Thanks to GOG donating Full Throttle and to the Winter sale discounts, I was able to finally complete my LucasArts adventure games collection. Now I want to play all the games, probably in chronological order, to start the year with that.

I have not played all of these games (and I won't be able to play Grim Fandango this time because it doesn't work with my Intel grahics card) so, I was wondering how would you rank the games, which ones are your favorites, what do you liike and/or hate about them.

Here I rank them from most to least liked:

1. Maniac Mansion. This is not just my favorite of the bunch, but one of my all time favorite games ever. It was the game that started my love for point and click adventure games. My favorite version is the Commodore 64 one, followed by the LucasFan remake.

2. The Secret of Monkey Island. I love this game almost as much as Maniac Mansion, but since I was older when I played it there's less nostalgia attached to it. I think this is arguably the best adventure game the company made, certainly the most influential.

3. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge. I didn't care much for the final part and weird ending, but still lots of fun.

4. Day of the Tentacle. I'm not a fan of the characters design, but I love the game! I have not played the remastered edition, I installed it to see if it would work on my computer -whcih it did- and I can tell they really made a great work with it (I wish the same love and care was put into the Monkey Island special editions), can't wait to play this version.

5. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Another great title, my favorite Indiana Jones game.

6. Loom. A different take on the SCUMM games mechanics, using music instead of inventory items and verbs. Very interesting approach. I really like this game, but I'm kinda lazy having to write down the music notes, so it's a game I don't play often.

7. Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders. I mostly love this game and I remember fondly as I played it in my C64 back in the 80s, but there are two things I really hate about it: the mazes and the airport/traveling mechanics, I wish I could go anywhere from any airport, I never know which countries will allow me to travel to the place I want to go, so it's annoying. The opening theme is one of the best!

8. The Dig. I didn't play this one back in the day, I've played it only once, a year or two ago, and I really enjoyed it.

9. The Curse of Monkey Island. Great adventure game, but I have a hard time accepting it as a "Monkey Island" game and I totally hate the character designs. There's a guy converting the graphics to the MI1 and MI2 style, I can't wait until that project is complete: Link.

10. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. I love everything about this game except the fights, that's the only reason I rank this game so low, it took me years to complete this game just because I was always killed in the fights.

11. Sam & Max Hit the Road. To be honest, I don't like this game too much, I don't know why. I love the characters and enjoy parts of the game, but I always get bored half-way. I've started playing this game many times, but I think I've only finished it once.

I have never played these games:
-Full Throttle.
-Grim Fandango.
-Escape from Monkey Island (this one doesn't look like something I would enjoy, let's see).

My list, best to worst:

1. The Secret of Monkey Island - my first adventure game and still one of my favorites for many reasons. I love pretty much everything about it.

2. Curse of Monkey Island - in some ways I might like it even more than the original, like the voice acting and graphics. On the other hand it does sort of re-tread some of the same ground. Anyway, it's still a great p&c adventure.

3. The Loom - I love the unique gameplay and fantasy world. It still stands out as something special.

4. Day of the Tentacle - hilarious, clever, with great puzzles. It's not quite as memorable in terms of characters and setting as some other Lucasarts games, but makes up for it with great gameplay and writing.

5. Monkey Island 2 - I dislike the change in Guybrush's character and the ending, but other than that it's still very solid

6. Grim Fandango - It's fine, but I don't really get why so many people obsess over it as some masterpiece. It can be very funny and fun to play, but at other times it's just frustrating with very obtuse puzzles, and let's be honest - the 3D graphics never looked as good as the older 2D games, and they aged TERRIBLY.

7. Sam & Max Hit the Road - I love Sam & max's humor, in all of their incarnations, but the other than that the story here is luckluster and the puzzles are just pure insanity.

8. Escape from Monkey Island - the good part: it's more Monkey Island! The bad part? It's inferior in every way to the previous games, the controls suck ass and it's not nearly as much fun as a Monkey Island game should be.

9. The Dig - great premise, nice graphics, but in the long run the limited number of characters to interact with makes the game kind of dull, and some of the puzzles, despite the game being in theory much more serious than other, "cartoonish" games, are just ridiculous.

10. Full Throttle - piece. of. Trash. Terrible, barely functional action sequences, boring predictable story, bland characters, empty, boring locations, luckluster puzzles.

I haven't played the rest yet.

Reposted from a previous discussion:

Top Tier (unsorted because that is too hard):
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge- Graphics, music, humour, feeling of adventure
Loom: puzzles, innovation, atmosphere, music-interlaced-with-story
Grim Fandango: Story, writing, characters (are all those the same thing?), music (although I'm not THAT big a fan of the style, so I wouldn't say music myself), but unfortunately horrible controls at the time
The Secret of Monkey Island: Possibly nostalgia speaking here, but I thought the graphics, music and insult swordfighting were great
Day of the Tentacle: The time travel puzzles

Middle Tier (solid adventure games that just weren't the very best of LucasArts)
6- Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis: Possibly belonged in the Top Tier, but it was getting too big ;D. Lots of interesting interplay between Indy & Sophia.
7- Sam & Max: Hit the Road: Awesome humour, fun interactions between the two main characters, zany setting.
8- Full Throttle: Interesting setting, Pretty graphics, Fitting music and voice acting
9- The Curse of Monkey Island: Pretty graphics (I rate this at the end of the middle tier, but that could just be my "This isn't what Monkey Island is!" fanboyism speaking).

Bottom Tier (some rated low for simply being too primitive design-wise, not their fault, maybe at their time they were at the top of the game)
10- Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
11- Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
12- Maniac Mansion
13- The Dig
14- Escape from Monkey Island
- Labyrinth: was never able to finish this game, so perhaps it is unfair to rate it 15th, lets just say "unmarked rank"

Hm. So. How I experienced them. In order of enjoyment.

1. Last Crusade. Very Indy (because based on film), multiple solutions ("oh, you could also solve it lke that ?"), fun characters interactions, sweet experience.

2. Loom. Some day I'll start a thread on poetry in videogames.

3. Secret of Monkey Island. Gorgeous graphically and musically, fun, witty, inventive.

4. Sam and Max. Hilarious, absurdist, unpredictable.

5. Maniac Mansion. Overcomplicated puzzles made to feed conversations, and, again. I just love when a game offer different solutions.

6. Day of the tentacle. Possibly as good, or better than Maniac Mansion, but less crazy, more logical, and... came after Maniac's impact.

7. Zac McKraken. Unplayably silly, and I like that. But more rough on the edges than Maniac.

8. Full Throttle. Simple and fun, lovely universe and flawless style. Almost a different genre, towards the modern, less complex, more polished games of today.

9. The Dig. Beautiful but empty and kinda boring. I don't like Myst-like plot devices (here's a cllection of mysterious alien ancient machines, reactivate them), and I felt frustrated by having half of a promising space crew disappear in the intro, with the space suit space shuttle adventure replaced with ruins explorations. Felt like bait and switch on the aspects I was looking for.

10. Fate of Atlantis. Complete loss of the Indy feel, replaced with generic Amazon-Queen-like adventuring, and loss of the on-the-fly multi-solution approach, replaced with a selection of on-rail pre-defined gamestyles. Plus a large part of convenient Myst-machines-reactivation-puzzles (always handy to spare oneself some plot crafting), and aliens, and magical power beads with conveniently undefined deus-ex-machina functions, and... bweh, The Dig's plot in the wrong setting, a cheap Indiana Jones fanfiction.

1 to 8 were a real joy. 9 was okay, pretty but disappointing. 10 was full of sighs and rolled eyes. I still have some good ones ahead, such as the Monkey Island sequels, and Grim Fandango. But it's like star wars nowadays, hard to muster the sense of wonderment of its original era. We're a bit jaded by the genre it generated. If I remember well, you could have avoided them all of them (and without pre-deciding it as the game's start), except one, that you could cheat through (in-game, I mean) to make it a mere formality.

1. The Secret of Monkey Island: Simply the game where I had the hardest time pointing out any obvious flaws. It’s pretty, it’s funny, it’s fun to play, has great music and is very memorable. I wish the remaster was better, since while the voice acting was top notch, the command and inventory system ended up confusing and the art style is…slightly odd.

2. Day of the Tentacle: I like that you have to think across the different time periods to solve some of the problems. The humor works just fine, the graphics and music are great, and the story delightfully silly. The remaster is great too, spot on.

3: Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: In my opinion the best Indiana Jones game there is. It’s one of the few games on this list that has a greater replay value. I even think it handled some its themes better then Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Once again also a great soundtrack and visual. The are a few tedious parts though, like controlling the balloon and submarine.

4: The Curse of Monkey Island: I for one, love the cartoony style of this game. It’s the first to put voices to the Monkey Island franchise and does so wonderfully. Its weak point might be its story, for which atleast some of the blame goes to Monkey Island 2’s ending. Might have the best soundtrack of the entire list here.

5: Sam & Max: Hit the Road: This game starts of making no sense, and ends still making no sense. This is fun and all, and par for the course for Sam and Max, but perhaps no too engaging for a full game. The humor carries it, and it at has a few puzzles that are so stupid that they make me laugh.

6: Monkey Island 2: Lechuck’s Revenge: It has many of the same qualities as Secret of Monkey Island, but for some reason, it doesn’t work quite as well for me. A few of the puzzles feel needlessly complicated. One major thing is that the ending is a mess in my opinion. If it’s supposed to be a hallucination, it makes little sense and isn’t satisfying. If it’s supposed to be real, it undermines everything before and is still not satisfying. It has a much better remaster than Secret of Monkey Island, so that is something.

7: Loom: This game is an interesting experiment, but that’s just it, it never feels fully fleshed out, both in regards to mechanics, but also in regards to story and lore (Mind, I don’t have the tape that came with it in some versions). A beautiful experience, but not one I’m looking to repeat often.

8: Escape From Monkey Island: The humor, voice acting and music works for me. However, the story is a mess full of retcons, the game is ugly and has not aged well at all visually, the controls are clunky and the gameplay is dominated by the tedious monkey kombat for the last part.

9: The Dig: I like the atmosphere in this game. You truly feel alone in an alien land. However, the puzzles are once again needlessly complicated, and don’t seem to fit the atmosphere much. The ending leaves me cold, as it seems to contradict the message of the story at the last minute.

10: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: This game feels so…antiquated. I very much miss the later ease of life additions to the controls. Parts of it at tedious, like the pixel hunting in the library, and others are frustrating, like either fighting or figuring out how to avoid the fights with various guards.

The rest I haven’t played, or at least not enough to grade them. All in all, they’re still all rather enjoyable, so this is the pick between good, better and best.

Grim Fandango did not take its excellence from its puzzles. It was a masterpiece for the characters it created, and the depth it put into those characters.

Yes the puzzles are hard, in fact I'd say dip into a walkthrough whenever you spend more than 10-15 minutes being stuck, it won't lessen the game. However what you absolutely must do in the game is talk to everyone, and really take in the character's story and their personality. For this reason I think it's probably not for most people, I'd say the acid test is whether or not you went around talking to all the other kids in Psychonauts. If you were just there for the game, you won't like Grim Fandango.

If you want a really different world, with some brilliant variations on the traditional film noir concepts, it's well worth playing.

I almost always talk to everyone I can in adventure games, read the flavor text, I read the books lying around in RPGs. And I love classic crime noir movies and novels. I still don't think Grim Fandango is anywhere beeing a "masterpiece". I honestly don't see anything remarkable about the characters in that game. It's not bad by any means, but not great either. I might be the only person who thinks that, but I think that Discworld Noir for example leaves it in the dust, not to mention many modern point & clicks.

Top Pick:
Secret of Monkey Island

Middle-of-the-Road: (Fun, but with flaws; Not listed in any particular order)
Sam & Max Hit the Road: Fun, bizarre and wacky.
Maniac Mansion: Fun, but difficult with easy-to-hit dead-ends.
Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle: Too many cutscenes.
The Dig: Fun, but not great.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: Fun, but not great.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis: First half is very fun, but the second half is a tedious grind.
Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders: Starts out really good, but many frustrating mazes and dead-ends later on.

Worst of the Lot: (Not in any particular order)
Monkey Island 2: LeChucks’s Revenge: Too much pixel-hunting and too much dialogue. Obscure puzzles. Not nearly as funny as #1.
The Curse of Monkey Island: Too much pixel-hunting and too much dialogue, contains a real-time puzzle and overly-complex puzzles. Not as funny.
Loom: Slow, boring, story-centric.
Full Throttle: Boring, too many cutscenes, action sequences.
Grim Fandango: Uninteresting characters and story.

The 3D graphics is the one thing I'm not looking forward to in this game, I hated when those ugly early 3D graphics started to become the norm in video games, it made a mess out of franchises that used to have beautiful art, like Kyrandia, Monkey Island and Syndicate, to name a few. Not necessarily, it depends on what you mean by "writing". You can have a work with a great story, great characters and still be poorly written, all those things are independent (and optional) elements of storytelling. You can, however, also use the word "writing" to encompass all of that. I think the fights on the Zeppelin are unavoidable. Most other fights can be avoided, but some have very intricate dialogue trees and it wasn't very obvious in an era without Internet that you could avoid most of those. Now it's so much easier using a walkthrough. :) I agree about the special edition, it was quite disappointing... and that Guybrish hair, man, gladly some fan took the time to make new art to fix it. I also disliked the command and inventory system in the Monkey Island special editions. One of the things I love about the Day of the Tentacle remastered is that you can play with the new graphics and still use the old verb interface. Yes, it really was an improvement. I liked that way to describe these games. We all have our favorites and some that we may not like at all, but they were all good games. I'm sad I won't be able to play this one yet because of my graphics card, I've heard many favorable opinions about it and, although I'm not a fan of 3D graphics, the game does look interesting to me. From the three LucasArts adventure games that I've never played, this is the one I would like the most to try. Haha, this critique brought a smile to my face, it reminded me of the Amadeus movie when they say Mozart's opera had "too many notes". :)

Monkey Island 1, but the special edition, was the first point and click adventure game I ever played. Yes, I only started playing these games in 2010, way too late. I was unprepared, got stuck all the time, I was a disaster, so I didn't really enjoy it until I replayed it years later.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who disliked the ending in Monkey Island 2, that was just a big slap in the face.

I think both these games start out well, then the last 40% feels rushed. I guess I like both games(except that ending), I had some good laughs, but I think I would appreciate them more if I played them sooner.

I liked the idea and atmosphere of the Dig, but I expected a lot more from that game.

Haven't played the other games.

Anyone who likes Monkey Island and Indiana Jones, do yourself a favor and play Flight Of The Amazon Queen that you got here on GOG.

Still great imo:
- Indiana Jones and the fate of Atlantis: Very good adventure imo, fun Indiana Jones feeling, good (and mostly logical) puzzles, three different paths are a nice touch.

Good, maybe a bit overrated:
- Indiana Jones and the last crusade: somewhat archaic, also quite short (though the multiple solutions are nice), leaves out too much from the storyline of the movie imo. Still interesting.
- Loom: unique concept; too short, but nice setting and story.
- Secret of Monkey Island: Pretty charming, nice puzzles, not too difficult.
- Curse of Monkey Island: Good game, very funny; feels a bit too narrow in its setting (there aren't that many characters in the game), ending sucks.
- Sam and max: horrible puzzles, but at least it's funny.

Kind of lame:
- Monkey Island 2: don't really like that one much at all; Guybrush's character sucks, and the puzzles are far too difficult (at least on the difficult setting...it's very unfortunate that the remastered edition removed the easy setting; also was a mistake that there was no intermediate difficulty setting, which was originally intended). And the ending is just horrible.
- The Dig: tried playing it, bored me, seemed to consist of abstract logic puzzles which don't interest me.

I played ManiacMansion and Day of the tentacle, but that was so long ago I can't really say much about them.
Haven't really played the rest.

Yes, I can't imagine what it must be like to play these games for the first time in the last decade for someone who had never played a point and click adventure game. I'm glad you ended liking the first two Monkey Island games, even if not fully.

I remember not being happy at all with the way Monkey Island 2 ended the first time I played it, nowadays it doesn't bother me as much, I've had many years to learn to accept it, but I still don't like the final part of the game as much as the rest of it.
Thimbleweed Park, another Ron Gilbert game, had another weird controversial ending, but that one didn't bother me at all.

Flight Of The Amazon Queen is a fun game, I haven't completed it yet, I got stuck at some point and put it aside for a couple of years (I didn't mean to, I just started playing other things and forgot about it), I'll go back to it eventually.

The different paths were a very nice touch indeed. I played this one while in high school and a friend was playing it also at that time, so every day we would tell each other how we were able to solve a new puzzle; one time we did different things and ended on different paths and we didn't know this was possible so it was a cool thing to learn and also very confusing, lol.

Stuck in Last Crusade at the moment, thanks for reminding me :)

I've finished precious few of those. Only Monkey Island 1&2, and yeah, didn't care too much for the final part of the 2.

Got pretty far in Fate of Atlantis playing together with the lady, but I want to start over playing only with Indy, and leave playing together with her for my 2nd playthrough.

I've checked out Grim Fandengo and Full Throttle and love the atmosphere and worlds of both. Hopefully something for later in 2019.

No you didn't. Full Throttle Remastered is not a LucasArts game, it's a remake by DoubleFine. Which probably means that you are trying to play Grim Fandango Remastered, which once again, is not a LucasArts game, but DoubleFine remake.

These remakes use different engines than original games, the original ones would surely run on any graphics card with the help of DOSbox and ScummVM/ResidualVM.

Also, someone already mentioned it, but you forgot Labyrinth from your list:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labyrinth:_The_Computer_Game

As for the answer to your question, The Secret of Monkey Island is the best adventure from them.
The original game, not the remake.

Woah, there's some real hot takes going on in this thread :o

I haven't finished Labyrinth, Maniac Mansion, or Escape From Monkey Island yet, but from what I've played, this is my order:

12. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
11. Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
10. Full Throttle
9. Loom
8. The Secret of Monkey Island
7. Grim Fandango
6. Curse of Monkey Island
5. Monkey Island 2: LeChuck’s Revenge
4. The Dig
3. Sam and Max: Hit the Road
2. Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
1. Day of the Tentacle