This is an ongoing list where I attempt to do the following: Play, Complete, and Rank every video game in the known universe in order to finally answer the age old question "What is the greatest game of all time?" For previous entries find the links on the attached spreadsheet.

How did I do?

I have mentioned ad nauseum in these write-ups that I was a huge fan of adventure games growing up. I did grow up in the “golden age” of adventure games, and from a parental decision it certainly made more financial sense to buy an adventure game that can appeal to more people in the household, then something specifically catered to one of the kids. I played everything under the sun that we had, including games that were certainly not meant for my age range (7^th guest, Gabriel Knight, etc.) but I figure my parents didn’t mind because they could make a leap that spending time playing adventure games was pseudo education as it worked on some skills that I wouldn’t be honing while playing Doom or Wolfenstein (still played those too). One of the games that was towards the tail end of the “golden age” was The Dig.

To set the scene, The Dig was a game that went through development hell ever since Mr. Spielberg came up with the idea of the story. I’m not one to really dive into the development of games, because while it can certainly give some background as to why elements of the game come out the way they do, it doesn’t really jive with what this series is about. I’m not about to get into an argument where IF Duke Nukem: Forever had a better development, that it might be better than Goldeneye 64. Nope, we are only grading what is on the paper that was turned in. So let’s take a look at that paper.

The Dig starts by showing that an asteroid is about to collide with Earth, a crew is quickly assembled and their job is to essentially blow the Asteroid off course with carefully laid explosives. You take on the role of Commander Boston who leads a team to do just that mission. After planting the explosives, you and your team realize that there is something not quite right about the asteroid. It’s hollow and has strange symbols about it, and through messing around inside the asteroid, learn that it is actually a craft that packs up (with you inside) and flies away to its home planet. Now, you and your team must try to investigate the world you suddenly find yourself on and see if it is at all possible to find your way home.

Before we get deeper into the story, which we will need to do. I need to stress that this game has an amazing atmosphere to it. Everything feels cinematic and awe-inspiring. Exploring the planet, taking in everything that is other-worldly or alien, finding the technology they left behind, all of that was incredibly interesting to do. Cutscenes of traversing the planet in the transportation orb or unlocking new rooms gave this game a sense of wonder that I don’t get from exploring other adventure games. All of that atmosphere only grows when accompanied by the music of Michael Land, as the score fits perfectly with the vibe of the game. I still felt that wonder almost 30 years from the release of the original game and I still found it all very engaging to experience despite remembering a lot of the twists and turns of the story and where it goes.

Of course an Adventure game lives and dies by its puzzles and sadly I think The Dig’s puzzles are underwhelming. In terms of difficulty, the puzzles skew more difficult and obtuse then previous Lucas-arts games. You can chalk some of that up to, trying to fit puzzles into an alien world, so that the puzzles seem alien to the player… which works, but it just makes solving them that much more difficult. Early on you have to control a drone by giving it directions from a control panel, but none of the buttons give you any clues as to what each does. So, not only are you trying to work out where this drone needs to go, but now you have to work out what each button does so you can combine the two and make it work together. Not insurmountable by any means, but it now feels like I have to decipher the rules of the puzzle and then the solution, when compared to other games where I just have to figure out solutions. Perhaps the worst puzzle for me, which is a seemingly rather easy one, involves tracking down a buried treasure using an orb. The problem is, you don’t actually know the rules that the Orb operates under. All you can do is take it out of your inventory, and if you do so on 90% of the available screens, it just spins around and your character says “can’t get a good reading.” I didn’t solve it until I backtracked to an area that you think you are presumably done with and pull it out before it starts working, and the only reason I backtracked that far was because I was at a loss for all the other puzzles happening at the time. A good adventure game, has multiple puzzles going at the same time. The ability to solve those puzzles vary, but eventually you get to a point where a domino moment happens and you can close the loop on 3 or 4 puzzles in a row, and it creates a nice feeling in your brain zone. The Dig does the same thing, by stringing along multiple puzzles at a time, but because of the obtuseness of the puzzles you never know if you are one step away, or if you are just doing the puzzle wrong. Going back to that orb puzzle for a second, I didn’t know that the item I found from using the orb belonged to another puzzle, because the logic connecting those didn’t fit in my brain. It might make sense now that I know the answer, but it didn’t click until I resorted to the “try everything on everything” solution that I hate doing.

Now that’s not to say all puzzles are bad, because they aren’t, but they certainly skewed harder than some of the contemporaries. Hell, people really hate the turtle puzzle in this game with a passion and while I certainly won’t defend it, it is a puzzle that personally wasn’t a top 3 bad puzzle in the game. The problem specifically for this game, is that even the easiest of puzzles is still tedious as it adds unnecessary junk to the system. Locked doors require a code to open, those codes are usually 4 symbols of different shape or color. So maybe the code is blue triangle, red square, red triangle, and green star. Should be simple solution, but you don’t know which door that is to, so you manually input that same code into each and every door you come across, just to find the one single one that it opens. Why couldn’t this puzzle have been solved by you “using” the item on the door, and it working that way? I have no idea. So, instead we take something that should be a simple solution and we add an annoying layer on top.

We have to get back to the story, because I would argue that the two most important aspects of adventure games are the story and puzzles. While on the planet you have a crew of three people, you only ever play as one, but at any time you can “call” the other two to talk which can presumably help you solve solutions. In theory this is a good idea, but I can’t think of any help the crewmates actually gave me about a puzzle I was struggling on. What really happens is you call them up, ask about an item or room in the dialogue section, and they say either “I don’t know, seems alien” or “Don’t bother me, I’m busy.” Those aren’t great hints when I am trying to solve getting a tram up and running. Ok, back to the highlights of the story. You realize the planet you are on must have had intelligent life on it, but you can’t find anything outside of a few small animals. You eventually stumble upon a crystal that can raise the dead, but it also comes with drawbacks, and eventually very late in the game you get to converse with an alien. I’m bringing those up quickly, because the real part of the story I want to talk about is how bad the ending is and I need to get that baseline out there so that the ending makes a little bit of sense. Through events you learn that using the crystals on a dead thing will slowly drive it mad, and make it addicted to the high it gets from the crystals, you witness this firsthand as one of your crewmates befalls this fate. As you start reaching the pinnacle of the game, the other crewmate is like “hey if I die, don’t bring me back, just leave me to die.” Wouldn’t you know it…. they die, and you actually then have the option to bring them back or not. There are two different endings to the game that all hinges on this choice. The ending if you honor your friend’s wishes is the most Deus Ex Machina bullshit that results in not only you finding your way back to Earth via a new magical spaceship, but the crew that you left dead on the foreign planet being revived with no ill effects to come back to Earth with you. Not only do you travel back to Earth a survivor, but now get to bring back the knowledge of ancient alien races (because they are saved by your shenanigans), you have bettered yourself, the aliens, and Earth because you pushed a few crystals at the right time.

It is such a letdown for a story that I think had promise with some edits. I think the concept of you going back a broken man who lost some of his crew on an alien planet is far more interesting then the 100% super Mega Happy ending, where everyone is better and now you have cool new alien friends. Your crew’s death should be a warning to Earthlings that aliens exist, but to not meddle in things you don’t understand, etc. etc. I’ve beleaguered the point enough, I think the ending sucks (no matter which one you get) and it reaffirms my belief that I need to complete games before I rank them, because playing this for an hour or two and not seeing the ending would have placed it higher on the list then where it will eventually fall.

Now, I spent a lot of this writeup pretty much crapping on the game. I didn’t think the puzzles were as fun to figure out (or intuitive) as its contemporaries and I thought that the story biffed it pretty hard at the end, which should be damning for an adventure game. A point and click adventure game with seemingly bad story and bad puzzles, should be a recipe for disaster, but I somehow still ended up liking the game. Some of it can be chalked up to nostalgia, and I will own that piece, but I do think the game nailed the atmosphere, sense of exploration, and look to the game (within context of the time). I would never put it on a pedestal above some of the great games of the time, but the feeling of scope and the production values of this game made other games feel kiddie in comparison. That is not all good, as I think that bloated production and scope is why it took so long to make, why it had such a troubled time, and ultimately why it probably has a rushed ending and some bad puzzles, but I do remember the feeling of booting that game up for the first time and thinking I was playing a real movie.

Is this the greatest game of all time?: No

Where does it rank: So how do I rate this game with all things considered, and while trying to keep my nostalgia bias in check? It’s a game that will always hold a special place in my heart, but I know that it isn’t in the peak range of adventure games, but not in the depths either. It’s a game whose promise was greater than what it delivered and has not aged particularly well. People playing it for the first time now, aren’t going to be wowed by the atmosphere, the big names attached to the project, or even by the production value that it had for the time being. There is no way to simulate that for a new audience. So, while The Dig might live on in my personal top 10 adventure game list, where nostalgia is king.. In reality the game charts much closer to the middle then I would have expected. I have it ranked as the 70th Greatest Game of All Time out of 171 total games. It sits between Psychonauts (69th) and Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars (71st).

Anyone looking for it: here is the link to the list and more if you are interested in following along with me (this is not a self promotion).Here. I added links on the spreadsheet for quick navigation. Now if you missed a blog of a game you want to read about, you can get to it quickly, rather than having to scroll through my previous blogs wondering when it came up.

Thanks for listening

Future games coming up 1) Theatre of Sorrow 2) Operation Darkness 3) Vampire Survivors