Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
I’ve been playing various Lucasarts graphic adventure games for the past week, and this is probably the worst so far. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason as to where you are supposed to go, and it loves wasting your time by padding the game with horribly repetitive mazes everywhere you go. The characters are almost non-existent. Barely any lines are spoken between characters aside from Zak uttering a newspaper headline every once in a while. There are also unknowable fail states, which are unacceptable in a game filled with nonsensical puzzles and pixel hunting.
– Real player with 13.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best Point & Click Retro Games.
Although “Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders” is a not one of the famous LucasArts' game, it’s one of their oldest point and click adventures that certainly pushed the genre forward with some creative ideas. Gameplay mechanics like controlling multiple characters or traveling freely everywhere were unique for back then and made the game less linear. That doesn’t mean that the puzzles are perfect. Many puzzles have weird logic or they don’t give you enough clues to proceed to the the next one. A lot of times you’ll try things by luck. Dead ends, repetitive deaths, pixel hunting and obsolete controls can be frustrating too. Nevertheless it is a game that packs lovely pixelated graphics, a crazy story, adorable characters, good sense of humor and it is entertaining enough to give it a try.
– Real player with 13.0 hrs in game
The Curse of Monkey Island
My favorite game of all time, hands down. I play it every year or so since I first played it, probably in 2000 where I bought it at a store that sold used video games that came in CD cases (this was a 2-CD game). There is one significant problem with this game: I’ve been searching for its equal ever since, and I’ve never found it. The gentle mix of humor, of lightheartedness, challenging puzzles, voice acting by Dominic Armato, the beautiful graphics and amazing musical score… Nothing comes close. I don’t think that the folks who created this knew what they were making at the time, it was just another game from LucasArts. Bill Tiller did the graphics, and there is something so soothing about the visuals. I think most importantly is the intelligence of the puzzles, where each item you get will be put to use in some creative form later on in the game in a way that makes you think about what you’re doing and what is possible, but doesn’t go too far in difficulty nor is it too easy, either. The fact that all of this came together in one game is truly remarkable feat.
– Real player with 25.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Point & Click 1990's Games.
I never got the chance to play one Monkey Island game until now, and this is actually my first eventhough it’s the third xD. I’m clearly missing a lot of references to the first and second game, there are some characters that I can tell is not the first time “we” met so I’m clueless to most of the funny bits regarding these ones.
The humor is the best part of the game, at least to me. I had lots of fun with the dialogs and incredibly horrible dad jokes. Puzzles are sometimes hard to understand, there may be very very very little objects you thought you clicked on but you didn’t , maybe you thought you could solve the puzzle certain way because it’s the most logical to you but NOT and the solution is one of the silliest you could ever think of. So yeah, puzzles are not exactly unfair but rather… weird? You just gotta get used to the game’s logic, that’s all.
– Real player with 11.9 hrs in game
Between Me and The Night
Between Me and the Night captured my attention. The ability to be someone else is something that I’ve long wanted to be. It’s not that I hate myself but I always wanted to be something more than what I turned out to be. I was a promising basketball player at one stage and had scouts looking at me but illness as well as the fact that I stopped growing when I was 5’7″ and was never an athletic freak good enough to make up for a lack of height stopped me from becoming a professional. I wanted to excel professionally in other athletic ventures but was never very good at anything other than basketball. Other dreams included becoming an air force pilot (my eyesight was never good enough) or an astronaut (I’m fairly intelligent but not when it comes to the required sciences) so being a talent scout, writer, marketer and business person were my limits. Not bad but certainly nothing spectacular. Therefore the premise here was perfect for me. I tend to believe most of us can relate to the young boy in the story who is confronted with the realities of a modern world – including hot topics such as school bullying – and needing to escape it.
– Real player with 16.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Point & Click Retro Games.
Between me and the night is a creative artistic game that amplifies certain phases of life a man can go through. You follow the role of a nameless boy with red hair who is plagued by various illusions of his nightmares. The game is technically very short and sweet (unless you give your best for the achievements). Before you buy, consider there was a bug in the game in the “house level”. Unless you don’t go through a particular order in the house level, you are guarantee to get stuck and go no further. So it’s best to follow a walkthrough before finishing the first level unless you want to get frustrated. The bug could be bypassed so I did not consider it as a major flaw.
– Real player with 16.1 hrs in game
Fenimore Fillmore: The Westerner
A very solid graphic adventure, the strongest part is represented by the puzzles that are really good (and this, has always been the factor N1 in any adventure).
The artworks are of average quality but are lovely painted with extreme cure, the same for the cinematics that are really funny and enjoyable to watch.
One of the things i mostly missed was the option to accelerate the slow walking and the fast exit from a scene, that would have speeded a lot the things making a little less stressing the gameplay, i also experienced few crashes in some points that forced me to reload a previous checkpoint.
– Real player with 23.7 hrs in game
a cute point & click, old school style. thoroughly enjoyed it. no probs running on my pc except for one or two freezes, but luckily regular auto saves negated any disasters. without giving any spoilers, there was also a very nifty bit after the main ending, at the beginning of credits. fun!!
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Shadowgate
Journey once more into the castle Shadowgate
Do you remember having a favorite video game that it seemed not many other people fully appreciated? One that you were completely obsessed with, spent tons of time with played over and over again, gathered every bit of information on it that you could? For some people, the games that they find themselves so devoted to end up becoming big series, with numerous sequels. For others, those games get periodic sequels and live on. And for yet others those games just sort of fade away, becoming forgotten in time.
– Real player with 141.9 hrs in game
Shadowgate is a re-imagining of the point-and-click adventure game released almost three decades ago, under the same name, on NES and Mac. Given these origins, your motivations for venturing into Castle Shadowgate are about what you would expect: you are a hero who must defeat an evil warlock. The graphics, music and the majority of puzzles have been reworked; new, voice-acted cutscenes and story elements have been peppered throughout; while the mysterious atmosphere and memorable locations of the original remain intact, along with the option to use the retro soundtrack.
– Real player with 37.5 hrs in game
Call of Cthulhu: Prisoner of Ice
What a mess! After playing Shadow of the Comet (I loved it! Read my review! http://steamcommunity.com/id/pointnclickster/recommended/389470) , I was looking forward to playing this. After ten minutes, my hopes were diminished, and after an hour, my hopes were dashed and by the end, I was a very very confused gamer.
Prisoner of Ice went backwards in terms of so many things. Trying to blend 3dish/claymation looking characters in 2-D settings just doesn’t work. The setting is right before WWII, and as far as Lovecraft goes, thats a little too modern for my taste. The story is an absolute mess, trying to loosely branch off of The Mountains of Madness, and serve as a kind of continuation of Shadow of the Comet…..within 3-4 hours (Steam says 6 hours, but I had long periods of being AFK). Thats right. Short. It’s so short, there is no time to care about really any of the characters, and those we do know from Shadow of the Comet, it feels like they threw them in so we could kinda care about somebody! Maybe if they had made this game longer, they could have developed the story a lot better, but they didn’t and we are now stuck with this. I honestly couldn’t even really explain to you the plot. I had to go to Wikipedia just to find out what in the world I just played. For those who know my reviews and what I play, that should definitely tell you something. Pixel hunting is back!…and man is it annoying. Shadow of the Comet threw pixel hunting out the window, and the graphics were all pixelated. Now in this mixed mess of a game, good luck finding the key you need in a timed puzzle. Oh yes, this game is full of timed puzzles. However, if you do die (you will), the game does autosave so you have a chance to quickly figure out what in the world to do.
– Real player with 5.6 hrs in game
I wanted to play this game since it’s release day back in 1995 but back then it wasn’t easy to find the game you were looking for, so the years passed and here i am finish my first playthrough 25 years later.
Prisoner of ice is a nice short adventure game to spend your evening.The game is interesting with a good atmosphere and story and manages to keep the tension on a good level, keep in mind though that if you are a fun of Lovecraft you will not find many elements that remind a lovecraftian story and writing here.It’s just a horror adventure game based on the mythology of Cthulhu and you shouldn’t expect nothing more than that.That doesn’t make it a bad game though.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Sam & Max: Season Two
The Next 5 Monthly Episodes of the Entire Sam & Max Trilogy. Sam & Max Beyond Time & Space (Season 2) delivers the best in Point & Click Adventure Games. The connection between the episodes is more loose and complicated than in the first season. Season 2 builds on Season 1 with more dynamic NPCs, an updated engine, a hint system, support for widescreen monitors, more realistic animations & more minigames within each episode.
Season 2 features a calibration assistant when first run, which allows the player to set their graphics and difficulty settings before playing. Help Sam & Max on their exciting Adventures as they go Beyond Time & Space!
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
I’ve played through all three seasons of these Telltale Sam & Max games now and I really enjoyed them all. They all sort of blend into one another in my mind, but I think season 2 was the most humorous and it certainly upped the craziness in terms of plot and the locations and situations that Sam & Max find themselves in. This season also introduced many new characters and started to phase out Bosco, who was really becoming tedious and tiresome for me over the course of the first season.
Backing up a bit: these episodic games from Telltale are point-and-click adventure games with quirky characters and surreal humor. If you know anything about the Sam & Max characters, then you should already own all three seasons as you will most likely enjoy them.
– Real player with 8.2 hrs in game
Sam & Max 201: Ice Station Santa
The Next 5 Monthly Episodes of the Entire Sam & Max Trilogy. Sam & Max Beyond Time & Space (Season 2) delivers the best in Point & Click Adventure Games. The connection between the episodes is more loose and complicated than in the first season. Season 2 builds on Season 1 with more dynamic NPCs, an updated engine, a hint system, support for widescreen monitors, more realistic animations & more minigames within each episode.
Season 2 features a calibration assistant when first run, which allows the player to set their graphics and difficulty settings before playing. Help Sam & Max on their exciting Adventures as they go Beyond Time & Space!
– Real player with 9.3 hrs in game
I’ve played through all three seasons of these Telltale Sam & Max games now and I really enjoyed them all. They all sort of blend into one another in my mind, but I think season 2 was the most humorous and it certainly upped the craziness in terms of plot and the locations and situations that Sam & Max find themselves in. This season also introduced many new characters and started to phase out Bosco, who was really becoming tedious and tiresome for me over the course of the first season.
Backing up a bit: these episodic games from Telltale are point-and-click adventure games with quirky characters and surreal humor. If you know anything about the Sam & Max characters, then you should already own all three seasons as you will most likely enjoy them.
– Real player with 8.2 hrs in game
Sam & Max Hit the Road
It’s Sam & Max’s first Adventure made for MS-DOS/Windows 3.1/95/98 PCs & is considered one of the best Inventory Adventure games created. Sam & Max Hit the Road is based on a 1989 Comic Adventure of the Freelance Police called: “Sam & Max On the Road”. The Sam & Max Franchise had a Cartoon Series that used to air on Fox Kids from 1997-1998 on the Fox Network Channels. Sam & Max are Dog & Bunny who operate as a Freelance Police Force.
In this adventure, Sam & Max have been tasked by the Commissioner to locate a Bigfoot that’s gone missing from a local carnival, but along the way, they run into all sorts of Zany things that makes the game feel & look fun leading into an ending that makes complete sense of the situation or not at all.
– Real player with 13.3 hrs in game
This was a surprise find for me.
I was looking for a different sort of game, one that hadn’t been over-recommended by Steam’s algorithm– and by almost impossible chance I stumbled on this. Not only did I get the sense that this was a very old game, but by reading its initial release was back in 1993– and by staring at its graphics– I immediately understood.
This game is a classic. (Unquestionably).
And Sam & Max are a familiar pair. I’ve heard of them but have never formally introduced myself to their video game counterparts.
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Simon the Sorcerer - Mucusade: 25th Anniversary Edition
This review is about the port, not the game itself. I guess everybody who buys Simon knows what to expect.
They redesigned the graphics of the control panel and added a key to display hotspots, but simon has only a few per screen. That’s it. I see no more inprovements from the scummvm version and that one. There is not even an autosave option. You cannot leave screens by double clicking and you cannot change walking speed, the skip option is also horrible, u will miss a lot be using it, because mostly not only the displayed sentence is skipped. The game runs stable at 40fps on my RTX3090, only if the backround has to scroll it becomes real jerky. So you will buy an Intel 486 Simulator as well, just to show you how high ended this game realy was. xD
– Real player with 27.9 hrs in game
This was an enjoyable blast from the past. A couple of elements of the humour of this game haven’t aged well, and I do think two of the puzzles are so obscure as to be unfair, but apart from that, still good. I actually think the guy who plays Simon in this is better than Chris Barry in the first one.
– Real player with 11.8 hrs in game