Adventure Games are Great But... (giveaways included)

OPUS also has the Adventure Pals link ^^
And thanks for the giveaways, won't join any though :)

Yeah, as a fan of point-and-clicks, that always kind of bothered me.
"Classic Adventure" was used for a time, especially in the heyday of "Action Adventure" as a genre.
But nothing broke out and redefined the label strongly enough to ever change it. And I don't really have any good suggestions for what a different label would be. So yep... Adventure it is! :)

My favorite is still Grim Fandango. Story, characters, puzzles (although a few are a bit hmm...), music, style, voicework, and everything else I love about a good adventure are all just about perfect in that one.

Adventure games earned their name back in the day when Action games and Adventure games were less combined. Wanna shoot dudes? Action. Wanna experience a story? Adventure. It wasn't until the 90's that the two genres became intertwined enough that you'd get a story in your shooter or hack/slash in your story.

let's start with saying that not all games are adventures of some sort - tetris most certainly isn't. As a matter of fact, Adventure games are really defined by that they are not - they are not RPGs, they are not action games, they are not puzzle games.

But now for the matter at hand. The term "adventure game" is almost as old as computing itself, starting as text adventures (as opposed to, say, pong). And these early adventure games did involve actual adventure, such as the adventures in the land of Zork, or the adventure of the King's Quest.
I also want to point out that "Adventure Game" originally meant a game like "Adventure" (another name for Colossal Cave Adventure, 1976), so it's referring to the product not the term, in the same way that "World Series" is allegedly named that way because it was originally sponsored by the World Newspaper note that there is some dispute as to this origin
For better or worse, the terminology stayed, and while later genres were split off (e.g. Role Playing Game), what remained is still called "adventure" to this day.

All things considered, perhaps we should call it interactive narratives? That pretty much covers the space between interactive novel and interactive movie.

I am more of an RPGer, but some adventure games are good. Thanks for the giveaway

When HOG's became the new term for adventure games. >.<
Yay new adventure, oh wait another HOG.

Point and click always been my favorite genre, had a short revival in my opinion with Daedelic Entertainment, giving us a new adventure game every few months, but they had to make other games, and Pendulo Studio's are slow too so there are only the occasional odd adventure game out, like Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure.

But you can say most games have a bit of action too, many are so diverse that's why i won't categorize my steam games, it's fits this but also that.

I agree that Adventure is a genre name that has been misused and abused. In my personal game list, I use a major genre called Narrative (which doesn't necessarily means wordy), with the classic subgenres, and another called Action-adventure for other games which are also called 'adventure games'.

As far as Steam labels go, so many games are mislabeled it's a joke.

Said that, point and click graphic adventure was one of my most fav genres. However I got bit tired of them nowadays, I don't see myself paying for one atm, I rarely enter giveaways for them here either. I have replayed some old favs (DOTT, The Dig, MI 1 & 2) constantly over the years, but the only new one I have is Deponia Complete Journey. I have a few oldies in Gog too and also a modern one but don't remember its name.

Thank you and bump :)

I like all the types of games you mentioned, well except visual novels as I have yet to try them but I'm sure I would! I mostly like games where you can stop and think, and don't need fast reaction times. (I'm one of those chronic fatiguey types)

I guess when I think of an adventure game I picture something like LoZ, but I agree many games are an adventure, while not strictly or even at all falling within that genre. I guess it helps to have more labels to narrow down what you want, when they're labelled right anyway. :)

Many game genres have names that just barely describe what they're about. To this day every time I list the types of games I like I cringe at a few of the names, but to me the one that takes the cake is action-adventure, you can toss games that feel completely different inside of that category.

I think that all descriptors are fine as long as they're reasonably well understood and widely used. 'Adventure' is fine. When I talk about adventure games people understand what I'm talking about.

As for favourites. I enjoyed the Blackwell series quite a bit in recent years.

By the way, you could make this complaint on pretty much any genre. Roleplaying games? Aren't you always playing a role in games? Strategy games? Don't you always need some strategy for advancing in a game? Simulation? Don't all games simulate something?

Seems like a silly complaint to me.

I do love a good adventure. I started with Infocom and Level 9 text adventures in the mid 1980s and have stuck with them ever since. They were and remain wonderful playgrounds to explore and experiment in and have a long history of wonderful humour even while other games were largely simple shooters and sports titles. Infocom's text adventures and Lucasarts' graphic adventures were glorious. Sometimes there were experiments to combine the intuitive controls of arcade games with the depth of adventures, with varying success. The finest of them in my opinion is the utterly brilliant Mercenary series, first person 3D games that were decades ahead of their time.

Then in the 1990s with the massive overnight explosion of storage space created by the introduction of CD-ROM came new experiments with video, high-resolution graphics and a wealth of material to seek out and discover. Some criticised them for a lack of action, but not me. I loved to see what developers could do when they had room to play. I think the height of that was the now forgotten game Total Distortion. I literally spent hours just playing with the dozens of digital toys available before even starting the game proper.

I still go back to my old favourites from time to time and remember how much I loved and still love opening entire worlds to peacefully explore on my computer. I can enjoy many types of games today, yet adventures will always be something special and very dear to my heart.