Thanks to Telltale Games, Guybrush Threepwood is back, with a vengeance!
While I was growing up, I became a huge fan of adventure games. The love affair began with me typing “Push rock” and seeing a giant boulder roll over and crush Sir Graham. And then I discovered LucasArts’ adventure games and was immediately hooked. Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, The Dig, the entire Monkey Island series, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Grim Fandango. I played them all and loved each one. This was an era when a great game meant a great story rather than flashy graphics, and LucasArts was the master of that craft, serving one delightful mix of great stories, irreverent humor, and creative puzzles after another. They were such enjoyable gaming experiences that even after I’ve beaten the game, I’ve gone back and played each one multiple times over the years, just to experience the games again.
And then, sometime around 2000, after the release of the fourth Monkey Island game, LucasArts apparently decided that the only games worth its time were Star Wars games. It canceled sequels to Full Throttle and Sam & Max, and just like that, an amazing lineage of adventure games came to an abrupt end. The rest of the adventure-game genre was drying up as well. After yearning for years for a new adventure game from LucasArts, I had given up hope and presumed the adventure game genre to be dead.
Then, last year, we discovered a new Sam & Max game. We played it and loved it. In many ways, it was the classic LucasArts game, displaying the many traits of its impressive pedigree that made adventure games great. However, it wasn’t made by LucasArts. Instead, it came from a company called Telltale Games. Then, a couple weeks ago, I discovered that they made a fifth installment in the Monkey Island series — easily my favorite computer game franchise. My wife and I have been playing it for the last couple weeks and love it. Again, it’s right in line with its predecessors — great storytelling (I guess that’s to be expected from a company called Telltale Games), hilarious puzzles and dialogues, and an array of eccentric characters.
While downloading the game from the company’s Web site, I poked around the site and found out that Telltale Games was actually founded by a couple of former LucasArts developers who wanted to bring the story games that LucasArts turned into an art form back in vogue. Their games are slightly different from the traditional LucasArts adventure games in that they are episodic and released on a monthly basis. I actually kind of like the episodic format, as it divides a game up and gives you a clear goal for each stage of the game. And from what we’ve seen, each episode is chocked full of puzzles, making for at least a few hours of play on their own. It’s just great to see somebody finally breathing life into adventure games that understand how to be entertaining by engaging the player’s mind instead of just serving up a boatload of cool graphics. Here’s hoping another golden age dawns on the genre.
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