A few days playing games on the Mac (WillFred the Windows Box is fixed, now) - I had to dig out the old, old games.

There are some superb, stuning, amazing, infuriating, exciting, invigorating , challenging and downright wonderful games out there. Games which rival great literature or cinema in their visual beauty or tight plotting. Games which entertain and educate, which move you and bring joy (or frustration) to your day.

I have re-discovered that there are also games which should never, ever, ever have seen the light of day. Definitely anything involving Lara Croft or Leisure Suit Larry.

So - what games should have been left on the drawing board or as uncompiled code?

I'm nominating Plan Nine From Outer Space, Hopkins FBI (a pain to install on Linux, and not worth the effort), The Moment of Silence and Mystery of The Druids (with apologies to House of Tales for a dual nomination).

- Cold Case File, so boring, short and easy it doesn't even deserve the word 'game'.
- Dead Reefs, so buggy I can't play it because it freezes my computer whenever I try to open a certain door.

Why TMoS reikidave? It's one of my favorite games, ever, and I still recommend it to anyone who asks for a game with a great story. I know the controls aren't always cooperating very well, but for me that was only a bit of a nuisance and not a dominating problem. I haven't played any of the other games you mention, although I have bought Hopkins FBI and Mystery of the Druids and they are waiting for a rainy weekend.

What a quandary. At first I find myself in complete disagreement with you : the Lara Croft games are excellent. Of Larry I know little, and what little I know ensures I don't find out more.

P9FOS and Hopkins FBI... I have no idea. I though Plan Nine was an OS (it is).

However, in the end I have to wholeheartedly endorse & second your nominations for The Moment of Silence and The Mystery of the Druids. I didn't enjoy either of them. TMOS is dull, dreary, clichéd and predictable. MotD is illogical (which is okay in Monkey Island, but infuriating in a police procedural investigation) and dull. Almost as much fun as Operation Wintersun.

Gremlin

I'd like to nominate on the post of the worst (not only adventure) game of all time ANY of the Microsoft Windows (tm) OS installments.

1. Illogical puzzles (trying to install new hardware on VISTA for example)
2. Random crashes
3. Unstability
4. Performance drops
5. Not satisfactory ending
6. Very little tech support
7. Getting boring over the time
8. Frustrating action sequences (beating keyboard or pressing ok when multiple error messages keep popping up)

Seriously - I sometimes wonder how many games at all people posting stuff like "Moment of Silence is the worst game" actually played. I liked moment of silence and I would say that it was definitely one of the better adventures coming out in the last years.

Frustrating action sequences?

I'm going to initiate a "And the best game is......." thread so we can have both going at once. It'll be interesting to see which games are listed on both threads.

Hi

The worst game for me was The Sacred Mirror of Kofun

Cheers.

Mad

For me I often dislike a game because I don't like the main character e.g Ankh, I found so irritating that I never finished. My top choice for for worst game has to be Dead Reefs for many reasons, the arrogance of the main character, the WASD controls, the fact that I did something wrong and got totally stuck and had to start again.

I enjoyed Moment of Silence and the Mystery of the Druids at the time but I think they are now very dated and we have moved on to much better games like Syberia and Darkness Within

Oh gosh....I'm right with you there with Mystery of the Druids. And the Frankenstein TTEOTM game--even though it had Tim Curry it just was the biggest bore I've ever tried to play through. I finish most games but I just couldn;t force myself through that one.

WW

...and yet I found Frankenstein TTEOTM to be one of the best most entertaining games I have played, and loved Tim Curry in the role of the 'doctor'...I have even dug it out and replayed it at least twice whilst awaiting another 'soon to be released' game on my MUST HAVE list! I guess it's true, "one man's trash is another man's garbage" (and I am a female) and "to each his own" and "variety is the spice of life". What a wonderful (gaming) world we 'live' in!
Love, Betty Lou

My least favorite game ever is among the newer games and will probably garner some hostility, but I hated, and would not finish, Penumba: Overture. I found it tedious with dull graphics and overly-easy puzzles. I don't think there has ever been a game I disliked as quickly or as completely.

I would nominate Forever Worlds. This sounded so good, but I could not get it to work properly no matter how hard I tried and in the end it froze my comp up everytime I tried to open a game.

This is kind of funny.
I was looking over my old games to see what i could
trade.I come across Shivers 2.
I hated this game the first time i played it, and never finished
it.
I installed it to remind me why i disliked it .
Yes you guessed it, i am getting a hoot out of
this game.
I always had a soft spot for old games,but i think after playing so many newer DUD games i appreciate them more.

And I enjoyed "Mystery of the Druids." My discovery of "Twelve Bridges" (in Druids) was one of my favorite gaming moments. And "Moment of Silence" had a great story, which I still find myself thinking about when I see access to information being restricted, or old sources of information gone defunct.

Maybe the title of the thread should be about your "personal worst." It's pretty clear that not many people in here have played (or even read about) "The Sacred Mirror of Kofun" or it would show up a lot more often.

Sorry to all TMoS fans: the game's premise was great, but I had terrible trouble getting it to work - a 241mb patch solved the problem. Trouble is, the artwork, acting and puzzles just didn't engage me. I'll admit, though, that this could be a failing in me and not a lack of quality in TMoS. I find that House of Tales usually fails to live up to expectations - which is sad, because Overclocked looks to be potentially an intriguing and challenging game.

gremlin - I should have said "Plan 9 From Outer Space" - excellent film (honestly!) but a screamingly, teeth-grindingly abysmal game. If you can find a copy lurking out there in the dank corners of the internet, try it and see if I'm wrong. (I do play all games I post on). Wish you hadn't mentioned the Plan 9 os, though - I have got to try the live cd (my addictions are Adventure Games and unusual OSes. Solaris is superb on VMWare Player).

metamorphium - you are so right. Windows and Linux (even today) are a pain for upgrades and patches. Except for Mandriva, anything based on Debian.For me, Apple's OSX series is the easiest.

Really, I started this thread because trying some of the old games made me realise just how high-quality the Adventure Games being made today are, even ones made by amateurs and purely for love (the Ben Jordan series, The White Room and most of what's on the AGS website are cases in point). They don't just benefit from better technology, they are infinitely superior to much of what has gone before.

Well i can't really remember a game which i absolutely hated when it comes to Adv Games, sure some games i found more enjoyable than others but nothing comes to mind at the moment. Oh i got one, Paradise, i tried that game for about 10 mins and then uninstalled it. That was probably the worst Adve Game i ever played.

Butcher, in ten minutes you can barely get started much less decide if it is a bad game. You missed a great one in my opinion, Paradise was an excellent game.

Ana

I really liked Moment of Silence & Mystery of the Druids (although it was quite difficult). I also think the Tomb Raider series are excellent games. The game I have come across which I think is the absolute worst is In Memoriam (aka Missing in January) - it is the only game I have completely given up on & would never go back to. Conspiracies I didn't think was that great & as for Forever Worlds - I thought it was dire when I first played it but through replaying sections to help out on hints I ended up getting quite fond of it! (I don't know whether that makes it a less dire game!)

I'm adding my two-pennorth to the support for The Moment of Silence, as it's one of my most favourite games.

As for the worst game - I do have to agree with Butcher, Paradise was an absolute stinker. Never has a game depressed me quite so much as this one did, with its drab colourscheme and monotonal main character. Having come from the same developer as the Syberias and Amerzone, this was such a disappointment for me personally.

How about The Scroll? That got a lot of votes the last time we had a "worst game" thread...

Fork in the Tale. One wrong step and you replay a scene over and over.
I thought Kofun had some beautiful underwater shots. Wish I could have made the game play all the way through.
Loved TMOS, Dead Reefs and Paradise.

Without getting too descriptive because some people are still playing this game, my worst game to date is Next Life. Although it did make me laugh in a few places with the zany translations. Canoe: old bark. That made me laugh out loud.

In addition to Frankenstein (one of only two games I just couldn't finish) I would like to add Necronomicon to the list of bad games...

I think all the old "The Scroll" players died off.
Either that or they developed amnesia about it to preserve their sanity.



Have to agree with that. It was dreary and depressing and the main character was a mindless drone. Especially coming after games like Amerzone and the Syberias, I was expecting more of the same magic... but got something akin to dried sludge instead.



http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=360003174944

Actually, it's not a common usage, but bark does mean boat

That's great, Jenny...

I have 'Paradise', played it for an hour or so and didn't get into it...however, maybe I should give it a real try and then make a decision. My all time least fave has to be 'Moment of Silence'. Toooooooo much talking! The incessant conversation trees would put me to sleep...