
"Typical. I always used to enjoy adventure games, and was hoping to lead you through this list of some of the greatest point-and-click adventures ever released.
"Unfortunately, it looks like now I'm going to have to spend the whole time dealing with this fuckin' wasp.
"...Stop telling me not to swear, mammy! There's a fuckin' wasp in here! God, I really hope it doesn't sting me on the fuckin' butthole!"
Typically for LucasArts games, death was almost impossible in Monkey Island, with the focus on exploration, character interaction, puzzles, and the funnies. The aim seemed to be giving the player a real good time, keeping the interface stripped-back, rather than frustrating them with narrative dead-ends and obtuse puzzles.
Get this: it was inspired by Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean theme park ride. Having gone on the ride as a child, Ron Gilbert always wished he could get off and explore the pirate world. In some sort of irony, when Disney bought LucasFilm, one of its first moves was to close down LucasArts.
Rather than star Deckard, and follow the plot of the movie which inspired it, Blade Runner starred a character called Ray McCory and focused on a parallel plot that, well, more or less followed the plot of the movie which inspired it.
Nevertheless, the pre-rendered backdrops were gorgeous, you got to fanny around with that machine which analyses photographs, and use Voight-Kampf empathy tests on suspects. Its production values were off the chart, with several of the movie cast (NOT Harrison "Plane Crash" Ford) even reprising their roles; a rarity at the time.
Notably, this wasn't the first Blade Runner game; there was one released for 8-bit home computers, but due to being unable to acquire the movie rights, publisher CRL described it as "video game interpretation of the film score" by Vangelis.
The series returned in 2013 with a fifth instalment, having wrongly embarked - for 3 and 4 - into ill-advised 3D territory. Those were horrible.
Nevertheless, the self-consciously wacky humour - apparent even in the early cut-scenes set in the "real" world - failed to undercut the over-the-top silliness of cartoons in the way Who Framed Roger Rabbit? managed.
Also, there was no getting away from the static nature of Lloyd's avatar, who spent most of the time staring into space, or failing to convincingly interact with his environment. No offence to the man, but judging from his dead-eyed performance in anything other than Back to the Future, this might've been the perfect role for him.
What's that? I'm having a pop at a global treasure? And? And!
It offered a unique gameplay conceit; players could learn to perform tunes on a magical "distaff" - which would cast spells. You know: a bit like in Nintendo's Ocarina of Time. Unusually for an adventure, there were three difficulty levels, which affected how accurate your tune-playing needed to be.
With a time-travelling plot that spanned three different time periods, each featuring a different protagonist, puzzles would often require a solution which necessitated all three characters working in conjunction. Nicely, the entirety of the original Maniac Mansion could be played within Day of the Tentacle, on an in-game Commodore 64.
With a setting and visual style inspired by Mexico's Day of the Dead festival - as later seen in Disney's Coco - Grim Fandango was a hard-boiled, and frequently funny, noir detective tale, which just happened to star a skeletal "travel agent".
Its bizarre, twisty-turny, plot was spread over a span of four years, which lead character Manny navigated via an almost invisible interface. Unlike most other adventures, the on-screen cues were all character-led; if there was an object Manny could interact with, his head would turn to look at it. Imagine how exhausting that'd be in real life.
It was apparently inspired, in part, by Joss "His Ex-Wife Doesn't Like Him" Whedon's Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and main character April displays the same sort of knowing "sass" Whedon employs for his female characters. You know: when he isn't trying to get off with the actors playing them, allegedly.
A sequel was released in 2006, with a crowd-funded second sequel being pumped out in 2014.
"Anyway. Let's just crack on, and enjoy the rest of this list together."
Certainly, Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers features some very of-its-time misogyny - see Wilco's encounter above with the Latex Babes of Estros - but had a completely unique concept.
To wit: Wilco could travel along his own timestream, entering future, as-yet-to-be-released games, as well as earlier instalments in the series (with the graphics reverting to a more primitive style, and encounting a group of aliens who mock him as "Mr Look-At-Me-I'm-In-VGA").
The visceral horror nonsense boasted a censorship option, allowing the player to decide whether the screen should be blurred to remove violent or sexual content. Indeed, a rape sequence received widespread criticism, though given the level of the actors' performance, the soap-y music, and primitive graphics, is more absurd than it is disturbing. Nevertheless, there's a general tone of violence towards women which makes it a difficult experience in today's climate. Not least given Williams' prior output.
Still, the controversy surrounding the adult nature of the content doubtless helped it to become a commercial success, and it became Sierra's biggest-selling game up until that point (we tend to forget that Half-Life was later released under the Sierra banner).
Alas, it was a short-lived victory. Shortly after the company's sale, CUC was bought by Cedant International - and was implicated in a massive accounting scandal, with two of CUC's top executives going to prison for fraud. Sierra was eventually sold on to Havas Interactive, and the brand still exists to this day - now owned by Activision, which released a new King's Quest in 2015.
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