Tag Archives: PC Adventure Games

PC Games

The Longest Journey

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Publisher: Funcom
Developer: Funcom
Year: 2000
Platform: Windows

Review: When I played The Longest Journey in 2003 I had not experienced an adventure game since the advent of 3-D rendered graphics, a little turned off by the early efforts. Since I could not find a single person who said they disliked this game, I was giddy diving in. And I remained for the most part dazzled throughout the month or so it took me to finish (a long time by today’s standards). After some time to reflect, I came to realize many of the game’s flaws. But I still love it.

You play April Ryan, an art student in the 23rd century, who is more or less drifting through life, unsure of herself. It will come to no surprise to any seasoned adventurer that some really bizarre things happen and April will get involved in the middle, eventually realizing her important place in the world after solving many a puzzle. What makes the plot compelling is that the learning curve is steady and slow, while April receives only bits of information at a time. At no time during the game does the player know more or less than April.

What holds the plot together are the characters. Near every primary character is thoroughly developed with extensive conversation topics, mannerisms, and diverse personalities. The voice acting is solid, the only problem being the use of the same actors for multiple characters. The primary humans you meet curse, talk about sex and their personal lives, and may go on forever about their own eccentricites. Sometimes they will even bore you, irritate you, or both. In other words, they act like real unenlightened people.

The puzzles cover nearly every conceivable kind, though most are inventory-based. Many are heavily contrived, but nearly as many are fun and intuitive. Regardless, I rarely became stuck for a significant amount of time.

But for a game of this magnitude that seemed to attempt being all things to all things, there are a few glaring faults. For starters, you cannot die, erasing all tension from what are supposed to be some tense moments. There is more than one scene where the music becomes frantic and eerie while April tries to escape her ominous predicament.  However, with no time limit and no threat, the intense situation simply dissolves into an infantile annoyance.

Secondly, the linearity is sickeningly tight. Though I may be wrong, I cannot remember a single puzzle that can be solved in more than one way. April also cannot make her life easier or more difficult by how she interacts with people. Characters will treat you the same no matter how you treat them, and everyone will talk and talk and talk until you’ve exhausted every possible conversation topic. The Longest Journey cannot even create the facade of playing in a real-time environment.

Despite these faults, the stunning production values, combined with the fairly compelling story and characters, created a mesmerizing escape that is at the core of the adventure genre.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. A few obnoxious puzzles (hello, rubber ducky!) and some endless talking would annoy some modern gamers.

Cruelty Rating: Merciful. If there was a higher rating, this game would get it.

PC Games

The Secret of Monkey Island

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Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: LucasArts
Year: 1990
Platform: DOS; Windows; Macintosh; Amiga; Atari ST; Sega CD; FM Towns

Review: Knowing that this game is widely considered to be the pinnacle of adventure gamedom, I was worried when I finally played it fourteen years after its release I would be disappointed. I wasn’t.

The concept itself is funny enough. You, as Guybrush Threepwood, want to be a pirate. After venturing to a remote island in the Caribbean, you seek the advice of the locals. The plot thickens (and becomes more sinister) as you progress, and rarely slows down as you battle each puzzle.

Two features make this quest so revered. The writing is ridiculously good (Ron Gilbert, David Grossman, and naturally, Tim Schafer); I laughed out loud dozens of times at the puns, fourth-wall breaking, anachronisms, in-jokes, and graphical wackiness. The second feature is the gameplay innovation introduced by LucasArts in Maniac Mansion and perfected here. Interacting with characters and using inventory is very intuitive, and pixel-hunting is quite rare. The game can’t be made unwinnable and there is little to frustrate the average (or even the novice) gamer.

As a bonus, some of the puzzles are devilishly clever, and most of the ones that are easy are also entertaining by virtue of their wackiness. Learning how to swordfight is one of my favorite puzzles of all-time. I was turned off a bit during the last third of the game, as the puzzles become more arcane, and a lot of back-and-forth fetching is required. Still, this section is better than most games, as it is often saved by the brazen humour right up to the zany end.

While there may be the occasional adventurer that won’t share the writers’ sense of humour, I encourage anyone to play The Secret of Monkey Island. If you’re not laughing within the first ten minutes you can safely skip it, but that scenario is unlikely.  Best part is, you don’t even have to tangle with DOS or SCUMM.  TellTale games has released a modern port of the game, available for download at a low price.

Contemporary Rating: High. Everything still holds up today.

Cruelty Rating: Polite.  There is one way to die, but you’re given several warnings and essentially would have to be unconscious to let it happen.

PC Games

King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella

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Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1988
Platform: DOS; Amiga; Apple II; Atari ST

Review: 1988 and 1989 were Sierra’s truly great years, and it all began with The Perils of Rosella. With the series’ fourth installment, Sierra revolutionized the gaming industry with professionally composed music, their new SCI game engine, the best parser they ever created, and an adventure worthy of the moniker.

King Graham is planning on passing his adventurer’s hat to the next of kin, but before Alexander and Rosella can fight over the rights to star in the next sequel, Graham lets everyone down and has a heart attack. While Graham is on his deathbed, Rosella runs out of the room in emotional anguish, only to have the magic mirror come to the rescue once more. Genessa, a good fairy from a faraway land, informs the hopeful Rosella that a magical fruit within her realm can save her father much like drinking water from the Holy Grail. Rosella says “Okay.” Genessa informs Rosella that because the producers needed to flesh out the game, she has been struck ill and does not have enough magic power remaining for a round trip; rather, there’s just enough left for a one stop shop. Rosella says, “Screw that!” Genessa informs Rosella that the evil fairy Lollotte has stolen her talisman, and if Rosella would be so kind enough to destroy the evil Lollotte and bring back her talisman, she just may continue to live, and would thus be able to send Rosella back home. Rosella says nothing. Genessa reminds Rosella of the incredible guilt she’d feel if she didn’t at least try. Rosella says, “Bloody hell!  I’m in!”

Okay, so maybe the introduction isn’t quite like that. I make light of it because Roberta Williams must let the player know the entire plot before the first chapter even begins, as she did in nearly every game she ever made.  At least it’s the only significant mistake she made here. In fact, the plot does veer slightly at various junctures. Rosella ends up needing to complete more quests than the one already outlined during the introduction. While the various plot lines are not connected very well, they do stand up on their own merits, and because the ride is fun you can forgive everything else. The characters (human and otherwise) you meet have good development considering you rarely interact with any of them for more than a couple minutes. The game has humor; I fondly remember reading all of the epitaphs in the cemetery. There are multiple endings, and creative ways you can die. To top it off, halfway through the game day turns into night, fleshing out more characters and allowing for more exploration, not to mention adding a few spooks.

Like the last game, time is a factor, as you must retrieve the talisman within 24 game hours. While that may seem like a short time, the game can be won much quicker than that if you know what to do. There’s a chance you may have to restart if you do enough aimless wandering, but if you make good use of the “save” and “restore” commands you shouldn’t have to worry too much. Some puzzles are difficult without being unfair. Mythology is used quite heavily but knowledge of the stories is neither required nor all that useful. There is one terrifyingly awful puzzle involving a whale’s tongue(!). Thankfully, it is not terribly difficult, although it’s a mite frustrating. At least Sierra was able to poke fun at this very puzzle in Leisure Suit Larry 3.

If you only play one game in the King’s Quest series, and you are not allergic to typing, make it The Perils of Rosella.

Contemporary Rating: Low. The pointless time limit and some cheap falling deaths were annoying twenty years ago.

Cruelty Rating: Cruel. Not as cruel as other Sierra titles, but there is one way to lock yourself out of the good ending without realizing it. You might realize you did something wrong, but the game gives little indication.

PC Games

Black Dahlia

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Publisher: Interplay
Developer: Take-Two Interactive
Year: 1998
Platform: Windows

Review: In the mid 1930’s, the Torso Murderer ravaged Cleveland, Ohio by slicing up seven people and leaving Eliot Ness a puzzling case that even he could not solve. In 1947, Elizabeth Short (nicknamed the Black Dahlia), an aspiring Hollywood actress, was brutally murdered in much the same fashion of those in Cleveland a decade earlier. That case wasn’t solved either.

Take 2 Interactive takes their shot at solving the case, creating a mystical black gem (sought by the Nazis, naturally), known by the name of Black Dahlia. The gem gives its owner power to rule the world, quite typical for Nazi relics. The crusade for this gem by various groups is masked by all of the aforementioned murders, and one agent of the CIS is bound and determined to solve the case and stop the world takeover. You play Jim Pearson, a fictional agent of the non-fictional CIS (later the OSS, and still later the CIA). You must interview agents, criminals, and face the murderer himself in order to solve the case, while dealing with interference from the local police, Eliot Ness and the FBI, as well as, of course, Nazis.

Take 2 does so many things right with this adventure that it’s hard to know where to begin. One of the last games (until the rise of indie adventure games in the 2010s) to use extensive FMV sequences, it avoids the pitfalls present in most games of this nature. For starters, the game plays in first-person perspective. You never see Jim unless you’re watching a movie, so the continuity of his clothing and emotional state never come into play. And while some of the script is hokey, there are no noticeably horrible acting performances. The worst performance, surprisingly, is given by Dennis Hopper as an ex-CIS agent who’s been committed to a psych ward. Complementing the movies is the soundtrack, which is nearly flawless. Tense moments are subtly treated as such, without cheapening the mood with overblown scare tactics.

The plot, which is perhaps the most ambitious and well-crafted in adventure game history, spans many locations, including Cleveland, Germany, and Los Angeles, and about ten years of history as Jim Pearson attempts to track down the Black Dahlia and the killer. The story borrows plenty of historical facts to increase the feeling of realism.  As it is fairly easy to determine what is fact, fiction, and pure mysticism, the player never feels insulted by the storyteller. The game never pretends that it knows the truth behind the killings; it simply takes a fascinating historical account and creates an even more fascinating story around it, much like James Cameron did with Titanic.

What either makes or breaks the game for most players are the puzzles. They are hard. While there are a few inventory puzzles, most are symbolical or mathematical and require extensive note-taking. If you’ve ever done Mensa puzzles, think of the hardest of those. I would encourage all players to have a walkthrough handy, as unless you are a literal genius, you will break your keyboard from pounding your head against it. The designers cannot be faulted for the puzzles themselves, as none of them are contrived and all fit seamlessly with the plot. However, there are far too many of them, especially midway through the game, and at times it feels more like a homework assignment than a game. To be fair, some of them I found to be fascinating and I solved approximately a third of the puzzles without any help to much personal satisfaction.

If you like FMV games and don’t mind using a walkthrough to get through the tough parts, there is little doubt that you will be as enthralled with this adventure as I am and will no doubt follow up your experience by hitting Wikipedia for a history lesson.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. It takes a little bit to get used to movement.  Also, swapping eight discs during gameplay is a pain, though there’s not much back-and-forth.

Cruelty Rating: Polite.  Death (or a premature game over) is a rare outcome but can happen.  The occasional save is needed.

PC Games

Star Trek: 25th Anniversary

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Publisher: Interplay
Developer: Interplay
Year: 1992
Platform: DOS; Macintosh; Amiga

Review: One of the few true adventure games that Interplay had produced, they struck gold with this license. With characters lifted perfectly from the TV show, the game is a pleasure to watch (let alone play) if you even moderately enjoyed Star Trek.

Interplay did an adequate job of incorporating the four icon system into gameplay. At times you must combine items in your inventory and manipulate them, and the designers came up with some inventive uses for the phaser! The graphics are excellent, and the sound is even better than on the original show. Imagine what 25 years can do for production values.

Deftly incorporating all facets from the show, Kirk and his crew must solve each of seven missions efficiently and in accordance with the prime directive. In other words, don’t mess with the natives! After each mission, an admiral from Starfleet will give you a rating representing how well you accomplished your goals. The higher the rating, the more powerful upgrades you receive for your weapons, shields, and flight control. These resources are key if you want to stand a fighting chance during the battles. Several times you will be confronted by either the Romulans, Klingons, or Elasi pirates, and unless you become a master of the controls, you’ll need all the help you can get!

Part of your rating relies on your demeanor towards native populations and to adversaries. During conversation, you are presented with several choices of how to respond. You can pick the funny, brash, or sarcastic comment, but these will get Kirk in trouble most of the time. Not only do you have to be a good adventurer and fighter, you have to be a good diplomat as well.

A few of the missions are a breeze, but watching the characters interact is such a joy that I am glad the game wasn’t extremely difficult. However, there is one excruciating mathematical puzzle which I could never solve. Several years after pounding my tricorder against a wall, aided by an internet walkthrough, I acquired the answer. I think I could have sat there for decades and never solved it.

Perfect characterizations (aided by the voices of the real-life actors on the CD-ROM version), combined with a fluent story, moderate challenge, and excellent graphics and sound, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary should be played by every adventure game aficionado, regardless of your personal affections (or lack there of) for the source material.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. While most of the game is intuitive, the battle system is pretty clunky.  There’s also no way to skip it, which can be a beast for the game’s final battle.  If you haven’t done well on the missions and received the best upgrades, you might as well restart because there’s no way you’re seeing the ending.

Cruelty Rating: Polite.  Many ways to die, but no ways to get stuck.  My kind of game.

PC Games

Back to the Future: The Game

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Publisher:  Telltale
Developer: Telltale
Year: 2010
Platform: Windows; Macintosh; Playstation 3

Review: When I discovered this game was a thing, I immediately bought it for the wife and I to play. Like with most Telltale games it was released in agonizingly slow chapters. Each time a new one came, we’d knock it out in a day or two and then wait a couple of months. But as evidenced by my score, it was definitely worth it.

I was a bit hesitant as every single game that has ever been released with this license has made as much sense as a screen door on a battleship (e.g.  killer bees!). But Telltale has yet to screw up a license, or any game for that matter. For starters, Bob Gale was consulted on several story elements. And not only did they get Christopher Lloyd (who was also great in Toonstruck) and Claudia Wells(!) to reprise their roles as Doc Brown and Jennifer, they held a worldwide contest to see who would play Marty. Enter A.J. Locascio, who sounds so much like Marty McFly that if one didn’t know any better, you’d swear it was Michael J. Fox.

Of course, the game has to be more than its voice talent. While some of the chapters are better than others, the overall story is entertaining. It has countless paradoxes and is unendingly silly, but no more so than the second movie. It doesn’t have the dramatic impact of the first or third movies, but it’s funny enough to make up for it. One chapter in particular had us laughing out loud time after time, as the script writers were not afraid to go blue on several jokes.

As for the puzzles, they’re generally straightforward and easy. Only a couple of mindbenders are in the game, and there are unfortunately a few annoying lock & key puzzles that are not obvious.  But one should never get stuck long.

The ending leaves things open for a sequel, though one certainly isn’t necessary. If they do, there is no doubt in my mind the wife and I will drop what we’re doing and play it.

Contemporary Rating: High.

Cruelty Rating:  Merciful.  There is no way to die, which does take some of the drama out of a few puzzles.

PC Games

25: Eric the Unready

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Publisher: Legend
Developer: Legend
Year: 1993
Platform: DOS

Review: Rated by many the best adventure game of 1993 and it’s pretty obvious to see why. You are the infamous Eric the Unready. You have been assigned to save the princess from her evil stepmother. Unbeknownst to you, you were assigned because you are the most ill-equipped knight in the land.

As with the early Legend games that used a text parser, you can play the game with or without graphics.  The graphics are gorgeous for the time, and being a comedy they do well to serve the humor.  The music is pleasant if too repetitive.

It’s more of a parody than a game. To the skilled adventurer, this should take less than a couple of weeks to win. The puzzles are not all that well-developed, and can even be annoying at times. But it is without a doubt the funniest game I have ever played. Bob Bates spoofs everything from Star Trek to Saturday Night Live to Zork and has a grand ole time with medieval culture. There is something here for everyone.  I haven’t played the game since 2000, however, so it’s possible the jokes have become dated.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. Some of the puzzles seemed there just for busy-work.

Cruelty Rating: Tough. Like many text games, you can get rid of objects that you need later, but you never really need to.

PC Games

Blade Runner

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Publisher: Virgin Interactive
Developer: Westwood Studios
Year: 1997
Platform: Windows

Based on the cult-classic movie of the same name–starring Harrison Ford–this cyberpunk adventure is one licensed title that doesn’t disappoint.  I unabashedly feel this is better than the source material. Being as that the movie is currently ranked #123 at IMDb, I am sure to be in the minority.  Good news is if you liked the movie it is doubtful you’d be disappointed by the game.

In the future, where buildings rise above the city, crime is rampant, and man has colonized the moon, a mega corporation has developed replicants, super-humans with a predetermined lifespan. Naturally, some of the more advanced replicants have begun to become self-aware and are pissed that they have been essentially subjected to slavery for moon colonists. And some of them have come back to Earth in order to meet their maker with the intention of reversing their fate. Blade runners have been employed by the city to terminate all replicants before the bloodshed spreads. However, it’s not so simple, as determining who is and who isn’t a replicant is not a foolproof process and there is considerable sympathy for the replicants. It’s even possible some of the blade runners are replicants and don’t know it!

This premise is the same for the movie and the game. The designers of the game were smart in creating a new storyline, sharing only a few characters from the movie made fifteen years earlier (of which Sean Young and William Sanderson reprise their roles!). Not only does this keep the game from becoming stale, I felt the movie’s story was plodding with poor dialogue. To be fair, the plot of the game is no Oscar-winner, but I actually did enjoy the script significantly more, feeling the characters on my desktop were more sympathetic than the wooden personae on the silver screen.  They did, however, keep the Voight-Kampff testing, and you can whip that out whenever you feel it’s appropriate.

I keep discussing this game as if it’s a movie, which is only because that’s what it feels like. There are very few puzzles and it is incredibly difficult to become stuck. Atmosphere and exploration rule the game, with gorgeous sights and beautiful sounds lifted straight from the movie. There is certainly detective work to be done, but a significant portion is optional, shedding a light on the finer points of your case. What gives Blade Runner the feel of a game (and not just an interactive movie) is that there are multiple paths, stories, and endings dependent on several factors.  Every time you start a new game, character motivations change, which in turn changes some puzzles, dialogues, and eventually plot branches. In addition, whether or not you decide to terminate or sympathize with the replicants will also change the story.  If you like this sort of thing, you’re in for a treat. Personally, I did not have a desire to replay the game multiple times, but I did reach a few endings on my own before downloading some save files to see the others. Blade Runner has incredible production values and it is worth trying to find everything there is to see.

Oh, and you can use your gun. Good times.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. Some modern timing issues in action-scenes.

Cruelty Rating:  Polite.  You can die, so saving is necessary.  If you “screw up” the worst that happens if you take an alternate path through the game.

PC Games

Grim Fandango

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Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: LucasArts
Year: 1998
Platform: Windows

Review: How does one review a game that is universally loved by everyone? And I mean everyone. I can’t find one negative review of Grim Fandango anywhere. Oh sure, there are criticisms out there, but this may be the only game that has nothing but choirs to preach to. So I guess the only thing to do is to keep this short.  And once again sing the praises of Tim Schafer.

The last pure adventure game by LucasArts, Grim Fandango tells an epic tale of Manny Calavera, a travel agent in the Land of the Dead. Your job is to give clients their best means of reaching the underworld where their souls can move on. Problem is that your coworker seemingly is getting all the good clients now, while you’re getting all the bad ones. And if you can’t get some saints to give express tickets to, you can’t work off your time (for whatever unspeakable moral crimes Manny committed in his first life) and leave this place. The plot (unraveling over four years and many hours of gameplay) turns sinister as Manny reveals the mystery behind his problems at work.

The graphics are fabulous considering the designers were able to convincingly give pathos to skeletons (albeit well groomed skeletons). The atmosphere is film noir with heavy touches of Mexican mythology and Art Deco. The play control is all keyboard (or joystick), which while allowing for less artificiality to the atmosphere, is rather clunky and annoying at times (as you’ll discover after accidentally whipping out your scythe for the fiftieth time when you don’t want to use it). The puzzles are mostly fair and some are devilishly complex.

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But what I believe truly makes this game for the fans is the incredible voice acting. Yes, the dialogue is good, but I’m not sure this game reaches the pantheon of adventuredom without the characterization and emotion that can only be provided with tone and inflection. Nearly every hero, villain  and bystander is marvelously portrayed without devolving into caricature or stereotype. If you’re not reeled in by the introduction, then you will be after speaking with your co-worker and your boss’s secretary.

While I became antsy at times while playing due to the controls and a few inane puzzles, I was never bored. I even forgave the multiple bugs and occasional game crash, which speaks volumes as my patience for such sloppiness is on a very short leash. It’s not one of my favorite games, but there’s not a gamer out there I would have reservations recommending Grim Fandango to, adventure fans or otherwise.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. The controls suuuuuck.  Also, very buggy.  But everything else holds up today.

Cruelty Rating:  Merciful.  No way to die, though you still need to save regularly in case the game crashes.  And maybe save twice in case a save file gets corrupted.

PC Games

Mission Critical

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Publisher: Legend
Developer: Legend
Year: 1995
Platform: DOS, Windows

Review: An easy, plot-driven space-faring adventure by Legend Entertainment, Mission Critical tells the story of a lone surviving crewman of a terrible battle. An incredibly long FMV opening sequence depicts this battle where the Alliance (composed mostly of survivors of North America) loses to the United Nations at a key turning point in the war. However, the captain (played by Michael Dorn), decides to destroy his own crew to save the ship (and its secrets) by taking the enemy with him. As you were left unconscious and were the only person kept aboard, the U.N. ignored your presence, allowing the kamikaze plan to work. Now awake, you must quickly make repairs to the ship, figure out what’s really going on in this war, and try to complete your ship’s mission.

As with all Legend games, you play from the first-person perspective. Puzzles are mostly inventory based but are creative and perfectly logical. Never does one feel contrived or thrown in just to make the game longer. Sadly, many are too easy, ramping down the satisfaction level taken from completing them. The ship’s computer will also help guide you nearly to the answer for many problems. But the puzzles do their job, which is provide the necessary pacing to make this extensive story work. Information is revealed slowly, with regards to suspense and intrigue. It is also possible to die, either violently or due to running out of time (though the time limit is very liberal), which adds to the realism. And thankfully, it is impossible to put the game in an unwinnable state.

One aspect that does hurt the pacing is a battle simulator, where you must practice several missions before fighting a few real ones. While the simulation is well-done and the difficulty level can be adjusted to please any gamer, it seems out of place, especially with the type of adventurer the writers had in mind.

The graphics and sound are above-average, and the FMV sequences are beautifully done. Being dead, Michael Dorn’s character doesn’t make a lot of appearances  but it was fun seeing him without the Klingon makeup on. The other actors are up to the task as well, except perhaps the protagonist, who sometimes makes it a little too obvious he’s reading from a script.

While nothing about Mission Critical strikes me as fantastic, it is very solid throughout until the end, where the story comes hurtling at the player with seemingly endless exposition. Thankfully, the game rescues itself a bit with the final puzzle, which is clever and satisfying enough. I would recommend this game to any adventure fan who’s looking for a sci-fi story that plays more like an episode of Star Trek than a puzzlefest.

Contemporary Rating: Medium. Intuitive, but the battle simulator definitely doesn’t stand the test of time.

Cruelty Rating:  Polite. You must save the game regularly, but you don’t have to obsess about it.