Naming Your Top 10 Siera Games.

[Tawmis]

And by this, I mean individual top 10 games. Not series. So you can say #1 is Leisure Suit Larry series or anything. You would have to say LSL1, LSL2, or whatever.

Josh recently did a top 10 favorite games (in general, not just Sierra), but his list encompassed a lot of Sierra games. I tried to break down my top 10 Sierra games, and found I couldn't really list a top 10 in order (with #1 being the best). I know for most here, they could start with #1 being KQ6 and work from there. So what's your top 10 Sierra games? (Feel free to say why you like the game, so it can generate some potential convo too!)

[BBP]

1: Gabriel Knight 3. I didn't know a game could be this good. To this day, although the graphics don't wow me as much as when I first played it, it has the best writing of any game I've ever seen, and the best puzzle I've ever seen. Don't stumble on a moustache and get entangled in the Red Serpent and the SIDNEY wiki!
2: Gabriel Knight: Sins Of The Fathers. The game suffers a bit from poor character work in case of Malia and Moonbeam, and the narrator but at least you can shut her off, but the otherwise terrific acting, wonderful music, great writing, huge amount of information, beautiful graphics... This game oozes awesome.
3: Leisure Suit Larry: Love For Sail. That's how you should combine clicking with typing, ladies and gentlemen. That's how you include additional coolness. That's the kind of mini-game that gets me hooked!
4: Sid & Al's Incredible Toons: besides the Incredible Machine gaming, it has toon humour, lovely atmosphere, Mozart's 25th, and some very tough puzzles.
5: Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards: the only game in which the text parser is so good, being a non-native speaker is not a handicap.
6: Island of Dr Brain: I find myself going back to this one a lot more than Castle. In spite of the voice acting, it has some terrific puzzles, like the bookcase and the liquid weights.
7: King's Quest VI: unfortunately when first playing it, I had to turn off the voices and play the text version. The Gnomes puzzle is great, you feel so clever when you get past that, and the way the two paths are set up is ingenious. Also bonus for the funniest ending: having a majestic royal wedding with your parents and sister, the King, Queen and Princess of Daventry, the King and Queen of the Land of the Green Isles, plus all the leaders of the individual islands, a grand and important political event: and then say "I think I left my ring at the pawn shop." Brilliant!
8: King's Quest III: I love the sense of threat that Manannan poses. Though I do tend to play it with sound off. And I love casting all the magic spells.
Receives lots of bonus points and goodwill for using Schubert's Erlkönig.
9 Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up Or Slip Out. Illustrates that with non-linearity there can be but a little story. And how! Because it's non-linear, it's a lot easier to solve, since if you get stuck on one puzzle there's still plenty left to solve, and with the copious amount of landscaping, the replay value is very high.
10: Hoyle's Classic.
It's really cool to be able to play against your favourite computer game characters. On top of that, the AI is very decent and the Cribbage has a Muggins option, which is pretty hard to find. I wish we could make a more updated version, so we could also play with Prince Alexander or Gabriel Knight, or Larry with Jan Rabson's voice.

[Maxor127]

1. Police Quest 1 EGA
2. Quest for Glory 1 (I like EGA and VGA equally)
3. King's Quest 3
4. King's Quest VI
5. Conquests of Camelot
6. Space Quest 2
7. Quest for Glory IV
8. Beast Within
9. Betrayal at Krondor
10. Colonel's Bequest... or maybe Space Quest IV

[Tawmis]

In no particular order...

Leisure Suit Larry 2 This was, without a doubt, the best LSL of the entire series. LSL3 comes VERY dern close, because I like switching between Larry and Patty. But LSL2 felt like such a huge game when I played it - like leaps and bounds bigger than LSL1, which made a massive impression on me. (Granted, the whole bag thing in the airplane at the end was pretty fubar'ed because of text parser limitations apparently or whatever the reason was). But I just loved every element about LSL2. It's very close to my favorite Sierra game of all time, when I think about it.

Space Quest 3 Space Quest 3 is my favorite of the Space Quest series, with SQ4 just a hair behind. I loved the puzzles of SQ3, and like LSL2, SQ3 seemed so much larger than SQ2. So I loved how much the game seemed to have improved over SQ2. Like LSL2, I loved all the puzzles and everything about SQ3. It was difficult without being impossibly so. And it had a lot of fun death scenes.

King's Quest 4 KQ4 was amazing to me. The fact that it cycled through night and day and had different things happening depending on the time, was just amazing. I also enjoyed the fact that they switched it up and made the lead character a female. That was a very amazing move, I think, for Sierra, to take their "flag ship" title and throw a female in the lead. Granted, KQ to me was always a family game, so it's not like it's "male-centric" - but still, felt this was a nice jump.

Gabriel Knight 1 This gave birth to my interest in New Orleans. GK1 was such a great game, because it was based in "reality" and yet still had that very supernatural feel (especially with Voodoo, which many consider very mysterious). Gabriel Knight was the guy I always wished I could be - smooth, cool, and could woe the ladies! So I enjoyed the game, because while I played it, I got to be who I always wished I could be! Added bonus came when, thanks to the interest in New Orleans, I was given the chance to meet Jules & Patrick, and hang out with them each time we have gone out there (except once, I think). As I suspected, I loved New Orleans! And find new things to love each time we visit.

Phantasmagoria Another one that has a special place. When Amiee and I moved back to CA from TN, we moved in with my childhood friend (since I'd known since the 4th grade). He bought a new computer and wanted a game to "push the limit" of his computer. And at the time, that game was Phantasmagoria. So the four of us (Aim, myself, Chuck and his wife Tammy), played that game together - and man, it was a creepy game (we'd play with the lights off and everything). I still remember the crib with the baby crying - freaked us all out. So that's why this game ranks up there (on top of being one of the best FMV games, in my opinion, with the writing, music, etc). Sure, it's cheesy NOW in today's standards, but back then it was mind blowing.

Torin's Passage Aside from being a very fun game, that I thought could have easily been a Disney cartoon (it was much better, I thought than KQ7, which had great cartoon quality, but felt too much like a side scroller) - Torin's Passage is special to me, because Aim and I played it together.

Colonel's Bequest I thought all the variations of what you could do in this game, was absolutely incredible. Like no everything was really needed to solve the game; you could spy on these two people, or these two people, and get different elements. I thought the entire "feeling" of the game, of the Roaring 50's was done very well - in dialogue, and how they were able to make these pixelated characters look right! Everything about this game was executed (no pun initially intended!) perfectly!

GoldRush! Another game with a variety of paths and possibilities! It was often brutal with some of the random things that could happen (some random illness), but to me, that just added to the game. (Save Early, Save Often, as Al used to say!) This was, like Colonel's Bequest, executed beautifully. I thought the way they did the cities, the travel, everything was so well done - and the book that comes with it (though made for copy protection purposes) was full of all kinds of cool information, which just made this game all the more cooler.

Leisure Suit Larry 3 I loved Leisure Suit Larry 3 because you swapped back and forth between Larry and Patti. Though you could do the same thing in LSL5, to me LSL5 tried too hard to be "dirty." What I love is the subtle humor that LSL1-3 delivered. Everything post LSL3 to me, just was too "in your face" with the dirtiness. (Mind you, I still enjoyed the games, but felt like they didn't compare to the original three). I thought LSL3 wasn't too insanely difficult, the right amount of difficulty and ease. And like I said, switching from Larry to Patti was a nice touch.

Space Quest 4 I absolutely loved Space Quest 4. The jumping between the different versions of Space Quest was so freaking amazingly brilliant and funny (with the Sequel Police involved as well). SQ4 eludes to so much that never really got touched up on again, sadly. While I rate SQ3 as my favorite of the SQ series, SQ4 is like a small hair behind. It was so brilliantly done.

[Datadog]

King's Quest 6: No commentary needed.

Leisure Suit Larry 7: Women, jazz and beavers on a cruise ship that's enormous, full of hidden goodies, and is fun to explore. Not to mention the combination mouse/parser interface that lets you do anything! This game has everything that makes adventure games fun.

Space Quest 5: This is only one of the series with a structured plot and character development. Unlike Monkey Island where your crew is never helpful, this game explores the idea of earning your crew's respect as you play (just needs a few loyalty missions!)

Quest for Glory 4: Ghosts, ghouls, and Gimli. Such great atmosphere, and just like SQ5, it's about starting about the bottom and earning the townspeople's respect. I love games that do that.

Gabriel Knight 1: For all the flack I give it in the tournaments, this is still a pretty great game. Tim Curry and Mark Hamill for the win! And the bookshop music! Always love the bookshop music.

Leisure Suit Larry 3: What a neat game. A big tropical island, gender-bending gameplay, and then you get to meet Roberta Williams. They could have ended the series with this game because it wrapped up in such a perfect Al Lowe way.

EcoQuest 1: The Abyss, Finding Nemo, Ecoquest - I like underwater stuff.

Space Quest 3: This game defined what set Space Quest apart from any other sci-fi series, let alone other adventure games.

Gold Rush!: I played this way too much as a kid. Now I look through the floorboards of every gazebo I walk through.

Hoyle Classic: Me, Bulldog, Rosella, Larry, a couple coolers, and a game of Hearts. This is my jam.

Honorable Mentions: King's Quest 1 + 4, Torin's Passage, Goblins 3, Island of Dr. Brain, Pepper's Adventures in Time, Quest for Glory 2

[AndreaDraco]

1. Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within is unsurpassed in terms of story, characters and writing.

2. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned has one of the richest story ever to grace the genre, an immersive setting and the greatest puzzle of the history of adventure gaming.

3. Gabriel Knight 1: Sins of the Fathers, thanks to depth of the characters and the scope of the plot, is one of the best classic adventure games I've ever played.

4. King's Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow features my favorite character of the series, Alexander, and the Green Isles are incredibly detailed and fun to explore.

5. Conquests of the Longbow is rarely mentioned, but is a gem nonetheless, thanks mainly to a subtle, poignant writing and an inspired design featuring multiple possible outcomes.

6. Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is my favorite of the series because of the Arabian setting, because of the Wizards' Institute of Technocery and because of Rakeesh.

7. Gold Rush is an incredible achievement: educational, wildly entertaining, with multiple paths and a compelling character. Great game.

8. Police Quest 3 is sometimes schmaltzy, but for the most part the atmosphere is consistely grim and the nuanced story is perhaps the best of the series.

9. King's Quest III: To Heir is Human is tense and suspenseful, and the final revelation feels earned.

10. Pepper's Adventures in Time is, like Gold Rush, an edutainment title, but superbly manages to be challenging, entertaining, endearing and informative at the same time.

[Tawmis]

1. Gabriel Knight 2: The Beast Within is unsurpassed in terms of story, characters and writing.
2. Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned has one of the richest story ever to grace the genre, an immersive setting and the greatest puzzle of the history of adventure gaming.
3. Gabriel Knight 1: Sins of the Fathers, thanks to depth of the characters and the scope of the plot, is one of the best classic adventure games I've ever played.

So you're not a fan of Gabriel Knight, huh?

7. Gold Rush is an incredible achievement: educational, wildly entertaining, with multiple paths and a compelling character. Great game.

It really was.

8. Police Quest 3 is sometimes schmaltzy, but for the most part the atmosphere is consistely grim and the nuanced story is perhaps the best of the series.

I agree, best of the PQ series, by far.
It reminds me a bit of the cheesy 80's horror movies (First Power and such, with the pentagram thing), but loved it regardless.

9. King's Quest III: To Heir is Human is tense and suspenseful, and the final revelation feels earned.

I remember the Dragon in KQ3 right at the end, and was like, "This is awesome!"
I admittedly HATED Manahanan (or however you spell his name). Man, with him alive - the game is a nightmare. I never called or got a hint book for this one... I can't even remember how I found out to hide the spell components from him under the bed... I just remember dying... a lot... until I got rid of him. I did love when I learned about the teleport thing (the debug teleport), that no matter where you went he would show up there.