MetzO'Magic ...I respect your views...

But my opinion wasn't about new games being not worth it....
My point was about the list not being fair to the newer games..Year after year its mostly everyones choice on the older games...Not the newer games...

I just think there are so many GREAT newer games that are out right now that I have played....Some of them you can't compare to the older games....Its not a FAIR Vote in my opinion...

Well, (hoping that flotsam doesn't mind), I've taken my own advice and have compiled a list of the adventures drawn from the List 2008 that were released in 2007 and 2008 (since we're only partway through 2008). I'm going by the release dates in the PAGODA adventure game database.

Some of these games are so new that they have been released only in Europe but not in the US, or only in the US, but not in Europe, or only via download (though a release on CD/DVD is expected later). In a couple of cases, the games have (as far as I know) only been released as of today in languages other than English.

So -- here's the list of 2007-2008 adventure releases that made the List 2008, along with the number of votes each received. Let me know if I've left any games out (keeping this absolutely accurate is hard).

29 The Lost Crown
19 Culpa Innata
14 Jack Keane
13 Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder
13 Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis/vs Arsene Lupin
9 Dead Reefs
9 Dracula: Origin
8 Aura 2: The Sacred Rings
6 Art of Murder: FBI Confidential
6 Overclocked: A History of Violence
5 Agatha Christie: Evil Under the Sun
5 East Side Story
5 Destination: Treasure Island
5 Last Half of Darkness: Beyond the Spirit’s Eye
4 AGON: The Lost Sword of Toledo
4 Anacapri: The Dream
4 Perry Rhodan: Myth of the Illochim/ Immortals of Terra
4 Sam and Max: Season 1
4 Undercover: Operation Wintersun
3 Ankh 2: The Heart of Osiris
3 Belief and Betrayal
3 Diamonds in the Rough
3 Rhem 3: The Secret Library
3 Sam and Max: Season 2
2 Cleopatra: Riddle of the Tomb/A Queen’s Destiny
2 Ghost in the Sheet
2 Limbo of the Lost
2 Nancy Drew: Legend of the Crystal Skull
2 Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek
2 Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy
1 Delaware St. John: The Seacliff Tragedy
1 Dracula 3: The Path of the Dragon
1 Hotel Dusk: Room 215
1 Portal
1 Sinking Island
1 Yoomurjak’s Ring

BECKY !!! You are the Best !!!!

That is a Great list...

Works for me...I hope all the developers of the newer games feel the same way....

Lost Crown is Tops for me...

Wow! YOu did that fast Becky. Awesome! :Bravo:

Ana

I thought the list was for your favorite games YOU would recommend to New players. Doesnt matter IF they were old or new.

Catsmom -- that's right, it doesn't matter if the games are old or new -- you vote for those you'd recommend.

I pulled this "recent release list" from the overall 2008 List to distinguish newer games from older games as another way to analyze/comment on the 2008 List, because people seemed interested in looking at the newer games. It's not meant in any way to detract from the overall, complete List that's stickied above.

Thanks Becky. You always do such a fantastic job keeping all of us so informed.

Awesome job Becky - and there is no way I would mind.
How we all use the list is up to each and every one of us. I confess I started it as a way for me to find out what I should play, as I had no idea there were so many adventure games out there. Its just continued since then.
I regularly look at the list to get an idea of the newer games that people rated well, in order to think what I might play next. I will do the same this year, and bump a few of my backlog up the order.
One reason for expanding the number of game selections is to take account of the ever growing number of games. We started with 10 choices, then went to 15, and now 20 (or 21). I think thats the best way to cover the field. If we start excluding older games, do we also exclude any games that are hard to find, that you can't buy retail, that haven't been released worldwide yet, anything that won't play on xp It gets a little arbitrary and a little difficult.
In the end, its a bit of fun, and hopefully a resource for those that want to use it that way.
Now I am off to see Nickie at the darkside

Out of all the games I have played over the years I have liked probably 95% of them. Forever worlds and Limbo of the lost are the few I didnt like. I have a few friends who play adventure games and I only recommend games that would play on their systems, why recommend a game that wont?
But I do enjoy reading the list to see how my favorite games rate as favorites of other boomers.Also I like reading the list from the Darkside to see if there is a favorite game that I might try to play. I look forward to the list every year

Ana, hi,

Well, if nothing else I at least got people talking about what The List really means...



That's what reviews are for. Or do you imagine that those of us who review games do it just for the heck of it? You see, we're not all BAAG (Buy All Adventure Games) specialists. I have a limited amount of time to spend gaming, and so I want to maximise that amount of time by playing games that are good. Since I do review games myself, I'll buy the occasional game 'on spec' because I think it might be good. Such was actually the case with The Lost Crown. It wasn't even released in Europe yet, but I imported it (at a ridiculously high price of $120 by the time I had paid all the import duties) from the U.S. and reviewed it for Quandary (now metzomagic.com):

metzomagic. com The Lost Crown review

But for the most part, I try to read reviews by at least 2 or 3 reviewers that I tend to see eye-to-eye with before purchasing a game. I don't typically go by the GameRankings or metacritics web average scores, because I know the mainstream sites are unfairly harsh on adventure games. But I do use those sites as a 'launch pad' for finding reviews. So believe me, I know when a game is a stinker, because I've taken the trouble to read several reviews of it.

Now... that list that Becky compiled of the games that were released in 2007 and 2008 is interesting. 9 people, for instance, recommended Dead Reefs. Aside from Limbo of the Lost, it's got the worst reviews for a (recent) adventure game that I can remember. So do you think it's a good idea that it's fairly high up on a list of games that you would recommend others to play?

So all I'm saying is that a lot of games appear to be on that list just because they were recently released, not because they are worth playing. And that is really all I'm saying.

Regards,
MetzO'Magic
P.S. And just because an older game might be a bit difficult to get running in XP or Vista is no reason it should be excluded from The List. There are plenty of us techies lurking here who can help out.

Metzo -- I think you may be placing a lot of confidence in the opinions of reviewers, some of whom, as you mention, are not particularly interested in adventure games in general.

While it's fine to judge for yourself by placing confidence in what a reviewer has said, I find it a little strange to tell someone who has actually played a game like Dead Reefs that they aren't supposed to like it or vote to recommend it, based solely on the opinion of a reviewer or reviewers that you've read (and especially when you haven't even played or finished the game yourself).

Those of us who enjoyed Dead Reefs mostly didn't like the interface. We enjoyed the game for other reasons -- particularly (in my case) the story. It has been my observation from reading reviews from non-adventure sites, that the reviewers frequently don't finish the game before reviewing it -- so the impact of the story would not even make it into their review.

You mention gamerankings -- I've been meaning to do a comparison with that site, which might be interesting. Let me work on it a bit.

Below are the average review rankings of PC adventure games based on reviews by major sites. I got these 50 games by searching on this page. You can get a different list by using different search parameters. I searched for Adventure: General (note later changed to Adventure: All), all dates, PC platform, Best Ranking, Minimum Reviews was 10, Average score of Main Sites, 50 results.

EDIT: I did a second search for Adventure-All instead of Adventure-General, which turned up broader results. I'm editing the list below to reflect this.

You can change the parameters. For instance, I could have searched for a Minimum of 5 reviews, but that tends to give mostly just the reviews from the adventure gaming sites, and I wanted to show more of a general ranking, so I asked for a minimum of 10 reviews. You can also search for more than 10 reviews, but this restricts the numbers of games severely, because adventure games don't tend to be reviewed by lots of generalist sites (if that makes sense).

The results are below. You'll notice that a few of these games are not adventures -- so just mentally elimininate them. Despite this flaw, I think the results below do show you which adventure games the generalist sites/reviewers thought were superior.

I'll repost the top 50 from the 2008 Twisty List below that for comparison.


1. Grim Fandango 93.000%
2. The Curse of Monkey Island 89.900%
3. The Longest Journey 88.815%
4. Sam & Max: Season 1 88.063%
5. Sam & Max Episode 205: What's New, Beelzebub? 86.100%
6. Indigo Prophecy 84.898%
7. Sanitarium 84.105%
8. Syberia 83.587%
9. Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon 83.289%
10. Escape from Monkey Island PC LucasArts 83.138%
11. Sam & Max Episode 105: Reality 2.0 82.741%
12. Sam & Max Episode 201: Ice Station Santa 82.563%
13. Sam & Max Episode 202: Moai Better Blues 82.300%
14. Outcast 82.017%
15. Syberia II 81.712%
16. Sam & Max Episode 101: Culture Shock 81.500%
17. Myst IV: Revelation 81.278%
18. Sam & Max Episode 203: Night of the Raving Dead 81.231%
19. Sam & Max Episode 104: Abe Lincoln Must Die! 80.889%
20. Sam & Max Episode 106: Bright Side of the Moon 80.571%
21. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned 79.333%
22. Sam & Max Episode 102: Situation: Comedy 79.289%
23. Myst V: End of Ages 79.143%
24. Myst III: Exile 78.890%
25. Evidence: The Last Ritual 78.059%
26. Blade Runner 78.031%
27. Return to Mysterious Island 77.773%
28. Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space 77.700%
29. Dreamfall: The Longest Journey 77.058%
30. Uru: Ages Beyond Myst 76.981%
31. Law & Order: Justice is Served 76.793%
32. Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness 76.750%
33. Destination: Treasure Island 76.643%
34. The Egyptian Prophecy 76.455%
35. Runaway: A Road Adventure 76.338%
36. Still Life 75.895%
37. Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths 75.846%
38. Ankh 75.811%
39. AGON: The Mysterious Codex 75.750%
40. Omikron: The Nomad Soul 75.344%
41. Dracula: Origin 75.158%
42. Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis 74.921%
43. Nancy Drew: The White Wolf of Icicle Creek 74.833%
44. Zork Grand Inquisitor 74.818%
45. Secrets of the Ark: A Broken Sword Game 74.774%
46. Echo: Secrets of the Lost Cavern 74.750%
47. A Quiet Weekend in Capri 74.364%
48. Sam & Max Episode 103: The Mole, the Mob and the Meatball 74.267%
49. Voyage: Inspired by Jules Verne 74.235%
50. Bone: The Great Cow Race 74.192%

The result of the top 50 in the 2008 Twisty List (taken from here ), going from game #1 to game #50 (numbers on the right are the numbers of votes each game received):

1. Syberia 55
2. The Longest Journey 51
3. Grim Fandango 36
4. Syberia 2 36
5. Riven 32
6. Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within 30
7. The Lost Crown 29
8. Black Mirror 28
9. Keepsake 27
10. Dark Fall: The Journal 26
11. Sanitarium 26
12. Dreamfall 26
13. Still Life 25
14. Myst/RealMyst 24
15. Myst 3: Exile 22
16. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 21
17. Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars/Circle of Blood 20
18. Secret Files: Tunguska 20
19. AmerZone: The Explorer’s Legacy 19
20. Culpa Innata 19
21. Moment of Silence 19
22. Zork Nemesis 19
23. Runaway: A Road Adventure 18
24. Scratches 18
25. Tex Murphy: Pandora Directive 18
26. Nibiru 16
27. Zork Grand Inquisitor 16
28. Barrow Hill 15
29. The Secret of Monkey Island 15
30. Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened 15
31. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned 14
32. Jack Keane 14
33. Uru Chronicles 14
34. Return to Mysterious Island 14
35. Shivers 14
36. Amber: Journeys Beyond 13
37. Aura: Fate of the Ages 13
38. Blackstone Chronicles 13
39. Darkness Within: In Pursuit of Loath Nolder 13
40. Day of the Tentacle 13
41. The Curse of Monkey Island 13
42. The Neverhood 13
43. Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis/vs Arsene Lupin 13
44. Black Dahlia 12
45. Broken Sword 2: The Smoking Mirror 12
46. Obsidian 12
47. Tex Murphy: Under a Killing Moon 12
48. 80 Days 11
49. Riddle of the Sphinx: An Egyptian Adventure 11
50. Timelapse 11

Thanks Becky, that was a lot of work, very impressive!

Ana

Becky, hi,



Obviously, I have enough experience with adventure games to only trust reviews from certain sites, and over the years I've managed to find certain reviewers whose slant I've largely agreed with across the games we've both played. I also tend to steer clear of fan sites who give every adventure game a glowing review just because it's an adventure game.

As I said before, the numbers mean very little when it comes to adventure games, because the bad scores given by the mainstream sites inevitably drag the average down. You have to do the dirty work and actually read through a cross section of the reviews for every title. If I can tell the reviewer obviously doesn't like adventure games, then I take that review with a *very* large grain of salt. You might find this article interesting:

http://metzomagic.com/showArticle.php?index=679

It explains why I'm not especially enamoured with the way the mainstream sites normally treat adventure games ;-)

And finally... I do respect the fact that some people may have enjoyed something like Dead Reefs. Every game has its legion of followers. What I'm wondering though, is why it would appear on someone's top 20 list, which is what The List is supposed to be, no? If you're new to the genre and haven't played that many games, there's no need to go padding your submission with all the games you happened to play even if they're garbage. That just dilutes the value of The List.

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

I loved Dead Reefs.
One man's garbage is another man's treasure.

Do you think I should play more games?


It is on my top 21 list.

Fair play MaG, you are indeed correct

I suppose if someone is just going by the recommendations and doesn't bother to supplement what they glean from The List with a little research before shelling out for a game... then it's their own fault if they wind up with a stinker!

Well, I suppose we've beat this one to death, so time to call it a day. I'll admit that I can be a bit heavy-going at times...

Regards,
MetzO'Magic

What's great about the list is that it is so diverse! I did wonder though how many of the games that you put into the category of "very average" you've actually played as you have admitted on a later post that you haven't played many new games!

As for the older stuff, I've got quite a few games that were listed that will mean a visit over to your site when I have time to get round to them - & will be grateful for the help! But what about games you just can't find?

I'll just add that I loved Dead Reefs also!

I seem to be one of the culprits that have old games on my list, Rhem 2 (2005) and Alida (2004) being the most current. However, to put it in perspective, I've played over 160 games, so I've got to know exactly what kind of games I like.
I don't play many new games now, but I have experienced a few - Voyage, which I never finished and Keepsake which I liked. The newer games just don't interest me, mostly because I like the Myst-type ones, and they are not in vogue right now.

Some of us (at least myself) are somewhat influenced by the thrust or intent as I saw it of the list when it first began. Wow has been a while with the twisty list Thanks Flotsam, as long as the GB christmas poem appears I guess you have to hang in there with the twisty list Thank you.

So mine always have been my favorite in a critical and also just sheer gaming pleasure sense The ones that when I heard that opening music (Rose Tattoo, CMI or Syberia etc) just made me glow deep down. Others were the same but they also stood out from many other games and contributed something unique to the genre.

As for Dead Reefs, I really enjoyed it and not in spite of the poor interface ( it really did suffer) but because of the unique story and plot basis. Didn't make my top 20 of all time list but definitely was one of my top 10 of recent games to play.

Some things never change. Becky never ceases to amaze me. All I can say is I feel very lucky to belong to an awesome site like Gameboomers. Years ago I read a post about Faust written by Becky that just left me in awe. I just wanted Becky to know just how much I appreciate her hard work and dedication to making this the friendliest site on the web.

It was a breeze to compile my list. I just put down my 21 favorite games of all time. I never even gave a thought to when a game came out. My all time favorite game was an oldie. Gabriel Knight 2 The Beast Within.

I second that .... Becky is very fair...Appreciation in order for all the hard work she does to make us all happy.

Metzo -- your "We're Not Dead Yet" article brought back memories from the first time I read it! Some great commentary in it.

Space Quest Fan and Darlene -- wow -- thanks for that vote of confidence.

Well, I've done some comparisons of the GameRankings list and the 2008 Twisty List.

The GameRankings list is a compilation of review scores from various sites across the web (including both adventure sites and general gaming sites) and game magazines. So I would characterize the comparison as "professional" reviewers, many of whom play and review several different game genres (the GameRankings scores), as compared to the votes of (mostly) avid adventure game players (the 2008 Twisty List results).

Two further explanations -- sometimes GameRankings includes a game that our community would not label as an adventure game. Those I've just left alone. The other issue is that Sam & Max is ranked in GameRankings by individual episode and also as Sam & Max Season One, while on The List we voted only for Season One and Season Two, not the episodes. Since the Sam & Max games rank so highly on GameRankings, they dominate the top twenty available slots there.

Similarities:

Games that made the top 50 on both GameRankings and the 2008 Twisty List (although there are some differences in the place rankings within the top 50 here, simply ending up anywhere in the top 50 on both lists is, I feel, an indication that this is a very good game).

Grim Fandango
The Curse of Monkey Island
The Longest Journey
Sanitarium
Syberia
Syberia II
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned
Myst III: Exile
Return to Mysterious Island
Dreamfall
Uru
Runaway: A Road Adventure
Still Life
Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis
Zork Grand Inquisitor

Similarities, Part Deux

These are games that were rated highly on the Twisty List, but didn't meet the search parameters I chose for the GameRankings list because they had fewer than 10 reviews -- usually these are older games or (in the case of The Lost Crown) much newer games that were reviewed mostly by the adventure sites, with just a few reviews from generalist sites. I'm including their GameRankings percentages, but keep in mind that a significant portion of the grade comes from adventure sites, so these percentages do not fully reflect the views of generalist reviewers.

Riven 84 percent
Gabriel Knight: The Beast Within 92 percent
The Lost Crown 79 percent
Myst 90 percent
Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers 93 percent
Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars/Circle of Blood 84 percent


Significant Differences

There are three games that made the top 50 on GameRankings, but did not garner even one vote on this year's Twisty List.

Escape from Monkey Island
Evidence: The Last Ritual
Bone: The Great Cow Race

Although Sam & Max Season One and Season Two did garner a few votes on the Twisty List, there is a remarkable gap between the way these adventures are regarded by generalist reviewers and by the Twisty List voters. They took up 9 of the top 20 slots in GameRankings, but received only a handful of votes on the Twisty List.

Significant Differences Part Deux

These are games that made the top twenty on the Twisty List, but were ranked much lower than that by generalist reviewers. For contrast, I'm including both the Twisty List Ranking (TLR) and the GameRankings Percentage (GRP).

The Black Mirror TLR #8, GRP 64 percent
Keepsake TLR #9, GRP 69 percent
DarkFall: The Journal TLR #10, GRP 73 percent
Secret Files: Tunguska TLR tied for #17, GRP 73 percent
AmerZone: The Explorer's Legacy TLR tied for #19, GRP 73 percent
Culpa Innata TLR tied for #19, GRP 70 percent

I'm still thinking about what all this means. Is there a common factor in the games that are appreciated by both the reviewers at various generalist sites and by avid adventure gamers? Why do adventure gamers love (for instance) Black Mirror when the professional reviewers are so unimpressed with it? And why aren't more avid adventure gamers playing the Sam & Max games?

Becky....

I do not like the Sam & Max games....Maybe cause its too babiest for me Where as the Monkey games & Jack Keane game to me were different....

Sam & MaX were so matter of fact games...I can't explain it...Too Stupid in a sense....That's my opinion...

Maybe it was the Characters ...I don't really know...WHY...? I thought the Sam & Max games were for kids... UMMM