A while back I was saying, all this Star Wars stuff is great but can we have more classic Lucasarts graphic adventures please? Now gog have delievered! Along with a couple of other interesting non-SW titles
Loom: A personal favourite of mine. A haunting, atmospheric fantasy tale in a world of dark magic. It was known for an unusual interface – instead of picking up and using items, you cast musical spells to interact with the world around you. It’s a brief game and rather easy but still highly worthwhile. I hope at some point they can add the EGA original (if I recall right the dialogue was text-only but more extensive).
Monkey Island 2 Special Edition: I’m not sure I genuinely like the graphical facelift that was given to the first two Monkeys. I think maybe because while the art was redone, the animation is still rather basic? They feel a bit like something created in Flash. Still, the game underneath is one of the greatest of the graphic adventures, and you can revert back to Ye Olde VGA if you like.
Zak Mcracken and the alien mindbenders: One of their earliest adventures. Not played it but I believe it’s rather unforgiving by the standards of later Lucas adventures. Such as letting you make a mistake that makes the game unwinnable, in a way that you don’t realise until an hour later. I wouldn’t make this one a priority. Still, I kind of like to see oldies made available even when they aren’t all that playable or entertaining any more, especially when they come from a stable that went on to do much greater things. Just for the sake of preserving a bit of gaming history.
Indiana Jones and the Emperor’s Tomb: an early-2000s Tomb-raider-ish action adventure. Seeing how heavily Lara Croft drew from Indy’s concept and story themes, I always thought it was fair enough for him to then copy her gameplay. Interesting that they’ve gone straight to this one and skipped its predecessor Infernal Machine?
The Dig: From the later days of point-and-clickers, this one feels a bit like an Arthur C Clarke story, with 3 astronauts finding themselves stranded on an abandoned alien world. Unusually for Lucasarts, its played totally straight, with no comedy elements. I think enjoyed it more than Rik did, possibly just down to being more of a scifi fan, although I share his opinion that the ending was overtly sentimental.
Outlaws: This was Lucas’ only non-star-wars first person shooter, going instead for a Wild West theme. It was powered by the same engine used for Dark Forces, which was a bit long in the tooth by 1997, so that might partially explain why the game was forgotten so quickly. Still, I’m tempted to give it a try.