Time Gentlemen, Please!

"I have.... friends. ....people on the outside who want to see me... eat some cake."

When I think 'point and click', I think 'Oh, no, please, anything but that'. Generally, that is. When I think about it in the context of this 1001 list, I'm reminded that I still need to go back to Broken Sword, Grim Fandango, and even Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Oh, and a few Monkey Island adventures too.

Even though I know I'm awful at finding the often obscure solutions to the many puzzles in these games, their usually humourous stories and strong characters are worth putting in the time for. You can tell stories differently in point and click games. You can get to explore a character's thoughts and attitudes in ways that other games just don't touch.

But the genre had still fallen behind by the time 2010 rolled around. Wouldn't it be nice to go back in time and enjoy them in their prime? That's not the premise in Time Gentlemen, Please!, but this is certainly a love letter to the genre. One written by two foul-mouthed idiots, but a love letter nonetheless.

Machinarium

¯\_d[o_0]b_/¯

Source // Steam

Long, long ago, coincidentally around the time of this next game's release, I owned a MacBook. I then owned a MacBook Pro. One of those two devices, for a short time, had a copy of Machinarium on it, a point and click game about a little robot looking for love.

I have absolutely no idea how I came to have Machinarium. None whatsoever. I didn't like point and click adventures, and gaming on a Mac just hadn't taken off, outside of iOS devices at least, though I do remember getting Steam when it launched on the platform...

Anyway, what is immediately obvious about Machinarium is that it doesn't look like any other game you've played, does it? You might even think it was made for the Mac, but it wasn't, because it's on everything nowadays, and it's still as challenging.

Hotel Dusk: Room 215

"I'll be gone in a day or twooooooooooo"

Well, now. Would you look at that? That's different, isn't it? That's Hotel Dusk: Room 215, a Nintendo DS point and click detective mystery about a magic hotel room, starring hand-drawn rotoscoped characters with a hint of anime about them. Well, more than a hint, but not full-on. Well, not much. I'm waffling.

I've never seen nor heard of Hotel Dusk in my life until the time came for me to play it here, and like hotel owner Dunning Smith says, it has certainly caught my interest.

It may look like a music video, but how does it play?

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

"They haven't beheaded her yet. I think. Can they reattach your head after cutting it off?"

The point and click adventure. According to the 1001 list, it was a genre that went out on a high with The Longest Journey, a game that I thought wasn't bad at the time - certainly not my usual type of gaming experience. It was waffly and new agey, but it had something going for it. Not sure what, because I've not gone back to it since, but there we go. Point and click adventures can still be good. As of 1999.

Seven years later, there's a sequel trying to prove that the genre didn't go out on a high note. It didn't go out at all. The point and click adventure is still here, even if it has to be tweaked and mixed with third-person combat and other mechanics more casual players enjoy. That sequel is Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, and I've absolutely no idea how it connects to the first game.

Truth be told, The Longest Journey was out of my mind for so long that I didn't connect the two until reading this Wikipedia entry...

Samorost

Oh gnome!

This is the screenshot that accompanies the 1001 writeup for Samorost, a point and click game that follows a little space gnome on a mission to avert disaster for his home.

But you wouldn't know that from that screenshot. Your first reaction to it is probably similar to my own: what the heck am I looking at here?

The Longest Journey

"is the journey inward, for he who has chosen his destiny has started upon his quest for the source of his being." - Dag Hammarskjöld

Source // LongestJourney.com

The 1001 entry for this game calls it the end of an era; point and click graphic adventure games as a genre have fallen by the wayside, but not before a last great story about the mix of magic and technology in the form of The Longest Journey.

We are 18-year-old Art student April Ryan, and we're the mother of the future. Whatever that means. Must be true. Dragon hologram told us in our dream.

Source // GOG

Let's see what's going on here...

Grim Fandango

Can I borrow your hole punch?

 

When I look back at the long list of point and click adventure games to have come from the 1001 list so far, I see a fair few titles that I actually want to play again. By 'play again' I mean 'carry on playing', and by 'actually want to' I mean 'have been surprised by and should ignore the fact that I groan when I come across the words point and click because there are now many more games I should'.

That's a long-winded way of saying that even with the ease of having a remastered version on two platforms, I still somewhat hesitated to get around to playing yet another LucasArts point and click adventure game, in the form of Grim Fandango.

I hesitated not because of the cast of characters who are nothing but skeletons and monsters, but because I didn't want to get frustrated by getting stumped on a puzzle, of which there seem to be many in this genre.

Despite the developers constantly saying that there are no fail states, and no ways to lose, I'm never filled with enough confidence to get stuck in and find out, frankly, what I'm missing. Because I've clearly been missing the likes of Grim Fandango.

The Last Express

Anyone want my ticket to ride?

The 1001 list write up for this rotoscoped point and click adventure suggests that The Last Express could be the greatest game never played.

A tale of murder on the Orient Express, characters who go about their daily routines in the background, multiple options and endings to make this express your express. Is it the first express of many?

The Curse of Monkey Island

The Monkeys are listening.

Would you look at that? Another point and click adventure game finds its way onto the 1001 list - my favourite genre, don't you know?

LucasArts adventures have been cropping up in this list frequently, and they tend not to disappoint so it would seem that the third Monkey Island title, headed by those who were behind Full Throttle, is more of the same and then some.

The Curse of Monkey Island is, so I read, not as fondly remembered as the first two titles, but still has plenty to offer players, especially in the looks department. This twenty-year-old game has not been given an HD re-release of any kind, and it looks like it could have been released twenty minutes ago.

But how does it play? Like a twenty-year-old point and click adventure title? What's going on? Should I have played and completed the previous instalments? I should get going and work towards answering these questions, really.

Blade Runner

Give me a hard copy of that.

Games based on movies. They've got quite the stigma, haven't they? Notorious for being a swing and a miss in the vast majority of cases, it's a rarity to find one worth talking about in a positive light. On the overcast streets of a (now near) future Los Angeles are neon lights and signs of hope - hope that Blade Runner plays as good as it looks because it looks bloody fantastic.

Set parallel to the movie of the same name, Blade Runner follows Ray McCoy on the hunt for Replicants in a point-and-click adventure that weaves in and out of the plot from the movie, but still exists as separate from it.

Get your Voight-Kampff tests ready, because we're going to retire some Replicants.

The Neverhood

*gibberish mumble mumble brrrpbrpbrrp*

"The Neverhood? Neverhood of it before in my life!"

Seriously though, I haven't seen nor heard of The Neverhood up until this point in time, and I am perhaps gladder than I've ever been to see that corrected and to fill in another blank spot in my knowledge of gaming history.

Created by the guy who brought you Earthworm Jim comes the somewhat silly adventure of Klaymen, seemingly alone in the world called The Neverhood. Not much adventuring to be had with nobody to interact with, is there? What's a funny point and click without funny conversation trees?

Oh yeah, this game is a point and click. Aaaaand, let's go!

Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars

Paris in the fall...

If I'm not mistaken, the first point and click adventure I played was Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars. It was definitely a demo, rather than the full game, and the internet points me towards it being given away with the Official UK PlayStation Magazine in March 1997.

I haven't played it since.

Not because it was a point and click, no. Honest. I thought the demo was awesome. A game that looked like a cartoon - that even moved like one. I hadn't come across that before. Earthworm Jim wasn't in my life until later, for one example that springs to mind.

Anyway, believe it or not, I liked the idea of Broken Sword and what it had to offer, but kids being kids and pocket money being pocket money, I didn't get Broken Sword. It just fell by the wayside as I got easily distracted by whatever came after it.

As life went on, I never saw a reason to go back and actually see what the game was like beyond the conclusion of that demo. I never looked into the sequels - never even knew about most of them - and Broken Sword was left as little more than a memory.

Until, of course, this 1001 list...

The Beast Within: A Gabriel Knight Mystery

When the point and click fans go marching in...

Do you think I'm the kind of person to know of the Grabriel Knight series of point and click adventure games? I'm not the kind of person to know that Gabriel Knight is a name that is even associated with video games, let alone that it's the name of the lead character in a bunch of point and click adventure games.

If I don't know that, then there's no chance in Hell that I'd know that The Beast Within, the second game in the series, went down the full motion video, interactive movie route, putting blue-screened actors inside digital photos where, somewhere, there exists the thing you need to click on to progress the plot.

After reading that it was indeed a point and click with real people, I was interested in playing it. The introduction movie gives me no ideas as to what's going on, but what's new there? It's got fire and German folks in it, that's about all I gathered before being introduced to Gabriel Knight himself.

The Dig

Low to Brink. Low to Robbins. Low to Brink.

Of all the LucasArts point and click adventures, it's the one with the forgettable title that breaks the trend of outright funny dialogue and humourous situations in favour of a Steven Spielberg inspired tale of survival and aliens.

The Dig does eventually get around to having you dig something, but not until it has set the scene, and it's a scene you might not have ever guessed from the title. You're in control of Commander Boston Low, an astronaut on a mission to detonate nuclear weapons on the surface of an asteroid that has a 99% chance of slamming into the Earth.

The first thing you dig is a hole for your nuclear device, but things get a little more interesting from there...

Full Throttle

I'm not putting my lips on that.

Full Throttle. That's got something to do with a guy on a bike, right? That's about all I know of Full Throttle, other than that it is a point and click - my speciality...

I can't say I was looking forward to playing it if I'm honest, but the more I read about it before doing so, the more interested in it I was. It stars the vocal talents of Mark Hamill, for example, whom I think I've heard of before, but also the likes of Maurice LaMarche and Kath Soucie and other names you don't necessarily know but whose voices you definitely do.

Set in an alternate near future version of America, Full Throttle has you point Ben, leader of the Polecats motorcycle gang, around the desolate countryside on a mission to clear his name after being framed for murder.

How soon will I need to search for 'Full Throttle walkthrough'?

Beneath a Steel Sky

It's WHEEZING and BANGING... Like an asthmatic DINOSAUR in the MATING season.

I don't remember when or why I started watching other people playing games on YouTube, but I do remember that many, many years ago, Beneath a Steel Sky was among the first titles I watched, and not because I knew of the game or had played it before.

There I was, enjoying a game from a distance, knowing I would likely never be in a position to play such an old title. Here I am now, though, with a proper PC to watch YouTube on, and a game that is free for everyone to play. Free as in free, as in nought monies, as in no real excuse to see what it's about first hand.

Our adopted home has been destroyed and we're on the run from who knows what. We need to find answers, both as to what's going on, and to how to get through this point and click adventure in one piece.

No prizes for guessing the outcome to this entry.

The 7th Guest

Feeling lonely?

Having not had a computer for my early childhood, there is no possible way that I'd have caught The 7th Guest in all its original two CD glory - a game so big and detailed that not even the vast storage space of a single CD could contain it.

Joking aside, this game was one of the first pieces of media to really push for consumers to buy CD-ROM drives and welcome the future, and for video gaming (according to developers Trilobyte) that meant mixing pre-rendered 3D backgrounds with live action characters.

Kind of like Return to Zork, I guess, but better. Personally speaking.

We are a disembodied spirit in a spooky old house. What horrors will we witness? What secrets will we uncover? What will we rate the acting out of ten? Let's dive right in.

Sam & Max Hit the Road

Greetings from the USA.

If you were to ask me what Sam and Max look like, I could at least bluff some knowledge of the two - a dog and a rabbit. What do they do? Maaaaaybe cops or something? I don't know too much about them beyond that.

So, it was about time I finally saw who they were in Sam & Max Hit the Road, a point and click adventure that sees our heroes search for some escaped carnival attractions. Seeing as Sam and Max are part of the 'Freelance Police', that must surely mean there's more to the story than meets the eye.

Can we find out what's going on without looking up too many hints this time? Haha. Ha. Hhhyeahh...

Return to Zork

Simply Gruesome.

"Return to Zork? Return to Zork? As in, the Zork? That text adventure from way back when? Are we going to be going through another text adventure in the mid-1990s?"

That was more or less my initial reaction upon seeing Return to Zork in the list, before tracking it down and seeing that, no, actually we're not going back into the realm of text adventure, but are witnessing its evolution into point and click.

Though we've done a few point and click games already, so I guess we're seeing the Zork series evolve into point and click... such an important event that the developers have gone all out with their graphics budget to show it.

Look at that. A nod to the first game, from 13 years earlier, within the first minute of this game. The rest of the game can't look this good, can it?

Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle

Ding!

When I saw Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle creep up the 1001 list as its turn grew nearer, I knew I'd have to be prepared for a bit of frustration and a lack of progress. These types of games just aren't my favourite, but once again, a friendlier remastered version is available to play, so I should at least be able to marvel at the artwork if nothing else.

It's a bit of a negative outlook, that, but we'll see where it takes us.