Mark said,

I play adventure games occasionally, mostly Telltale’s. Not many. Too young to have experienced them in the golden age, but I’ve gone back and revisited the highlights. Telltale does good work, but for my money, the most interesting adventure games of the 21st century have been the Ace Attorney series.

MJG said,

1. Yes. Off the top of my head, I’ve played the modern Monkey Island and Sam & Max titles, Gemini Rue, Culpa Innata, and probably a dozen random Adventure Game Studio titles.

2. Yes, though I’d say my personal peak was the early 90s for the most part. Monkey Island and King’s Quest were among my favorite games at the time, and I also recall playing titles like Loom and Maniac Mansion.

I’m in the same boat as you with the modern games: all I really want is an easy play with an enjoyable game world. I’m not looking to challenge my mind or anything like that. I’m rarely excited to sit down and play an adventure game, but I do appreciate the change of pace they can give you. I mean, you can only play so many action games and RPGs in a row before you need to break things up a little.

Felix Pleșoianu said,

I used to play interactive fiction a lot, starting in 2004 or so, but I slowed down in recent years. That’s modern IF; the only classic title I’ve played seriously was The Hobbit.

When it comes to graphical adventures, I’ve played some of the classics with a friend (Zack McKraken springs to mind — did I spell that right?) and more recently Myst. Didn’t get very far, as I’m terrible with puzzles, but loved it nevertheless.

Then what do I play these games for, you might ask. Well, mostly for the exploration part. If it has a story as well, so much the better. Luckily, plenty of IF focuses on these sides.

Come to think of it, do CYOA books count? What about Planescape: Torment?

zacaj said,

I always get excited by them, but I cant stand the puzzles in anything besides Gemini Rue and Chzos Mythos

MalcolmM said,

Oops, I just realized that the Twinsen games aren’t first person, they are top down 3D games. Although maybe there was a first person mode, but I don’t think so.

Zelda, at least on the Gamecube/Wii is first person. But I actually perferred the earlier top down Zeldas, such as Zelda on the SNES.

Andy_Panthro said,

1. I’ve played a few “modern” ones (Monkey Island special editions, Telltale’s Sam & Max season 1, Telltale’s Monkey Island episode 1). The MI special editions were great, but I really like the originals so that’s probably why I like the remakes. The telltale stuff on the other hand I don’t enjoy. I quite like the writing, but I don’t like the interface and I don’t think the puzzles are any good.

Gemini Rue and the Blackwell games are on my to-play list though.

2. I have hazy recollections of my earliest computer use with my Dad, where he showed me Monster Math and Adventures in Math on his new IBM PC. Not sure how much those counted as games, but my interest grew and I was allowed to play Alley Cat and King’s Quest.

By comparison to the other games, King’s Quest was a revelation. The level of interaction was amazing, and it felt like you had a huge place to explore, and important quests to solve!

I became quite an avid fan of Sierra’s adventure games, and have always preferred them to any others. Even recently I’ve gone back and played Space Quest I (completed it last weekend, next up SQ2 before the Infamous Adventures remake is finished!). As for my favourite, well… it’s a dead heat between Space Quest IV and Quest for Glory IV.

Lucasarts output has been highly regarded for quite some time, so I won’t speak too much about that, but there have been several other classic graphical adventure games out there that have really caught my eye. Firstly, I’d like to mention Westwood Studios, known for Dune II and C&C, they also made the Kyrandia series which are all rather good. Another series worth a mention would be Simon the Sorcerer, although I can only speak for the quality of the first two in the series.

And on a final note, it’s worth remembering that Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw has a little side-line in adventure games, and up until recently I hadn’t even considered playing them, but since I’m trying to catch up on all the adventure games I’ve missed over the years I decided I’d start with his. Turns out, they’re actually quite good! There’s a series of four games that he’s made which have a central story linking them together that you learn more about with each game. I’d highly recommend them, and they won’t take long to complete (and they’re free!).

Lots of others I could mention, but it’s also important to remember there were lots of bad games, with weak stories, poor humour, and annoying puzzles. I choose to replay the good and memorable ones from my past, but I’ve no problem with trying new ones to see if they match up. Adventure games are a genre that will never truly die off, since there always seem to be people around making them (and there’s certainly a lot of us around to play them!).

McTeddy said,

1. I own and enjoy the first few seasons of Sam and Max as well as the new monkey island. I do play lesser name ones here and there also… but not nearly to the extent of the TT games.

That said… overall I don’t consider myself an adventure game player.

2. I didn’t have much of a gaming PC in those days so I didn’t play them much. Even more so… I HATED the ones I did play.

Sure, there was a few exceptions like Full Throttle… but I wasn’t a fan.

3. Why I enjoy the modern but not the classic? I’m ashamed to admit this… but I enjoy them because of the fancy voice acting and animations. It makes it easier for me to enjoy the jokes and silly storylines.

But the REAL killer with alot of old adventure games were the puzzles. “Put the shoe inside the cannon to scare the monkeys into throwing a banana which causes the guard to slip and drop the key into your hands…”

I struggled in those games because many puzzles weren’t logical. I’d get stuck… I wouldn’t see the funny story anymore… and then I’d move on.

I DO like adventure games in theory. I just often find that I don’t enjoy the way they are implemented.

Diogo de Andrade said,

1) I play loads of graphical adventures, including “finding the objects” kind of game, which I play with my wife extensively
2) Always played a lot of graphical adventures since I got my first computer with access to those, back in 1990, eating away at the catalogues of Sierra, Lucasarts, etc…

You raise a couple of interesting points in your post, but they are not so conjoint as they seem, in my opinion:
a) Are the puzzles in graphic adventures too easy? Have we become intellectually lazy that we prefer easier puzzles and hence this is what developers create? Or are they trying to cater for a wider audience?
b) Is our enjoyment in graphical adventures wanned through the years? Does this mean the quality dropped off? Or that the puzzles are too easy?

I have some thoughts on both of these… First of all, it’s difficult to say if the puzzles have become easier or not… We are more “experienced” with games nowadays, which makes it possible for us to draw from past experiences to navigate a game… Additionally, lots of us are also game developers (aspiring or not), which means we’re familiar with the internal mechanics of the games and discard some possibilities beforehand because of it…
But even if we allow for the idea that the puzzles have become easier, we can also postulate that some of them were hard because of low graphical quality, demanding pixel-by-pixel scanning of the environment to find that elusive object, the absense of internet walkthroughts, and the overall illogical nature of some of them (which is frowned upon nowadays).
So, my conclusion, is that the puzzles just seem easier because we’re not fighting the game system anymore and because we have more experience…
This isn’t of course a general rule, because there are some games that are just easier by nature, to cater for a wider audience, and that’s just game design.

About the second point, regarding our enjoyment. Again, I have several thoughts on this… one of them pertains to graphical style and such… For me, a good graphical adventure is like a book, should leave plenty to the imagination… Old adventures weren’t as visually and textual/speech descriptive as current ones, players didn’t get everything spelled out for them, and that made us fill the blanks, which in turn makes the world more believable for us (not necessarly for the person next to us). Another reason why I don’t think current graphical adventures are so engaging is the fact that I feel that most of them got cornered into a place where they don’t innovate as much as they should (from the standpoint of storyline development, settings and even puzzles)… A good example of this lack of development is the “find the objects” kind of game, which 95% of them revolve around some house/village that gets devoid of life and we’re an investigator that goes there to find why, which ends up being some crazy wizard (or more precisely a sorceress, for some reason).
There’s other stereotipical adventures, but that’s just a handful…
Opposite example might be a game like Machinarium, which has an amazing feel and I feel rivals the games from the golden age.

My last argument is that most graphical adventures are “rush-jobs” in terms that they don’t have the budget to properly develop… A good graphical adventure should take about 6-12 months of pre-production, with just some game designers mucking around it, and then turn it to a development team… Problem is that nowadays, the companies that actually do graphical adventures need to churn games faster than that, or they have a team that needs work, so it becomes a factory of games, instead of a really creative endeveour. Note that are good games comming out of those factories, just not as good as the ones from the golden age…

Just a final note on the Telltale games… although I admire the fact that they’ve brought an almost forgotten genre to the mainstream, their games are pretty weak compared to the ones that inspired them, but mostly the problems (for me) are the interfaces (the new Monkey Island was horrid in terms of character control) and the hand-holding (you always knew what you had to do, instead of leaving some space for exploring). The stories could have been more “original” aswell; there’s plenty of pirate stories to look about!

WhineAboutGames said,

I’m hesitant about modern adventure games because many have developed in directions I’m not happy with – either they’re all puzzles with very little story, or they’re very easy and very short (sometimes both!). And, of course, there’s the 3d thing. Hate 3d.

If I still had a subscription to BFG I would probably be playing some of their short cheap HOG/Adventure hybrids, but I dropped that for reasons mentioned elsewhere.

If there were more games like 999 or my own Fatal Hearts – games that are largely story but with sections of good old-fashioned puzzling thrown in – I’d be happy with those.

I’m still working my way through Ghost Trick on the DS, not because it’s that long or that hard but just because I’ve been busy and distracted. So far it falls into that nice category of something with enough story to it, fun visuals that make me feel like I’m exploring something, and puzzles that require a little thought but are limited enough in scope that experimentation is likely to point you in the right direction.

I have the first two layton games but I ran out of steam halfway through the second, getting tired of all the random puzzles and retracing my steps through the same scenes to try and advance the plot.