A Tribute to LucasArts

As you all may have heard by now, something terrible has happened: LucasArts has been closed by parent company Disney due to disappointments with not much happening.
Sad news to be sure. Okay true LucasArts haven't really done anything of note in recent years but for a moment there, these guys were at the top of their game, delivering games that were lot's of fun and have stood strong against the march of time.

The LucasArts I knew were makers of superb adventure games. They were both real written and imaginative in their premises. They boasted puzzles that actually made sense and had a sense of humor that worked even when humor in gaming tends to fall flat on its face all too easily. These games had brilliant graphics complimented with gloriously rendered backgrounds and presented wonderfully realized worlds. And these games were designed by people who truly loved their craft and knew exactly what made a great game. Finally, LucasArts took chances with new IP - most of them paid off in dividends. They fostered talent and proved they were bursting at the seams with genuine creativity.

I spent this summer playing a lot of LucasArts adventures - namely Day of the Tentacle, the Dig, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Sam and Max Hit the Road and, of course, Monkey Island 1,2 and 3. Some of these I played for the very first time. From the perspective of twenty years, these games still hold up remarkably well and they certainly are impressive - even to someone who spent the early nineties as a one-eyed console devotee. What worked originally still works very well and it's a testament to building games that are well-designed. Indeed, these games were made by people who are genuinely passionate about what they do and it shows.
And whilst the LucasArts adventures may have been a mainstay of PC gaming twenty years ago, even if I wasn't aware of it at the time, it's hard to imagine PC gaming without the Midas Touch LucasArts has provided.

So here's to LucasArts and the adventure games they made. We've never seen anything like them and we probably never will again.

On the Road Again

Recently I had the pleasure of striking another game from my Hall of Shame (they're falling like bowling pins!). This time it was Sam and Max Hit the Road.

Those who've been following my progress on my Hall of Shame would note that I've been playing a lot of adventure games. Nothing wrong with that: Point and Click adventue games is something that has eluded me in the past so it's great to sit down and play through some of them. Now normally, the genre I play the most (at least according to Raptr) are RPGs - and adventure games really come across as something of an antithesis: Whereas RPGs are serious, PaCAs are fun and witty; whereas RPGs are loaded with action, PaCAs don't; whereas RPGs are mostly confined to fantasy/scifi settings, PaCAs are a lot more inventive with their settings. And whereas RPGs demand a lot of hours on the player PaCAs take a much lesser amount of time investment. 
And ultimately after playing so many RPG's, playing a PaCA comes across as a breath of fresh air - and it makes me enthusiastic again to play games and jabber on and on about them.  

Anywho, about Sam and Max. If anything this game surprised me - but not for the reasons one would think so. You see, looking at the box art of the game, one will notice a Parental Advisory sticker that has been incorporated into the artwork:

Recognizing the image I went in expecting to see crude humour - the likes one would find on South Park - but with Sam and Max this was not the case. (of course now I look more closely at the 'sticker' and find it is indeed a parody).
Of course it would've been obvious to have some crude/offensive humor in a game featuring some goofy looking critters in some bizarre juxtaposition (looking at you Conker's Bad Fur Day!) but again, this was not the case.

What I did get was indeed one of the funniest games I've ever played. There are some real laugh out-loud moments (with particular favorites being the Dinosaur park and the Frog rock) that are egenuinely funny. Now humour is a very tricky aspect to handle in gaming as it can trip and fall on it;s face very easily but that doe snot seem the case with Sam and Max: The humor is genuine and natural and never once feels forced - which in gaming doesn't come as often as one would think. Indeed it could've gone all so wrong, as indicated by the previous paragraph, but it didn't. It sounds like an impossibility but here it worked a treat.

So yeah I really enjoyed Sam and Max - they were lots of fun and bursting with both personality and hilarity (I'm still trying to common-parlance the fact the Sam has the same voice actor who does Disney's Goofy). The world they inhabited was kooky, bizarre and great to get around.

So all in all, this game is another winner for LucasArts. Yes I've been saying that lot with the Adventure games I've been playing but with games boasting quality like this, why would I bother with the rubbish?