The greatest Adventure Game of all time...

[Sslaxx]

[Super edit powers to stop making yourself look like an arrogant twat away!]

[Kweepa]

Umm, have you done a survey or something to determine that?

I'd say none of the Zorks is IF in the arty sense. They are pure adventure games.
However, in my opinion the original is a pretty poor adventure compared to some of the later Infocom games, such as Sorceror or Planetfall, since it's just a big treasure hunt.

[mr crowley]

My Personal Favorite Adventure game is Grim Fandango

[Darius Poyer]

For commercial games its definitely Grim Fandango.

For the independent games, I haven't played many good ones, I've played allot of games that disappointed me however. But the best one I played would be trilby's notes, closely followed by 6 days a sacrifice.

[Gravity]

Shenmue 1 & 2. Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Myst. The Zork Series. Blue Lucuna. And more, to be sure. But I find it hard to rate any game as the greatest of all time. The above are some of my favorites whether by design or over overall gameplay.

[AnalogGuy]

3 of my favourites;

"Morpheus" from 1998. This is really the best adventure game of all. Nothing else haven't ever touched me in a same way. Just amazing... the graphics and music is stunning! See the trailer (sadly made from spanish dubbed version)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Px-roc9sA6Q&fmt=18

http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Morpheus/Morpheus_Review.shtm


"Dark Eye" from 1995. This is a true masterpiece that is sadly forgotten. This is one of the most original games ever! This is more likely called as visual novel because there's really no puzzles to solve, only hotspots. But the game itself is visually stunning and the twisted atmosphere is one of the creepiest I have ever experience. Specially the voice acting is mind blowing and the music is totally horrifying... in a perfect way! See the trailer by yourself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfPJF3ksJic&fmt=18

http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Dark_Eye_HOF/Dark_Eye.shtm


"The Last Express" from 1997. The big GEM! Animation is made from real live acting scenes and transformed into darn great comic style animation and it's just amazing. And the gameplay works at realtime!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aj3SIXUqlo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ykBrHYjAzw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33CScBb1eQE

http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/TLE/TLE.shtm

[placebo_effect]

For me, the best absolutely must be the first three Monkey Island games. Incidentally, Monkey Island 1 was the first PC game I ever PLAYED, so nothing ever quite compared after that!

In second place I'm going to say The Feeble Files. I thought the story was completely wonderful, and the voices were great as well.

[mode7]

Hm design wise I'd say Monkey Island 2. I think this is as good as any adventure can get. CMI is my favourite for graphics and music and just overall feel. I also think "Snatcher" for the SegaCD was a great adventure. For the recent ones I really enjoyed Book of Unwritten Tales.

@ptpt Dark Eye seems really interesting. I saw it on underdogs some time ago before it went offline. Should have gotten it.
For Morpheus: I think I played the demo way back, thought of it as a mediocre myst clone. Maybe I should have given it another try. These days the market was so oversaturated  with CG 1st person adventures

@placebo: Feeble Files was a huge disapointment for me. It had some great moments...and some really frustrating ones.

[AnalogGuy]

Hm design wise I'd say Monkey Island 2. I think this is as good as any adventure can get. CMI is my favourite for graphics and music and just overall feel. I also think "Snatcher" for the SegaCD was a great adventure. For the recent ones I really enjoyed Book of Unwritten Tales.

@ptpt Dark Eye seems really interesting. I saw it on underdogs some time ago before it went offline. Should have gotten it.
For Morpheus: I think I played the demo way back, thought of it as a mediocre myst clone. Maybe I should have given it another try. These days the market was so oversaturated  with CG 1st person adventures

@placebo: Feeble Files was a huge disapointment for me. It had some great moments...and some really frustrating ones.

The underdogs didn't went offline but changed their server and url. It's http://www.hotud.org/

About Morpheus, previously I found the demo (it's totally trashed everywhere... completely deleted from every server) but it wasn't even working properly so can't blame it didn't impress.

[mikdog]

I recently replayed Sam & Max and Full Throttle, and DOTT not too long ago. Busy with Monkey Island II which I never played. Really nice! No voices though, playing a 6 MB thing I dl'd off the internet BUT I recently purchased a MI 1&2 CD off Amazon so I DO own the original cd's. My buddy is bringing it over from the UK for me. Other than that ... I enjoyed Indiana Jones and the FOA ... all of which makes me want to badly to make an adventure game. I think I'd be able to crack a pretty good Sam & Max art style if anyone wants to code ONE ROOM FOR ME I'll do the rest, just as a test. I was an artist in the now devoid fan-game Sam & Max: Flintlocked. We got SOMEWHERE but a little too ambitious at first perhaps.

http://www.bruandboegie.co.za

[dbuske]

Monkey Island 1 is the best.  Sierra's Space Quest 4 is good.
The Longest Journey
Infinity

[strangechicken]

well my favorites would be the first 3 broken swords, full throttle and toonstruck but if we were to say what was great in terms of influence, i'd say the greatest adventure game would be "King's Quest V" nothing has had such a lasting impact as that game, full voice acting, proper songs (with sung vocals),  and a point and click interface it really redefined for me the art of adventure gaming and how adventure games where being told as a story medium. Sure Lucas arts has an influence on adding more humor (which many forget to credit Al Lowe and his Larry series for helping along to),  so definitely Monkey Island 1 comes up close to its influenced, but King's quest V to me seems like an unsung hero. The most ambitious adventure game of all time without a doubt would have to be phantasmagoria.

Thats my 5 cents.

[theo]

Grim Fandango - if it hadn't been for the somewhat awkward controls and a select few poor puzzles I'd say this was the best slice of entertainment that I ever experienced, all categories. There have certainly been games designed with better flow and more intuitive controls, but never has any game come close to beating the amazing mood of the Grim Fandango universe. Art, music, voice acting, plot, dialog... these are all flawless.

Runners up to me are GK1, MI2, DOTT, FT, THE DIG. All of them amazing games, but all of them with their own internal piles of odd flaws that I'd love to do without. It's strange, somehow it feels like the adventure game genre choked off before it really had a chance to stabilize.

I'd love to put the broken sword games onto this list because of their amazingly good flow. Nothing flows as good as a broken sword game. wow. I have however sadly never really liked the games' style. They've got that schizophrenic realistic/cartoony style that doesn't really do it for me. The character animation is spotless though. And the music rocks, so they certainly deserve to be mentioned.

Oh while talking about flow, I'd really like to mention the Blackwell games. Perfect pacing.

[Wersus]

I'm just listening to the soundtrack of Grim Fandango now. It's definately the greatest adventure game of all time, at least in my books. It's the only game in existance that I think shouldn't have a sequel just because the original game is so great that there's no way a second game could make justice to it (especially nowadays as Tim Schafer is not in the same company as the IP).

TLJ and Discworld Noir are also high on my list. I think the fact that these games have a magical world without being childish is a big thing for me. Other than that, I've always been a Lucasarts guy, so other titles that I've liked are pretty much the usual ones from that camp.

[dbuske]

Don't forget The Longest Journey original.
TLJ Darkfall sucked because they changed to a funky mouse\keyboard clunky interface.

[PuNKKoMmANDO77]

For me Grim Fandango (pure poetry)

[Butcher]

I won't be original at all and just say Broken Sword 1, Grim Fandago and Monkey Islands 1,2 and 3

For the first time in my life I feel mainstream!

[gaarias]

 :o

I myself am a adventure game junkie but, and I shit you not, I haven't played Grim Fandango.

My faves would be Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis, graphic and sound wise. It was the first adventure game I played back when the CD player was external. At first I didn't understand it, since before that game I was used to playing Atari's Moctezuma and the sort. But when I got the hang of it I just couldn't stop looking for more of the genre.

Also, DOTT.

The Dig is very nicely done. I remember the music, that was nice.

I have no mouth and I must scream, based on one of Harlan Ellison 's short stories. 'Twas my first attempt at "psychological" thrillers.

[akdb8r]

Wow! Thank you everyone for your input in this epic thread! You've brought to light a lot of classic adventure games that I've never played (and now will), even despite the fact that I've been playing adventure games for over 25 years (my first was the 1985 Sierra release of The Black Cauldron, based on the Disney film of the same title).

Once I saw this thread, I had to get it in on it! Yes, I even passed that silly quiz to register in this forum JUST so I could make a single post in this thread! You guys are awesome for contributing to this thread and bringing it to life!

Just to add whatever little I can to this thread, here are a few of my favorites that I've played (ranked roughly in order of preference):
The Curse of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 3)
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (the original, I haven't played the 2010 remake)
Myst
King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
Space Quest: The Serian Encounter (Space Quest 1)
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 5: 8-Bit Is Enough
Maniac Mansion
Escape from Monkey Island (Monkey Island 4)
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 4: The Criminal Projective
The Secret of Monkey Island (Monkey Island 1, the original, I haven't played the 2009 remake)
Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (Leisure Suit Larry 1)
Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People - Episode 2: Strongbadia the Free

Wow! I honestly thought I was just going to list "a few" of my favorites, but I ended up listing twelve! Believe me, though, there are many more adventure games that I liked that are not on that list of my favorites!

After reading this thread, I'm now totally convinced that I need to go out and find/play the following games as well (these ones I haven't previously played!):
Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (amazingly, I've played the original, but not its sequel!)
Grim Fandango
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Sam & Max (probably the entire series, or at least close to the entire thing)
Simon the Sorcerer
Discworld
Sanitarium
Broken Sword (I actually already have a copy of this game for the Wii, but haven't gotten around to it yet)

Thank you again everybody! I'm super excited now, and looking forward to exposing myself to a whole new world of classic adventure titles!

[galaris]

I think the best adventure game is The Longest Journey (the first, not Dreamfall!),
second best is Tales of Monkey Island.