For me, it was Salammbo. I didn't think that I would enjoy it as much as I did!
What is yours?
Rusty

I would have to say Amerzone. I had bought the game, got home, started searching for some reviews and the ones I found were not too favorable. So when I started the game a few weeks later, I was expecting to not like it at all. I loved it, not only that, its in my top 10 favorites of all time.

That's easy.....Faust. It took me a long time to buy it. I knew it was dark and that really didn't appeal to me at the time. As it turned out, Faust will always be in my top 10.

Oh, and it was just icing on the cake that Mephesto's voice made me melt. <sigh>

~Dee

Dee, very similar experience for me too. We were at a mall, and my friend picked up Faust. I'm not sure why (can't remember what the box looked like), but I thought it would be gory and creepy.
Fast forward a few years. I read more about it and borrowed it from her. I really enjoyed it.
Another game I was pleasently surprised with was Cracking the Conspiracy. I am not a huge science fiction fan so I wasn't sure what to expect. The story line was well developed and the background info was amazing (in Garnet Hall).

No question ! ............. 'Outcast'.

Yes, action adventure ! But I was in that game ! The music, the scenery, the story ! Bl**dy marvellous ! ............ and all for a bargain bin 50p. Note : I'd never heard of it and I just . . . . fancied a change !!

Gelert.

For me it was Runaway,I didnt know if I would like it because of what people posted on the board about the ladies in it.Now that I finished the game I can say the chapter with the ladies in it was the best I really enjoyed the game

In my case its the Monkey Island games. I had no clue we were going to enjoy them this much!

Hey, anything with the word "monkey" in it has to be fantastic!
Rusty

I think Gabriel Knight, the third one. I'd only played a few adventures and someone gave me the game as a gift. The box cover looked like it was going to be some kill-or-be-killed shooter and I was reluctant to even open it! Boy, am I glad I did! It also introduced me to GB...I was looking for help somewhere on the web and ran into a really nice lady named WITCHEN!

Ditto on Faust. I played through the first chapter and thought, "Why the heck did this game get such good reviews? It is incomprehensible and disjointed enough to make Sanitarium look like a NYT article by comparison."

But after frequent and incessant urging by LR, I gave Faust a second chance and ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

The artwork on the box of The Longest Journey was misleading to me and I thought it was a shooter or at least an action-oriented game. When I found this board, quite a few members encouraged me to give The Longest Journey a try, and I'm so thankful, because it's one of my favorite games!

Well, this is a weird one for me. Actually...I try to keep my expections low for EVERY adventure game, so that way I'm usually really pleasantly surprised, so...this question doesn't really apply to straight adventures for me. MOST of them turn out better than I initially expected.

The two games that stand out in my mind are Anachronox and Diablo II: Lord of Destruction (online). I did NOT expect to like EITHER of these games and LOVE them both. Of course, Anachronox is the adventure of the two, but...I love Diablo II as well, which was a HUGE surprise to me.

Lots of games are like that. Sanitarium, Faust, Grim Fandango, Nightlong, Ripper, Amerzone, and Myst.

In the case of most of these, the box art put me off. But Myst was my first adventure game. Before I played Myst I thought all computer games were action games.

Nope it wasn't TLJ for me - but this sentence made me think. I was trying to recall which game would fit this question and was not sure til I saw what Bryans Mom said.

I walked by Gabriel Knight 2 a bunch of times. The box art was this wolf claw tearing through fabric. I glanced at the box and thought blech - looks like a survival shooter. Finally looked at it more closely one day and flipped the box over. Saw the screens and decided to give it a try. It had just released and I wasn't much of an online person back then. Well of course as soon as I started I was wowed. Backtracked and got GK1.

Has to be one of the most misleading box art choices around.

For me it was the edutainment games - Bioscopia, Physicus, and Chemicus. I expected the emphasis to be on the educational side, but I thoroughly enjoyed them too.

GK2. i bought it kind of randomly when i was in college because it was one of the few adventures still available for the mac. it had been released several years before... not sure why it took me so long to try it. (maybe because of that M rating... i had to wait until i had my very own credit card rather than borrowing Dad's?!) i played through about half at school but ran into a bug (okay, it wasn't actually a bug, it was user error). finally worked through it with sierra tech support right after finals (back when they were still helpful) and finished the game up a few days after school let out. loved it so much i played through again from the beginning!

it had been a long time since a game gripped me like that (for a combination of reasons -- fewer games i could play b/c i still used a mac, not much time because i was in college...) but it'll always be one of my favorites.

-emily

Long before I discovered GameBoomers, I used to shop for my games just by browsing in the stores. I found Amber and Morpheus in bargain bins, and bought them just because they were cheap. Boy, was I surprised at how much fun they were.

I almost didn't buy Amerzone, because, at first glance, the box artwork made me think it was some sort of jungle combat game, but then I read a little further and decided to give it a try. Ditto, on the very pleasant surprise!

Nightlong, without a doubt. Hated the box art. It looked violent and boring! I ignored this game for a long time for that ridiculous reason. But I was going through a phase of not having enough games to be played (sound familiar? ) and I got found it quite by accident REALLY cheap (under $10) and I ended up loving it. It's a really great game that I think a lot of people pass up just because it doesn't "look" good.

Has to be Hitchcock: The Final Cut......... for 'me'! I'm a point and click girl and was really put off when I found out that it was a keyboard game. :-(

When I finally broke down and tried it, I realized that I not only was it not as difficult as I thought that it would be, but it was also very entertaining! I'm glad that I played it. It's not in my top 10, but it's definitely worth playing! It was fun!

Yvonne

I would have to say, Vampire The Masquerade Redemption.

Lone Wolf

Ark of time. for some reason i thought it was another of the many myst clones. maybe because part of it takes place in atlantis. Instead i found a very enjoyable 3rd person adventure. the only bad thing was i had to play it on my win 95 system because it requires a vesa compatible video card and on that system i have very old speakers which are not very good.

Torin's Passage - I was expecting it to be more of a kid's game and found out how wrong I was.

Really Syd? I actually don't own Torin's Passage just for the reason you gave.

~Dee