Everyone talks about adventure game puzzles and mechanics being 'played out' and 'tired' so I'm wondering what kinds of puzzles do you guys think belong in this category? I'll start.

I think a particularly played out one is the general sequence/puzzler based adventure game mechanic, which has _no_ bearing on the story.

An example of this would be moving a set of levers, through trial and error in order to get a door open. Developers use these puzzles because they are easy to implement, but they act only as roadblocks without any real gain in solving them.

Got any others?

Not only is that sort of puzzle (is it really a puzzle) frustrating but extremly annoying in my opinion

agreed

I make three.

New puzzle: Lighting torches in the right order. THe torches go out after a short time or if wrong order is used. It should be noted that there might have been an obscure clue earlier in the game ( like in the beginning third, while you are now at the very end).

Another "puzzle": A maze where every room is the same and there are no clues to tell you which direction to move in to exit and move foward, but one direction always allows you to exit. (PS: you have to get through this to proceed)

Example: A small area with four exits, North, South, East and West.
Exiting east will always exit to where you came from. Exiting the room to the north will have you entering from the south, and vice-verca. Exiting from the West will have you entering the east entrance.

PS: Which game is the example from? (I tried drawing a picture, but it didn't work to well. It would help if I could just paste it into the text field)

I like logic based stuff


An idea
message first then perhaps a trapped area cleared by using skills or magic
or plain old blunder thru the lot ! ! !

The best puzzle in mornings Wrath was the clock sequence color symbol puzzle to get into the crypt gates - this had me stumped for a little bit untill I Clicked on what I had to do - very nice indeed

As no one guessed on my last puzzle, it was the Lost Woods from the original Legend of Zelda.

This is a puzzle that came to mind on my 5th or so play through of Golden Sun: The rolling log puzzles.

There are some similar puzzles in other games, like block moving puzzles in Zelda, but the basic premise is that there is an area with movable objects that only move in certain patterns; most often a straight line until stopped (sometimes only in an up/down or left/right pattern).

You then have to align the movable objects to hit switches, create a walkable path or so that you can walk on top of the objects themselves.

This puzzle can be simple to complex with several solutions. This is also a really-easy-to-implement-into-any-game puzzle, because I've even seen it in Resident Evil (2 for sure,maybe others...).