The Long-Awaited Return of Adventure Games
I long for the days of the old Sierra and Lucasarts Classic adventure games. The Laura Bow Mysteries, King’s Quest, The Dig, Full Throttle, Monkey Island. It’s been a long time since there’s been a great adventure game. Developers such as Quantic Dream – the creators of Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy here in North America) and the upcoming Heavy Rain – and Funcom – the developer of The Longest Journey series – have been bright lights in a dark age of first-person shooters and “sandbox” games.
I mainly play games for story. If the storyline isn’t fun, the gameplay certainly can’t save it. I admit, I’m the guy most mainstream gamers seem to hate. I have patience for cutscenes that go on for several minutes. I’m not chomping at the bit to move on without knowing what the story holds – my primary motivation to continue. Truth be told, if I were to watch someone else play a game start to finish, I would be equally satisfied as if I had played it myself and there would be no need for me to play it over.
And so it is my pleasure to discover that Lucasarts may be ushering in the second age of Adventure games, starting with a remake of The Secret of Monkey Island, the original pc adventure, and releasing it on Xbox Live Arcade later this year. This will be a scene-for-scene remake with huge graphical and auditory improvements as well a fancy new hints system for the uninitiated gamer.
I daresay this could bring some intelligence back to the gaming world. One where puzzles don’t always involve shooting things in sequence, or moving heavy objects. A world where dialog isn’t an afterthought.
I am extremely excited about this and have been angry with developers (read: Lucasarts) because they stopped making adventure games altogether, opting instead to make some pretty mediocre ones – exceptions being the Knights of the Old Republic games, which are only a step removed from an adventure game so that’s ok. I hope that the world of gamers are with me in this, and I hope we can send a message to developers that says we are DYING for some good adventures. That there IS a market for it.
And then the floodgates will open again.

