Some of the major news coming out of this year's E3 were its adventure games. Of course, a few high-profile, non-adventure titles got a lot of attention. But just about everyone who stepped foot into the LA Convention Center this week knew that games like Doom III, Half-Life 2, or Halo II were going to draw huge crowds. People waited in lines for five hours (yes, really) to watch the Half-Life 2 trailer because they already knew they were going to like it, not because they were looking for real news.

But adventures this year shined because they had something new to show off at E3. Last year, people might have started to get the sense something good was around the corner -- DreamCatcher announced that it had signed Syberia, and LucasArts announced its Full Throttle sequel. This year, however, could be the year that the adventure genre -- all but abandoned by the "mainstream" publishers for the past few years and limited largely to European imports -- finally establishes itself (again).

One only has to look at The Adventure Company's latest offerings to see how much this company has grown up in the past few years. Some of their past titles, while often quite playable, did suffer from murky graphics or quirky interfaces that kept them just out of the "major leagues" of game design. While I think that the hard-core press, like a Computer Gaming World or GameSpot, has often been a little too hard on TAC's titles, their complaints haven't been entirely without merit either.

But now, for the first time in their history, many of TAC's upcoming titles (part 1) (part 2) have clear first-rate potential. Mysterious Journey II (Schizm II for those of you in Europe) is a very good-looking game, with clear graphics that finally live up to the first game's promise. What I've seen of Broken Sword III appears so far to be a clever take on the genre, offering true 3D puzzles while retaining the spirit of pure adventures. Gabriel Knight creator Jane Jensen is back and as determined as ever. Jeff and Karen Tobler will also be developing another sequel to The Omega Stone

Turning to other companies, Ubi Soft's Uru: Ages Beyond Myst should bring adventure games to the Internet without destroying the single-player experience or turning the entire series into a virtual chat room. (Although they really must do something about that title. Uru from Ubi? I'm half expecting to see "Sit, Ubu, Sit," in the game's closing credits.)

And now, onto the games...

-- Jason Strautman