by Pete Davison

Created on: January 04, 2009   Last Updated: July 27, 2011

Triple-A blockbusters flood the game store shelves. Games like Halo, Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto dominate the headlines - and not without good reason, as to many people they represent the current pinnacle of interactive entertainment. However, it's easy to forget certain games - games that you promise you'll always get around to but never do. The "Pile of Shame", that pile of shrink-wrapped game boxes that gradually builds up on your shelf, constantly pushed to one side by the aforementioned blockbusters. Games that want your love and respect but won't get it unless you make a special effort.

This article is an attempt to set at least a little of that right. I'd like to share with you one of my favourite "Games of Shame" - a hidden gem from the annals of history that is highly worth your time and effort to seek out and explore. It's a game called The Longest Journey, and is currently available on the Steam digital download service (http://www.steampowered.com) along with its sequel, Dreamfall.

The Longest Journey tells the story of April Ryan, a struggling art student. She starts to have mysterious dreams about another world and over the course of a very long adventure discovers the truth about the relationship between her world - the futuristic dystopia known as Stark - and the "other" world - a brightly-coloured yet slightly sinister fantasy world known as Arcadia.

The Longest Journey is notable for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is one of the last examples of the point-and-click adventure genre that didn't attempt to incorporate perceived "next-gen" cross-genre blending features such as combat systems, stealth sequences and the like. Its sequel Dreamfall fell foul of this and was an inferior game as a result - not enough to make it a bad game, but enough to make it not quite so beloved as its predecessor.

Another reason to pay attention to The Longest Journey is the sheer quality of its writing. April is immensely believable as a main character, with a very distinct personality in the way she talks to both the player and to the other characters. She is attractive as a person, but not in the grotesquely obvious way that many video game heroines are forced to be, but naturally, simply on the basis of who she is. By the end of the lengthy adventure, the player will have developed a deep emotional bond with April and will be sorry to leave her behind as the credits roll. Besides April, other characters in the story are very well written, such as avian

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