Until early this year, I hadn't played video games seriously since I was in grade school. But in an effort to find something new and entertaining that my wife and I could do at home, we entered into the wonderful world of adventure games. Charl and I play the games together, typically with the help of Universal Hint System, for when we get in a jam. Here are the games we've played this year, and my personal ranking, from best to not-as-great:

1. Grim Fandango - Wonderful script and story, great characters and performances, very smart and funny.


2. The Curse of Monkey Island - Excellent cartoon-like graphics, great music, performances, and humor.


3. Escape From Monkey Island - Longer than Curse, but not quite as fascinating. Still great fun though.


4. The Longest Journey - Lives up to its name- it's the longest game we've played so far. Very immersive and complex. Great story, memorable characters.


5. The Secret of Monkey Island - The original game in the excellent Monkey Island series. I was a little concerned that I wasn't going to enjoy this game because it was 10 years older than some of the other games we'd played. The graphics and sound are nowhere close to the later Monkey Island games, but this one was still inventive and laugh-out-loud funny.


6. Syberia - Absolutely fantastic graphics, good music, and chalenges that are just easy enough to complete, and hard enough that you feel a sense of accomplishment when figuring them out. Some of the voice perforances weren't all that great, and a couple story elements were kinda lame, but the atmosphere and attention to detail of the game overshadow its inadequacies.


7. Beyond Atlantis - Wow, gorgeous graphics, great sound, really immersive environments. I really liked ALMOST everything about this game. There's one aspect of it though that really bites. You have to "record your journey" into a crystal you carry, and the process is tedious, somewhat difficult, and definitely not fun. This game might have gotten a higher rating if not for that one silly thing.


8. Day of the Tentacle - A very funny and inventive game where you play 3 characters in 3 different time periods who must work together in order to win. I was continually surprised by the humor and clever design of this game.


9. Atlantis: The Lost Tales - We experienced some technical quirks with this game, probably because our PC and graphics card are much faster than this 1997 title was designed for (none of them prevented gameplay though). Despite that, I was impressed by the lush 3D environments, and interesting story. There are a number of sequences where you must complete certain tasks very quickly, and without any mistakes or you will die. Charl found it very stressful (she's usually the "driver"), and I found it annoying that you couldn't choose where to save your game- the game automatically saves at certain points, and you sometimes have to repeat lengthy sequences in order to repeat a difficult and deadly challenge.


10. Monkey Island II: LeChuck's Revenge - The graphics in this second part of the Monkey Island quadrilogy are improved in the sense that there is more color and detail than in Secret of Monkey Island- however, the added detail actually makes it more difficult to notice important objects and hotspots in the game. Still definitely worth playing.


11. The Cameron Files: Secret At Loch Ness - While I enjoyed the Scottish atmosphere and music in this game, the character animation was not as good as in some of this game's contemporaries. Also, like Atlantis The Lost Tales, there are some timed sequences where you can die- but worse, but here the game actually ends. And this game doesn't save automatically, so make sure you save often. This was also probably the shortest game we've played so far. We finished it in 2 nights.


12. Beyond Atlantis II - This game is really odd. Despite the name, its story doesn't have anything to do with the first two Atlantis games. Also, the vocal performances are pretty bad, and there's this part of the game called "the membrane" which you must go through numerous times, that is incredibly difficult and frustrating to navigate. There are actually two phases in the game which I thought were pretty cool- one where you're a young thief in and Arabian fantasy, and another where you're a cave woman, but that darned membrane! This game also seemed sort of short. Oh- and the options menu, while looking really cool, is utterly obtuse- none of the controls are labeled, or even look like they do something useful. You basically just click and pray that you didn't accidentally just end the game. Oh well.