As the topic, what's ur top 5 adventure games and how long did it take you to complete them?


1. Monkey island 1 (2 months) I was a kid
2. the book of unwritten tales (3 days)
3. Full throttle (3 days)
4. Vampire story (1 week)
5. Jolly rover (2 days)

It is always a bit hard to pick favourites, but here are what I currently would classify as my favourites:
1: Riven (4 days)

2: Syberia (5 days)

3: Myst 1 (1 evening)

4: Sherlock Holmes: The awakened (1 week)

5: The dig (2 days)

Though when it comes to hours spent, I think Riven tops the list out of those. The Longest Journey, a game that just barely did not make it to the list was among the longer adventure games that I have played. And the most time consuming adventure game that I have finished was Schizm, which took me the better part of a summer to finish (that game was hard). 

Haven't really played many of your top games, atleast now I got some more time killing games to play! keep it up guys.

I take it that you are relatively new to the genre then. Not all games on my list is everyone's cup of tea. While Syberia is nearly universally loved, I know a lot of people who don't like Myst & Riven all that much (on the other hand, those two games also have some very loyal fans. If you do decide to give Myst a try, then I would recommend this version. Also, as for Syberia, there is a collection called Syberia Collection, which contains Sybera 1, 2 and Amerzone. It might have been an UK only release, but importing games form the UK to Sweden is no problem, and will usually be cheaper than buying the games here. 

Originally Posted By Fnord (17 FEB 2012 6:33am)

It is always a bit hard to pick favourites, but here are what I currently would classify as my favourites:
1: Riven (4 days)

2: Syberia (5 days)

3: Myst 1 (1 evening)

4: Sherlock Holmes: The awakened (1 week)

5: The dig (2 days)

 

Though when it comes to hours spent, I think Riven tops the list out of those. The Longest Journey, a game that just barely did not make it to the list was among the longer adventure games that I have played. And the most time consuming adventure game that I have finished was Schizm, which took me the better part of a summer to finish (that game was hard). 

Myst 1, one of the harder games in one evening and Syberia, one of the easiest, in 5 days??

Originally Posted By SirDave (20 FEB 2012 2:00pm)

Originally Posted By Fnord (17 FEB 2012 6:33am)

It is always a bit hard to pick favourites, but here are what I currently would classify as my favourites:
1: Riven (4 days)

2: Syberia (5 days)

3: Myst 1 (1 evening)

4: Sherlock Holmes: The awakened (1 week)

5: The dig (2 days)

 

Though when it comes to hours spent, I think Riven tops the list out of those. The Longest Journey, a game that just barely did not make it to the list was among the longer adventure games that I have played. And the most time consuming adventure game that I have finished was Schizm, which took me the better part of a summer to finish (that game was hard). 

 

Myst 1, one of the harder games in one evening and Syberia, one of the easiest, in 5 days??

 

Myst was not all that hard, I think I spent about 5h in total on it (I hardly even left my computer during that time though). When I played Syberia I took my time and explored the world, and I could not spend an entire evening playing it, I had to spread it out over several days. 

Haha guys, let's not start judging each other. Everyone is not as fast as others or maybe they choose to explore the game more carefully than others to really get everything before u finish the game. So there's not really a  "speed" limit to complete a game. Keep it coming!

1. King's Quest VII (4 months)

2. Broken Sword II (1,5 years) <= stuck forever on that theodolite 

3. Myst III (a few weeks)

4. King's Quest I  

5. Rama (almost 10 years until i figured out the final puzzle) 

Originally Posted By Lovee236 (20 FEB 2012 3:51pm)

Haha guys, let's not start judging each other. Everyone is not as fast as others or maybe they choose to explore the game more carefully than others to really get everything before u finish the game. So there's not really a  "speed" limit to complete a game. Keep it coming!

 

'Judging each other' was and is not the point. Since what you say above is true (about how people play games differently thus affecting the time taken) and since, also, some people use 'hints' or walkthroughs, the time people give for how long they take to play an AG is usually of little or no use, unless they were to time themselves and not use any help system.  Btw, I'm not suggesting that Fnord used a walkthrough- what was more interesting to me was that it took him 5 days to play Syberia which indicated just what he said- that he simply took a little more time to explore.

Originally Posted By markornikov (20 FEB 2012 4:01pm)

2. Broken Sword II (1,5 years)

 

I did not even know what a theodolite was when I played the game (just recently). I always thought the name of the instrument was "total station", so that threw me off a bit. 

Well actually, I just did a wikipedia search before hitting "submit post", and theodolites are apparently the precursors to total stations.

Originally Posted By SirDave (20 FEB 2012 4:13pm)

Originally Posted By Lovee236 (20 FEB 2012 3:51pm)

Haha guys, let's not start judging each other. Everyone is not as fast as others or maybe they choose to explore the game more carefully than others to really get everything before u finish the game. So there's not really a  "speed" limit to complete a game. Keep it coming!

 

 

'Judging each other' was and is not the point. Since what you say above is true (about how people play games differently thus affecting the time taken) and since, also, some people use 'hints' or walkthroughs, the time people give for how long they take to play an AG is usually of little or no use, unless they were to time themselves and not use any help system.  Btw, I'm not suggesting that Fnord used a walkthrough- what was more interesting to me was that it took him 5 days to play Syberia which indicated just what he said- that he simply took a little more time to explore.

 

 

No I do understand that you weren't judging him that's why I didnt quote you but that was meant for everyone since I felt that it was going that way

RIVEN: about two weeks of full evenings [40?]. The best game - didn't want this one to end.

MYST 1: 4 evenings + 1 afternoon [20 hours?]. My first AG so the *whole* concept of exploration, clues and puzzles -  indeed the nature of the genre to begin with, was a complete novelty and had to be discovered as I went along - no veteran experience to help me. Great time though.

ZORK NEMESIS: a bit faster than Riven

OUTCRY: a short week of evenings

DRACULA 1 & 2: maybe 2-3 weeks of evenings?

None of these with any aids [may have cheated on Drac 2 in one or two spots...]

Sorry but I must cheat THREE times:-

(1) I can't possibly stick to 5 top games ever =- I'm listing 1 extra !

(2) Four of them are series since although I COULD pick one out of the series it would be unfair to the others.

(3) They are ALL so old that I camn't record the times it took to play them. However, Im sure that every one took me more than 40 hours (maybe even much more) - I'mm a very slow player - sos, sob,

SORRY !!

Each one was aa breakthrough innofvation at the period it was released.

*  Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis.

**  The first 6 King's Quest games.

***  All the Monkey Island games.

****  The last 3 Tex Murphy games.

*****  All the Gabriel Knight games.

******  Nyst.

Originally Posted By Fnord (17 FEB 2012 6:33am)

....

5: The dig (2 days)

5th on your list, hmmm... must give this one a look..

Originally Posted By tincup2 (2 MAR 2012 5:27pm)

5th on your list, hmmm... must give this one a look..

There's a DVD version although I suspect you have the "equipment" to run the original release.

The Dig is well worth the price they ask for it on online stores. It is a bit short and easy, but the story and voice acting is really good. I don't understand why critics gave it lukewarm reviews on release, to me it is the best Lucas Arts game. 

The Dig is one of my favorites.  I didn't find it particularly short, probably because it was the first 3rd person/inventory-based game I ever played, so it took me a while to get used to the movement and hunting for hotspots.  There were a couple of decent non-inventory based puzzles to solve, too, and I liked the characters.

Originally Posted By Fnord (3 MAR 2012 4:09am)

The Dig is well worth the price they ask for it on online stores. It is a bit short and easy, but the story and voice acting is really good. I don't understand why critics gave it lukewarm reviews on release, to me it is the best Lucas Arts game. 

Saying it was easy sounds a bit subjective but then I'm not the best when it comes to random type puzzles. As far as reviews go, it seemed inevitable that major reviewers would immediately base their impressions by a comparison to the style of other LA games of the era. I suppose that when you develop a certain expectation and that expectation is not delivered you won't react with much applause. They didn't. A shame.

The Dig sounds very similar to a paper game called Damocles Mission featured in an early 80's issue of Ares magazine [published by SPI of Strategy & Tactics wargame fame]. Though I now have both, I've yet to play either, but the concepts seem very similar: Space Shuttle goes up to investigate/explore a huge alien ship parked in earth orbit.

Damocles Mission uses cardboard counters to progressively generate the spacecraft and it's systems, and a programmed paragraph booklet system to advance the plot. The game came out around the time when book type adventures were popular - read a paragraph and depending on what you decide to do you are directed to another page section etc. The system is similar to PC text and early graphic adventures, only you just flip through a book and keep track of things with pencil/paper, and dice for battles or other conumdrums as you go along. Some were pretty clever will all sorts of convoluted or divergent plots possible. 

The Dig would probably be toward the bottom of my ranking of the LucasArts games, but that's less a reflection on The Dig and more about the high quality of most of the other LucasArts adventures. It has some lumps, but it really doesn't deserve the rather negative reputation it seems to have in general. I'd call it a minor classic just for the interesting atmosphere and geat music.

Originally Posted By CB (3 MAR 2012 12:34pm)

Originally Posted By Fnord (3 MAR 2012 4:09am)

The Dig is well worth the price they ask for it on online stores. It is a bit short and easy, but the story and voice acting is really good. I don't understand why critics gave it lukewarm reviews on release, to me it is the best Lucas Arts game. 

 

Saying it was easy sounds a bit subjective but then I'm not the best when it comes to random type puzzles. As far as reviews go, it seemed inevitable that major reviewers would immediately base their impressions by a comparison to the style of other LA games of the era. I suppose that when you develop a certain expectation and that expectation is not delivered you won't react with much applause. They didn't. A shame.

 

I found it easier than the other games that Lucas Arts made. I never managed to finish any of the other ones without resorting to at least hint systems. The Dig's puzzles made sense to me (which is more than I can say about the puzzles in Monkey island)

Originally Posted By tincup2 (3 MAR 2012 2:10pm)

The Dig sounds very similar to a paper game called Damocles Mission featured in an early 80's issue of Ares magazine [published by SPI of Strategy & Tactics wargame fame]. Though I now have both, I've yet to play either, but the concepts seem very similar: Space Shuttle goes up to investigate/explore a huge alien ship parked in earth orbit.

 

Damocles Mission uses cardboard counters to progressively generate the spacecraft and it's systems, and a programmed paragraph booklet system to advance the plot. The game came out around the time when book type adventures were popular - read a paragraph and depending on what you decide to do you are directed to another page section etc. The system is similar to PC text and early graphic adventures, only you just flip through a book and keep track of things with pencil/paper, and dice for battles or other conumdrums as you go along. Some were pretty clever will all sorts of convoluted or divergent plots possible. 

That is a relatively common theme. Rama also did that, and The Dig has more than a few similarities to that book series (even the aliens are somewhat similar). 

By the way, the game based on those books was also quite nice, though it sadly runs poorly on modern computers.

And book games, that brings me back. I used to play those that Fighting Fantasy made, and I have a complete colleciton of the ones that got translated to Swedish. They did by the way recently re-release some of the more popular Fighting Fantasy books. 

I had a few LOTR paperback games but stupidly let them go!

I would imagine that there is quite a market for older LOTR games of that type. I've seen old licence pen & paper RPGs sell for a decent amount of money on auctioning sites (though usually rarely for more than 1½-2 times their original price, which would put them just slightly above a new game). How rare were those LOTR games? 

By the way, I just tried my hands at the old "Forest of Doom" adventure by Fighting fantasy, and I sadly have to say that it had not aged all that well. My 7 year old self loved it, it gave a sense of adventure that could not be found anywhere else at the time (for a person of my age, that is), but I feel that it has largely been surpassed by video games these days. It lacks the social aspect of pen & paper RPGs or regular board games, and it did not really suck me in the same way as a good adventure game or CRPG would. 

A first edition dungeons & Dragaons 3-book box set can go for a couple hundred bucks on eBay... But I really didn't get caught up in the fantasy RPG thing at was booming at the time - we spent our time painting 7 Years War figures and playing miniatures battles on the living room floor or messing around with SPI and Avalon Hill board games... lol and still do.