Easiest and toughest games you've played
 

What's the easiest and hardest game you have played?

Hardest for me would probably be a text adventure trying to find the right verb. Graphically, definitely Schizm which I gave up on at one of the first puzzles. Other games I finished but found very difficult when I played were Riven, Space Quest (random deaths and dead ends! :frusty:) and Sam & Max Hit The Road (I was very young playing all of them). Some of the Sherlock Holmes were very hard too. There was also an oldie called Countdown, where the whole game was you escaping from jail. Every section resulted in death if you didn't do exactly the right thing, plus there was a timer on the whole game!

The easiest for me is definitely Adam's Venture. You don't have to think at all! The only keys used are arrows, space to jump and enter to use. The objects you need to pick up are all sparkly. There's no inventory - when you want to interact with something you just press enter and the appropriate item is used. The character tells you what to do next. I really wonder how they can possibly dumb down adventure games any more! The recent Back To The Future is very easy too, but at least it has real puzzles :)

Riven is the toughest game I've played, and I think Barrow Hill is one of the easier ones. I love both!

Well, I usually get stuck at something no mater the game!

If it's 3d I had to say I had a nasty time with Farenheit colour controls all over the game (especialy in the storm chapther part!) and took me long to get to the next chapters.

And the easiest from the recent period I would say Jolly Rover.
And from the 90's I think MI 3 was easy.

Door puzzles with symbols are also a pain in my _ _ _ in almost every game !!!

But every game has easy and hard puzzles depending on what type of puzzles you feel comfortable with , or what controls.

Well, I'm not sure about easiest as I've played so many dead easy adventure games by now that they all sort of blend together.

But the hardest I've played is probably Myst 4... which I found quite a bit harder than even Riven, for some reason.
I suspect the reason is the puzzles in Myst 4 felt a lot more vague... while Riven had very tough puzzles, they felt more specific somehow.

About easiest games... if you discount modern adventure games, where so many are really easy... if I think back at classic adventure games, the easiest might have been Space Quest 1 VGA (sadly played this one before the original).
That, or maybe Police Quest 1... the only puzzle I was really stuck on was because of horrible design -

Spoiler:

when you have to call directory assistance for the number to the cab company... the number you have to call is 411, the US directory assistance number... it's assumed you already know this, you can't find it in the game (at least I think so, otherwise I've always missed it.

Great idea for a topic!

Hardest would definitely be the Myst games, especially Riven. I had to use walkthroughs to get anywhere in those games...I could barely do a single puzzle by myself, but it was also one of the first games I tried, and I was quite young. :P

Not sure what the easiest game would be. Probably just inventory puzzle games, maybe "The Longest Journey". :)

I'm a wimp
 

The really hard games, like Riven, I gave up right away, as they were just too hard and they didn't keep my interest. So, I can't comment on them.

of the games that I finished, Simon the Sorcerer 1 was probably my hardest. There were so many puzzles, so many people you had to do things for, it was just really hard. Of course, I didn't have the internet at that time and if I was stuck I had to call my sister who had internet and ask her to look it up and she would give me a little clue.

the easiest game probably was Torin's passage. Other than the hill puzzle, everything was pretty laid out. that makes it a great game for my grand kids to play now.

Space Quest and Sam & Max were easy games I beat without a walkthrough. The hardest games I ever played were the two Manhunter games. They had a lot of really difficult arcade sequences that had to be replayed over and over until you got it right.

Dracula: Path of the Dragon was tough with all those blood tests. And the final symbol puzzle was a head scratcher.

Zork: Grand Inquisitor was fun but not too challenging.

Hardest is definitely Schizm. It's so hard I don't even understand the walkthrough.:frusty:

Easiest is Undercover: Operation Wintersun, it's also the most boring game I've played.:r

Dracula 3: Path of the Dragon I also had a lot of trouble with. It started out great with lots of really cool very doable puzzles but somewehre at the start of the (extremely long) third act they suddenly started pushing up the difficulty to an impossible level. The last couple of locations I played with a walkthoughprintout next to me.

The easiest adventure I've played so far is almost without the doubt the "15 Days". It has no gameplay at all. "Back to the Future" would probably be on the second place, though I'm enjoying it otherwise as a big fan of the movie triology.

As for the hardest adventure I've played, I'm not so certain. Generally, I'm not very good at puzzles even though I do like them. So I might classify titles that are puzzle rich, like "Sherlock Holmes vs Arsene Lupin" and "Sherlock Holmes vs Jack the Ripper", as the more difficult games I've played. Also, I remember I was struggling quite a bit with the first "Black Mirror" game, especially with those slider puzzles. :frusty:

I don't think we can have an easy conversation without Full Throttle involved. The game was crazy fun, but it was short, and almost every main puzzle was recycled from all of Lucas Arts other iconic games.

Another easy but fun game was Gilbert Goodmate. That's one of the few games that could have benefitted from pixel hunting or maybe a few more hotspots per scene to throw you off.

One of the hardest games was Escape From Monkey Island. Good grief, I was stumped from start to finish and I was a very experienced adventure gamer at the time. From memory puzzles, timiing puzzles, purposely whacky and irrational puzzles, difficult controls. I feel that LA was trying to break the adventure mold a little too much. It wasn't a bad idea because at that point every Lucas game was a wash and repeat type, but it was just too much.

Hmmn. You know, I'm not sure that what I consider easy games even qualify as proper AGs, and really, the rest were or are considerably difficult, mostly just in determining what the developer wants you to think. I suppose I'd say Squinky's games are the 'easiest' AGs I've played, though most of them are more interactive stories than games.

The hardest is sort of a three way tie between Riven, Schizm (I agree 100%, Grey; I never completed the blasted game, and don't care if I ever do), and Rama.

easiest, probably Alter-Ego. not a particularly bad game but certainly not great either. and very easy

hardest is a bit trickier... I was stuck for ages on Cruise For A Corpse but I was rather new to the genre when I first played it and much of it wasn't so much to do with difficult puzzles as finding the right action (be it a line of dialogue, searching a pot that was empty the last fifty times you checked or just walking past the right door in the right direction) to advance the clock
I got stuck on Perry Rhodan and Star Trek Final Unity as well, both times for the same reason; a sound puzzle. all the tones sounded alike to me so I was forced to consult a walkthrough in Star Trek's case and trial and error in Rhodan's since my internet was down for a week
I wouldn't consider it fair to call any of those difficult for those reasons though. but it's hard to remember a game that really was difficult because once it's completed and the solution is known it generally feels "oh THAT's how it's done, that was easy after all and shouldn't have taken me hours..." or at least if the puzzles make sense they tend to feel like that when looking back

Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis aka Holmes vs. Lupin without a walkthrough is an incredibly hard game. At one point you have a long series of logic puzzles that are super-difficult.

Games like Gray Matter and Lost Horizon are very lightly challenging but largely easy but in a way I like.

Then there are games like the casual/hidden object ones that I find insultingly easy.

The Feeble Files was by far the hardest adventure I have played so far. Some puzzles were really illogical and unfair, especially the mini games.

The easiest? Hm, probably Mata Hari.

"Hardest" in a good, logical way - probably TimeQuest. It is so unlinear that you can spend hours and hours just exploring it. But the time travel concept and puzzles involving different historical events are great fun.
Woodruff is pretty tough with all the options given. It gets almost impossible near the end, but I still love the game, and it has its own weird logic.

As for the "easiest", there is too much to choose from, especially in recent years.

Hardest? Take your pick, any of the MYST games, none of which I ever finished, those, IMHO, aren;t even real AG's, but a collection of really hard puzzles strung together with the thinnest of stories. But amongst those kind of games, I have to agree with some here, Schizm is just mind blowing hard, like others said, even with the walktrhogh I didn't understand, and sometimes couldn't fnish, the puzzles:crazy::frusty:

Easiest? There are quite a few, but Dreamfall comes to mind first, again, almost not an AG but an interactive story; Still enjoyed it, but alas

The hardest was every game I played before I had internet!

Joke aside, that really is an important factor when attempting to judge difficulty because we are just an alt-tab away from an answer now. I've probably played some real tough newer games but none stick in my head because I looked up hints or answers shortly after getting stuck; whereas I can recall being stuck on single puzzles for days on Discworld 2.

I've played a number of AGs that crash horribly on my system if I alt tab out, so I tend not to use a walkthrough anymore, even when I really wish I could have one. I don't like printing them off anymore, because I tend to misplace them. I like to have UHS open, but certain games kept crashing or going buggy, and I just got uptight and stopped playing when I got stuck. Then I get too busy and don't go back for months or even years.

Well, nowadays I actually use my phone for a lot of game walkthroughs, so if you have a newer phone that is a nice solution to alt-tabbing.