Sometimes I think that I miss point and click adventures, but the reality is there are a lot of good ones out there — like right now, today.
But there’s something different about the old ones. Something different about the context in which they were released. I play them now and it’s not the same: gaming has changed and it’s difficult to go back.
Anyway, the question: your all-time favourite point and click adventures. I want to know about them.
My choices are fairly run of the mill…
— The Secret of Monkey Island
— Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
— Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis
— The Lure Of The Temptress
What are some of yours?
Comments
90 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: Favourite Point And Click Adventures”
Love the Gabriel Knight games. All three of them have a place in my heart. The Longest Journey is truly excellent, I remember rushing home from school when I was seventeen to find out what happened next. LucasArts’ games are pretty special too. Maniac Mansion was my first adventure and they remained a constant in my life all through my childhood. (My mum used to buy my siblings and I the LucasArts Archive boxsets. So good.) Got so much love for this genre. <3
My fave genre to this day; telltale should be commended for bringing it to a modern audience.
Day of the Tentacle was amazing, the epitome of Lucasarts point and click adventures for me.
More recently? Gemeni Rue was absolutely fantastic. I’d suggest anyone who has ever been into point and click adventures get on to that immediately. Should be pretty cheap on Steam too.
Gemini Rue is in my Steam library. Can’t remember how it got there. You know how that is, right? I’ll have to check it out.
One of my faves is Broken Sword 2. I only had the demo as a kid, but i played it over and over, and then when i was finally old enough to procure the full version for myself, I could finally find out what happened after I drowned a dog and got farted on in the face a billion jillion times….
Oh man, I remember watching the Broken Sword demo at a game store in awe. My brother and I convinced our parents to buy it and it wouldn’t run on our computer for ages. Used to do this all the time. Bought Grim Fandango a good six months before I was able to play the damn thing. XD
I bought games, magazines and other stuff before I even had a PC 🙂 i was like 7-8 years old i think.
I feel like Daedalic is where it’s at for LucasArts quality adventure games these days. Deponia, Night of the Rabbit and @sughly’s own Anna’s Quest. <3
Deponia gets a lot of love, but I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like the characters or the writing, I thought the ending was pretty bad. It had potential, but it wasn’t great.
I’m not bringing that up to try to dissuade you from enjoying it. But given how much praise the games get it makes me wonder how I would feel about my beloved Lucas classics if I were playing them for the first time today. Maybe I’m not capable of enjoying this type of game any more.
The lead character of Rufus is an abrasive jerk who folks either love or hate. 😀
Yeah, that’s true. I think they pushed it a little too hard, though. The clean-the-memory-chip segment comes to mind. Most jerks would at least act in their own self-interest, which in that case would have been to use the proper cleaning supplies that were available.
The conversation between Doc and Grandma Utz at the start of number 2 is probably one of my favourite adventure game set pieces of all time, though. That was really well done.
I never liked Deponia, but did love Dark Eye, New Beginning and Edna & Harvey. Deponia are the bomb.
Or love to hate
Probably Sanitarium because its the only one i can remember playing and its really twisted and creepy (which is a good thing). I would also love to try Fran Bow which also scores high on the twisted and creepiness aka Twispiness.
Love the isometric perspective of Sanitarium too. The atmosphere too. 🙂
Sanatarium is a hidden gem! Intense stuff. Great atmosphere.
Sam & Max: Hit the Road.
Such a great adventure game with fantastic humor.
Have you read the comics or seen the cartoon show? Same deeply twisted surreality. Brilliant.
First time my housemate and I played, and we got to the first puzzle where you use Max on the kitten… we cackled. Set the tone for the game nicely.
ahhhh, the cartoon was awesome!!
I bought the comic collection on comixology, and I think I’ve seen one episode of the cartoon on YouTube.
All fantastic.
There’s a DVD box set. 😀
… Really?
My wallet may have to suffer for me…
My son may or may not be named after Sam of Sam and Max fame. No one will ever know for sure.
Ok, he totally is, but at least it’s better than Kal-El.
Or Conroy Bumpus
FRIENDS!? FRIENDS!?
We’ve only gone out together 3 times and already you’re telling me you just want to be friends?
You never gave me a chance and for that you’ll fry like a pork sausage!
Sam and Max: Hit the Road
Grim Fandango. Nothing comes close. When I grow up I want to be Manny Calavera
This was my first thought as well. But it’s not a point and click.
I’d have to say Space Quest IV. When I played it, it was the height of technology at the time.
Aaaaand reading the commments somehow I forgot Full Throttle. Without a doubt that was the one. Such an amazing game.
Wasn’t then. It is now.
Day of the Tentacle
Full Throttle
Police/Space and to a lesser extent Kings Quest series
Leisure Suit Larry series
Dreamweb (hell that was a classic)
*edit: How did i forget the Dig!!!
Discworld will always be a classic – Cut me own throat Dibbler
I think the Discworld games have the best interface ever designed for PC point-and-click adventures. I like that it’s completely simple, but still maintains the flexibility of having move, look, use verbs.
The Dig. I know it’s not the best, but I love it. The animation when the astronauts activate the ship was mindblowing…
Dig story: myself and two friends were big Lucasarts fans. The Friday that The Dig was released, I went up to the Virgin Megastore up the Tottemham Court Road end of Oxford Street and picked it up. Went home to Baron’s Court, and moved my PC (a 486 DX4-100) into the lounge near the TV. My two friends (one of whom I went for beer with last night in Melbourne!!!) came over. And we played. We had breaks for going to the pub and sleep and stuff. We finished it on Sunday, surrounded by pizza boxes…
Really enjoyed Broken Age recently. Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, Discword 2 and Discworld Noir… So many great games in the genre as well as the ones Mark mentioned.
The Dig’s opening sequence is mind blowingly cinematic to this day.
THE DIG \o/
The Dig was a fantastic game for the time. The music and general atmosphere it had I don’t think anything else has replicated.
Really the only bad thing about it was that stupid puzzle where you had to trap the mouse thing.
Glad (and a little surprised) to see I’m not the only one.
It didn’t have the humour of many other Lucasarts games, but it had atmosphere up the wazoo. It really FELT like you were on an alien planet. Too many other games feel like you’re walking across a movie set.
Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max: Hit the Road for me, also Monkey Island 3 and Grim Fandango come close too.
I can’t wait for the Day of the Tentacle HD version!
Zork Nemesis! Loved the FMV cutscenes and incredibly creepy feel.
My family and I played a lot of this game when I was growing up but it’s incredibly tough. With our combined efforts we were only ever able to finish 1 out of the 4(?) planets after the intro world.
Anna’s Quest.
Fate of Atlantis.
THE DIG.
Can I say Until Dawn?
I reckon you can, man. I, for one, love these new kinds of adventure games. Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and Life is Strange and Until Dawn. <3 <3 <3
I’m glad I can say that.
That being said my fav of all time is Broken Sword 2.
Oooh, maybe The Walking Dead qualifies as well.
I loved Bladerunner
Forgot about the one! Thanks for the reminder 🙂
Yeah, that was boss 🙂
Hell yeah!
Lighthouse: The Dark Being. Sure, it was a shameless Myst clone, but it scared the shit out of me when I was a wee lad.
From Lucasarts – Monkey Island I & II, Day of the Tentacle, Grim Frandango, Sam & Max and Full Throttle
From Sierra – Kings Quest I-IV, Quest for Glory I-IV, Space Quest I-V, Police Quest I-III, Gabriel Knight and Laura Bow series.
Thanks for the memories! 🙂
From Telltale – The Walking Dead, Wolf Amongst Us (caveat, they are all I have played so far)
Oooooh, Laura Bow. <3 The Colonel’s Bequest was the first Sierra game I played. Loved moseying about that estate. 🙂
I remember getting it for Xmas and spending pretty much most of my school holidays inside playing it. Such a great atmosphere and I loved how it was a murder mystery! 🙂
She died so many times in so many creative ways. The laundry chute in the first room set the tone on that front. 😛
Ha ha, yeah. And the alligator too, I knew it was going to end badly but couldn’t resist getting close anyway!
Day of the Tentacle. I’m reasonably sure I could walk my way through it now without looking at the screen.
…must open safe… must provide for family…
The Longest Journey, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Future Wars are the main ones.
Oh, and Toonstruck! Balloon?
monkey island
Heck, the entire Monkey Island Trilogy!
(YES, I SAID TRILOGY. THERE WERE ONLY THREE GAMES.)
exactly
For me the Lucas games kind of go without saying.
Outside of them:
Discworld Noir – Love the story, writing, and gameplay. Sorely let down by the presentation (especially the animation and the fact that there were only 4 voice actors. Great voice actors, but that’s a lot of characters for each one to cover).
The Neverhood – Weird, funny, loveable, amazing soundtrack.
Broken Sword – Great adventure. Just ignore how obsessed Stobbart must have been to invest that much time and money into chasing the mystery for no good reason.
Beneath a Steel Sky – Great atmosphere and world.
And an odd one:
Rent-a-Hero – I’m obsessed with the world of this game. A kind of steampunk fantasy setting where heroes are for hire, and princess rescuers are the lowest class of hero. The game itself isn’t all that good, but I’ve never forgotten the setup.
The only ever played two in the early nineties: Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites thanks to my dad’s love of all things Trek. They are actually pretty awesome – I replayed that first one again due to Steam’s re-release this year. I also played a little of Broken Sword 2 on PSX in the mid to late nineties but that is about all of my point and click adventures.
I’m a fan of the Amanita Design games myself.
Machinarium and Botanicula are amazing imo.
Love, love, LOVE Curse of Monkey Island. Surprised nobody ever mentions it. Grim Fandango too. And Day of The Tentacle.
I agree. COMI often gets a lot of crap for not being a “real” MI game, but it’s probably my favourite.
Plus it’s probably the most gorgeous 2D adventure ever made. A little low-res these days, but just great designs and animations. I love it.
Totally agree, it was gorgeous from start to finish, and funny as hell.
QFG 4 for me. Loved the art style, the humour, the setting, the characters … loved it all.
Roaming about at night freaked me out as a kid!
Haha, totally. Once the sun went down it was a race between the various ghosts back to the safety of Mordavia!
Full Throttle. All the way……just…don’t mention the bit where you have to kick the wall.
Definitely Full Throttle. Such a great game, also Mark Hamill.
Next would be Dreamweb, first real “grown up” game I’d played.
First game I’d played that ended with suicide. Them feels.Simon the Sorcerer !
Sam and Max
Monkey island 2
Discworld 1 and 2
The neverhood
Loom
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Loved that on my Amiga. Didn’t love having to swap 12 disks every time you moved around or went into your inventory.
You young ones, don’t know you were born…
mine was The Curse of Monkey Island. ahh, so good.
Fate of atlantis would be #1 for me I think
Honorable mentions to dink smallwood and quest for glory.
In more recent time Tiny bang story is right up there, just so sweet and cute
Stasis
Wolf among us
So many great titles in the list. My favourite is definitely the Monkey Island trilogy. (YES, TRILOGY.)
Feel like a big shout-out to titles not mentioned yet like:
Rise of the Dragon
Hugo’s House of Horrors
I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream
Dark Seed
…Does Bad Mojo count?
+1 for Hugo 🙂
I really can’t choose between Syberia and The Longest Journey.
Syberia might just creep in first due to Benoit Sokal’s beautiful art design. That and clockwork robots.
How is The Feeble Files not on this list? One of the best games of the 90’s!
Do text adventures count? If so, my fav was Quest for Glory 2
If it has to be point and click, then I’d say Monkey Island 1 🙂
The Dig is my all-time favourite. Beautiful game, great story, and voice acting, fantastic score. Just a really all-around wonderful game that I love to revisit.
There’s been a few really great attempts at newer games to capture the retro point & click formula. Wadjet Eye in particular have done a great job with the Blackwell series, and I really enjoyed their smaller self-enclosed game, The Shivah. A brief but very well paced and moody murder mystery with a lot of personality.
Another game I loved as a kid was Ripley’s Believe it Or Not! The Riddle of Master Lu. What a convoluted puzzler that game was. Nicely designed, funny, quirky, with a few sprinklings of history lessons thrown in, but overall just fun to play. I wonder if it’s on GoG…
As for older games, I could really rhapsodise for far too long and I have work to do, so shouldn’t. Special shout out to Monkey Island, Broken Sword, Sam & Max and Sierra’s Quest games, in particular the Space Quest franchise which was probably the series that turned my interest in gaming from a passing hobby into a full-blown obsession.
My top 3 are:
Sam n Max
Day of the Tentacle (such an original story and idea)
Full Throttle (short but so much atmosphere)
I would love to see them redone like they did with the reissued Monkey Island series, same story but playing on modern systems.
Your wish is Double Fine’s command.
Rex Nebular!! Also Darkseed (based on visual style of HR Giger). And day of the tentacle . Indiana jones fate of Atlantis is a masterpiece.
Almost all of my favourites already listed.
I’ll add The Adventures of Willy Beamish. The Dynamix adventures were really good.
Loved the classic Lucasarts era games, Sam and Max: Hit the Road, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island 1 and 2, Day of the Tentacle…
But the top contender will always be Loom for me. It’s relatively simply in it’s puzzle solving mechanics, but it was a nice spin on the genre, the music was fantastic, and the story still hooks me now. If only the Forge and the Fold had actually happened….
Does anyone remember Eternam? I remember that being a lot of fun.
But I’d have to go
1) Full Throttle
2) Bladerunner
3) Space Quest 4
4) Police Quest 3 (look I was 10 ok? It was fun at 10).
Gemini Rue, BladeRunner and Beneath A Steel Sky, for sure. All of them have Cyberpunk down pat, and Gemini Rue is perhaps the best of them all. Man I love that game!
The Longest Journey
Day of the Tentacle
Sam & Max Hit the Road
Monkey Island series
King’s Quest series
Quest for Glory series
Toonstruck, legend of kyrandia series, black mirror wasn’t bad either.