30 PC Games to Play Before You Die

Outcast

Developer: Appeal
Year: 1999

If traditional adventure games aren’t your bread and butter, and you prefer the more loosely defined action-adventure genre instead then Outcast is undoubtedly our recommendation for you. As equally unique as Grim Fandango, Outcast likewise was met with disappointing sales that failed to diminish its legacy.

The plot is standard Hollywood fare with an exciting twist, as a group of scientists journey to a parallel dimension to salvage a damaged probe that now threatens life as we known it. You, as US Marine Cutter Slade, get lumped with the task of protecting the team on the excursion – though your plan goes awry massively when you get separated and are hailed as a messiah by the natives, who task you with a holy mission.


Outcast is most often remembered for the unusual voxel-based engine it used, but there’s far better for gamers to give the world of Adelpha a visit if you ask us, not least of which are the plentiful side-quests, freeform gameplay and orchestral score. Adelpha is a sharply realised world, with a real mythology, language and social hierarchy within – to ignore the monumental effort made by the designers borders on sacrilege.

King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow

Developer: Sierra
Year: 1992

Worth having a look at if only to hammer home how preferable the point and click system is in adventure games, Sierra’s King's Quest series proved to be one of the most popular and long-running franchises in gaming history despite the awakward controls.

Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is generally regarded as the most polished and balanced games in the series, though the folks at Custom PC would have you believe that Perils of Rosella lays claim to that honour.

Regardless, Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow is a fantastic fantasy adventure on a much larger scale than the rest of the series – something that’s attributed to Roberta Williams’ collaboration with Jane Jensen. Jensen, who would later go on to make the equally decent Gabriel Knight games, had a huge influence on the themes and design of the final game, ensuring that the players attempt to reunite the Prince Alexander and his love would be as epic as fans hoped.

Grim Fandango

Developer: LucasArts
Year: 1998

We don’t like sounding like a broken record all the time, so we made a conscious effort to cull LucasArts adventure games from this list wherever we could – especially The Secret of Monkey Island. If we didn’t then we’d have to list literally everyone one of them, from Zak McKraken to Sam and Max and that just wouldn’t be fair.

One game we decided we couldn’t leave out though was Grim Fandango, which as well as being one of the best adventure games ever made also turned out to be one of the last; an unfortunate swan-song for the genre.

Designed by Tim Schafer, Grim Fandango is based equally on Mexican mythology and noir fiction – an eclectic mix to say the least. Players are cast as Manny Calavera, a travel agent for the deceased who mistakenly prevents a dead nun from being ushered to the correct afterlife. Wracked with guilt and pushed for time, Manuel sets out to save her soul and quickly runs into trouble with the mob.

Alternating between hilarious and deeply moving, Grim Fandango sold poorly on release but has at least managed to go down in history as one of the most imaginative and cinematic games ever to grace a PC.