9 Best Adventure Games Of All Time That You Should Know Update 04/2024

best adventure games of all time

Every video game is an adventure in its own way. Only a few games can really show what an adventure game is like. Explore and a good story are two of the main things these games are all about.

There are also things like combat and puzzles that become part of the journey. These things aren’t the only things in the game. But in general, adventure games are very wide and can come in a lot of different ways. There are a lot of great adventure games, but each one is very different from the other. In Metacritic’s words, these are the best and worst adventure games ever made.

1. What Remains Of Edith Finch (Metacritic Score: 89)

What Remains Of Edith Finch

Walking simulators have become their own kind of adventure game, with a lot of big hits coming out over the last decade or so. However, no walking game has been as creative and unique as What Remains of Edith Finch.

Giant Sparrow made What Remains of Edith Finch, which starts with Edith going back to a house she used to live in. Isn’t this house weird? But it gives the player a lot of insight into every one of the family members, who were all killed for some weird reason. How the player learns about each of these stories is done in a very unique way.

2. Return Of The Obra Dinn (Metacritic Score: 89)

You might think it’s weird to call something an adventure game when you only play it in one place. But Return of the Obra Dinn takes players on a journey of another kind! It is about an inspector who has to look at a ship that came ashore after it was lost at sea.

It’s the inspector’s job to look at the dead bodies that are on the ship, figure out who they are, and give them a formal cause of death. People who play Return of the Obra Dinn can use a device that lets them go back to the moment each passenger died in order to help them make decisions as they write an interesting story about a wild trip.

3. L.A. Noire (Metacritic Score: 89)

L.A. Noire

You can play as the law in a game made by Rockstar Games. It would be fun to play a game in which the players are the law. Set in 1947 Los Angeles, L.A. Noire has players take on the role of Cole Phelps as he works his way from a patrol cop all the way up through homicide and through various other divisions of the department.

Players can take on different cases on the street because the game is set in an open world. In L.A. Noire, though, the most important thing to do is to look into a case and talk to both witnesses and suspects. It also turns out that there’s more going on in the city than Phelps thought.

4. Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Metacritic: 90)

Adventure games can sometimes be very harsh because of how the setting is set up and how the story progresses. A hard look at dark parts of characters doesn’t make Chicory: A Colorful Tale any less fun as a whole, though.

Small anthropomorphic dogs are the Players. They work for the Wielder, who has an amazing brush that adds colour to the world. The Wielder is a person who owns the brush. After the current owner of the brush gives it back to the player, they have to start painting again. There are a lot of puzzles and adventures in this game, but the main thing that makes it good is the story and the people in it.

5. The Longest Journey (Metacritic Score: 91)

The Longest Journey

There are a lot of big names in the adventure genre now, but sometimes older games aren’t talked about as much. In 2000, Funcom released The Longest Journey, a classic point-and-click adventure game. It’s a great example of this kind of game.

The story is about an art student named April Ryan, who is also known as a Shifter. She is a person who changes things. This is because she can move between the worlds of Stark, which is more “scientific,” and Arcadia, which is more “magical.” They want to get back in balance. The goal of the game is to do this

6. Journey (Metacritic Score: 92)

As Journey shows, some of the best games ever made are made by small businesses. A game in which people play the role of someone who is robed in the middle of a desert. The goal of the game is to get to a nearby mountain and play.

Music chimes are the only way that some players can talk to each other. This was done to make it easier for people to connect with each other in simple ways. The story is told through visual cut scenes that don’t have any words. The short length of Journey makes it one of the best Playstation 3 games.

7. Titanic: Adventure Out Of Time

Titanic Adventure Out Of Time

If you could go back in time to 1912, the first voyage of the RMS Titanic would be one of the last places you’d go. In most cases, unless you’re a former British spy, you can’t go back and do what you failed to do the first time around. This could have prevented both World Wars. If you’re a fan of adventure games and want to live through the ordeal through the eyes of someone else, that’s possible. In Titanic: Adventure Out of Time, CyberFlix’s 1996 story about a different world, you can do just that. Admire the meticulously researched, faithfully recreated luxury liner with the other passengers. You have an important task to do before the night is over, and some of it will be a race against time as the ship sinks into the icy Atlantic. Since so many people died on this trip, this game isn’t even close to the best thing you can do to be there. It’s a lot, a lot better.

The game’s setting is what really makes it stand out. It was digitally made from real historical documents and photos. You can take a free-roaming virtual tour of the ship’s sights. Puzzles are few and far between, but you’ll have to do things like disarm bombs, fix mechanical problems, and send Morse Code telegrams. There are a lot of different people you’ll be meeting, and each of them has their own stories and secrets to tell. It’s important that you talk or act in a certain way at the right time. Often, there are second chances to fix mistakes, but there are many different ways to get there and not all of them are good. As water levels rise, the lower levels are cut off and the ship starts to list. Between cutscenes that show the disaster from afar, you have to hurry to finish your tasks before it’s too late. The timed element makes the tension tangible, which is a must in this case and leads to a truly immersive endgame. Will you sink or swim? It’s up to you. If you don’t like how it turns out, there’s a lot of real value in going back and trying again. If you lived or died there, you wouldn’t want to be there. This is one Titanic voyage that is a lot of fun to go on.

8. Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor

That’s not true at all. We could have chosen any other Nancy Drew book to put on this list. The mind-boggling 25 game series (and counting) has achieved an unprecedented level of success that should be celebrated, even though the formula has stayed almost the same through them all. So why did Her Interactive make the 11th game in their long-running series? To make it a great Nancy Drew game, Curse of Blackmoor Manor has a lot of the things that make a good one: hard, multi-layered puzzles that are well integrated into an interesting story about ancient family bloodlines and a little bit of lycanthropy; a mysterious setting with lots of visual Easter eggs; great voice acting for all the major characters; and a non-linear path that isn’t very linear.

In the same way, players direct Nancy as she interviews a colourful group of people, including a wealthy second wife who fears she’s been cursed by the beast of Blackmoor manor, a precocious stepdaughter, and an aunt who grows carnivorous plants, among other people. You’ll see clues all over the house, from messages hidden in a family coat of arms to sumptuous wall tapestries depicting mythological scenes. For this trip, dynamic cutscenes and a smart phone that can search the web were added to the mix. Some changes, like a task list for Junior level detectives, were so good that they’ve been in the games ever since. There aren’t as many “make-work” tasks in this game as there are in other Nancy Drew games. By 2004, Her Interactive had its teen detective series down to a science. In the many new adventures that have come out since Curse of Blackmoor Manor, none have been better than that one.

9. The Space Bar

The Space Bar

There are many ways to add a little something extra to the traditional mystery genre. Set it on Armpit VI, a planet far away. Hire the same artist who made the aliens in Mos Eisley’s famous cantina to draw the cast of characters. Steve Meretzky directed Boffo Games’ 1997 game The Space Bar. In it, players play as Alias Node, one of the few humans on the planet who works as a police officer and is looking for a shape-shifting criminal who took your partner. In addition to the usual forensic equipment, your best tool is the ability to “mind-meld” with some of the dozens of aliens you meet. This means that you can live out a past event in their lives through their eyes.

In this way, the game has a lot of great moments. When you’re a business tycoon, you’re trying to make a ridiculously complicated deal. When you’re a high-IQ alien, your only way to interact with the world is to get through to your dumb-witted alien partner. In the future, you’re a drug-running alien who can’t speak because of laryngitis. Then, you’re a robotic sports star who has to get over last night’s hangover in time for the big game. You have to figure out which one of the many aliens around you is the shape-shifter in disguise. The game has a very strict time limit and a lot of puzzles that require a lot of trial and error, but those who are up for the challenge will be given a hilarious cast of characters and a truly unique adventure. Many games on our list are better known than the Space Bar, but it deserves to be known as a true classic.