I like point-and-click adventure games. They aren't all created equal, though. When done right, they're some of my favorite games. When they aren't, well, let's just say that games that are that broken should be taken out and shot behind the barn before they're inflicted on an unwitting populace. Good point-and-clicks have interesting stories, reasonably easy to find areas, items, and clues, and puzzles that should be somewhat logical and have something to do with the story. they don't have to be long games, just fun. Too bad so many of them aren't fun. Oh, well.
I made a list a while back that I titled The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Good titles are obvious: I liked them, they were fun, and the puzzles were reasonable. Bad games are just that: bad. True stinkers. The stories weren't that good, the puzzles were obtuse, out-of-place, or just out in left field somewhere, and the game may have felt more like work than a game. Ugly titles may have been sequels to good games that just didn't follow through or were major disappointments, or had potential and then fell apart, or had a mix of good and not-so-good puzzles. Lucky for all of us, most of the games on my list fall into the good category. Hope you all enjoy!
The good:
The Bad:
The Ugly:
Have you tried The Cat Lady? It's a really awesome point and click, and one of the first games I've seen that understands depression. The writing is great, the atmosphere is dense, and the story is chilling. I highly recommend it! Unless you don't like games that deal with suicide, serial killing, revenge, and depression. Then you might give it a miss.
No, haven't tried it. Where does one find it? I am realively limited with PC games, as I'm using an older Dell laptop.
I've always wanted to play Syberia, Dreamfall, etc. but haven't gotten around to it yet. I own all of them I think.
Point and click has really come back in the past couple years and there's a bunch of indie games on steam for the genre. there's this really neat one with environments and characters made out of clay called "The Dream Machine" that looks really neat:
Syberia may be one of my favorites in the genre. It was a bit of a cliffhanger, so I was excited to get Syberia 2. That game was a huge disappointment from the first one. It did tie up the loose ends of the story, but the game itself sucked. I recommend playing the first one, and then watching a Let's Play of the second one. Play The Longest Journey first, and then Dreamfall, you can get them as a bundle on Steam if you haven't already. Dreamfall should have had a sequel, Microsoft talked briefly about making one and then nothing materialized.
I will have to see what my laptop can handle. I pretty much stick to browser-based games with it, as it's not very beefy and I'm trying to save space on my hard drive for my photos.
I think they are making a sequel. It was crowdfunded I think, and coming out in episodes. Here:
IT's called "Dreamfall: Chapters"
Ooh! Cool! There will be a way I will play that!!! Looks like they more than exceeded their goal, too.
I didnt see The Testament of Sherlock Holmes a very hard but good point and click game. Xbox 360 game.
The reason you didn't see it is because i haven't played it. If I find it cheap and on a disc, I'll probably pick it up, though
$20 is what I paid and worth every penny lol!!
I was going to mention this game as well!
But then I realized that it was the Jack The Ripper game that I played; I need to get my hands on Testament next!
I've been a fan of point-and-click adventure games for a long time (although in my head I still call them graphic adventure games, although that term has been long outdated). When I was younger I was obsessed with every adventure game that Sierra and LucasArts put out. I think Day of the Tentacle and the Space Quest series are my favorites.
I am really happy that Telltale has become so succesful in recent years. I've played all of their adventure games and have had alot fun with them (although I was dissapointed to hear that they cancelled their Kings Quest reboot). The Walking Dead series has been really good.
I also agree with Whatsacow. I haven't completed it yet, but the Cat Lady is really good, if you're okay with its distrubing content. So far it has been really simple, but the story is compelling.
Sierra was awesome! I bought the entire King's Quest Collection off of Steam (or maybe in was GoG). Interplay also had some really good ones, I had their 10th Anniversary Collection.
I didn't see it on your list but I wonder if you ever played Star Trek 25th Anniversary. It's a mixture of adventure and flight simulator; that's my favorite in a genre that I admittedly am ignorant of.
Nope, never played that one. Only Star Trek games I've played were a text adventure back in the 80s and ST:TNG on the Genesis. And now you have some choices to check out if you're interested.
I got about halfway through the first Monkey Island. I did enjoy it, but I learned that point-and-click adventures are not really my style of games. The humour was awesome and that is why I stayed with the game so long.
The Monkey Island games are really challenging, for all their goofy style. Some of the games I linked to on Kongregate are very short and much easier. Then again, they might not do it for you, either. I like that we all have different tastes, makes things more interesting.
I'm a huge fan of Guybrush and I have all the games on one platform or another. I have started The Longest Journey a couple of times but for no particular reason haven't played very far into it. I have Dreamfall too and both the Syberia games which I enjoyed even though the first might be better than the second.
You can find The Cat Lady here: http://www.gog.com/game/the_cat_lady
I picked it up with a ton of other games for 11 dollars when GOG had the sale I blogged about a while back. http://www.pixlbit.com/blog/4151/gog_sale_5_games_for_80_off It's kinda creepy but worth playing as Blake pointed out.
Ah, it's on GoG. Which doesn't like the flavor of my credit card for some reason. May not get to experience this one then. Too bad, because I enjoyed someone's (Blake, maybe?) blog about it.
That certainly is strange... what kind of credit card do you use?
My debit card, which works for everything else.
Fair enough. That is strange.
So want to play those Monkey Island games. I've played a little bit of Syberia. The genre as escaped me for some reason, but I'd like to dig in deep sometime.
The Monkey Island games can be picked up on both XBLA and PSN. I think they may even be bundled. The King's Quest games' graphics are quite dated, but the games themselves are solid and a good place to start.You can get the whole collection off Steam fairly cheap. All the games I listed that are on Kongregate are fairly short, free to play, and browser-based. The Last Door is an episodic horror game that Julian reviewed and it caught my attention, so I checked it out. Episode 2 becomes available to play for free on Friday. I have it marked on the calendar, lol. Theresia is a survival horror point-and-click that is very good, and works really well on the DS. Avoid any of the games on my bad and ugly lists like the plague.
I've played a little bit of one of the King's Quest games. They are very funny. I'll have to play them all sometime.
I've played some of the Sierra adventures, including King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry, LOL. I've actually toyed with the idea of buying the LSL remake that was funded through Kickstarter from Steam.
My favorite point-and-click adventures were Dreamweb, a seriously creepy cyberpunk adventure where you're either saving the world from destruction or acting as a serial killer driven by paranoid psychosis (the game and the "Diary of a Mad(?) Man" that came with it are ambiguous on that point), which had great music, and the Tex Murphy series that blends the film-noir detective genre with Philip K. Dick's science-fiction stories (Blade Runner, Total Recall). The game's original creators bought the rights to Tex Murphy back and Kickstarted a new Tex Murphy Game. Atlus is going to release the new TM game on Steam next year, and I will definitely be getting it.
My other favorite in this genre is The 7th Guest. The music is the best part of that game. I have the entire soundtrack on my iPhone.
I've always wanted to check out The Seventh Guest. And I think my laptop could probably handle it, too.
Since it was released in 1992, around the time CD-ROM drives first became popular on PCs, and mostly uses FMV and pre-rendered CG, your computer should be able to run it with little effort. You can either get it from Good Old Games really cheaply (comes with a .MP3 version of the soundtrack if you buy it from them). You can also get it on iOS and maybe Android too.
Hey two of the games in my library made the good list! I have to admit that I do own Dreamfall, I have yet to play it. I bought it a long time ago when Best Buy was blowing out a bunch of PS2/X-Box games for $1.99 each. I did have fun with Back to the Future.
This is off the blog subject but how is kongregate? I've never tried it, but from the looks of it, there are a ton of games to play
Chris, I really enjoy the website. Free, and tons to choose from. And if you have a GameStop power up rewards card and you get the achievement of the day, it earns you points. Some of the games are amazing, some not so much, but since everything is free, it doesn't really matter.
My favorite Kongregate game is a text adventure called "Don't S*** Your Pants." LOL.
This is not a joke. Seriously.
I know, it's the Badge of the Day today.
Wow, I'm guessing there was quite a dive from Syberia (Top rated) to its' sequel. (Bottom rated) Was it the same people who worked on it or a whole other team,Tami?
The games aren't listed in terms of best to worst, just games that I liked, games that were pure crapfests, and games that were in between the two. The ugly category was more games that were huge disappointments, rather than really crappy games. As for the the dev teams for Syberia and Syberia 2, I honestly don't know. All I know was that the first game was amazing and the second obe was disappointing.
It's too bad. I know as a game designer myself, I'd hope to make gradual improvements with each game I made. However, I do know sometimes a developer can have problems with limited funding or internal issues when concerning the team itself. As you said, Syberia 2 may have been disappointing but at least it wasn't complete crap. lol.
They're supposed to be making a Syberia III. I think its release is for 2014 or 2015.
I've always wanted to try out Dreamfall. The atmosphere looks so cool. Also, I want to try Space Quest because I'm a sucker for any sci-fi/ comedy. One game that I'm not sure if it's point or click or not that I loved was Kings Quest. I don't know why, but that game just sucked me in.
Hey Sidd! Welcome to the party! And King's Quest is definitely point-and-click. Get The Longest Journey off Steam and play that before you play Dreamfall. The events in Dreamfall will make a lot more sense then.
My favorite point and click adventure games are the Phoenix Wright games
You and Cary.
Here are some others you should try and I hope they end up in your 'good' list.
Sam & Max (Any of them)
Wallace & Gromit's Grand Adventures
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
I have the first Phoenix Wright game, but it never grabbed me. I'll have to dig it out and give it anothertry one of these days. I do want to try the Sam and Max games because you've recommended them to me several times. Are the Wallace and Grommit games also done by TellTale?
Yes, TellTale did the Wallace & Gromit games also.
I played a bit of The Secret of Monkey Island. I stopped playing when I didn't know what to do next. I wanted to get back to it and never did. I'm sure playing Mass Effect had something to do with it. 
I finished it, but I did have to resort to a walkthrough in a couple of places. There are a lot of things you can overlook in that game, so don't feel bad.
Mountain Crime isn't horrible or broken, just laughably corny. I wouldn't pay full price for it, but if you see it on sale for around $5, it might be worth it. As for Dreamfall, if you play any games on your PC, it might be worth picking up both The Longest Journey and Dreamfall as a bundle on Steam.