ah. the early post. i always love going to blogs i lurk early in the morning and finding a new post. it's like the blog author at the same time has that same vacant computer face. what a strange look. how odd we would have looked to our ancestors, staring into a flat box as one would out a window. how many of us are like that right now, staring into flat boxes vacantly. now for my first top x, today it's adventure games.
top x adventure games of all time in no particular order pt. 1
x. indiana jones and the fate of atlantis.
Released in the glourious year 1992, adventure gaming was going well. Zak McKracken was yesterday's news. SCUMM 5 was in full swing, with Monkey Island 2 out, things were looking bright. This game had it all, a fantastic story that smashes the most recent entry in the Indiana Jones series out of the park, multiple paths, great puzzles that are actually reasoned, and gorgeous settings. Even the animations were great, fluid and used more than the standard eight frames when it needed to. The voice actors served their purpose very well; with the exception of "Dr. Uberman" who's name and cartoonish voice is grossly different from the rest of the game thematically. The plot centres around the hunt for Atlantis to stop Nazi scientists from obtaining a mystery metal with limitless power, so this time it's a double MacGuffin. Orichalcum, an actual metal mentioned in dialogues of Plato, is found throughout the campaign and is used with frequency as a puzzle element. This hunt takes him all across the world, from Iceland to Central America. At his side is his love interest of the moment, Sophia Hapgood, a fiery redheaded psychic that has an extensive history with the good doctor. Never dull, never insults the intelligence of the player, a golden example of adventure gaming. You can currently pick it up on Steam for five dollars.
ix. the monkey island series.
Not just the original, the whole lot of them. Some fans maintain that the series lost its mojo after COMI, or even the sequel. I don't think so. Everyone has followed up on the series' golden legacy, including TellTale Games' recent episodic entries into the series, whose humour was definitely consistent with the series and the love triangle between Guybrush, Elaine and Morgan was definitely a new twist on a series headed towards gross repetition. If you haven't played The Secret of Monkey Island and you love adventure games, you shouldn't be reading this post, you should be washed up on the Isle of Melee, readying themselves for the THREE TRIALS of piracy. This game didn't break the mold, it was the mold for all the adventure games to follow. There is nothing I can say about the story, and characters that hasn't been said countless times, but I can't omit the series from the list. I plan on forcing these games down my children's throats. They'll roll their eyes and plug their brains into their game console. What a great future they have in store. Maybe I won't have kids. The recently released Special Edition, complete with the original game is out on Steam for just under ten dollars.
viii. day of the tentacle.
Fuck Maniac Mansion, Day of the Tentacle is the star of the series. In all seriousness, Maniac Mansion probably winds up on other people's lists because of the multiple paths and ability to make a party from a pool of characters, but what they ignore is that some of the characters are flat out useless and most people only use a select number of the characters for the easiest way through the game. This game feels a lot like another game from LucasArts, Sam and Max Hit the Road. It has more of that cartoon feel too it. It's in the font of the game, in the voice acting, and in the bizarre cast of characters. What sets this game apart from most other games is that like, Maniac Mansion you switch between characters to solve puzzles together, however unlike Maniac Mansion, your party is split up over several centuries. The three main characters wind up having to time travel to stop a mad tentacle's plot to enslave humanity. One time machine goes nowhere, one goes to the 18th century during the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and the other to 23rd century, where man is a slave to the tentacle race. Time travel is used expertly in the puzzles, for example in one puzzle you have to paint a tree's fruits red to convince George Washington that it is a cherry tree that he should chop down in the 18th century, only to have that tree disappear, helping the character stuck in the 23rd. See how that works? That's just the tip of the iceberg. While I don't seem to find it in distribution by Steam or LucasArts still, it is being sold on Ebay or Amazon by collectors. It can also be found here, if you feel like being unscrupulous. I can't advice scrupulosity but it is a necessary evil when companies sit on top of games and don't sell them.
vii. full throttle.
Full Throttle is the badass, drunk uncle of adventure games. It's about hot sweaty steel, motorcycles, and sticking it to the man. Set in the year 2XXX, not much is said about the world, but it really appears to be somewhat post apocalyptic. People are switching from motorized vehicles to hover-cars, and the last hold outs are the biker gangs and Malcolm Corley of Corley Motors; the last corporation manufacturing real motorized vehicles. Ben, the main character and leader of the biker gang, The Polecats, is punched in the stomach and left for dead by Malcolm's corrupt right-hand man. This all is told with brilliant minimalist exposition in the first fifteen minutes of the game.The rest of the game unravels a revenge tale rife with corporate intrigue, and constant action. Outside of a weak demolition derby mini-game towards the end, it's a completely solid adventure game. It isn't the most difficult entry on the list, it places plot over esoteric puzzles, and does it well. Full Throttle, at its core, is a love story to rebellion everywhere. While I still have an original copy of it, you can find it, like DOTT, on Amazon or Ebay. A sequel was in the works for a while, but LucasArts canned it because didn't think adventure games were profitable.
apparently, there is a limit to the amount you can write per post, as the formatting goes a bit crazy after a while. so i wrote an essay on great adventure games that i will finish in a supplementary post that will be up later today. and the mp3 of the day with it.
vii. full throttle.
Full Throttle is the badass, drunk uncle of adventure games. It's about hot sweaty steel, motorcycles, and sticking it to the man. Set in the year 2XXX, not much is said about the world, but it really appears to be somewhat post apocalyptic. People are switching from motorized vehicles to hover-cars, and the last hold outs are the biker gangs and Malcolm Corley of Corley Motors; the last corporation manufacturing real motorized vehicles. Ben, the main character and leader of the biker gang, The Polecats, is punched in the stomach and left for dead by Malcolm's corrupt right-hand man. This all is told with brilliant minimalist exposition in the first fifteen minutes of the game.The rest of the game unravels a revenge tale rife with corporate intrigue, and constant action. Outside of a weak demolition derby mini-game towards the end, it's a completely solid adventure game. It isn't the most difficult entry on the list, it places plot over esoteric puzzles, and does it well. Full Throttle, at its core, is a love story to rebellion everywhere. While I still have an original copy of it, you can find it, like DOTT, on Amazon or Ebay. A sequel was in the works for a while, but LucasArts canned it because didn't think adventure games were profitable.
apparently, there is a limit to the amount you can write per post, as the formatting goes a bit crazy after a while. so i wrote an essay on great adventure games that i will finish in a supplementary post that will be up later today. and the mp3 of the day with it.
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