Top 20 Adventure Games of All-Time!!1!

#11: Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

LucasArts – 1999

It was always bound to happen. LucasArts successfully converted the Indiana Jones franchise into great adventure games. We always knew it was only a matter of time until the biggest (and obviously the greatest) LEC franchise was made into an adventure game.

But none of us were really prepared for how truly awesome the Star Wars adventure game would be.

The Phantom Menace is a brilliant, pure, third-person point & click adventure game that takes the best aspects of what is easily the strongest entry in the film series, and blends them with the best parts of adventure games. Every scene is loaded with dramatic intensity, character development, and brilliant, nearly emotionally overpowering dialogue. I kept a box of tissues next to the computer just in case.

This wonderful adventure really takes a turn for the better in Chapter Two, with the introduction of Jar Jar Binks, a character designed exclusively for this game. (Note: I have heard that Jar Jar was actually in the movie, but he must not have had much screen-time, because I didn’t see him.) The puzzles are brilliant; there’s one that involves lots of enemies shooting you from offscreen, and you have to figure out how to not let them hit you even though you can’t see them. Awesome stuff.

The pure adventure followup to Phantom Menace, Battle for Naboo, didn’t exactly live up to the standards of the first. But hey, Empire Strikes Back was a crappy movie too! So we can only hope for the best as LucasArts continues its wonderful tradition of Star Wars adventures!

Kwanzaa.

(E.D.)