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Post by headless on Mar 16, 2012 20:17:00 GMT -5
King's Quest V is an absolutely terrible game.
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Post by Sac (a.k.a Icaras) on Mar 17, 2012 17:14:15 GMT -5
I do find it amusing how modern gamers seem to absolutely hate adventure games.
I grew up playing them during the golden age of the genre (the 90s, hell the first game I ever bought was a Space Quest collection) and at the time, we considered it normal that you'd have super hard puzzles and that the game would take a long time to solve for that reason
(as if you had a walkthru, most adventure games, even if you did everything, would normally only take an hour or 2 to play through).
That didn't stop me from reading the write in help section of every mag I could hoping people were stuck in the same places as me, or reading the hint books (I even write to Sierra themselves a few times and got response. Pretty sure I still have the letters they sent back with hints somewhere)
That's probably one thing you should keep in mind, as while even back then we didn't like illogical puzzles, we still considered it normal to pixel hunt, look at and try and take everything and to use every item with every other item on everyTHING.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Mar 18, 2012 15:05:17 GMT -5
To wash the taste of KQ5 out of my brain... okay, so it wasn't THAT bad. It was an experience and I am thankful I played it. I am not thankful for ominous tree branches or small boats.  But seriously, I played and beat KQ6. Thanks to the constant tutelage of muteKi (who I kept bugging to give me more hints than I should have ingested), I beat it and enjoyed it very much! It's slightly less heinous in terms of unwinnable situations, though there are still a fair deal of those. Thankfully, there are only three somewhat long stretches of places where you can't go back, unlike the entire latter half of KQ5 which prevents you from getting ANYTHING from the first half. The voices have actual actors behind them (the late, great Tony Jay most notably), the graphics and music are even finer, the situations are more creative, and the puzzles are GENERALLY less damning, though I swear I still had to ask for more than half the solutions. Maybe I just suck at this sort of game, but... hey, if you suck, the least you can do is enjoy a good presentation while failing! I may have to play the other KQ games at this rate, and I hear AGS's remakes of the first three KQ games are extraordinary. Here's hoping they'll get on KQ4 at some point, and... hell, KQ5 may even need a remake somehow. KQ6 is fine. KQ7 doesn't technically need a remake either, though I hear it's disappointing compared to 6. KQ8... could do with a DEmake, IMO. Anyway, I'm rambling. The podcast will be recorded a bit earlier than usual, and I don't want to say too much about it, but I'm hoping this'll be the biggest one we've done so far. Tune in sometime in the beginning of April (if not sooner) and be prepared to vote on our next set of games, whatever those may be! |
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Post by Snarboo on Mar 19, 2012 0:11:10 GMT -5
I recently played through and beat King's Quest VI on the good ending path myself, and I have to agree with Sotenga. There were still a few "gotchas!", one of which I encountered right before the end, but overall King's Quest VI is vastly superior to King's Quest V in every way. It really stands up there with some of LucasArts' best games in my opinion.
Now that I've finished KQ6, I've decided to move onto Beneath a Steel Sky. So far I'm enjoying it, but it was difficult adjusting to the interface at first. The interface is really nothing at all like LucasArts or Sierra's games. It's also more forgiving than Sierra's games while still having the occasional death or two. The voice acting and dialogue isn't as good as LucasArts or Sierra's output, but I still enjoy the snarky banter the main character and his robot sidekick Joey share every now and again. Speaking of which, it's interesting comparing the character of Joey the robot to Cedric the owl: Joey is basically everything Cedric should have been. You can talk to him for tips, ask him to solve certain puzzles for you, and he can analyze inventory items for clues.
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Post by kal on Mar 19, 2012 6:05:33 GMT -5
My problem with BaSS is it starts out so atmospheric and heavy...then it sort of tails off and gets a little silly. Then the ending is neatish.
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Post by Snarboo on Mar 19, 2012 6:26:21 GMT -5
My problem with BaSS is it starts out so atmospheric and heavy...then it sort of tails off and gets a little silly. Yeah, I noticed.  It's gotten really goofy the further I've gotten in, and the puzzles are just as inane as most other adventure games. The thing that gets me the most is that the main character stops to tell everyone his life story, even though he's only known them for all of five seconds. Admittedly, I like some of the cheesy dialogue and the jokes, so it's not all bad. The game still has its atmospheric moments despite the sudden shift in tone, though, such as the operating room underneath the cathedral. |
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Post by Discoalucard on Mar 19, 2012 8:37:31 GMT -5
Yeah, I noticed. It's gotten really goofy the further I've gotten in, and the puzzles are just as inane as most other adventure games. The thing that gets me the most is that the main character stops to tell everyone his life story, even though he's only known them for all of five seconds. Admittedly, I like some of the cheesy dialogue and the jokes, so it's not all bad. I think that kind of makes sense in the context of the plot though. Since he grew up among the aboriginals, it makes sense that he'd be pretty naive and slightly awkward. I honestly can't decide whether I like this or Broken Sword better. They're both really excellent. |
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Post by kal on Mar 20, 2012 9:44:17 GMT -5
I prefer Broken Sword personally, it edges it out slightly for more environment variety and some of the more gorgeous graphics ever used for a point and click.
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Post by Vokkan on Mar 20, 2012 19:51:04 GMT -5
Is there anything in the maze that can be missed? (more importantly will that screw me over later?)
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Post by Snarboo on Mar 20, 2012 23:37:35 GMT -5
There's only one, and it's required to exit the maze anyway, so you can't miss it.
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sco
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Post by sco on Mar 21, 2012 1:52:11 GMT -5
King's Quest V? Pffft. You should have chosen KGB or Murders In Space.
That would make you scream.
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Post by kermiter on Mar 21, 2012 2:44:28 GMT -5
You know, it's not entirely true to say we got through all these games without hints back in the 90s. I remember I used to be able to get information on games through America Online. Yes, believe it or not there was actually a time when being an AoL user did NOT automatically make you an idiot. There just weren't a lot of options back then.
So while I did beat the NES version without hints because we didn't have a computer yet, I did have access to hints when I played the other Sierra adventure titles and such back in the 90s. I used Univeral Hint System (UHS) files. They were great. You looked up the part where you were stuck, and it would give you a series of increasingly informative hints, with the last one telling you outright. So you could just give yourself a hint and still have some sense of accomplishment, and you would hardly see any spoilers for other parts of the game.
If you do decide to go back and play some of the old Sierra games--and I do recommend them, especially Space Quest 1-5, King's Quest 1-6, Freddie Pharkas, Phantasmagoria, and especially the first Gabriel Knight--UHS files can ease a lot of the frustration. They're good for pretty much any adventure game, in fact.
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Post by Discoalucard on Mar 21, 2012 8:11:42 GMT -5
I used to write UHS files! Mostly for Infocom and random other stuff, since Sierra games had already been filled by the time I'd started. I was like 15 or so.
Pre-internet, I used to check out the hint guides at the local bookstores whenever I went to the mall. When I got a PC in the mid-90s, we had access to Prodigy, which was slow and expensive, but had hints for most of the games I was playing. I remember them helping me through Monkey Island 2.
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Post by xerxes on Mar 22, 2012 20:27:57 GMT -5
That's accurate. I used to check out AOL keyword NintendoPower for hints on Link's Awakening, if that tells you anything. It tells me a lot, now that I think about it...
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Post by muteKi on Mar 23, 2012 14:56:16 GMT -5
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It's gotten really goofy the further I've gotten in, and the puzzles are just as inane as most other adventure games. The thing that gets me the most is that the main character stops to tell everyone his life story, even though he's only known them for all of five seconds. Admittedly, I like some of the cheesy dialogue and the jokes, so it's not all bad.
