It's the early 90's all over again!

What the hell is happening here? I'm playing adventure games so much these days, it's as if their oft-reported death never came to be!

BASS Remastered (see below) continues along in all it's glory/frustrating old-school puzzle logic. It's helping restart that horrible part of my brain that used to not think twice about the insane leaps in logic inherent in the adventure genre. There is some really insane Blade Runner and Neuromancer inspired craziness going on in this game. Any doubts about it's awesomeness are probably demolished by the time you jack into the city controlling computer and interface with it by walking around in a virtual space.

I finished Tales of Monkey Island Chapter 1 a couple weeks ago, and am anxious to get started on chapter 2. I'm sad it is hampered graphically by the stupid low memory limits of WiiWare, but otherwise it's a fantastic return to form. Dominic Armato is and always will be the ideal Guybrush, and I couldn't be happier that he's back. The games wit is spot on, and splitting the game up into more managable chapters helps them really shift the tone and location more easily than making a full length game feel choppy. I am probably gonna download the remake of the original Monkey Island on iPhone after BASS is finished, simply because it's the most likely place it'll actually get played, and I really want to get to the point where I can beat that game from memory.

Sam and Max Season 2 is coming out on XBLA this week, alongside another game I'm really curious about called Axel and Pixel. It's an adventure bonanza on a modern console! I'm ashamedly sitting on a barely touched copy of Sam and Max Season 1, but will definitely play it this winter, and will probably follow up with the XBLA version of the second season. The Wii version seems stuck in lombo, and the XBLA release is cheaper and will probably run better. If you don't know about Steve Purcell's glorious Sam and Max legacy, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

Last but not least, I got Phantasmagoria to run on my Mac last night! Dealing with virtual copies of multiple discs (7 discs bitches!) on a virtual DOS sytem on a Mac is kinda insane, but it works damnit! HOLY CRAP I loved that game. It's one of the finest examples of the insanity of the Full Motion Video adventure games. I don't want to imply that it's a particularly good game, but it feels like a perfect time capsule of an era where PC games held so much maigc for me. Compared to what was coming out at that time on consoles it was something to behold. My dream is to get really good at it and to eventually host a live speed playthrough as a compliment to a horror movie night. I wanted this to happen at our Halloween party, but with an impending move coming up at the end of the month, that probably won't happen.

So basically, Adventure games rock. Let's hope it keeps up!