as i continue to write on blogger, i'm starting to understand how to work with the editor a little bit better, and hopefully will master it by the end of the week. hopefully, i'll work out a way so i don't have to split up my lists/dissertations/essays into multiple posts. without further ado, the top x continued.
top x adventure games of all time in no particular order pt. 2
vi. sanitarium.
What a terrifying and strange game. Published by ASC Games, who also published the original Grand Theft Auto before Rockstar nabbed it and made it the success it is today. Sanitarium puts you in the shoes of the protagonist Max, who has a case of amnesia and can't recall anything after a car crash. He finds himself in an asylum, and the story takes off from there. Along the way you'll have to work around his psychological demons, and question what is and what isn't real in this bizarre asylum world. Psychological horror games are few and far between, so if you like a little dark in your game, Sanitarium should be right up your alley. You can grab it DRM-free from Good Old Games for ten bucks.
v. grim fandango.
If this list were in any particular order, which it is not, this would be a strong contender for the number one spot. A darkly comedic look at the afterlife, a setting not used in any frequency by video games. The puzzles are expertly crafted and have an excellent flow. It's hard to define flow, but I feel as though most gamers will understand what I mean. The lighting here, the colour emphasis here that almost subconsciously guide the player towards the goal. The music is incredible, ranging from jazz to salsa. I can't tell much about the story without spoiling it for the first timers, but think Casablanca but in the afterlife. This should be a bit easier to find, considering it's more recent than some of the others, I was able to find it on Amazon for fairly cheap. Definitely Tim Schafer's most solid work.
iv. machinarium.
An adorable little independent adventure game about robots. Every scene that you enter is a piece of art its own. There is no real dialogue, the characters seem to talk to each other in thought balloons and "Simlish", so the style really does carry the game, but not to the point where there's no substance. The puzzles are well crafted and usually contained within a zone or two. There is one particularly irritating part that had me stuck for a few days where the player is forced to play a robot in a "connect five" game. He is an unholy monster with one purpose, to beat you at connect five then cackle at you when he defeats you. Once you beat him, you get a sense of purpose and march through the rest of the game. Of all the puzzles, of everything in the game, the connect five robot is by far the hardest and most unfair. The game can be bought directly from the developer's website or on Steam. The developer site also has a little flash demo showing the first few areas of the game.
iii. the seventh guest.
I know that this section has been pretty sparse in the LucasArts games, but i wanted to give other game companies their fair place in the hall of fame. The Seventh Guest was one of the first games to arrive on CD and used glourious pre-rendered 3D effects, and FMV. It's not a game that holds up well against the test of time, but when it was released, it truly was a cutting edge game, and quite scary as well. The cake puzzle in particular always creeped me out for some reason, not sure why, might have been the blood filling. The player basically moves through a haunted mansion solving puzzles, while the antagonist cackles at you with now-hilariously over the top genre music playing. This game isn't on the list because of it's merit and timelessness, it's on the list because it was a definitive moment for games. The success of the 7th Guest actually helped CD's become commonplace and viable for computer games. As much as it sold then; Nowadays, this is quite a rare one, and can only be found secondhand on Amazon or Ebay.
the formatting got wonky again, so i'll have to make a part three, which will include the final two entries in the top x, and the mp3 of the day.
When I heard about Machinarium, I though, excellent another game like Sanitaruim. Of course they are nothing like each other, but both great games, very deserving of a place on this list.
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