Friday afternoon top 10: Graphical adventure games

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Posted on 6 Jun 2008 at 16:43

The graphical adventure game was the staple of early gaming. Combining the best in graphics with fiendishly difficult puzzles, laugh-out-loud humour and brain-hurting puzzles, they were really the best computer games you could buy.

Sadly, the genre has suffered lean times with the undisputed master, LucasArts, pulling the plug on the follow-ups to classics including Sam 'n' Max and Full Throttle. Sam'n'Max has found a new home with episodic adventures, but many of us are still yearning for full-length adventures to test our brains and wits again. For you, we've come up with Computer Shopper's Top 10 list of the best graphical adventure games. It's been hard to do, and in the process we've had to lose some old favourites including Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders and Broken Sword. The games we have chosen are here in reverse order:

10 It Came from the Desert

Meteorites. Strange disappearances. Giant Ants. It can only be It Came from the Desert.

Cinemaware's 1989 classic is best described as an interactive 50s B-movie. You play the role of a geologist sent to investigate a meteorite crashing in the remote desert town of Lizard Breath. Soon you realise all is not what it seems, and before you know it you're fighting to save the town from a plague of giant ants.

It Came from the Desert is a graphical adventure, interspersed with a series of mini-games. You have to find the queen's layer and destroy it before 15 days are up, or the ants will overrun the town. You must use your investigative skills to prove the ants exist to the townsfolk, do battle with the beasts with a variety of weapons and vehicles to slow the tide and even escape from hospital in a hilarious chase sequence. The claustrophobic small-town atmosphere is spot-on, and defeating the ants before time runs out is a serious challenge.

9 Leisure Suit Larry 3: Passionate Patti in Persuit of the Pulsating Pectorals

Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry series games are best known for their smutty humour. This game revolves around the misadventures of Larry Laffer, a hopeless lothario with a receding hairline, white polyester leisure suit, and chat-up lines that should have died with the 1970s.

Set on a tropical island paradise-cum-tourist trap, the game follows Larry's comical misadventures as he stumbles through a sequence of embarrassing romantic failures. The game's second protagonist is Passionate Patti, a club pianist with the misfortune of being the woman of Larry's dreams. You control the actions of both Larry and Patti in an interweaving plot that takes them from health spas to jungles.

Released in 1989, this was one of the last Sierra titles to use a text parser that required you to type commands to interact with the game. Although the humour is often crude, clever puzzles and challenging gameplay make this often-surreal adventure a classic.

8 Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis

This game was so good that rumours abounded for ages that it would be the plot of the fourth Indiana Jones film. Fate of Atlanis features everything that's great about the original movies: fighting against Nazis, a strong female companion (Dr Sophia Hapgood) and, most importantly, a plot that revolves around a one of the world's great mysteries.

With the journey taking place all round the world and a choice of three different ways of playing the game, Fate of Atlantis was everything that was brilliant about adventure games.