Last time I felt I had to apologize for mentioning Ron Gilbert's new adventure game, DeathSpank. It's not a Bungie game. It's not a Halo game. Gilbert never worked for Bungie, or worked on Halo. The two have nothing to do with one another, and this site has always been about Bungie or people and things connected to Bungie somehow. In my own twisted way I justified including the item because while completely separate, Gilbert's Monkey Island games stood out to me as special and memorable, as well as the pinnacle of good concept and solid execution in a graphical adventure.

This time, though, Gilbert makes my job easy when he answers the question posed to him by Rock, Paper, Shotgun, about why adventure games have lost their way. He blames Halo... sort of. Kinda. Well, not really. But he does mention it:

In same ways, adventure games are just as popular as they were back in the day, the real issue is that the rest of the industry took off without them. I blame Doom. That game showed up and interjected testosterone in gaming that wasn't there before and adventure games had a hard time competing with that kind of energy. There is an audience for adventure games, but it's not the same people that are buying Halo, Bioshock, or even Mario. Problem is, until a company really decides to focus (spend money) and discover that market, it's going to remain small.The future my lay in good adventure hybrid games, like... oh just to pull one out randomly... DeathSpank.

Ron... not entirely true! We're here! We love Halo and Monkey Island, and we're looking forward to DeathSpank! Really!

As a footnote: for all the old RHL gang who remember the great Crotchfest, Gilbert offers this:

DeathSpank frequents a local pub called the Haunted Crotch Bar and Grill (all you can eat salad-bar Tues nights) owned by Grimtub Hobblepotty.

There is no game so good that a few crotch references can't make it even better.