New York

I don't know about you, but one of the things that really pisses me off about what's happened to the game industry in the last twenty years is the complete disappearance of adventure games.

Not that I was ever a huge fan of adventure games, really; Kings Quest and Gabriel Knight left me cold. But Zork was a lot of fun, back in the day, and I loved the Monkey Island games, and Grim Fandango was goddamn brilliant. Adventure games let you do things with actual story -- stories with real characters you actually come to care about -- that almost no other digital game style can manage. And with rare exceptions, digital games are relentlessly and really annoyingly unhumorous. Indeed, they're by and large ridiculously portentous: The evil Whatsis of Whatever has entered the world and turned everything to steaming piles of shit, and Only You and your l33t skillz, along with the Gizmo of Frammistan, can rescue us from the crapper, but of course first you have to collect the seven Thingummies of Plot Device.

I am so sick of that. Give me Guybrush Threepwood any day.

Rabbi Stone has a crisis of faith. When was the last time you heard a game described in remotely similar terms?

Shivah is the Jewish mourning ritual. For a week after a family member's death, the family stays at home, receiving visitors, and mourning the deceased.

Rabbi Stone, this game's protagonist, leads a small and declining congregation on the Lower East Side. He receives word that a somewhat disreputable former congregant has died, and left his small estate to the synagogue. Though he himself is close to losing faith in God, he views it as his duty to investigate, and perhaps to comfort whatever family members this man may have as they sit Shivah.

Dave Gilbert continues his career as the auteur of a new school of old school graphic adventures with The Blackwell Legacy, the first of a series of planned games featuring freelance writer Rosangela Blackwell.

In this first outing, Rosangela comes to grips with her powers--or affliction, as it may be--and is forced to deal with a haunted dog run in Greenwich Village's Washington Square Park. Helping her out is the mysterious Joey Mallone, a fedora-wearing ghost whose dialog is straight out of Raymond Chandler and who has apparently been haunting her family since the 1940s.