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Posted on November 2, 2011, Phil Owen Top 10 Best Adventure Games of All Time

Uncharted 3 is out this week, and so we’ve been thinking a lot about the adventure games of our past. And boy have we played a lot of them. Here are our top ten adventure games of all time.

10. Planetfall



Developer: Infocom

Year: 1983

One of the early text adventure games, Planetfall finds you as a crew member on a space ship that crash lands on a remote, unknown planet (thus the title). Planetfall is as esoteric as games come, but it’s a ton of fun to explore this world. It gets the nod over the better known Zork simply because I prefer it.

9. King’s Quest



Developer: Sierra

Year: 1984

This is one of the first adventure games to have graphics, which is kind of crazy to think about, but the 80s were a strange and awkward time for everyone. A classic fantasy tale, King’s Quest was so good that is almost singularly responsible for the rise of Sierra.

8. Tomb Raider



Developer: Core Design

Year: 1996

Tomb Raider is a pillar of the adventure game genre, because it dragged it into the 3D era for the first time. While Core Design’s original may not be the most polished of the Tomb Raider games, it get the nod here because of the progress it represents within the genre, and because it’s still great that we have a major franchise with a female protagonist.

7. Syberia



Developer: Microids

Year: 2002

Syberia, another game with a female protagonist, tells the semi-surreal story of a lawyer’s quest to find the owner of a French toy factory. At its heart is an existential dilemma — all too rare in gaming, period — and that’s what made the biggest impression on us.

6. Myst



Developer: Cyan

Year: 1993

Who here hasn’t played Myst? The Myst franchise is ubiquitous, and that speaks to its power. A powerful tale of exploration of worlds previously unknown, Myst is at once eye-catching and mindblowing and really, really difficult, as any old-school adventure game should be. Few games have ever captured our imagination the way Myst did.

Check out our top 5 on page 2