These are reviews of most of the adventure games I have played (or replayed) since 1994 or so, when I found myself with an empty web site. The reviews use a framework and terminology defined in a little essay on the nature of adventure games. Some people have lives, I hear ... If it makes any sense to you, you're not one of them.
Note that the reviews, qualifications, and rankings are subject to change. As I review more games I may decide to reconsider my evaluations to make for a more informative and consistent assessment.
| Rating | |
| Gabriel Knight: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned | -3 |
| I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream | +2 |
| Journey to the Centre of the Earth | +2 |
| King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride | +1 |
| Nancy Drew: The Curse of Blackmoor Manor | +0 |
The story should be interesting. It may be funny, or scary, or intriguing, etc. I don't care if it's new to the medium: a cliché is a cliché. A story so bad that it wouldn't even rank as a bad B movie doesn't miraculously become good because it is now a computer game (e.g., Phantasmagoria, Daedalus Encounter).
Along with the story I want a good puzzle. A great puzzle is one where you kick yourself afterwards for having such a hard time solving. A poor puzzle is either silly (and not funny) (see the essay), too easy, or lacking in originality. The percentage of good puzzles isn't important, just the quantity.
The challenges and the story should be relevant to each other. The 7th Guest is a good counter-example to this relevance. Some people refer to this as contextual puzzles.
I don't like quick-clicking arcade action dropped into an otherwise sedate game. It's okay if the action permeates the game, like in Ecstatica and the Twinsen games, but you probably won't find any of those kind of games here. The Daedalus Encounter's Krynn shooting episode is a bad use of arcade action, as is Gabriel Knight's zombies. The early King's Quests also illustrate this dislike: you have to dodge monsters and carefully climb stairs.
Finally, my audience is me. I hold the games up to my idea of a perfect adventure game. If the game drifts too far off my idiosyncratic standard of adventure, it will probably fare poorly in my review, even if the world considers it a great game, even if I consider it a great game. For example, Civilization would rate a -5; it just isn't an adventure game. Similarly, games for a very different audience will suffer in my ratings -- this particularly affects games intended for children and novices.
| Rating | |
| Adam: The Double Factor | -3 |
| Daria's Inferno | -2 |
| Desire | +3 |
| Eve burst error | +4 |