Don’t be so patronizing. Of course I’ve heard of Riven. It was the top selling PC game for close to a year, so many have not only heard of it but have played it as well. Me included.
It’s not a comfort game though. Just like Civ it takes too long to complete for it to be a good comfort game for me.
And thanks for the patch. I’m going to try it.
In short, no adventure.
Don’t get me wrong: I love adventure games, too. But they’re hardly any more intelligent than any other genre: they just require a lot of patience for trial- and-error and pixel-hunting. Can’t get through a particular door? Try using everything in your inventory on it. If that doesn’t work, go back through every previous room and make sure you didn’t forget to pick something up, or make sure you talk to all the NPCs until you’ve exhausted all the dialogue trees. You don’t have to be smart to beat an adventure game, you just have to have a mild anal-compulsive disorder. Sure, adventure games can be fun, but there’s a reason the genre’s in decline: they’re generally not very good games. Too often, the game comes to screeching halt because the player can’t make whatever intuitive leap is required to advance the story. And then there’s nothing else to do but wander around screens you’ve already seen, hunting for some clue as to what to do next, usally trying a dozen or so perfectly valid strategies to get past the obstacle before hitting upon the one solution you’re supposed to use. When it comes to most adventure games, I’d rather just read a novel of the same material, because a book doesn’t have it’s story grind to halt every ten minutes while I try and figure out how to turn the next page.
I do find it funny that you condescend about adventure games not featuring “cars to steal, or whores to run over, or buildings to blow up, or giant monsters whose bloody guts will splatter gloriously,” and then, while listing good adventure games, you go on to cite Sanitarium, which features a stolen car (which you crash in a flashback at the beginning of the game), exploding buildings (the sanitarium’s tower), and giant, gloriously gut-splattering monsters (the plant creature in the town of deformed children). Okay, you can’t run down whores, but no game is perfect.
Miller 
try playing alien vs predator - as a marine…
playing in the dark with headphones highly recommended. definitely not a comfort game.
Roller Coaster Tycoon 2. The only non-violent game in my whole collection.
Also, Jagged Alliance 2. Great game, terrific voice work and rock solid gameplay. Bloody shame that Sirtech has keeled over and died…
Hee, hee. Unreal Tournament is good, but I don’t regard it as a “comfort game.”
Although I find it very soothing to frag bots left and right after a hard day’s work. Helps get the venom out and makes me a nicer person to deal with, y’know?
And while Myst and Riven were okay, I really preferred Grim Fandango… although, once again, I’m not sure I’d call it a “comfort game.” Too, too long.
Scrabble’s good. And I really like Freedom Force, for some absurd reason…
Soldier of Fortune II - online multiplayer. Within seconds I can be online and blowing up stranger’s limbs.
mmmmm… gibbs…
People require different things in comfort games, I think.
I would classify Diablo II and, back in the good old days, Descent II, as games that fall in the category you mention for me. But they aren’t comfort games.
For me, it is adventure games and RPG’s with their familiar story lines and beloved characters that are truly comforting. A lot of Sierra Online’s stuff: the King’s Quest games, particularly the middle ones–V, VI, and VII. The Quest For Glory games, also in the middle of the series–III and IV. And last but certainly not least, Squaresoft’s stuff–Chronotrigger, Chronocross, Final Fantasy VI, VII and VIII. And Myst, yes. (Didn’t get into the sequals.) Whenever I’m feeling down, it’s one of these games I drag out of storage.
They’re coming outta the walls. They’re coming outta the goddamn walls!
Ever try playing the multiplayer Co-op maps? Me and my brother played them as Marines, you face a never ending horde of aliens constantly attacking in waves. We scared the crap out of our parents screaming at each other for backup.
Biggirl… did the patch end up working for you?
I second Thief. I’ll be playing that game off and on as long as I have a computer capable of running it.
The game is one big virtual sandbox. I love the AI–very little is scripted so even though the game goes one way one time you play it, you have very little chance of the same planning panning out the same way the next time.
It’s also damn immersive. Whenever I’ve had a bad day, it’s always nice to ghost my way through Bafford’s mansion (basically achieve all goals, steal all treasure without alerting, knocking out, killing or otherwise disturbing the guards). I love the ambient sounds, too. Very relaxing.
Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat - the game is over 10 years old but it’s still one of the most enjoyable combat flight sims ever. It’s made for mid-20th Century fighter combat ( WWII, Korea, also Vietnam ) and gives a great feeling for each type of plane you can fly. You can go up against any plane or combinations of planes you feel like (like a P-51 vs. 10 trainee Me-109s, or 2 NKAF MiG jets). Easy to get into and short enough to provide just enough distraction.
I like Heroes of Might & Magic - the original. The city generation isn’t too complex, and the bright cartoonish look of the characters is amusing. It is a little too easy to beat the computer, though. It’s a relaxing game for me.
One that may seem strange as a ‘comfort game’ is The Longest Journey. With almost every other adventure game I’ve played, I concentrate on beating just that game. This one, though, has such strong characters and a decent story that it isn’t as important. You find yourself actually wanting to have the conversations that you have with others, instead of the usual pumping them for information. I’ve been playing it well over a year now, just a little bit at a time. It’s nice that it’s an ‘impossible to lose’ game and most of the time doesn’t require much thought. My only criticism is that the occasional puzzle still requires bizarre leaps of logic leading to the try everything in your inventory.
I’ll second AvP - as a Marine when I feel desparate and want to watch things blow up as I wait for death, as an Alien when I feel like biting people’s heads off.
Chuck Yeager’s Air Combat - the game is over 10 years old but it’s still one of the most enjoyable combat flight sims ever. It’s made for mid-20th Century fighter combat ( WWII, Korea, also Vietnam ) and gives a great feeling for each type of plane you can fly. You can go up against any plane or combinations of planes you feel like (like a P-51 vs. 10 trainee Me-109s, or 2 NKAF MiG jets). Easy to get into and short enough to provide just enough distraction.
I like Heroes of Might & Magic - the original. The city generation isn’t too complex, and the bright cartoonish look of the characters is amusing. It is a little too easy to beat the computer, though. It’s a relaxing game for me.
One that may seem strange as a ‘comfort game’ is The Longest Journey. With almost every other adventure game I’ve played, I concentrate on beating just that game. This one, though, has such strong characters and a decent story that it isn’t as important. You find yourself actually wanting to have the conversations that you have with others, instead of the usual pumping them for information. I’ve been playing it well over a year now, just a little bit at a time. It’s nice that it’s an ‘impossible to lose’ game and most of the time doesn’t require much thought. My only criticism is that the occasional puzzle still requires bizarre leaps of logic leading to the try everything in your inventory.
I’ll second AvP - as a Marine when I feel desparate and want to watch things blow up as I wait for death, as an Alien when I feel like biting people’s heads off.
I haven’t patched it yet. Doesn’t look like I’ll get a chance to before this weekend. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
The salamanders likes to play!! My casino always had a lot of salamanders, it was hard to get them to leave.
Very strange game. I played it a lot, but I would get bored after a while because, in the long run, there was only so much you can do, and soon every dungeon is pretty much the same.
My comfort game is Rise of Nations. Whenever I am bored I can bring it up, start a solo battle (usually me vs. 7 AIs on a smallish random map, all random nations), and play for a while. It doesn’t get boring for me but I often get frustrated and quit sometime around the enlightenment age.
I love Cataclysm (homeworld 2) by Sierra.
AvP2 is too scarey for me, although big multiplayer LAN parties are fun with that game (5 marines against me as an alien…heh heh heh).
I also play Age of Empires 2 and Shogun: Total war when the urge to send hundreds of men to their deaths appeals to me (but Shogun doesn’t always work with my Nvidia card…argh!).
Yeah, no kidding. I downloaded the demo to Siberia a few months ago, and regretted it immediately. Sure, it looked good. But there’s nothing that bothers me more than trying to walk into a room and being told “You don’t really feel like doing that right now.” OK, I’ll check out my suitcase. Oh, I don’t really feel like doing THAT either. Hmm… there’s a locked door, wonder if I can jimmy it with that crowbar? Wait, those two items cannot be used together.
I’d be all for so-called adventure games if they were set in an actual world as opposed to a script. It’s my goddamn suitcase, I should be able to open it whenever I want, not only when the game deems it acceptable!
Mine is Factory: The Industrial Devolution. But it’s only for Mac, and so I haven’t played it in a long time.
Team Fortress Classic!
Whether I just want a quick 20 minute game or want to waste an entire evening I will fire this bad boy up and commence to mow down everything in front of me. Best game ever, and I don’t even like multi-player games. This is the only one I play.
I’m depressed- despite having a dozen friends who are eager for LAN parties on any given day, I’m the only person I know who likes to play AvP or AvP2.
My recent comfort games:
Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory - this is a free multiplayer-only game that was intended as an expansion to RtCW but ended up being standalone. It’s theraputic to pick up a panzerfaust and blow the hell out of other people.
Thief Gold and Thief II, as other people have said. While it’s fun to be sneaky, it’s also fun to blackjack a guard, pick up the body, and throw it into a canal and watch the unconscious guard drown, or toss it off a balcony / roof and try to hit a guard walking by below.
You can’t kill someone by throwing a body on them (I think) but it’s amusing to try.
Europa 1400 - The Guild satisfies my latent Machiavellian nature. Someone has dirt on me and is trying to prosecute me? Let’s kidnap him and hold him for a year and let the case die down. I need a better position? Bribe, bribe, bribe.
I wanna go play -now-.
Great game, but it’s not Homeworld 2. This is Homeworld 2, and it’s out in less than two weeks!