Whilst it can be hard to define when exactly an era ends, you can, with hindsight, show how the end came about. And so it is, with the 3rd installment of Simon the Sorcerer, we can see the reasons for the endemic failure of the Adventure Game industry as a whole. An adventure game, like a good book, should have interesting locations, realistic characters (for the setting) and an enigmatic storyline that keeps you wanting more. Unfortunately, despite the promise shown in Simon 1 and 2, the 3rd installment fails in all these categories. The underlying reason for this failure lies in the 3D. This extra dimension does not offer anything to this genre and in fact given the sparseness of the locations, contributes to the empty, desolate feel of the game as whole and proves that 3 dimensions don't always have depth.
I wanted to like this game as I did its predecessors, but couldn't so in the words of George Orwell - "2D good, 3D bad".