Some were riddles, yes. (I'd have said they were jokes, actually.) But the good ones were puzzles. Puzzles are a lot harder to write than jokes.
I'd argue that the Myst series was the best of the genre. There were no riddles or jokes there. Every single challenge was a puzzle, with clues that were either obvious or hidden. Never were they absent, like a lot of adventure games.
What we're seeing now is FPSs that have adventure elements. Very few of them, but they're coming along. I even saw a hidden object game that was half adventure game! It got my 9 year old niece interested in adventure games, and she had quite a lot of fun with the copy of the original Myst that I bought her. (Her grandmother and mother helped her with it, some, but she was pretty good at it.)
So no, they didn't deserve to die. The good ones were amazing, and the bad ones were horrible, just like every other genre.
Some were riddles, yes. (I'd have said they were jokes, actually.) But the good ones were puzzles. Puzzles are a lot harder to write than jokes.
I'd argue that the Myst series was the best of the genre. There were no riddles or jokes there. Every single challenge was a puzzle, with clues that were either obvious or hidden. Never were they absent, like a lot of adventure games.
What we're seeing now is FPSs that have adventure elements. Very few of them, but they're coming along. I even saw a hidden object game that was half adventure game! It got my 9 year old niece interested in adventure games, and she had quite a lot of fun with the copy of the original Myst that I bought her. (Her grandmother and mother helped her with it, some, but she was pretty good at it.)
So no, they didn't deserve to die. The good ones were amazing, and the bad ones were horrible, just like every other genre.