With all clever graphical innovations, physics and AI there are not many games that are like any of the old lucas arts games or disc world or anything similair.
the current sam and max games are fun but the episodes are short and zack & wiki was too much a level based game. I'm not disliking these game. but I do miss de adventures with guybrush or that broken sword guy.
It's a shame these games had to die. It's actually the only genre that has actually died.
games these days don't have these absurd item puzzles. but why... you can still have dynamic game while solving all sorts of crazy puzzles that are carefully weaved into the story.
I say it's a sad loss.. what about you?

I miss them too. I remember spending a lot of time playing Sam and Max! And I was so young at the time, I often needed help from family to get all of the puzzles, so it brought us together. And everyone could play those kinds of games. I remember spending too much time on the Sam and Max battleship mini game.

I also played Escape From Monkey Island! That was one, right? Everything seems so far away in my memory. I can't remember a lot of either game. Don't remember the endings at all. I think they rereleased Escape From Monkey Island for the PS2 though, didn't they? Was that any good?

The opening post is pretty much proof that the person doesn't really play adventure games.

Sam & Max Episodes, Bone, Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People, Overclocked: A History of Violence, Still Life 1 and 2, Phoenix Wright and its sequels, Apollo Justice, Trace Memory...

Need I go on? There's plenty that I could still list.

The last great one i remember playing was Grim Fandango and that was 1998. I haven't played one since thats been even half as good. Oh well these things go in circles so i'm sure they will make a return one day.

Woe Is You:
The opening post is pretty much proof that the person doesn't really play adventure games.

Sam & Max Episodes, Bone, Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People, Overclocked: A History of Violence, Still Life 1 and 2, Phoenix Wright and its sequels, Apollo Justice, Trace Memory...

Need I go on? There's plenty that I could still list.

no you don't i'm well aware that there are still adventure games out there but they still don't have the same feeling those games gave me.
and they are still in a vast minority compared to current releases of other genres. And I think that's a shame.

I wasn't really old enough to appreciate them at the time they came out, but I absolutely love going back and playing old adventure games because of the cool sense of humor most of them had. I honestly can't think of why such clever games aren't made much anymore, but it may be due to the fact that the current generation of gamers would rather blow up stuff and laugh at the f-word than think about weird puzzles and enjoy a genuinely clever script.

I'll tell you why they died.
FPS games, that's why.

they haven't died.ok,the one you had to pay for died,but there are lots of good ones on the internetz.

2 words.
Inquisitive Dave.

I played Zork, now that's some oldschool shit right there.

I remember I never really got very far. But I remember killing a troll that then was enveloped in black smoke. I always thought that was cool. And there was a thief I found down a chimney who I fought to the death over a painting. He had a cool knife.

In one of the later installments I actually did better and I remember tricking the monkey grinder into opening the magic "Do not Open" box because the enclosed material said monkey grinders are illiterate. He disappeared and I got to use his music box to cross the colorless field of crows. And I blasted an evil puppet with a magic wand. And fought the king crab for his tiny crown in the basement while looking for wine.

I was probably more immersed in that game than anything i've played since. Zork was fun, most of the shit nowadays with their high def graphics and havok physics don't even approach that level of fun.

I'm going to go with what others on this site have already said.

Adventure games died out because so many of them were terrible. I point to the King's Quest series as my main exhibit, though really anything Roberta Williams made is just begging to be displayed as how not to build an adventure game.

In short, you know how right now there are ten million FPS games, but only about four of them are worth playing? But people keep churning them out, blissfully unaware of what makes a good game and just hoping that their product will be the next Halo?

That's what happened to adventure gaming. Everyone and their dog made one and almost all of them were bad and pretty soon gamers were ready to play just about anything else (enter FPS games).

That said, the good adventure games were positively wonderful experiences, and I often look back on playing games like Under a Killing Moon and Full Throttle with a longing for those days.

Ah... good times.

- J

Been playing Sherlock Holmes, Nancy Drew (yeah, Nancy Fucking Drew, it's awesome), and Strong Bad's cool game for Attractive people (demo).

Found Beyond good and Evil on Steam for 5 dollars.

Bully was an adventure game... albeit a fighting intensive one but it was still driven by its narrative and the fighting served a specific purpose within its context.

I really thought that Bully would be the tip of the iceberg in terms of an adventure game revival but that hasn't happened and the repititious run & gun gameplay of GTAIV killed any expectations that Rockstar was heading in that direction.

basically, sandbox games + context sensitive game mechanics + puzzles = would have the potential for a new age of adventure games.

oh and Psychonauts, I consider that a solid template for this new direction as well.

Oh man, Sam & Max, Full Throttle, Day of the Tentacle, The Monkey Island games... good times, good times. If adventure games aren't dead, then at least their Golden Age has passed. Hopefully there will soon be a revival of some sort.

Colonel Mustard, in the Billiards Room, with the Lead Pipe.

In all seriousness, action games have been mostly transmogrified into either mediocre platformers of FPS's. Until the new PoP comes out ^^.

I guess the people these days don't like clever writing or lovable characters or things not being killed.

I MISS GRIM FANDANGO! *sobs*

"I'm Guybrush Threepwood, a might pirate!"
I love the Escape from Monkey island games. The PS2 version was a let-down.
"Eww, porcelain."

I don't think the genre is really, completely dead. What about Dreamfall?

Most of the aspects that made adventure games unique have been incorporated into bigger-budget/bigger-profit games like RPG's . . . and even CRPG's are supposedly dying out in favor of MMO blut-fests.

More stuff for the indie developers, I guess.

They are not dead. Not mentioning all those above, the adventure genre lives, in the form of flash adventure games, that you can find for free, in many places on the internet. Granted the quality/length is in question, but there are plenty of good ones, if you are wiling to look.

Simple. The video game companies stopped marketing to US, and started marketing to the COOL kids. And adventure games aren't COOL.

For all you missing the "old school" style of Adventure games I'd advise you to download Ben there, Dan that. Its a great adventure game from an Indie developer.. Specially if you have played most of the old Lukas Arts games the referances and humor is hilarious!

And the best thing aboute it.. Its actually free, but If you love it (as I'm sure you are going to) please donate a few bucks to the developer and maybe we will see more from him in the future!

Link btw: http://www.zombie-cow.com/

To quote Old Man Murphy from eight years ago (honestly you damn kids learn your history):

"Who killed Adventure Games? I think it should be pretty clear at this point that Adventure Games committed suicide."

http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/79.html

tiredinnuendo:

Adventure games died out because so many of them were terrible.
- J

I think a bad adventure game is also far more terrible then a bad FPS. By a factor of 10. And a half. Thousand.

Shudmeyer:
I wasn't really old enough to appreciate them at the time they came out, but I absolutely love going back and playing old adventure games because of the cool sense of humor most of them had. I honestly can't think of why such clever games aren't made much anymore, but it may be due to the fact that the current generation of gamers would rather blow up stuff and laugh at the f-word than think about weird puzzles and enjoy a genuinely clever script.

Alot of developers are just too preoccupied with graphics to be bothered, and that's due in no small part to the fact that its want the "audience" wants. Don't get me wrong, its been interesting to play through the evolution of gaming from 8-bits to 8 billion environmentally mapped poly's per square inch, but I can't help to feel alot was lost along the way. The existence of things like XBL Arcade and Steam certainly makes it more viable for indie developers to put out the occasional old-school gem but I fear mainstream gaming is ever becoming too much like an industry for its own good; there's just too much time and money involved anymore.

I was going to post that old man article myself. It's one of the best bits of game related writing I've ever read and it hits the nail right on the head.

It could well be that the genre itself committed suicide. Another way of looking at could be that gaming just became mainstream and left the adventure game behind. I think it takes a certain kind of person to be into point and click adventure games, and it just became a very niche genre.

It's a bit like flight sims - they're still being made, and probably the same number of people are interested in them, but the cost of game development now is so prohibitive that they just aren't profitable.

mintsauce:
It could well be that the genre itself committed suicide. Another way of looking at could be that gaming just became mainstream and left the adventure game behind. I think it takes a certain kind of person to be into point and click adventure games, and it just became a very niche genre.

It's a bit like flight sims - they're still being made, and probably the same number of people are interested in them, but the cost of game development now is so prohibitive that they just aren't profitable.

I disagree. With the powerful editing tools available making point and click games has never been easier and I think we're seeing a little bit of a adventure game revival. Especially with the new products the adventure company has been churning out.