Other Adventure Games
What are some other really good adventure games that are largely ignored? Not like Lucas Arts, but maybe something more obscure like Discworld.
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So, so excellent. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has played it.
Discworld is awesome.
The Neverhood
THE NEVERHOOD
I also enjoyed ToonStruck.
I really like The Feeble Files too (except for that grabber puzzle) - helped by the fact Feeble was voice by Robert Llewellyn.
Also agree with you on Discworld.
The Gabriel Knight series is one I'd recommend to anyone wanting to get into adventure gaming.
Blade Runner by Westwood was a great adventure, which allowed some freedom for the player. There was large number of different endings and you never knew at game start which people were replicants and which were human.
Discworld games were also great, I particularly enjoyed darker atmosphere of Discworld Noir.
Legend Entertainment's Gateway, Gateway 2 - Homeworld, Death Gate and Shannara were also good games which I would at least recommend to friends of Frederick Pohl, Weis & Hickman and Terry Brooks.
First two Simon the Sorcerer games were entertaining, although not very original (they had practically stolen the interface from classic LucasArts adventures).
There are other titles in the series, but I haven't played those besides the demo of Simon 5, which seemed to be otherwise decent 2D adventure game, but it was in German and my German is so rusty that it added extra difficulty and I missed many jokes. English version should be out later this summer.
Simon 3D and Simon 4 have apparently got mixed reception among the fans, but since I haven't played them I don't know if those are as bad as people say.
My vote for the worst puzzle was the one where you were stuck in the arcade playing crappy mini-games until you had enough tokens to play the awesome game
Agree'd!!
Blazing Dragons- PC/ PS1/ Saturn; It's fairly simple and based on a cartoon by Terry
Jones I think. Had some great dialogue in it.
So Blonde- Currently playing this- By Broken Sword writer Steve Ince - starts off cheesy but I'm getting into it. Lots of Monkey Island and Broken sword references. Marred by a few bugs here and there.
It has all of the faults of Sierra adventures, but somehow takes those and makes something with hilarity and style completely separate from the LucasArts mold.
My experiences are basically LucasArts IPs and a few random Sierra ones as well as Kyrandia/Discworld/some other thing I liked I cannot remember. Generally enjoy funny ones but serious can be good too - ending of MI2 was sweet.
I appreciate the help greatly.
Are they any for the Wii or DS?
You should totally check out Professor Layton and the Curious Village on the DS. I's a really cool puzzle/adventure game. Probably more 'puzzle' and less 'adventure' than other titles mentioned in this thread, though. Highly recommended nonetheless!
Ever wonder why Lucasarts never made a Star Wars adventure game?
I wish they would have.
The two first Broken Sword, a lot of humour, well polished puzzles, great voice acting, great scenario (it's not just a funny game).
Normality, an adventure game in 3D VGA, where you're a young man stucked in a sad town, and you try to change it. Great music, a lot of kitsch, and funny lines. First Person view, that's original
Nightlong, a darker one, in pre-rendered 3D, with a great serious ambiance, a little bit of pixel hunting, gret puzzles too.
Sanitarium, isometric 3D game (pre-rendered) with an insane ambiance, I swear I did lot of nightmares because of it when I was a kid. Very great and challenging puzzles, a very good (and very very dark — trauma kind) game.
The Neverhood, all made in a sort of clay, by Dreamworks. Maybe the Adventure Game with the most incredible soundtrack. You just have to play it, even if some puzzles are... a bit long and confuse.
There is also Stupid Invaders, bt it's most a matter of design and music than a matter of game quality. The puzzles were pretty bad.
Of course, Day of the Tentacle, Curse of Monkey Island, Sam&Max Hit The Road, Grim fandango, Full Throttle, but I don't think these are much of a discovery.
Really, while you are waiting the next tell tale game, go grab it.
http://outoforder.adventuredevelopers.com/
`Beneath a Steel Sky ' is freeware too now http://www.revolution.co.uk/_display.php?id=16 .
3 its ok, behind those awfull graphics, and lots of design flaws there is a true Simon adventure. 4 is really as bad as people say, a total shame.
Beneath a steel sky also good, I LOVED the robot sidekick, he was awesome.
Flight of the Amazon Queen is pretty amusing in a "wth?" sort of way.
I'm playing Beast Within atm actually. I loved Gabriel Knight 1
Broken sword was good..
Oh, and I really enjoyed Still Life, except that bloody lazer/robot puzzle near the end. GRRRR. BAD MINIGAME bad!
J/K;)
http://brokensword25.com/news/news.htm
There's also Call of Cthulhu: Shadow of the Comet, Call of Cthulhu: Prisoners of Ice, and Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, which are all great adventure games set in the Cthulhu Mythos created by H.P. Lovecraft. Shadow of the Comet is my favorite among these, especially for it's penchant for actor cameos. DCOTE comes next as one of the best 3D adventure games I've experienced, due to atmosphere and the game's ability to pull you into the story and mythos.
Discworld was Noir (at least, I think that's what he meant).
I was actually under the impression that the game had been scrapped for ages and would never see the light of day. Then I found out it had been released, and I was able to buy a copy, several years after its release.
Needless to say I was annoyed.
Not only was it the best of all 3 discworld games but it might have been the best adventure I've ever played, too.
Of course it's entirely possible that I was simply the last person to hear about it. I might have even been the victim of an elaborate conspiracy.
Good thing was that you eventually got the game. It was released only in the Europe and development team ceased to exist in the same year when the game was released. IMO it was better than previous Discworld adventures, because it got original story (first game for example recycled plots from Pratchett's books, especially from "Guards! Guards!" and turned it into Rincewind story. Which annoyed me, because it would have been better if Vimes would have been protagonist). Discworld Noir got great set of characters and difficult puzzles, so I really loved the game. Unfortunately it takes a lot of work to get the game running in modern computers.
Rincewind was always my favourite DW character and I really loved Eric Idle's portrayal in the games. And, in spite of the lack of original content in the first 2 games I still thought there was some extremely funny content.
DW Noir blew me away, though, not just for it's brilliantly original story but (I've said this before and I'll say it again) for it's inspired 'Notebook' system. (You still had to collect items that would fit into the protagonist's pockets but you also collected clues, stored in the notebook, which could be compared with other clues, and even with items, in much the same way you would combine them in other games).
(The game’s only failing was the terrible voice acting from some of the cast. I suspect they’d blown most of their budget by the time they started casting).
I seriously hope somebody comes up with more games like this, I'd especially love it if TellTale were the ones to do this.
I think Broken Sword wins though (for the moment) as I've never played it and it's actually comedic. I thought it was a serious game with a good reputation. >_>
Thanks.
As for obscure, I guess I was mistaken. I've just never seen anyone else ever reference the games. Discworld itself is not obscure, yeah.
I played it today and it was even better than I remembered. I like that you have to make moral decisions in the game and I have never felt less heroic than when
Broken Sword can be QUITE serious at times. It's got a more subdued humor, mostly brought into the picture by the quirky characters or the animated style.
Simon 3D is okay if you're prepared to be very patient, and are prepared to use a walk through to get past a couple of puzzles that are just badly done.
If you're a fan of the series you'll get some fun out of it.
Simon 4 is just utterly horrible though.
It was picked up by a German company and designed to neatly follow on from the German translations of the Simon the Sorcerer series.
It was then picked up by the lowest bidder to be translated into English. These people have obviously never played the series and wound up completely messing up all of the characters.
If you're a fan of the series you'll want literally to burn it after 2 minutes of playing it.
What about Knights of the old republic? And Knights Of The Old Republic 2?
They're RPGs, albeit really good RPGs with great stories (especially the first ones).
As far as actual adventure games, most of my faves have been mentioned already : sanitarieum, discworld (didn't care much for the second one, but DW Noir was GREAT (and to the guy complaining about the voice acting : french dubbing was even worse :eek:) and a bunch of others i'm too lazy to remember right now.
I'll check normality and out of order, these two got me interested.
Tried playing it again under a Win98 Virtual Machine a few years ago, but it kinda got stuck when you swap CDs...
As always, there's Phoenix Wright and Hotel Dusk. If the occasional stupid joke or internet meme doesn't bother you, Phoenix Wright is great. The only down side is that every game starts out with a rather simple tutorial case.
Still an awesome game though!