Top Ten Adventures @~To register your votes, just send in your choices, number them @~1st to 10th and preferably give brief comments on why you voted @~for each game. 10 points are awarded for 1st place down to 1 @~point for 10th place. Charlotte Wolle's Top Ten for 1998 I'm pretty sure no-one's going to look at this without noticing the complete lack of any strategy games. Well, I don't have anything against them, it's just I'm so utterly useless at them that I haven't bothered to rate them, and am going to leave that to someone who knows what they're about. Something else that's going to stick out like a large green tentacle is my total and unashamed bias towards Lucasarts and suchlike games. 1 - *Day of the Tentacle* Packed with humour, lush graphics, funky music, and most importantly an absolutely excellent adventure, and not a bit cheesy. Not the hardest game in the world, but my motto is, quality, not quantity, and this just oozes quality. One great feature is the way you play the three characters in their own individual themed time setting, which adds a brilliant variety to the game. 2 - *Curse of Monkey Island* The latest mind-blowingly good adventure with Guybrush Threepwood hit my Lucasarts soft spot and forced me at knife point to put it at number two. Great plot, some tricky puzzles, and a hearty slap across the thigh of humour. 3 - *Mindshadow* My first timid steps into adventuring ventured through this absolute cracker of a game. Okay so the gameplay or graphics aren't up to much, and it's pretty old as well, but it reflects the qualities that really count in an adventure, and those are adventures. Couldn't praise it enough. 4 - *Little Big Adventure* This immature yet pleasing cute game made me feel about six, but really splashes out gorgeous graphics. It's action packed, but has a neat story line, lets you explore a complex setting, but doesn't let you wander far from the plot. Grrreat. 5 - *Discworld 1* No Terry Pratchett fan could ever live the same again after seeing Rincewind and his weird sense of humour in pixels. Of course, it is a game of getting-this-thingy-and-using-with-this-thingy, which gets a bit tedious if you get stuck, but makes up for this with hilarious characters, dazzling colours, and plenty of Pratchettisms. 6 - *Sam and Max Hit the Road* Another great triumph for Lucasarts; I don't know anyone who's played it for 10 minutes who hasn't played it for a fortnight. (That's Good.) Or anyone who hasn't loved it to bits for another thing. The loveable duo are comic from the start, and really have a dig at all those cheesy American cliches of the tourist route. Totally addictive, side splittingly funny, and really, really, cool. 7 - *Discworld 2 - Missing Presumed...!?* Not quite as ground breaking as its predecessor, but a great leap in graphic and puzzles. Starts off kind of dark and miserable (well the game is about death ), but brightens up into a deja-vu of bright comedy and characters. An excellent attempt at following up near perfection. 8 - *Humbug* Not the biggest fan of text adventures around, myself, by far, but this game is undeniably the best game of that type I've ever played. Without fancy graphics it makes light work of creating an unusual and amusing setting, and scenario. Graham Cluley also manages to break the boundaries of convention with his wicked, and sometimes twisted sense of humour. Not the easiest game in the world, (a really hard one actually, I found), but extremely entertaining and long-lasting piece of fun. 9 - *Hugo's House of Horrors (all three)* I couldn't resist adding this silly set of adventures in here somewhere. Number three, is, undoubtedly the best of the three, but I still have endearing memories of struggling away at numbers one and two. They are a sort of, well pathetic, attempt at big style adventures, but don't fail completely miserably. Hugo's hardly an action hero, the stories aren't exactly gripping, the graphics aren't very exciting, but they all make up for these by being small, unimposing, and overall very nice and cute. Oh I'm so soppy. 10 - *Lord of the Rings* Another one that couldn't bear to be left without a mention. Interplay crammed as much of the novel (the nation's favourite!) as they could into the game, without spoiling the plot or rewriting the book. I think it's quite old too, so it really did do a good job of transferring some Tolkien magic into pictures. Not quite as gripping as the others I've mentioned above, but very satisfying to complete. (Another pretty hard one for me). Well, that's all for this year, and probably the next five. As you can see, I don't really buy many new games, and subsequently my favourite games stay the same for quite a while. And if you don't share the love of these tasteful choices; write your own top ten and share your opinion with us all. You can e-mail me to rant and rave, or suggest games I might like, but no 'flames' please. @~The Top Ten for 1996/98 is: 43 pts Dungeon Master 24 pts Lands of Lore 23 pts Secret of Monkey Island 19 pts Day of the Tentacle 18 pts Chaos Strikes Back 15 pts Magic the Gathering, Might and Magic series 14 pts Secret of Monkey Island 2, Bard's Tale 12 pts Discworld 1, Sam and Max 11 pts Stonekeep 10 pts Gabriel Knight 2, Ultima VII:The Black Gate, Sentinel, Mordens Quest, TimeQuest, Ultima Underworld 2, Command and Conquer:Red Alert, Little Big Adventure 1 9 pts Curse of Monkey Island (MI3), Aliens, Civilization 2, Ultima VI, Anvil of Dawn, Prisoner of Ice, Millenium 2.2, Eye of the Beholder trilogy 8 pts Dungeon Master 2, Guild of Thieves, Ultima V, Lords of Time, Colossal Cave, Civilization, Quake, Historyline 1914-1918, Mindshadow 7 pts Ravenloft 2: The Stone Prophet, Lurking Horror, Jet Set Willy, Hammer of Grimmold, Zork Zero, The Civilization series 6 pts Ishar 2, Elite, Frontier:Elite 2, Veil of Darkness, Pirate Adventure, Toonstruck, Ultimate Doom (Doom/Doom 2), Warcraft 2, Dune 2 5 pts System Shock, Nord and Bert, Ultima Underworld I, Flight of the Amazon Queen, Zork 1, Settlers 1 and 2, Syndicate Wars 4 pts Ultima 8: Pagan, Populous, Lords of Midnight, The Dig, The Four Symbols, Black Dawn 2, Discworld 2 3 pts Humbug, Wolfenstein 3D, Ishar 1 Full Throttle, Transport Tycoon, CivNet, Betrayal at Krondor, Master of Orion 1 and 2 2 pts UFO:Enemy Unknown, Sim City, Drakken, Gabriel Knight 1, Death Gate, Eric the Unready, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Shadow of Yserbius, Descent, MechWarrior 2 The Clans, Railroad Tycoon and Deluxe, The Hugo Series 1 pt Captive, Emerald Isle, Theme Park, Midwinter 2, Larn, Fool's Errand, Wizardry VI, Lord of the Rings @~Votes so far by Alex van Kaam, Laura Duncan, Adrian Sill, @~Greg Lord, David Stocks, Arnie, Steve McLaren, @~John Ferris, Sue Medley, James Judge, David Wagner and @~Charlotte Wolle - o -