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Ask Slashdot: Best Adventure Game To Start With?
canolecaptain writes "One of my daughters (10 years old) has become interested in adventure games, and started playing Fate. It's been awhile since I've had time to play this type of game (since the Diablo 2 days), and I'd like to know what Slashdotters thought would be the best set of adventure games to start her on (PC preferred). Nothing too scary yet, so unfortunately, Diablo is out for the time being. I'd prefer one with multi-player so that we could quest together on ocassion."
You can do Titan's quest its alot more PG then Diablo, and also has multiplayer.
Cartoony, Hilarious, and not impossibly difficult. And easy to acquire. A spectacular game all around and you can run it right in scummvm.
Really I recommend all of their games, but I'd suggest that as a best "first" game. Monkey Island 2 is my actual favorite scumm game, but its SUPER hard so not really a good "first" game.
The only thing a hack'n'slash has in common with an adventure game is mouseclick-induced carpal tunnel.
A great place to start for anyone. It involves a bit of imagination, but a fantastic game, and it's available for free on pretty much all platforms. It's the one I always find myself coming back to every once in a while. No multiplayer that I'm aware of unfortunately.
Zelda Zelda Zelda Zelda. Since she's 10, she might get a kick out of Wind Waker due to kid-friendly themes (while still not being completely kid-sanitized) and a slightly better learning curve than, say, Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time. You can't go wrong with Zelda, and Wind Waker is a really, really great game. Exploring those islands, filling my sea chart with maps of the islands and so on will live on forever in my memories because of the sense of discovery in that game. It was pretty easy to play, too, while still having challenging puzzles.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
The one with the squirrels and mars (but incidentally no squirrles ON mars) is Zak McKracken. I love that game and like nobody knows about it.
...didn't include hack-and-slash dungeon crawlers/RPGs.
If you're looking for actual adventures, then the Syberia series is a good point to start. Modern in their design, accessible mechanical puzzles and a wonderful non-violent story. There's also Amerzone, Myst and The longest Journey.
I was thinking like Syberia or Dreamfall, especially for a young girl. But then I looked at the game Fate and I believe I'm maybe in the wrong genre.
Torchlight. It was made by many of the people who made Diablo 2, but it's significantly less "scary". Good fun, if a bit repetitive towards the end. And cheap, too - It was only $20 at release, and is probably down to $10-15 by now. And it even has a "netbook" mode to run on low-end hardware, in case you haven't upgraded lately.
The whole Monkey Island series, which ranges from 8-bit to 3D modeling, is awesome for big and little kids alike. Who doesn't like pirates?
Beautiful artwork, music, compelling story, etc. You really can't go wrong!
Torchlight is very much like Diablo, but not as scary, IIRC. Look into it. You can turn off any simulated blood, IIRC. There is a demo available at Gamefront file hosting.
BTW. These are TPL's (Third Person Looters), not adventure games. Usually, Diablo and FATE get called an RPG, which is a good enough classification. I almost recommended Zork I, based on the "adventure" genre, but then decided to RTFS. You can only imagine how disappointed your daughter would be cracking open a text adventure, wanting FATE instead!
If she gets into actual "adventure" games, the HER Interactive Nancy Drew series is a lot of fun, and has light to pretty difficult puzzles to solve.
--
Toro
West of House
There is a small mailbox here.
>read leaflet
"WELCOME TO SLASHDOT! YOU
MUST BE NEW HERE!
SLASHDOT is a game of adventure,
danger, and low cunning. In it you will
explore some of the most amazing
territory ever seen by mortals. No
computer should be without it!"
Oregon trail. Learn history and epidemiology.
It's not on the PC, but it's pretty cheap.
You can quest together on occasion.
It's generally not scary.
Great MMORPG with no monthly fees - just a one time purchase. Excellent depth, replay value, HUGE and beautifully detailed world and inherently multiplayer. It's quite complex though and I'm not sure whether 10 year old will get that much into depth.
Zork!
It's not super-scary and extremely funny, with great characters and interactions. I recommend the TuTu mod for it, though it does flesh out some of the darker corners of the story. For instance, she should under no circumstances ask Kivan about what happened to his girlfriend.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
I would second or third the recommendation of Monkey Island. There is an remake available that's been ported to many platforms (PSN, Wii, PC, iOS, etc) called Tales of Monkey Island. My daughter (who is 7) enjoys it quite a bit. Some puzzles are a little too hard for her and I need to help her out, so it might be the right level for your girl. The humor helps a lot too, she might not get the puzzles but she enjoys some of the responses she gets for incorrect answers- keeping her from getting to frustrated with it.
My daughter also loves the Zelda series like Windwaker and the Twilight Princess. She likes these worlds and loves to play in them not just for the story line. Like playing fetch with the a dog in Twilight Princess, or placing the pigs in Windwaker in funny spots like try to get them on a roof, or in a water basin. She sometimes plays the older versions like Majora's Mask or the Ocarina of Time but sometimes seems a little turned of by the lack of detail/responses of the environment. [sigh] Kids these days! ;)
She also likes to play on my World of Warcraft account sometimes (with supervision, of course)- although I can see many reasons not to go that route (monthly $, stranger interaction, addiction/immersion). She likes to roleplay in the environment- go fishing, follow/talk to NPCs, sleep, eat, and sometimes go on a quest or two.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrono_Trigger
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. Zork of course!
I can see some similar replies: "It depends on what you mean by adventure"... well, no. If you say adventure, you MUST mean games similar to Zork, King's Quest, Myst, Monkey Island, Gabriel Knight, stuff like that. Otherwise, you are simply using the wrong word. This is the traditional, well-established, widely accepted definition; it is not open to debate, period.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Since you're misusing genres, given Diable is not an Adventure game.
Hence no one knows if you actually want adventure games and hence they should recommend things like Monkey Island, or if you actually want an action-RPG and hence they should recommend things like Torchlight.
And of course the jerks just point out you mixed up the genres instead of answering at all.
Great story, incredibly cute and artistically fantastic graphics, still pretty simple and all-in-all light on violence, available for just every platform under the sun, it's a great choice.
You can't go wrong.
Lex
1)
Ico
But like someone else, I suggest text adventures too. There's lots of free or shareware ones too.. e.g. http://www.ifarchive.org/indexes/if-archiveXgamesXzcode.html
Abandonware is $PERCENT1 "we own that?", $PERCENT2 "who cares? Just don't email us for support!" and $PERCENT3 "I hope we can sue someone for distributing this crap! We don't care about it, all my Dad (predecessor) bought was the name, do we own the code too?".
If you want to download these games, go ahead. If someone knocks on your door demanding payment for something they aren't selling and didn't write, can you tell the rest of the Abandonware users so that we can have some kind of genuine legal perspective on 20 year old games that these companies can't prove we didn't buy and stand no chance of monetising?
Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
... is where it all began
It's not exactly adventure, but Minecraft is awesome for all ages. I was put onto it by my teenage nephews. My 6yo kid loves it because it fires his imagination and I love it because he's learning good lessons about managing resources, oh yeah and developing redstone circuits to automate things or provide serial communication is a lot of fun too....
He's a little young to play on anything other than peaceful (he covers his eyes if I put it on Easy) but it's still hours of fun for him. The only trouble we have is the occasional tears when I tell him it's time to play outside.
I don't therefore I'm not.
Zelda is not an adventure, it is an action-RPG (in fact, Zelda DEFINES what action-RPG even means).
It has elements of both, but Zelda is almost entirely an adventure game. Even though it's an action game and has RPG elements, that doesn't necessarily make it an "action RPG". Adventure games involve getting from Point A to Point B, usually from solving a puzzle or collecting an item that allows you to pass (in the case of Zelda, a weapon you find in a dungeon or a key item). This fits the definition of "adventure game" perfectly. The only Zelda game that I'd consider to be Action RPG-like would be Majora's Mask, because there's so many sidequests and optional things to do in that game that it really has that Action RPG feel.
If you want a good example of an Action RPG, check out Kingdom Hearts (first one preferably) or Monster Hunter, especially the latter game which is much more RPG-like in nature.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Perhaps, put on some hiking boots, open the front door and head out for an adventure in the real world. It'll give her a far better grounding in life than spending even more hours in front of a screen than she (probably) already does. Seriously.