sure the game is copy-protected... I believe I still have the patch exe at home. PM me if you want it.

It's definitely worth buying it (especially considering how cheap it is now); the music is good and some of the cutscenes are really good too (and necessary for the story IMO). And I'm not saying that just because I worked on it; I certainly wouldn't get any of the money from the sale.

I know Psychonauts and BG&E are available on other platforms but the Xbox controller worked really well for both games (and I've heard that control is wonky on the PC versions). I believe both are also available for PS2.

[Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS]

Originally posted by DrSpike
Final Unity was the really good Star Trek game.

That's not what I was thinking of. They were DOS games:
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Star Trek: Judgment Rites

[Wiglaf]

The new Sam and Max sucks, if that is relevant to this discussion. Also, those old star trek games on floppy were the **** but it's a shame no one makes good games like that anymore. Have we gone so far.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by Mike Breitkreutz FIRAXIS


That's not what I was thinking of. They were DOS games:
Star Trek: 25th Anniversary
Star Trek: Judgment Rites

Those weren't bad also.

[Kinjiru]

My fav adventure was one I played way back on the my good ole' CoCo2 - a TRS-80 Color Computer 2 with an, upgraded mind you, 64 k of ram.

The game - Bedlam.
The language - Basic.
The source-code - way too many lines of code you could actually type in yourself from your copy of the CoCo enthusiast monthly magazine.

The premise sounds a bit like Sanitarium. You wake up in an insane asylum and don't know how you got there. Not too much in the way of hard puzzles, but the atmosphere (music and graphics) were well-done and the writing was top-notch. The guy who wrote it was an amatuer (which is why the source code was available), but I hope he went on to become a professional.

Other than that one, I got half through Syberia before my machine died on me and I never got around to reinstalling it. Think maybe I'll have to dig it out and do that this weekend...

[Kloreep]

Sanitarium is on my list of games to pick up sometime. (I'll probably get around to it once I play The Longest Journey, which I haven't even taken out of its box. )

Grim Fandango is one of my favorite adventure games. Definitely play it if you like the genre.

Star Trek: A Final Unity is good fun. If you can get it running on a modern machine (maybe DOSBox is at the point where it can handle it?) it's worth a look. Haven't played the 25th anniversary games.

Beyond Good & Evil is a good one. I believe it's available for all three major ("last-gen") consoles, though you may need to pay more for the GC version than for PS2 or XBox - the GC version didn't receive as much printing and is much rarer. There is a PC version as well, and I have it and would be reluctant to recommend it - it has a lot of timing issues I was never able to solve on my laptop (desktops with less power management might fare better) and generally seems like a crappy port to me, frankly. Definitely a game meant for consoles; I picked up the GC version after the PC failed me, didn't encounter any bugs, and found the controls much easier with analog sticks.

I also like the Quest for Glory games, an old sierra series. Adventure games primarily, but with a heavy dose of RPG hybridization. It's hard to find 1-4 these days though - they were re-released in a CD collection a couple times but those are now extremely rare.

BTW, if anyone's into the old Sierra series, check out AGD Interactive. They've made a VGA remake of King's Quest 1, a complete re-do of 2 (new plot, puzzles, practically everything was redone) also in VGA, and are currently making a VGA remake of Quest for Glory 2.

[snoopy369]

Mike sounds like you should be over in the Name that Game thread

[snoopy369]

I consider Thief (1) the best adventure game i've ever played, though not sure if it's technically an adventure game.

Lookingglass studio was amazing...

[FrostyBoy]

I think a true adventure game is a either text input (Kings Quest, Space Quest), point and click (Zak, Monkey Island) and I think there's another style, but I can't remember it..

These days you get a lot of hybrids that appear adventure like, such as Theif and Hitman; they have a adventure-like feel to them, but I just wouldn't consider them to be in the adventure genre 100%.

I'm surprised you worked on an adventure game Mike; do you think there is a market for adventure games again, similar to the earlier ones? I had a lot of fun with them when I was a kid, I wonder if kids these days would get the same feeling if the game was made right (modern, but not too 3Dish). 3D is nice, like Syberia, Dreamfall and TLJ, but it doesn't leave much for the imagination and of course, where is the quirky, whimsical graphics? I always found that to make the game so much more interesting. Especially the likes of Lesiure Suit Larry 5.

[Nostromo]

I found a fairly good definition in Wikipedia:

Adventure games are a type of computer entertainment programs and video game, characterized by investigation, which may include exploration, puzzle-solving, interaction with game characters, and have a focus on narrative rather than reflex-based challenges. It is important to note that this term is unrelated to adventure films, and adventure novels, and is not indicative of theme or subject matter. The vast majority of adventure games are computer games, though console-based adventure games are not unheard of. Unlike many other game genres, the adventure genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film. Adventure games encompass a wide variety of literary genres, including fantasy, science fiction, mystery, horror, and comedy. Notable adventure games include Zork, King's Quest, The Longest Journey, The Secret of Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Gabriel Knight, and Myst. Nearly all adventure games are designed for a single player, since the heavy emphasis on story and character makes multi-player design difficult.

The adventure genre was quite popular during the late 1980s and early 1990s, and many considered it to be among the most technically advanced genres. While few developers continue to produce adventure games, some are still being released, and the adventure game genre has had some elements carry over into other genres. Games that fuse adventure elements with action gameplay elements are sometimes referred to as adventure games (a popular example is Nintendo's Legend of Zelda series). Adventure game purists regard this as incorrect and call such hybrids action-adventures.

[snoopy369]

Thief is an adventure game I'd say, by that definition. You didn't kill people in it (thus not reflex based), and puzzles and such were definitely part of it (not always traditional puzzles, but having to figure out how to complete the level in an unusual way).

It also had levels, which differentiates it from an RPG which typically does not.