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Post by Bobinator on Mar 13, 2012 17:26:41 GMT -5
You want to know my biggest problem with this whole game?
Monkey Island had come out two months before.
OK, so I know obviously Sierra probably wouldn't have time to steal that game's better ideas, but still. I mean, MI1 isn't perfect, but it IS leagues beyond this game.
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Post by xerxes on Mar 13, 2012 19:56:06 GMT -5
Yeah, for those who really want to understand the genre, how it works, and why it's become popular to hate on it, I highly recommend these three links. Why Adventure Games Suck, written by Ron Gilbert, creator of Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. He wrote this in 1989, and a lot of what he says about adventure games could now apply to the many many genres of story-based games. Death of Adventure Games, from oldmanmurray.com. This was written in only eleven years later, so you can see how quickly things unraveled for the genre. This sarcasm carpet-bombing of Gabriel Knight 3 has since become the primary argument for the Adventure Games Are Bullshit crowd. Retronauts Live, Ep. 39, featuring ... Ron Gilbert. This podcast celebrates the 25th anniversary of Maniac Mansion, but offers tremendous insight into the birth of the genre as well. Gilbert's explanation for the whole "why is there death?" thing is fantastic. |
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Post by Snarboo on Mar 13, 2012 20:43:12 GMT -5
I started up King's Quest VI a few days ago, and I'm shocked at much of an improvement this game is over V. The puzzles are more forgiving and can be done out of order, most of the puzzles are more logical, the voice acting is actually competent, and the graphics are even better than KQV, which is saying something given how pretty V is! The game still has its fair share of bullshit, such as an important NPC only appearing once and puzzles with ridiculous solutions, but on the whole it's far superior in every way. After finishing King's Quest V, I've come to the conclusion that graphic adventures, as a genre, are not meant to be played alone. They seem like the sort of game you're supposed to play with a small crowd taking turns and figuring out puzzles together. GC9X has illustrated this point perfectly: I would have never beaten this game if others hadn't brought a different perspective to this thread and given hints on how to solve most of the puzzles. In that respect, adventure games are the ultimate family game. Even the youngest child can help solve puzzles alongside their siblings and parents. As for King's Quest V's flaws, I have to agree with xerxes' consensus here, but I suspect most of KQV's design flaws can be explained by it being a tech demo. Think about it: this is the first game in the series to have a contextual point and click interface, full voice acting, and VGA graphics. Odds are good that after writing the engine, they pretty much cobbled the story together at the last second just to have something to show off with their new tech. That explains why King's Quest VI is such a vast improvement over V: they had more time to work with the engine and really think about what they were doing with it. The rest of KQV's bad design decisions can be written off as holdovers from the previous games.  Like a lot of technical marvels, the gameplay leaves something to be desired, but much as Myst would wow audiences 3 years later, so did KQV in 1990. It's definitely a game worth playing, even if you have to play it with a guide. |
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Post by Discoalucard on Mar 13, 2012 21:32:02 GMT -5
I played VI before I played V. I mostly just wanted to play that to see where Cassima came from, since she's a major factor in VI. Then again, V heavily references III, which I didn't play until last year, for the adventure game book. This LP over at the Gamespite forums has plenty of comparisons to the (ugh) NES version: www.gamespite.net/talkingtime/showthread.php?t=8683 |
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Post by Sac (a.k.a Icaras) on Mar 14, 2012 2:09:15 GMT -5
Funny you should mention about playing Adventure games with other people, as most Sierra On Line game manuals actually recommended you do so, for the very reason you state.
My example of something like this was years ago when playing Space Quest III.
I managed to get to the very 1st planet where you're eventually chased by a terminator parody and have to destroy the robot to continue.
I couldn't figure out how to beat him, and I did spend a bit of time trying (Being very young and having no money to buy other games helped, haha) Now, one of the major locations on this planet is called the World o Wonders, and is a shop inside a mechanical monster ( I think its a parody of such tourist traps in remote corners of the US...well I always took it as such, having never been to the US).
One day watching my little sister play, I noticed she went to a screen that was around the corner from the shop and went up some stairs to the top of the mechanical monster.
There she walked past some pulleys, and chains hanging from the roof, got to the end of the screen and typed "PUSH CHAIN" which caused it to go whizzing past. That gave me the idea that maybe I could lure the robot up top, and smash him with the chain. It worked! (I found out from the official hint book some years later that this gave less points than another solution)
If it hadn't been for her just screwing around with one of my saves, I may not have even figured out how to get past this section (That said I was never able to beat Space Quest 3 on its own, hence my purchase of the official hint book.)
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Post by kermiter on Mar 15, 2012 0:11:35 GMT -5
You know, I actually beat this game when it was new. On the NES, no less. Without ANY kind of a guide. And yes, it was frustrating, but I did get through it without any kind of a guide. And I didn't even own it--it was a rental! Somehow I got through it, and I don't even remember ever making the game unwinnable except for a few parts where I could easily go back and get the item needed. I think it might have been more forgiving in that respect? One thing I do remember, is that the game gave you as many tries as you wanted with the cat and the boot. I actually got screwed over when I played the PC version later and saved after the cat ate the mouse, thinking that the encounter would respawn over and over again. Maybe there were some other places that the game prevented this from happening?
What people are saying about remembering the intended audience is very true. Sierra gets maligned for having obtuse puzzles that kill you off for no reason, and making games unwinnable without telling you, but that's how all games were at the time. In fact I would say the infocom text adventures were much worse in this respect.
I don't know whether or not it should really be called "bad" design. Some things, like being randomly killed, were just expected. At the time we didn't mind it. I actually miss that when I play adventure games from the LucasArts era or later. All the different ways to die were actually one of my favorite things in the early Sierra adventures--especially Space Quest. I would intentionally walk into obvious death traps whenever I saw them, just to see the death message.
I still consider KQ5 one of my favorite adventure games, no matter what people say. First of all, the artwork is gorgeous. It blew me away at the time, but even today it has a very unique flavor--which I much prefer to KQ6's Disney-derivative artwork. And the artwork helps to create this great atmosphere, which is distinct both from the Disney model and the typical high fantasy of Tolkien etc. Kind of has the feel of old Grimm fairy tales, but with a very dark and dangerous spin to it. I think that dying actually helps in this respect--knowing that this is a world where one wrong step could send you to your doom at any moment.
I've gone back and played it a few times, and I still love it. It may not be the best from a design perspective, or even a story perspective, but it will always have a special place in my heart.
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Post by Snarboo on Mar 15, 2012 0:41:37 GMT -5
...which I much prefer to KQ6's Disney-derivative artwork. Are you sure you're not thinking of King's Quest 7? King's Quest 6 looks like a prettier version of 5 and uses the same engine. I'm really curious about the NES version now that you mention that it's harder to get stuck. That was really my only beef with King's Quest 5: most of what you had to do was obvious in hindsight but didn't make any sense until after you solved the puzzle, or died trying. In fact, that's my biggest issue with graphic adventures in general: the need for metagaming, such as using knowledge outside of the game that the player character simply would not have. |
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Post by kermiter on Mar 15, 2012 2:29:38 GMT -5
Are you sure you're not thinking of King's Quest 7? King's Quest 6 looks like a prettier version of 5 and uses the same engine. Oops! I am indeed mixing up King's Quest 6 and 7! I had kind of forgotten about King's Quest 6. Now that I look back and refresh my memory, KQ6 was indeed a very good game, and probably a lot better from a gameplay design perspective. But I found KQ5 to be much more memorable overall, and that atmosphere is great. The gritty inn with its scary inkeeper, the beautiful mountain range, the labyrinth, the beautiful snowy mountain range. And the final part of the game is one of the coolest visual representations of an evil wizard's lair I've seen. I should probably go back and replay KQ6. Perhaps it would stand out as more memorable now than it did my first time through. That was really my only beef with King's Quest 5: most of what you had to do was obvious in hindsight but didn't make any sense until after you solved the puzzle, or died trying. See, that's what I consider to be GOOD game design. When a puzzle takes forever, and when you get it you think "Of course! I should have thought of that!" I consider it to be a very good puzzle. When you get something by blind chance, or via a manual, and in hindsight think "I never would have thought of that," that is bad game design. And I actually like it when a game kills you every once in awhile, as long as it does so in entertaining ways. Although I think games should allow you to "undo" your actions rather than force you to save all the time. So while I generally like the more forgiving gameplay that LucasArts helped make the norm, I think it's a shame that designers decided that killing the player had to be avoided in all forms. |
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Post by Snarboo on Mar 15, 2012 4:12:12 GMT -5
See, that's what I consider to be GOOD game design. When a puzzle takes forever, and when you get it you think "Of course! I should have thought of that!" I consider it to be a very good puzzle. When you get something by blind chance, or via a manual, and in hindsight think "I never would have thought of that" that is bad game design. What I mean by "it makes sense in hindsight" is that the solution makes sense when you think about it after the fact, but is nearly impossible to solve beforehand because the logic is so beyond what you're expecting. It's kind of like that scene in the forest after you meet the witch:
The way out requires you to squeeze the honey out of the honeycomb and then throw the emeralds out to lure the elf into the honey, who then shows you the way out of the forest. In hindsight, it sort of makes sense. You see little eyes in the background of one of the screens, which immediately made me suspicious. However, there's no way to know the honey and the emeralds are the specific items you need to escape the forest. To make matters worse, the honey can only be used on one specific screen in the entire game. Trying to examine the eyes gives no clues to the solution, nor does examining the honey help either.
Edit:
Not to mention that the game is unwinnable if you forget to bring the honey into the forest!
The game could have really used more transparent puzzle solutions. Alternatively, Cedric could have been given a greater role by giving the player hints. The "Wise Old Owl" cliche is pretty old by now, but as it stands, Cedric is nothing more than an accessory character that serves little purpose out of being a Deus Ex Machina. I have to agree with this. I prefer a game the player can "fail" at instead of get stuck in and be forced to restart months later. I did enjoy watching King Graham die sometimes, too. However, they really should have given you an option to restart from the scene you were on rather than forcing you to save your game at every point. |
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Post by kal on Mar 15, 2012 19:07:03 GMT -5
I enjoyed the part where Cedric suffered horrible.
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Post by Vokkan on Mar 15, 2012 21:03:03 GMT -5
I'm still stuck on the 3 screens after defeating the yeti. Am I missing some item or haven't found the exact pixel somwhere?
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Post by muteKi on Mar 15, 2012 21:08:41 GMT -5
The screen with the wolf, head south (that is, toward the bottom of the screen)
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Post by kermiter on Mar 15, 2012 22:14:13 GMT -5
What I mean by "it makes sense in hindsight" is that the solution makes sense when you think about it after the fact, but is nearly impossible to solve beforehand because the logic is so beyond what you're expecting. Well, that I can understand a little bit more. In the example from the witch's forest that you gave, the solution does make sense in hindsight but the way it you have to do it doesn't make sense.
When I saw the eyes looking out, I immediately thought that was a creature I would need to lure out somehow, and tried using both the honey and the emeralds on them. But this did nothing. The actual solution, which is that you had to go to ONE SPECIFIC SCREEN and use the honey on the ground, was totally counterintuitive and I only got it by randomly trying items everywhere. But once I did that using the emeralds to lure it in and get stuck on the honey was obvious.
After it was done, I was like why did I have to use the honey on one screen? Why wouldn't the game let me interact with the eyes?
If the game had only given me some hint when I used the items in different places, that would have made it much less frustrating. Cedric could have been very useful for this--he also could have been a good way to keep you from making the game unwinnable. Like telling you if you're about to leave an area without a very important item, or even picking it up.
Like maybe swooping in to pick up the gold coin in the temple if you don't. Or just telling you when the mouse eats the cat that you've screwed yourself over.
Overall, though, I still think it's a very good game. It does have its flaws, but I think most of them could have been fixed with a few tweaks. Like the part on the snowy mountain:
Having to throw a pie in the Yeti's face? Good puzzle. I got stuck there, but after I thought of it I was like, "Ha ha, that was clever." Having it come after a part of the game where you are forced to eat the various foods in your inventory, and the pie can be eaten like any other item? Bad. I think the NES version prevented me from eating the pie, because I don't remember being stuck without a pie, but after playing the PC version I thought that seemed very unfair. Of course an even better solution would have been to make the part where you get hungry come in after you have used the pie...
I think it's important when you criticize a game to distinguish between real faults in that particular game, and differences in play styles that do appeal to some people. Like the thing about not dying. I think there's a widespread attitude now that you should never die in a game unless it's your fault. I can see where that's coming from, but I would say that it doesn't have to be an absolute. The occasional "gotcha!" moment can be fun, as long as it isn't too frequent and the penalties for death aren't too harsh. With PC games, being able to save anywhere you want has been the norm from the beginning, so games were designed around that. If you are saving often, dying is no big deal at all. Even making your game unwinnable was often intentional, because having multiple save games was easy to do at the time. We look at it now and say it's bad game design to build your game around savescumming, but at the time that was just the way people played those games. At this point designers weren't forcing gamers to play that way; they were just designing their games around the way people had been playing them for years. LucasArts deserves praise for bucking the trend and taking games in a new direction that was, for the most part, better. But I think Sierra shouldn't be judged so harshly just because they didn't revolutionize the genre. They may not have been the most innovative when it came to gameplay, but I think they were the best of the best when it came to storytelling and atmosphere. And I would say there are even some things in that old school style of game design that are good, such as the sense of danger that I pointed out before. Like that inn, at the very beginning.
That part is genuinely scary, because there's nothing really out of the ordinary from the outside. Then you go in, and the guys' conversation starts going in a very bad direction. But by the time you realize the danger it's too late! Without warning these guys will grab you, tie you up, and basically murder you just because you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I thought that was so effective at showing that I was in a harsh and unforgiving world that would kill me at any moment, that I had truly been reduced from mighty king to weak commoner. It wouldn't work as well if, say, you escape just in the nick of time until you came back with whatever you need to escape.
It's too bad that Sierra couldn't find a way to successfully combine the better aspects of their classic adventure games with a more forgiving and user-friendly design. |
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Post by Vokkan on Mar 16, 2012 9:07:15 GMT -5
The screen with the wolf, head south (that is, toward the bottom of the screen) Thank you! I hate this game even more now.... |
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Post by Bobinator on Mar 16, 2012 17:49:12 GMT -5
Slightly off topic, but I've been kind of a kick for these old Sierra games after playing this game, and after streaming Leisure Suit Larry 6, somebody really needs to take KQ5, redo it in AGS or some other engine, and add in the 'zipper' icon. Make no other changes to the gameplay besides this.
"So long, KING Grah --"
*zip*
"...OK, you know what? Just take your family and get out. Please."
Actually, if somebody could draw this, that would probably be the greatest thing to ever be done with this game. As long as you keep it mostly tasteful. :V
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