The greatest Adventure Games of all time... as voted by YOU!

[Anym]

Out of curiosity, I tried to compile all the opinions in The greatest Adventure game of all time... into a ranking, partly because I was a bit disappointed with the contents of said thread when reading it, because it contained little discussion about the relative merits of one game or another and everybody was just posting their personal favourites. Of course, much of this is very subjective, but as it is, I find it almost redundant with the What's your favourite GAME? thread, where many people are also posting their favourite adventures.

Compiling the data was a bit more confusing than I thought, with everybody nominating a different number of games or even entire series of games, rather that just the one greatest of all time (in their opinion), people posting more than once and people referring to the same game by different titles and strange acronyms, people voting for non-existing and non-adventure games and whatnot. I decided to take a rather liberal stance with counting, meaning that I counted every positive mention of a game, unless the poster made a clear distinction between what they liked and what they considered even greater, and counted a mention a series as a point for every game in the series, with every poster basically giving out as many or as few points as they wanted to, but no more than one per game, even if it was a ranked listing or something. Obviously this will skew the results a bit, but it seemed like most sensible thing to do (to me at least) considering the raw data. The only stuff I ignored were obvious joke posts, posts that were too vague and post nominating a company entire catalog. Another factor that might have skewed the results is that some people  were deliberately not mentioning titles which had already mentioned, but that can't be helped and me never knowing if people were referring to a single game (probably the first of its series) or the entire series in some cases. Also, I didn't do a recount. But enough about the methodology and on with the results:

1. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge (about 56 "votes", including many for the Monkey Island series as a whole)
2. The Secret of Monkey Island (55)
3. Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle (34)
4. Grim Fandango (33)
5. The Curse of Monkey Island (29)
6. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (26)
7. Beneath a Steel Sky/Sam & Max Hit the Road (19 each)
9. Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars (18)
10. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers (16)
11. Full Throttle (14)
12. Hero's Quest: So You Want To Be A Hero (12)
13. 5 Days a Stranger/The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery (10 each)
15. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (9)

So, what do you say? Is it a consensus you could agree to? Is it the way you expected? Too many/few LucasArts/Sierra titles? Discuss!

[radiowaves]

Edit: Ah never mind! Great list!

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

You have way too much time on your hands.

[Radiant]

At the high end, this is clear; at the low end, this gets statistically insignificant rather quickly.

There are surprisingly few Sierra titles on there, and I am surprised at not seeing KQVI around there. Whenever "best games" are asked for, in my experience, the two titles that crop up almost immediately are that and MI2 (which, unsurprisingly, is right at the top there).

[stevetheblack]

I find it very odd that Beneath a Steel Sky and Sam 'n Max are tied.  Although I like Sam and Max I much prefer BASS, in fact I would have to say it is my joint favourite adventure game (along with Fate of Atlantis).

That might, however, be related to the order I played them rather than whether or not they are superior games.  I miss my youth sometimes

[Snarky]

Shouldn't votes for the Monkey Island series be credited to the first game, rather than MI2? Anyway, you can put me down for Secret of Monkey Island, thereby moving it up to a joint first place.

Not much to say about the list, other than that there are a lot of LucasArts fans around here.

[blueskirt]

The lack of Sierra titles (or the omnipresence of LucasArts games) isn't a surprise, Sierra was more about quantity rather than quality. Their game had gratuitous death sequence, dead ends, games were often shipped with countless bugs and unpolished, but they made sixty or so titles while the LucasArts adventure department concentrated their efforts on 13 polished titles. LucasArts also attracted far more people because all their titles were translated and had an easy to use interface, while Sierra games used text parser which repelled lot of people who weren't native with the english language.

Sierra's games were good but unless if we're talking about some QFG games or GK, an individual Sierra game cannot compete against an individual LucasArts' game. Would vote be counted by series, Sierra would score much better.

I'd like to see the results of a "No LucasArts, no Sierra, no AGS titles" poll, or one strictly for AGS games, as the current results aren't really surprising. The absence of Loom is rather surprising however.

[doctorfargo]

WHAT?!
:o

Where's Maniac Mansion and The Last Crusade? Two of the best adventure games ever!

[lo_res_man]

I think kings quest 6 should be up there, and though bass is great game I think sam and Max should be higher.

[Anym]

Loom and KQ6 both narrowly missed the cut, being tied for 16th place with about 8 "votes" together with nine other titles (Dig, LSL3, LSL6, MI4, PQ2, QfG2, QfG4, SQ3, StS2), but as Radiant pointed out, the numbers are losing significance quickly at this point and different ways of counting would probably yield different results as Snarky pointed out.

The LucasArts dominance (especially compared to Sierra) shouldn't surprise anyone in the least. After all, just think what is usually considered to be "good design" (no dead ends, no random deaths, hotspot highlighting,...) around here and check which Sierra games fit the bill. In fact, several people (which I didn't count as valid votes) declared the entire LucasArts catalog as the "greatest Adventure Game of all time".

Indy 3 and Maniac Mansion only received 5 respectively 4 "votes" (of which at least one was actually for Maniac Mansion Deluxe rather than the original) and thus would have needed about twice as many votes to make the top 15, maybe because those two early LucasArts titles share some of Sierra's perceived "design flaws". Maybe the fact that DOTT came in third is a little consolation for fans of the original. BTW I just realize that every vote for MM should probably have counted as a vote for DOTT as well, seeing that the latter is a superset of the former, thus widening the DOTT's lead over Grim Fandango.

I did find some of the nuances a bit surprising though, like MI2 beating out MI1 (albeit so narrowly that it might as well be considered a tie) and DOTT (and to a lesser extent MI2) beating GF. Even though I played MI2 first (so hopefully it's not just nostalgia) and liked it very much, I always considered MI1 to be the better game. As I've stated my dislike for unbacked statements in the initial post, I'll try to elaborate that a bit, although probably not entirely on objective grounds.

For example, the plot in MI1 seems much tighter in comparison, you always know what to do and what the character's motivations (first you want to become a pirate, then you have to save the girl you love) are whereas parts of the second game, while nice for their puzzles and dialogue, felt a bit like "filler" (find the four plot coupon map pieces to continue). With regards to the games' endings, I thought there would be no competition which one was more satisfying until I saw people actually pointing out MI2's ending as a positive aspect of that game, which I found surprising to say the least. The quality of the puzzles was of a high standard in both games, but I can't think of one as good as the first's "insult sword-fighting" in part two (although "spitting contest" comes close) or one as silly as the second one's "monkey wrench" in the first one. It's all just minor stuff and MI2 is a very good game in its own right, but all in all I think it falls short of beating its predecessor in terms of sheer greatness.

As I haven't played KQ6 and didn't like MM and Indy 3 as much as later LucasArts games, I'd really like to hear what you think they did better than the fifteen games listed above. Note that being good (or as the thread title unfortunately put it "great") isn't the same as being influential. CC, KQ1 and MM were all milestones in the evolution of adventure games, but that doesn't necessarily mean they are still the greatest EVAR!!1! Like I said in the original post, I'd like to see some discussion in addition to just naming titles that should also be on the list. After all, there are only fifteen spaces on a top ten list.

Finally, I'd like to point out that my votes for the "greatest Adventures game of all time" for GF, MI1 and Loom would incidentally be enough to push each of them up by one place in the above ranking.

[m0ds]

Yo, I think it's great that you broke these results down. And I think it's great that 5DAS actually made it in there too. That should be a good incentive to every developer here

[Snarky]

Anym, one thing I always thought was very neat about MI2 is the way the voodoo doll puzzle is repeated with a twist at the end. The fact that the final puzzle revisits one of the very first ones gives it a nice sense of symmetry. I would still agree with you that TSOMI is the better game overall, for pretty much the same reasons you list (although I do think the ending of the second game is genius).

And I didn't notice 5DAS on the list. Hahaha, that's funny.

[LimpingFish]

At least Myst, Riven, Gabriel Knight 3, and The Longest Journey didn't feature.

[lo_res_man]

*cough* I like myst.

[blueskirt]

I expected to see Loom or The Dig not because I felt they absolutly had a place in that list, but because I thought people would have massively voted for every LucasArts games except the three first games and EMI. I can understand people for not loving MM, Zak or The Last Crusade for the reasons Anym listed, but Loom and The Dig had the same chances to figures on the top 15 as the other LucasArts games.

Regarding Monkey Island, I personally prefer MI2 to MI1 because it was longer and more detailed. Every rooms are filled with countless of things to examine and laugh at, there's twice as many injokes and parodies crammed in MI2, there is a music for every scene and the cheer amount of puzzles, character and place to explore makes it one of the longest adventure games out there. Yes, the ending was rather enigmatic, but until the ending, the entire game was one long joyride. MI1 is quality, but MI2 is both quality and quantity, hence why it beat MI1 in my book.

I can't say for KQ6 and MM, but if The Last Crusade did one thing good, it was with non linearity and nailing how an evil fortress should be made. While I recognize the fighting was very difficult once you screwed up, and there had no hints to help you to bluff the guards, I thought it was well designed, just not well executed. While FOA beats TLC in every other aspects, for the non-linearity that characterise Indy's adventure games, FOA failed by dumbing down the non-linearity to 3 long strings where the method you picked do deal with problems would be the method you would use for the rest of the game. Compared to FOA's 3 strings system, TLC was a ball of spaghetti. TLC's non-linearity alone is nothing worth making it to the top list, but still something you don't see often.

One game that I would have liked to see in the top list is Alone In The Dark 1, but with Sierra and LucasArts in the list, there's simply not enough place for smaller developers.

It's also interesting that Quest For Glory 1 made the top list, while QFG fans generally agree that QFG 2 & 4 are the best of the series.

[Stupot]

At least Myst, Riven, Gabriel Knight 3, and The Longest Journey didn't feature.

I played the Longest Journey just before I came to Japan and actually really liked it.  I mean I wouldn't put it in the top 15, but I found it enjoyable.  The only problem was far too much talking and reading, and the ending was gash.  But I liked it and I have Dreamfall waiting for me when I get back home (2 weeks to go).

[lo_res_man]

Even PC gamer liked longest journey. don't tell me the ending though, I really want to play it.

[Babar]

I'm horrible at choosing one game over another, but:

Non AGS/Sierra/Lucas games:
Beneath a Steel Sky
Simon the Sorcerer 1
Kyrandia 1
Eric the Unready
Kyrandia 3
Kyrandia 2
Simon the Sorcerer 2
Broken Sword games
Discworld games

(I haven't played any Broken Sword game, so I wouldn't be able to comment on that. I guess outside Sierra and LucasArts, Westwood, Legend and Revolution Games were 3 great companies.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Curse of Monkey Island rating above any one of the 6-12 range of games is blasphemy.

[Oliwerko]

Wow, BASS made it high. I wouldn't expect that. It's one of my top favourites.