Top 10 Modern Adventure games?

[katyafrost]

Played Jane Jenson's Moebius for an adventure reboot and though it was pretty bad. I like the Nancy Drew game's for the puzzles and for the nostalgia effect it brings me. For current releases what would 10 good adventure games be?

 

[Jaesun]

Played Jane Jenson's Moebius for an adventure reboot and though it was pretty bad.

Why was it bad?

 

[katyafrost]

Played Jane Jenson's Moebius for an adventure reboot and though it was pretty bad.

Why was it bad?

80% of the puzzles weren't real puzzles. Just basic cross-matching which I considered lazy puzzle design that required very little creativity (sorry if that sounds harsh). Some of the story elements were absurd (the main character's parent was killed by a Lion). The final problem was the main character. I understand she was trying to make someone who was unique. An egocentric loner with a biting personality. Starting off with a good guy + generic personality is boring so this was a fine thing to do. But the character never truly evolved. He remained a prick through the entire game, and since I had no control over his development (though dialogue options would lead you to believe otherwise) I actually despised playing him through the entire game. When I finished it left with a bad taste in my mouth. The rest of the game had potential and the general mystery was OK, but there were no consequences for anything. In one spot while you're in Egypt you have to make a vital decision. You think ther'es going to be a story split here, but after 10 minutes and an alternate playthru you find it was just smoke and mirrors - minus the smoke. and there's some decision-making to be done, but it was just meaningless. Issues that immediately have no repercussions are lazy. The biggest problem was so few honest puzzles. Adventure games can be a tightrope: don't want to bog the story down in frustrating puzzles that detach you from the rest of the game, but you've also got to give the player something to accomplish besides "clicking dialogue" and "clicking objects for descriptions". Maybe she'll listen to critique and make the next game a lot better but I've seen nothing about that in their KS letters. The only correspondence we ever get is more unwanted wallpapers. I had high hopes for this game as I loved the Gabriel Knight series.

 

[Pyke]

Machinerium is one of my top AG's. I love how they got the story across using *just* icons and animation. Its a VERY difficult thing to do effectively and they nailed it.

 

[JudasIscariot]

I finally managed to temporarily overcome my current addiction to CKII and I got to play Quest for Infamy last night. Man, what an awesome game so far and it managed to keep me playing through the night until 3 AM.

There's a lot of great dialogue in the game. My favorite has to be the old couple running the general goods store :D They're hilarious! I would post a quote from them but it's best to hear it for yourself.

Two other modern adventures I would consider a top 10 would be The Cat Lady and Downfall. I totally recommend playing Downfall before The Cat lady as you get a bit more enjoyment out of both games if you do. Also, Downfall is getting a remake soon so it will have an updated engine and graphics that will kind of be in the vein of TCL although the original version of Downfall plays just fine and looks quite good in my eyes. I am biased towards 2D pixel adventure games just so you know

Also, I always recommend the Blackwell games along with Primordia and Gemini Rue (even though I wasn't a fan of the combat in Gemini Rue, the story and the setting overrode the combat in the game )

 

[garren]

Primordia was pretty good

 

[J_C]

Broken Age.

 

[Aeschylus]

Depends where you put the cutoff line for "Modern", but I guess for me it'd be something like this, in no particular order:
Chaos on Deponia (and the Deponia series more broadly), Heroine's Quest, Quest for Infamy, Primordia, Resonance, Book of Unwritten Tales. Those are the only ones released recently that I would consider really good. I have slightly mixed feelings about the early Telltale games -- some of the Sam & Max episodes were quite well done, but I think let down by their episodic nature. Of course, there've been a ton of great AGS games released over the last decade-plus.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Chaos on Deponia
Memoria
Heroine's Quest
Quest for Infamy
Primordia

I'm not a big fan of the Blackwell series, but it's good enough, too.

Also, if you don't dislike Myst-likes, ASA: A Space Adventure is really great and Ether One is okay.

 

[tuluse]

A lot of good games mentioned, I'll just add Donna: Avenger of Blood. It's even free!

 

[abnaxus]

Gray Matter

 

[buzz]

I'm gonna go full-:incloosive: and name most of the games I've enjoyed in the last couple of years. I've probably missed plenty of Wadjet Eye and Daedalic games but they're too fucking many so just try most/all of them.

Top 10 modern Adventure games
--------------------
ASA A Space Adventure
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective
The Dream Machine
Resonance
Memoria
Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper
Quest for Infamy
The Cat Lady
The Journey Down - Over the Edge
Sam and Max Beyond Time and Space


Top 10 modern "adventure" games (focus on storyfagging and atmosphere with easy or even zero puzzles)
--------------------
Kentucky Route Zero
Year Walk (the puzzles are actually decent in this one)
Jazzpunk
Yume Nikki
To the Moon
The Walking Dead
Kairo
CAVE! CAVE! DEUS VIDET
Les Misérables: The Game of the Book
Stanley's Parable




Top 10 modern not-sure-if-adventure games
--------------------
Paper's Please
Antichamber
Stacking
Papo & Yo
Amnesia The Dark Descent
Puzzle Agent
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Safecracker
L.A. Noire
Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons


Other stuff worth playing
--------------------

Heroine's Quest
Downfall
Gray Matter
Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies
Ether One
Gemini Rue
1953 - KGB Unleashed
Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure
The Blackwell Epiphany
The Book of Unwritten Tales
Night of the Rabbit
The Next Big Thing
Sherlock Holmes Awakened
Sherlock Holmes Nemesis
The Testament of Sherlock Holmes
The Samaritan Paradox
Knock-Knock
Sam and Max Save the World
Sam and Max Devil's Playhouse
The Sea Will Claim Everything
J.U.L.I.A.
DEVICE 6
The Inner World
Machinarium
Journey of a Roach
Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World
Tales of Monkey Island
Yesterday
The Shivah
The Whispered World
Hector: Badge of Carnage
Back to the Future the Game

 

[cvv]

"Modern" for me is everything after the golden age, to be generous let's say after 2000 (just for the sake of Overseer and Longest Journey). So what I've played and liked, from the top of my head:

Machinarium, Fahrenheit, Syberia, Post Mortem, Still Life 1, Black Mirror 1, Sinking Island, Dreamfall, Gemini Rue, Gray Matter, Tesla Effect.

Hated the Telltale stuff, including the new Monkey Islands, not a big fan of the German adventures for some reason, so yeah.

 

[Ivan]

Machinarium, Botanicula, Broken Sword 1

 

[ghostdog]

Broken sword is a 1996 game.


A Tale Of Two Kingdoms - This one should be mentioned more, it's a fantastic game, one of the best adventure games ever, and it's completely free.
Heroine Quest - Same as the above but even better since it has a quest for glory twist. It boggles the mind that these two games are free.
Primordia - My favorite recent adventure when it comes to atmosphere and story. Excellent puzzles too.
Tesla Effect - If you are a Tex Murphy fan just play it, if you are not, now is the time to become one.
Post Mortem - Has rough edges but managed to get the atmosphere just right.
Larry Remake/reboot - I was pleasantly surprised by this one, some very funny moments with good additions. All and all a very good remake/reboot.


From the ones mentioned here I didn't especially like:
Fahrenheit (pretentious-juvenile, shitty QTEs, gets worse as it goes), Syberia (Sub-par writing, no historical/geographical research, forced-unconnected puzzles), Still Life (Sub-par writing, atrocious puzzles), Gray Matter (disappointed by story and characters)


Other AGS/Free indies worth mentioning :

5 Days A Stranger
Mind's Eye
Missing
The White Chamber

 

[Boleskine]

The Blackwell series
The Deponia trilogy
The Book of Unwritten Tales
The Cat Lady
Machinarium
A New Beginning
Black Mirror II / III
Gemini Rue
Gray Matter
Amnesia

 

[katyafrost]

Thank you, thank you, thank you I honestly didn't think there could be so many decent options out there. Before Moebius, the last adventure games I'd played were the aforementioned Nancy Drew, Sam & Max, and Wallace & Gromit. I liked the latter games but they were really light on puzzles. Loved the animation and VoiceOver work though.

 

[RPGMaster]

1.) Broken Age Act I
2.) Broken Age Act II Part I
3.) Broken Age Act II Part II
4.) Broken Age Act II Part III
5.) Broken Age Act II Part IV
6.) Broken Age Act III Part I
7.) Broken Age Act III Part II
8.) Broken Age Act III Part III
9.) Broken Age Act III Part IV
10.) Broken Age: Remastered

 

[Unkillable Cat]

The Deponia trilogy stands out for me, not because I think that the series is so awesome and excellent (in fact I think it's above average at best) but because of how it redefined my perspective of adventure games in general. Many people hate the Deponia games because of the protagonist. That is intentional, the games are trying to tell people something. For that reason I suggest that the Deponia trilogy be left for last.

The only other adventure games I can recommend are Primordia and Machinarium, because I've actually played those. I'm missing out on a lot of adventure games, I know.

 

[toro]

I see a lot of shit in this thread.