I’ve been recommending PC games to my casual gaming friend with quite a bit of success. He has become hooked on both Pirates and Rome and now has me looking for a game his father might like.
I don’t know the father personally, but he has distinctive gaming tastes that are a bit out of my balliwick.
He played and loved the original Myst and Return to Zork. He liked Riven well enough, but was a little frsutrated by it. He hasn’t touched another Myst game since.
He likes puzzles that aren’t random or solved by whim; he’s a problem solver by nature.
So what recent adventure game with good puzzles and a rich world could I recommend to him? (Yeah, I could go look at Gamespot or my pile of CGMs, but this place is more convenient.)
Aura: Fate of the Ages is a good adventure game with an emphasis on puzzles over story and exploration. In fact, the less-than-stellar reviews it received are generally based on the fact that it was so much of a puzzler that it was hard to even call it an adventure game. But the puzzles are good and challenging so he might dig it.
Neither of those games is for people who don’t like non logical puzzles, because they are absolutely filled with them. I love both of them, but they sound like a bad matchup for what you are requesting.
I didn’t find Grim Fandango’s puzzles to be any less logical than the original Myst – both had puzzles with obscure solutions, but they had internal logic.
Most of the recent & semi-recent classics have been covered. Sanitarium, Myst 4: Revelation, and Obsidian have been well reviewed, but I haven’t played them. Obsidian mixes logic puzzles with those that need hand-eye coordination, so this might not be a good fit.
I don’t remember hand-eye coordination puzzles in Obsidian. I heartily recommend it though, as it’s one of two “Myst-like” puzzle adventures I’ve ever finished (the second being The 7th Guest, which I’d also recommend).
How about stuff like Gabriel Knight 3, Rendeszvous With Rama and the like too? Sierra had quite a few (stay away from Phantasmagoria, though… bleh)
Of course, I have no idea where you’d find these things other than used these days.
I wish I still had my copy of Obsidian, but it got loaned to the ex’s father before she was the ex, alas. (And it’s kinda okay; her dad I liked a lot. )
As mentioned above, I’d recommend Syberia (and its sequel Syberia 2). They stand up as, arguably, being the best the Adventure genre has to offer. An interesting, original story combined with some not-too-difficult puzzles along the way.
There’s a fun puzzle game called In Memoriam (it’s called Missing Since January in the US). It’s not an adventure game, but it’s based on logical puzzles and searching for clues all over the internet and in puzzles that are in-game. The story involves a Da Vinci Code-esque cult, and the kidnapping of 2 journalists.
Heh. I’ll do that. Apparently the father confessed that Pirates “looked interesting”. So maybe my friend will let him have a go at that.
Thanks for the recommendations, people. I’m familiar with the Lucas games (of course) and will include them in the round-up though something more immediately available is the likely course.
