Nice watch, although I am inclined to point out the fact that you listed "Gabriel Knight 3"--the number one game on the list list--as number three.

I'd actually argue that the reason Gabriel Knight 3 is listed as #3 at the top of the list is because it's so hard and insane that the difficulty transcends all logic, space and time.

'Use rat to get wallet'? PHANTASMAGORIA!

Try just shouting that in a lobby somewhere. Its fun.

In all truth, yelling many words randomly in crowded locations often leads to entertainment. :snicker:

I'm not very knowledgeable on older adventure games. I didn't play most of them, so I can't really identify with the difficult puzzles you mention LordKat. However, I still think you made a good list here and backed yourself up well. I enjoy learning about "the most" anything in video games, so knowing about exceedingly hard puzzles is another nice addition to my knowledge. =)

i would love to see you doing another let'splay with paw and the other tgwtg guys

That's why I stick with Monkey Island =D

[quote=Scotty2Hotty]That' s why I stick with Monkey Island =D[/quote]

Aren't there actually alternate endings in Monkey Island? I'm pretty sure that there are. I thought of this game when he was talking about replay value.

Yay! I'm so glad you featured some adventure games. It's my favorite genre and it doesn't get a lot of love from review sites.

There is a lot of bad and sloppy puzzle design in adventure games, but for the older Sierra and Lucas Arts games I think a lot of the weird puzzles were created so that players would call the $1.99 a minute hint hot-lines. I remember hearing somewhere that the hint lines were big money.

Awesome! Adventure games were never my thing, because I hate the frustration in being stuck, lost or whatever. I couldn't even go through monkey island, even though it had in-game hints - the coolest and lamest think I've seen. If you do something, like holding down the right mouse button, I don't really remember, and it bluntly tells you what to do. Perfect for me, insult for everyone who likes banging their head against the wall. My profession as a programmer requires that IRL so I tend to not repeat it in-game. I've only done 1 adventure game till the end and only with the easyer character. Thing that made me quit was bad programming, where triggers did not trigger and you had to repeat stuff over and over again in order to continue. That I've followed to the end in only one game and it was an Hentai game, so the reward was sweet for all the effort :)

was that the NES die hard game music over the end credits?

cat hair with maple syrup- genuis!

Yes it was, I recognize it from AVGN's review. I know he never beat it and it did seem like a stupidly hard game... if so looking forward to seeing LordKat tear it a new one.

oh, adventure games. perhaps my most cherished childhood memory of all. there's nothing quite like a good point-and-click. it's really nice of you to do a tribute to them, i can see how they're not really the kind of game for your show, but it's nice to know you like them to! i'd love to hear what some of your favorites were, unless you're tired of making top ten videos.
also i'm guessing from 'moonspeak' that you've seen the tv tropes for nintendo hard and such fun things. i spent hours reading about all the ways adventure games tried to mess with their audience. there was a surprising amount of 'unbeatable but we won't tell you until later' game.

Awwww, no honorable mention for Full Throttle? Stand behind the nondescript piece of background art to steal the gas, only fight the Cave Fish biker with a plank of wood to steal his goggles, KICK THE WALL IN A PLACE WHERE A LITTLE GIRL'S HEAD WOULD HAVE BEEN AT AGE NINE, gah! heh, sorry, flashbacks are trippy things sometimes. And that's not even mentioning the timed-giant-wingless- plane-with-a-armored- fighting-semi puzzle that finishes the game.

Oh, and exploding mechanical bunnies. That part isn't hard, its just my favorite :D

Not good. There were just too many cop out titles, i mean you just cant include a game on this kind of list if there is just one badly designed puzzle on the game. You should have chosen the games based on the overall difficulty.

Haven't played some of those, but I nostalgia'd hard at most of them. :want:

You are WRONG woth Maniac Manison.
You can win with every combination of Characters.

On the other hand. It's possible to screw up the combination ingame.

For example if you Rip up the envelope the Wendy, Razor or Syd endings are impossible.

That's bad but on the other hand, it's not top 10 material.

Personally I think it qualifies if you can so easily make the game unwinnable.

Ha ha, I KNEW the cat stache puzzle would be #1 on the list! XD

Hey, I know you from DeviantArt.

"Use rat to get wallet" reminds me of Peasant's Quest's "throw baby into lake."

Ah loves me some Sam & Max. I have a version running on an emulator & can't for the life of me figure out how you're supposed to save the game.

I hope all of these, including the honorable mentions, get Let's Plays on this site. Adventure games & RPGs make the most interesting Let's Plays.

Are any of these old games vaporware?

[color=green]These games are great but for me I would end up screaming at my pc monitor playing one of these, man I remember playing Willy Beamish on my sega cd.[/color]

This list is incomplete if Riven is not on it.

Sierra, ahh the memories ... and Lucasarts. I'll liste my own personal memories after seeing your list...
My dad had Iceman when i was about 12. I remember watching him play, and myself playing through the first beach and dance club section, with the CPR and the smokin' hot secret agent babe ... well, until i looked back in any decade OTHER than the early 90s and saw that her hair was hilarious.
Once it got to the submarine parts i couldn't get very far.
I hadn't played any of the King's Quests except 6, Heir today, Gone tomorrow. And it featured the king's son, Alexander, i think.
It was very fun, and crazy. I remember the different "Isles" - and you can even travel to the realm of the dead, and the music is so chilling and creepy. You had to give 2 coins to Charron to cross the River Styx, play "Them Bones" to distract some skeleton ghosts into dancing so you could steal a key to get into the deeper regions of the realm. And once you reach the end, you had to find a way to make Death cry in order to revive himself and someone else dead, i can't remember. Talk about deep.
But my main experience was with the Quest for Glory series. 1-4 were excellent, and i never got a chance to fully play 5. But they were great, hilarious, and damn tough sometimes, too. Fun enemies you get to collect money and sellable parts from, great characters, touching events...
They were just brilliant.
Trial by Fire (#2), and Shadows of Darkness (#3) were my favourites.
Then LucasArts had Loom, and Indiana Jones The Last Crusade, and The Secret of Monkey Island...
Lots of hours spent...

[i]you had to find a way to make Death cry in order to[/i] revive the parents, of the princess who you've fallen in love with, who were killed by the bad guy so HE could marry her, and get your own ticket out of the realm.

I'm surprised to see King's Quest V isn't on this list. Save a rat from a cat by throwing a boot so the rat can later save you by chewing through some ropes? Even though when you see the rat and cat there's no indication you're really supposed to do anything?

Then again, pretty much every King's Quest game except 6 and 7 could be on this list.

The most difficult game ever though is Riven. I'm not sure if you played it, or if you don't consider it a true adventure game, but it's insanely difficult.

It also has the distinction of being difficult not by being illogical (like the moustache puzzle), but just by requiring you to put so many different pieces of information together from locations all over the game, depending on super-human observation skills. That, combined with the constant CD swapping, meant that very few people ever made it to the end of this game without a hint book.

day of the tentacle is one of the hardest games for me,for a lousy memory, this game is batshit hard! not to mention you have ADD, constantly asking Bitterman Franklin, to send the buttons shirt kite, simply because you forgot to put that damn, super electoral battery into the pocket! or he stops you from actually play in the pocket. And don't get me started on how to figure out, that in order to replace a continuum crystal, with a disco ball! from the future! not to mention it can seriously screw you up if you do things in the wrong order, or example you forgetting to get the stamp, by completely and utterly, using the invisible ink correctly!

On the upside I do know the solution for mystery mansion because of the SQL, fat rockstar drummer, incredibly dumb blonde, and Mandark.

Terry Pratchett's brain has degenerated into mush? As much as I enjoy your videos, THIS was the most tasteless, useless und unnecessary comment I ever heard out of your mouth. Really. I have not problem with "tasteless" jokes, but this man, this genius has to fight with a really horrible disease - and he deserves respect for everything he has written.
Just my two cents. -_-

That line about Terry Pratchett was uncalled for, I know that LordKat meant it in a way that was referring to the game and how difficult it is but those were badly chosen words and greater respect should be given to Sir Pratchett and every one of his fantastic works. I'm not holding my breath for clarification, though.

[quote=Blackbot]Terry Pratchett's brain has degenerated into mush? As much as I enjoy your videos, THIS was the most tasteless, useless und unnecessary comment I ever heard out of your mouth. Really. I have not problem with "tasteless" jokes, but this man, this genius has to fight with a really horrible disease - and he deserves respect for everything he has written.
Just my two cents. -_-[/quote]

I thought the same thing. My grandmother has Alzheimer's and it makes me very sad every time when I see her and she can't remember me. Pratchett is fairly young, and dementia is a terrible, terrible illness. And it makes it worse when a brilliant mind like Terry's is affected.

I think it's great that Gaiman has been collaborating with him the last couple of years.

This video just made me sad about Terry Pratchett, I love his books and it's such a shame that he's succumbed to Alzheimer's and my be unable to complete any other novels later on. Everyone needs to check out "The Colour Of Magic" and "The Light Fantastic" and you'll see what I mean about him.

Yeaa, totally called number one!

Gold Rush sounds pretty interesting from your description. I might have to check it out, assuming it contains no cats, maple syrup, or masking tape... -_-

@Blackbot
Thanks for taking the words out of my mouth.
Adventuregames are great and I enjoyed this review, but after that line, it was a very sour experience.
Alzheimer is a horrible disease and yes, Pratchett jokes about it, but he can because he has it and because he does it in style.

That line about Terry Pratchett had really changed my opinion about LordKat, He may be suffering from a nasty disease but his books lately have been just as good as ever and he was diagnosed with it many years ago. Not only was that comment tasteless in the extreme is was also completely untrue on any level.

A good list and a nice video, although I don't agree with some of the analyses.

However, I do think the comments about Pratchett were rude ans tasteless. Even suffering from Alzheimer's, he still puts out books of great quality.

As mentioned before, the one about Maniac Mansion was wrong, you can win the game with every combination of chars.. with Syd/Razor you can get the green tentacle to get past the purple one, with Michael you can get Weird Ed to help you with that. With Wendie you can 'bribe' the meteor. The only useless char (other than Dave) is Jeff (only thing he can do is fix the phone).
Most people only know the Bernard solution, because it is obviously the easiest.

Another thing - I cannot agree with Manhunt New York and Manhunt San Francisco being that hard. You didn't die like in other Sierra Games (in fact, if you died you were automatically back at the start of that particular riddle and you could try all possible solutions until one worked). Loved those games back then, pity they never released the last part of that trilogy...

i think the only criticism i have for this video is that alot of the games you chose were difficult because of one puzzle and not the whole experience as a whole.

it just seemed like you used those said games to fill the void

@Milky Mint @Blackbot
Exactly. I mean I love black humour as much as the next person, and I have been a big fan of Jason's work before he even got featured here. He should also remember me from inviting him to a certain channel on EFnet, but I digress. This one line didn't seem funny, at all. To me it was nothing more than an insult to a very undeserving, terminally ill person. It wasn't executed in style, or cleverness. He didn't "take us the other way" with it. I don't know Sir Pratchett personally, but I don't think he would have laughed at that. Jason just plain insulted the man. I actually had to rewatch that scene three times to make sure I heard right, I was kind of surprised, as I had thought different of LordKat.

Well, Maybe he meant it sarcastically, seeing as Sir Terry Pratchett still is more creative and clever than 99.9% of people on this site, meaning that although he has Alzheimers, he still is very smart? But then it wasn't sarcastic enough in my eyes.

It's not that big of a deal, really. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and I would be the first to fight for your right to be able to state it, but I completely disagree with that statement. That was, in my eyes, just a very uncalled for low blow.

Other than that, the video was very entertaining and well done.

You should do better research:
For each character in [i]Maniac Mansion[/i] theres an ending exept Jeff (but you can end the game with the other kid you have chosen). Also the puzzle how to get rid of purple tentacle changes slightly.

What you said was completly wrong. The alternate solutions are what the game is famous for. Have you ever played the game for a longer time?

----

By the way, the comment about Pratchett was really tasteless. If thats your kind of humor, please keep it under your hat. -.-