Hmm, what is it about adventure games? Besides the fact that I've been playing them since I was 8?
It's the story. I'm a story junkie. Books, movies, TV, and games, the medium doesn't matter so long as the story is good. Adventure games, if they're really good, can have a story that is deeper than almost any of those other mediums (with the exception of some TV shows and some complex novels.) But more than just having a good story, it's a different form of storytelling. I appreciate the slow unfolding of story, the discovery that works often like a good mystery. I like my games long, with oodles of different locations, characters, objects, goals, and tasks. And sometimes, it's only at the end that all of those things really come together in a coherent story, but you had fun along the way.
My favorite AG of all time was The Longest Journey, which wowed me because I had been playing games for a long time already, and then that one seemed to have everything I'd ever loved about AG all together. The puzzles were challenging, but not impossible. The dialogue was extremely well-written and the plot well-paced. The world was original and exciting. And constantly changing. You constantly have different things to do, different places and people to talk to. I get bored of games in which I'm always in the same general area, with the same locations and the same people, or alternately (Syberia *cough*) when the locations keep changing, but the goals/tasks are the same.
The first AG to really blow my mind was the first Gabriel Knight. I had been playing Sierra games for a while at that point, but I hadn't seen anything with that depth of plot, character, and what felt like an adult mindset (to a 14 year old). Probably still in my top 5 games ever.
I'm not big on puzzles for the sake of puzzles. I like to have to constantly think, but not pull out my hair. Phoenix Wright games are great at that. Just enough challenge to require you to think about things, but not so much that you ever really get stuck and put down the game. How many times has a puzzle made you put down a game and never go back? I must be losing my patience, because it's happening to me more and more.
Umm, I think this got long, and became something of a personal manifesto. I have a bad habit of doing that when it comes to AG's.
