This is a followup to @SorosFootSoldier@hexbear.net 's recent thread for completeness' sake.
I'll state an old classic that is seen as a genre defining game because it is: Myst. Yes, it redefined the genre... in ways I fucking hated and that the adventure game genre took decades to fully recover from. It was a pompous mess in its presentation and was the worst kind of "doing action does vague thing or nothing at all, where is your hint book" puzzle gameplay wrapped in graphical hype which ages pretty poorly as far as appeal qualities go.
So many adventure games tried to be Myst afterward that the sheer budgetary costs and redundancy of the also-rans crashed the adventure game genre for years.
i just hate all videogames, despite playing them all the time. they pale in comparison to the shit i imagine while i play them. even my favorite games just piss me off with all the ways they could be hypothetically improved upon. this game needs bigger maps, that game could use a prone mechanic, this other game needs leaning around corners... i just can't stop myself. and thats without getting into microtransaction games-as-a-service shit that i can't afford but still want because i am a needy little treat goblin who has to farm any tiny scrap of dopamine out of the world that i can.