[MikaelS]

Simply, let's add on this topic some reasonings what you like in your favourite adventure games and what you feel ever AG should have. I'll start:


- Good main character you can perhaps relate to. Sense of humor and witty sarcasm is always a plus.
- Bad voice acting can always put you off or kill the feeling, so be careful when you choose actor/s.
- Music obviously has to be good and suit the atmosphere.
- For me personally, I feel that EVERY adventure game should have a strong presence of good, adult sense of humor! It spices things up a lot.
- Also my personal view, but too many MECHANICAL PUZZLES are lame. That's why, eventhough I liked Syberias, they never were 'great' to me.
- this might sounds weird, but I like it when main characters travel a lot around the world like in Indiana Jones and Broken Swords to different, and perhaps excotic locations. It makes things more exciting and less boring.
- no annoying sneaking too much or time limits. They should be kept in games of other genre. This made Dreamfall a big disappointment for me. On small amounts such as in Broken Sword 1, it's ok, but too much is too much, and fro example there was too much in BS3 and BS4. If you wanna play sneaking game, go buy metal gear solid or something, but in my opinion mixing sneaking and adventure is a bad idea.
- Woman/heroine with a sharp tongue... like Nico from Broken Swords. They make things funnier.


I'll stop for now and let you give your opinions.

[D.C.]

Full immersion. This is created through a variety of things - including story, characters, music, production values, etc. All the games I consider classics are the ones that have fully immersed me into their world and story. Puzzles can be important too, but I for one loved Dreamfall and consider it amongst the best even though it didn't have many traditional puzzles.

[DomStLeger]

I'd have to say a good Plot/Story is my main must have; it's what I play for. As part of that you obviously need good characters, dialogue, and presentation. I prefer games like Dreamfall (relatively light gameplay/challenge) to games like Myst (lots of puzzles etc but not much of a story),

[MikaelS]

Yeah, plot/story is obvious.

I go now back to mechanical puzzles. In few adventure games there has been some kind of "ancient temple" or something, which are FULL of mechanical puzzles. I always get annoyed when I'm seeing I gotta go in one of those next.

[colpet]

Must have:
Good puzzles
Mouse controlled interface
No action or timed bits

Strongly prefer:
Solitary exploration
Minimal dialogue and character interaction
Mechanical puzzles
A story that unfolds through exploration - reading journals, cut scenes
1st person perspective

[Bobske]

Originally Posted by D.C.

Full immersion. This is created through a variety of things - including story, characters, music, production values, etc. All the games I consider classics are the ones that have fully immersed me into their world and story. Puzzles can be important too, but I for one loved Dreamfall and consider it amongst the best even though it didn't have many traditional puzzles.

This sums it up for me! Full Immersion!

I don't care if the graphics are butt ugly, the gameplay non-existent and the story cliche, if the atmosphere is right, I'll probably play it and love it!

Sure a good story with excellent gameplay is what we all want, but atmosphere is more important to me. That's the reason why I love games like The Dreamweb, Phantasmagoria and Rise of the Dragon. the may not be considered classics but I was fully immersed into the game world...

[SnorkleCat]

Must have good writing and strong story...these two things are not quite the same. A good example of a games that have both would be something like Grim Fandango and the Mysts.

I like atypical and interesting heroes/heroines (more Mannys fewer Nina Kalenkovs)

Good musical and sound effects scores are of great importance too.

As for voice acting- I'd rather read subtitles than sit through poor voice acting, so I could take it or leave it. I'd rather they put the work into the music and sound if it is a toss up between that and acting. Of course, that said, good voice acting makes a game very, very enjoyable.

As for puzzles...I don't insist on any particular type of game play, I just insist puzzles be seemlessly integrated into the story. An example of how this is NOT done correctly is in Tunguska, where the story is almost an afterthought and the puzzles are both numerous and pointless. It's a souless combination.

[ILoveYou]

a) Non-humor, dark-themed story but nothing too depressing
b) 3rd person perspective
c) Point & click's are my favorite's

[MikaelS]

yeah, atmospehere is probably the most important thing. For example in Broken Sword 1, whatever location you went to, you could almost feel the presence and history of templars and how well that went together with location and story. On Gabriel Knight 3, the atmosphere and the location were just greatly mixed up with true myths/history. That was some piece of work.

[Crapstorm]

"Full immersion" is the effect that an adventure game has on a player who really enjoys it, but it doesn't really answer the question. What makes the game fully immersive? For me, it's really clever, challenging puzzles. Those things can get stuck in my head for days, like an infectious pop song. Games like Obsidian and Myst III wouldn't let me go, even after I had turned the computer off. That's how I get immersed.

[Hysteria]

Ok, this is my opinion:
1) no humor, I prefer something more serious. BUT, I can play some humor added game, like Broken Sword I.
2) not point and click, I prefer keyboard gameplay but oh, well, point and click will do just fine when I have no options and some game is really good (there are lot of examples )
3) 3rd person perspective
4) nice, melodic instrumental
5) exotic places(!), for example: charmed, beautiful woods or dark mysterious ones, ancient places, caves, something between reality and fiction...
6) good-looking character, non-humor ones...
7) non cartoon graphics (!)
8) not too difficult puzzles
And I have to agree with this - no annoying sneaking too much or time limits.
& of course, the plot that will spin your brain and your imagination, that will leave you with no breath because of it's story and you are going to play the game with pleasure to the end.
That's about it.

[MikaelS]

When I said humor...let me rephrase:

In games like Discworld and Monkey Islands, the game more or less relies on great humor throughout the games. It's great on them. Then on games such as Gabriel Knights and Broken Swords, it'd be stupid to have amounts of humor such as Discworlds and Monkey Islands, but it's present there in very appropriate dozes and places. Random witty comments from Gabriel makes it enough humor for me in Gabriel Knights.

[MuyaMan]

I need likable characters, mainly the protagonist but not only. Sophia Hapgood (from Fate of Atlantis) is a good example, and so is Joey from BASS. Even Kriminalkommissar Leber from GK2 was pretty enjoyable in his own special way.
Also, some reading can be nice and may give a little more depth to the game (again, Indiana Jones comes to mind), but in Syberia, for example, they just throw a 30-page diary at you at some point (just once? maybe more, not sure... there is another in Syberia II), which really starts to become a chore... You see this thing and you're like "let's save and go do something else".
Lots of travel and exotic places (like someone mentioned above) are also cool.

[MadTricks]

plot/story,they are like a great book which you just can't put down.

Just AG's are more intelligent than other genres...for me.

[cwapitm]

-Great characters
-Good story
-Puzzles that are neither too hard nor too easy
-Sometimes some humor, though it doesn't always have to be humorous
-No timed puzzles
-No action, or if there is it should at least be really easy
-No dead ends

I don't mind which format it is in. 1st or 3rd, point and click or keyboard. As long as the puzzles aren't too hard.

[bored]

ATMOSPHERE is the most important Black Mirror

[mysfit]

i think the best games have to have good interaction with the player... well, me, that is. however subjective this is interaction is, it includes a balance of immersion/atmosphere, interface/gameplay and plot/characters. i've given up on potentially cool games just because the controls sucked (lame, but this seems to happen the most with horror games). i found Dreamfall HIGHLY disappointing as there seemed to be little interaction - the atmosphere and characters where top rate, but it felt like there was little actual gameplay between cut scenes. Whereas games like Gabriel Knight 3 and Grim Fandango i was enjoyed a lot because i was SO involved with playing the game. Mechanical and logical puzzles, even timed puzzles can be fun but really only when they fit into the game. This was another area that was frustrating with Dreamfall, the logic puzzles were repetitive and felt dropped in, I mean why would a factory in Russia have same kind of weird lock as an old hotel and a police lock in New Port? I just finished playing Nancy Drew: Danger By Design and I loved the codes and the mechanical puzzles because, frustrating as they were at times, they mostly worked in the context of the game.

(Sorry to rip so much on Dreamfall. I know a lot of people like it, but beautiful as it was, I'm still bitter about it.)

[byf43]

For me a good story is all important. The same goes for humor. Also I really like the adventure games where the whole game isn't lost just because I do something wrong or not in the correct order.

I also like adventure games to be cozy. But even the more scary/exciting ones are also ok.

Puzzles are great, but please keep them within reason. Sometimes they are pretty far out and can almost destroy a whole game by being overcomplicated.

[LeisureSuitedLooney]

hmmm...this is an interesting thread, because of the sheer variety of factors that make a game fun for the individual player. Take 2 of my all-time favorites, for example: Shivers and Leisure Suit Larry 7. Both are very different on the surface, but looking at them comparatively, I can see a trend in games that I like to play:

-Both have very immersive settings. Shivers, set in and around a haunted museum, sets a very creepy tone. Appropriate for a suspense-horror game where your trapped in a museum overnight.

LSL7, on the other hand, is set on a cruise ship. It's bright, peppy, over-the-top--like being on a real singles cruise. And it's very silly, befitting the cartoon style and absurd situations.

-Both games have a similar open-endedness. Being stuck inside a locked museum, or on a cruise ship at sea, both games have a setting where you can--for the most part--explore the environments in a somewhat nonlinear fashion. I prefer non-linear gameplay to linear, as I like to feel that I'm guiding the story, not the other way around.

-Both games have puzzles that feel appropriate to the setting. In LSL7 for instance, the puzzles related to activities and competitions designed to help passengers win a shipboard competition. In Shivers, actions you performed had you interaction with the displays and exhibits, and each area's displays were themed, like in a real museum.

Of course, these 2 games are just examples...I play many other adventure games, many of which have only some, or even none, of those qualities. But these are my favorites, and they DO seem to have a lot in common, in terms of structure.

[Ariel Type]

-Well-written, immersive and believable gameworld;
-High level of interactivity;
-The specific and recognized atmosphere/style;
-Rich and long storyline;
-Thought-out puzzles, that vary in style, difficulty and are well integrated into the gameworld;
-Strong characetrs;
-Fun gameplay.