Adventure Games

Looking for something different I recently picked up 'Sam and Max: save the world' on the Xbox live arcade, and gotta say I thoroughly enjoyed it, some tricky puzzles, ridiculous characters and great humour made for a fantastic game and the episodic 'sitcom' format really adds a unique touch (try the demo today!). It certainly seems with the advent of digital distribution this niche genera is finding a new home and new fans, my self included to the point that I'm going to raid Lucas arts back catalogue (Monkey Island, day of the tentacle, full throttle).

anyone else more familiar with the genera? any titles to recommend? Even if not, any views on the adoption of episodic content and why adventure games have succeeded where other games attempting episodic content fail?

TL;DR
POINTAN
CLCKAN
ADVENTURAN
Adventure Games General

Being really lazy, I'll totally recommend Monkey Island, whatever John Walker says. I normally have total respect for the guy (RockPaperShotgun.com cowriter/editor chap) but he slated it in the latest PCGamer. But I like PCGamer less and less recently vs the internet in it's majesty.
It was very funny when I played it, though that may say I have the sense of humour of a five year old from the early nineties. =\ =)

Ps. I played Monkey Island through as the new graphicsy special edition, and though it has it's problems, it's darned lovely (problems: You may actually have to change back to the original graphics to solve one puzzle. FARKING GROG).

I've also played Full Throttle, and that's pretty good. DotT, I've only played as a demo (Lol, that was a while back) though I assume it's awesome from other peoples comments on it, but don't know from personal experience.

Oh! And if you want something involving cock jokes, I thoroughly recommend Ben There Dan That, and the pay-for sequel, (first one's always free... =\ =) But highly recommended by the aforementioned John Walker/RPS.). Note: Not 100% cock jokes. One second, splicing links to mini-reviews on the subject into the post.

Psyconauts is great. I recommend getting it over xbox live in their Xbox originals.

EDIT: Also this probably doesn't fit into the adventure games catagory you're looking in but if you haven't play it yet I whole heartedly recommend Beyond Good and Evil. Very fun and funny platfom adventure game.