Adventure games for a finicky spouse.

[crux]

Piggybacking off the idea of elvis' topic, "Life after Zelda," I thought I'd get some recommendations for my own non-gamer wife. Somehow I managed to get her to try Trace Memory years ago and she loved it. Since then she's played Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk, and Professor Layton (puzzle games being the other genre she'll mess around with).

I had her try a PC adventure classic, Day of the Tentacle, but she didn't really appreciate the humor or style of the game. That then rules out pretty much all of the LucasArts classics. I'm not really adept with adventure games, so what are some recommendations for someone who enjoys the type of adventure games as she does? I bought Gabriel Knight's The Beast Within recently, so I'll have her give that a try, but past that I have no idea where to look until some of the DS adventure sequels/successors come along.

[fast]

Broken Sword is either coming out or was just released on the DS. I would start with that.

[Limewater]

I wouldn't rule out all LucasArts games based upon her reaction to "Day of the Tentacle." Neither my wife nor my sister liked it, yet both enjoyed "The Secret of Monkey Island." You might try that one, since it's a little cuter, a little less bizarre, and has a slightly more traditional sense of humor. "Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis" might also be a good one. It's slightly more serious, but has a decent plot and includes three different game paths so that she can decide how to proceed based upon her preferred playing style.

Also, you might look into "The 7th Guest." I think there is a patch you can find online to run it on more modern machines. I do not know how she would react to the slightly spooky atmosphere and the terrible acting, but it has a very strong puzzle game element. Essentially, it is an adventure game while you wander around a creepy mansion, and then you encounter puzzles and it turns into a puzzle game. Tasks include things like placing eight queens on a chessboard so that none can kill each other, dividing a cake so that each piece has the same number of toppings, rearranging lettered cans to form a phrase, some sliding block puzzles, etc... Also, I could be wrong, but I believe it was the first multi-CD game ever released. It is possible some other game swept in and beat it to market, though.

[Hatta]

Laura Bow in: The Dagger of Amon Ra is an excellent detective mystery with a female protagonist. It's mostly serious but does have it's funny parts too. Great writing and voice acting. It's one of the last great adventure games from Sierra, and frequently overlooked. Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Fathers would be another excellent choice.

Good on you getting the little woman to actually play some of these. My GF loved watching me play Shenmue, KOTOR, etc. But I just can't get her to take the controls.

[Niode]

You might want to try the Mystery Case Files series. There's one on the DS called Millionheir. My mother and my fiancée both really enjoyed it. I thought it was pap, but meh, whatever.

The Broken Sword games are fantastic and seem to fair well with both casuals and hardcore alike. My fiancée loves them all. Even the 3D ones which I couldn't do at all.

I think you should try her on the Sierra adventure games as well as the other more mainstream Lucasarts games. Day of the Tentacle is HARD and not at all forgiving. The Indiana games are brilliant as are The Dig and Full Throttle.

Kings Quest (ALL of them). They are loved by my entire family especially as we all grew with some iteration of the entire series.

Dreamfall is pretty good. It's a standard point and clicker. So if she enjoys the previous suggestions that's one that is more modern and will run on modern PCs without a hitch and is still available to buy in the shops.

Also Vampyre Story is quite a current release which is quite similar to Grim Fandango (which I also HIGHLY recommend).

I can't think of any more.

You should invest some time into how SCUMMVM works and take a trip to Revolution's (the guys who made Broken Sword) website. They have a full version of Beneath A Steel Sky to download completely free. If your wife doesn't like it, then you should give it a go anyway if you haven't already.

Enjoy.

[gennss]

Under a Killing Moon
Grim Fandango
Kings Quest series.

There are a lot of adventure games. Most modern ones though lean towards horror. I think Dreamfall is supposed to be good.

[Ack]

So how is it we could get this far without mentioning the Myst games or the Neverhood?

[Niode]

Damn! I knew I'd forgotton one! The Neverhood Chronicles is great.

[Hatta]

Is Myst really an adventure game? IMO, it's nothing more than a puzzle game strung together with a plot. Real adventure games, like those made by Sierra and LucasArts have narrative based puzzles. The puzzles you need to solve are "what needs to happen to move the plot along?" not pure logic puzzles like Mastermind or Towers of Hanoi.

An adventure game is a computerized equivalent to the Choose Your Own Adventure books they used to print. Myst is more like the equivalent of a book of brain teasers. The fact that it has something of a plot doesn't make it an adventure game any more than Half-Life is an adventure game.

[Ack]

Maybe not to you, but his wife may still enjoy them. I always got far more out of the exploration in Myst than I did any of the puzzles. The beauty of the game was the world itself, not trying to think my way through which valve needed to be in which position. And there is a little open-endedness in collecting the pages. You can go for the "wrong" endings by freeing one of the brothers, or you can find the white page and win that way.