I was wondering if you had as many problems as I did in coming up with your twenty choices for the list. Why did you vote the way you did and what games did you feel bad about having to leave off your list?

The biggest surprise for me personally is that Gabriel Knight 2 "The Beast Within" is still the number one game for me. The game is 14 years old and usually my favorite games are the puzzle games with humor. This was the first game I ever played that I actually cared about the characters as if they were real people. I also loved that you get to play the game as two different characters. The map feature that let you know if you still had tasks to complete in an area was also very helpful. I really can't say enough about how awesome the plot was in not just this game but the entire Gabriel Knight series. If you have not played any of the Gabriel Knight games please do yourself a favor. You will be glad you did.

As far as the rest of my list since I enjoy the puzzle games with humor so it was easy for me to list the Monkey Island, Discword, Simon the Sorcerer, Day of the Tentacle, Ankh, Tony Tough and Fable games.

Black Mirror, Broken Sword "Circle of Blood"
and Secret Files Tunguska were all games that I thought had excellent plots.

I loved how different Grim Fandango and Runaway were from any other games I had played before.

Legend of Kyrandia Book One and The Longest Journey were games that I found visually stunning with great plots and music that really added to the gaming experience.

The last game I listed does not really stand up to todays graphic standards but the game was so funny and the puzzles were so wicked that I just wanted to cast a vote for Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders.

There were so many games that I wanted to cast a vote for but didn't have the room. It was tough not to vote for Syberia, Dreamfall, and Sanitarium and I hated to leave them off my list but twenty picks goes fast.

Please let me know what you all think and if you could only list one game this year what would be your best game ever?

If I could choose just one game, it would be a struggle between TLJ and GK3. Yes, there are so many more games I could recommend. That's the problem with lists like this, different mood, different fav game! My advice, don't look at lists or reviews, just play all the AG's you can get.

I have a preference for strong story-type games, so it was very easy for me to recommend Culpa, The Longest Journey, Grim Fandango, and the Gabriel Knight games. These are definitely my favorites.

In fact, all of the games on my list have what I feel are very strong, engaging story lines, albeit for different reasons.

It was difficult for me to leave off Next Life (Reprobates) as I personally loved it, but it doesn't seem to be very well received in general. I also wanted to include Murder in the Abbey, but it is pretty vague in direction at times, so I eventually decided to leave it off.

I thought about including a Space Quest game or two, but as my list was already pretty Sierra heavy, I decided against it. Though I loved the Space Quest series, I preferred King's Quest overall.

I also would have loved to have included Zak McKracken, but it seems as though it would be difficult to find nowadays, so I ended up leaving it off as well. Glad to see it got a vote, though.

After spending hours being totally ruthless I got my list down to 64 !!!!



So it was back to the drawing board - and what a painful experience THAT was

I think the year had been a respectable year for the genre. Coverage by mainstream press was still poor, though games from Telltale and Her Interactive managed to gain some traction for a few releases.

There had also been a significant uprising in the indie adventure scene. Developers such as Dave Gilbert and Jonathan Boakes are getting attention as poster boys for the genre.

Lastly, there was a slight shift in adopting the adventure genre to the causal game market. I am unsure if this has been a successful translation. It may be too early to tell for the genre. Chris Jones and Aaron Conners had launched a valiant effort with TCM.

This year may be a good year after all...

My problem is that when I finally finished my list and carefully reread it, it made no sense. There are old and new games of completely diffrent types. There are great stories and silly stories. There are great graphics and barely adequate graphics. I don't appear very consistant in what I like. (However, as usual, the first two games I wrote down were URU and Drowned God, which are both rather old about as dissimilar as games can get!)

There's nothing wrong with that, Haze. Unless you know the person's tastes, you might as well recommend a wide variety of games to try rather than just one sort. (I don't consider Uru to be very old either).

By the way, Haze, I notice you listed The Last Half of Darkness: Beyond the Spirits Eye twice. Did you mean for one of those to be The Last Half of Darkness: Shadows of the Servants?

Mad, I have the same problem. There are so many games I'd have liked to put on the list. I didn't have any room for any of Jon Boakes' games, for example, and my only current game was Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper. And I'd like to have recommended ALL the old LucasArts adventures, not just two of them.

The past few years have seen me play fewer games, so my lists were relatively similar. This year did present a quandary as I thought Outcry needed to be on there. I printed up a list of all my played games, then quickly went through and underlined the memorable ones - 30 games. Then I went back and picked the ones that I had fun with the most. My end result was different from last's years by 5 games, but we could pick 21 last year.
Alida, Amber, Beyond Atlantis, Morpheus and Under a Killing Moon,
were replaced by Outcry, Shivers 1 and 2, and Timelapse.
I still have a large proportion of older games, most are before 2000. I do have a lot of unplayed games with 'list potential' - Rhem 3, Myst 5, Rhiannon, Darkness Within, Beyond the Spirit's Eye - but by the time I get to playing them, they wil be older games too.
One thing that's caught my eye in the 2009 list so far is the multiple mentions of Yoomurjak's Ring. Pretty good for a download only game.
One other thing that is useful about the lists, is that I get to see who has similar tastes to mine (ex. Greyfuss, Jenny100). Then when they post about games they like or dislike, I'm much more interested in their comments.

I have the same proplem and so decided to only included 1 from each series -e.g. Syberia 1 but not 2 - I hope that the friend who I send the list to will get a taste of the wide variation of adventure games and will be able to buy the followups if they like the 1 st game.
I would liked to have included Discworld, Agatha Christe, Rama - the list goes on and on
I was so deep in thought about my list that I forgot that I'd put eggs on the stove to hard boil - thank heavens for smoke alarms

Old lady, you are not alone! Thinking about The List is very distracting.

colpet,

I do the same thing as you every year with the list. I always look at peoples lists who vote for the same style of games that I enjoy. Oldman, Mad, and Nickie seem to come to mind and I always scan their lists. It is really helpful every year to look at the results and try to find some hidden gems that I might of missed out on playing. I know Venus mentioned that she liked Zak McKracken so I need to eyeball her list too. I'm getting the feeling that I will have quite the list of must haves once the results are posted.

I am still struggling with my List! as I enjoy just about every game I play! I include just one of a series because if you like that you may be interested in the others & helps to free up space for other games! I thought I was nearly there until I read a post above mentioning a game that I just need to include There are others I would love to include like Outcry & Nextlife & some I have to let go but I have decided to let go of the one's where I've forgotten the plot - if I replay them again they will probably turn up again on next years list!

chrissie I am the same way. I had about fifty games that I wanted to vote for.

Well, this was my first time to try to make a list and I left off all games from the last millennium. Oops, not counting Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, but I'm a huge fan of Indy's and since I played that game 6 times (!) I felt it should get a mention. Otherwise, I'm going with today's games.

sierramindy I loved all the Indy games too. Fate of Atlantis really had some great puzzles.

Hi, Space Quest Fan,
Plus Fate of Atlantis also has that never-to-be-forgotten intro with the Indy music and Indy trying to find the artifact while falling through one trap door after another. I consider that a classic in its own right!

I'm still trimming and it's harder this year than ever. I've had to say goodbye to some old friends on my game lists that I have always been fond of because some new friends have come along.

There is always the first game I ever played that got me hooked into adventure gaming and I just can't remove it from my list as it would seem disloyal somehow.

I will eventually whittle it down to the top 20 but for a time I'm still holding on to some of the old memories.

"Plus Fate of Atlantis also has that never-to-be-forgotten intro with the Indy music and Indy trying to find the artifact while falling through one trap door after another. I consider that a classic in its own right! "

Oh, do I agree !!!!

When that game first came out I used to play the intro several times just because it was so darn good

Me too, Mad, that's why I remember it so well. Wonder how many others are out there who did the same thing?

Hi oldman,
Would it maybe help you to whittle your list if you decided to keep your old memories for yourself, while recommending your new memories to new gamers coming along? (Okay, I did go with Indy, but that was the exception.) That's what I tried to do because to my mind there really isn't much sense in recommending old games and ignoring the new ones. Besides if they get hooked on the new ones, they will certainly learn all about the old games. That's how I found out about George Stobbart from everybody posting about Broken Sword and the crates! That's a game that I missed during my hiatus away from games for several years.

If I left off games from the last millenium, I wouldn't have much on my list at all.
My newest games - Safecracker 2006, Outcry, Ghost in the Sheet,
The Lost Crown, Nancy Drew Castle Malloy and White Wolf of Icicle Creek - were all fun, but only Outcry made the grade.
It's pretty hard to find something I like when Riven is the game that I compare all the others to. As Mad said in the other thread, hopefully the games I like will become popular again and I'll have more to choose from.

If I could only list one game I would say Dreamfall is the best game ever.

It would be interesting to see the differences in individual peoples' "Most recommended games of all time" versus their "Most recommended games of the past 5 years." Even games as recent as Syberia and The Longest Journey would be excluded from such a list.


What about RHEM 3? That was 2007 and qualifies as new (I can't remember if you've played it or not. Is that why you didn't list it?) And those others you list didn't make it because of the competition... I also have many newer games that didn't make my list because of the competition with older games (that I honestly think are more enjoyable games). It's hard not to recommend a game with as many positive aspects as Gabriel Knight 2 or Obsidian over a game like Nancy Drew or Ghost in the Sheet (not that I didn't enjoy those games too -- and if limited to newer games some of them would be on my list). But the way I understand it, the Twisty List is a list of most recommended games for all time, not just recent games.

Yes, but why *recommend* an old game for a new gamer? I thought we were trying to encourage game developers here, not discourage them by repeating and repeating old stuff. Memories are strange things, they gain a halo over time, new games can't compete with that unfair competition!
I come from Sierra and LucasArts games, but I'm making room in my mind and heart for City Interactive, Atropos Studios, Wadjet Eye, and Bug Factory to mention a few of the new game developers out there. I want to encourage someone who is thinking of maybe making an adventure game to try, rather than decide that making a movie might be a better career move!

I would recommend an old game over a new game because it was a better game than a newer one. By recommending these older games perhaps developers will look to what made those old games great and use it an example for their new creations. By contrast, if we only recommended new games then new developers might think that this, in my opinion, "cookie-cutter" approach many seem to be taking is what all gamers prefer.

I'm trying to save it and play other, less compelling games right now. I also have Myst 5, Darkness Within, Rhiannon, and Beyond Spirit's Eye yet to be played.

Unfortunately, I don't play many new games anymore - too much dialogue, 3rd person inventory types - are not my cup of tea. Having said that, I did buy Immortals of Terra and Diamonds in the Rough, but I probably won't play them for a while.