JimmyTwoBucks

HOOOORAY! I finished KQ1! (with a little help from a walkthrough a few times, haha) I know it's unfair to judge it too harshly as they were inventing the genre by the seat of their pants at the time, so you expect it to be a kind of work-in-progress almost, as they iron out things in later games. I found it kind of fun, but it felt sort of underwhelming in a lot of ways, somehow the puzzles weren't that satisfying. I like that it's a short game in a contained area with not that many puzzles to complete, but some of them are such random mindbenders that I could see being stuck on some parts for years if I hadn't looked them up: --The bowl still seems random to me... I had looked at it and saw "fill" but that only suggested to me that it needed filling with something at some point, not that you can just say "fill" to fill it. --The bird... ok, it's swooping down, but how would you know that it's going to carry you away unless you spent hours trying every random thing? I didn't know if I was meant to give it something, throw something at it, put something on the rock for it to eat, whether it had something in its mouth I needed, etc. Even when you know roughly what to do, it's not that easy to actually do it, so I could see being stuck on that part for ages. --The gnome... wow. Just wow. I think with some of the puzzles, having to use the exact right words and be standing in the exact right place often makes them even tougher... you think you've tried something and ruled it out, but you just weren't in quite the right place, etc. And then conversely some puzzles were really straightforward - give cheese to a rat, put water on dragon's fire, eat mushroom to get through opening. I was really surprised that some items like the diamonds, egg, walnut did not have specific uses. I was like, "yesss, I have the diamonds, now I get to complete some puzzle somewhere else with them and progress!" Nope, they stayed in my pocket the whole time. The most interesting items in the games were ones you couldn't pick up... "Wow, an axe! And I wonder what this water pump does! Hey there's a bottle of something at the bottom of this well!" Yeah, well tough sh-t, you don't get to pick up any of that stuff. Here, have a carrot. I'm not sure if I would recommend the game to someone else apart from historical value... it was fun while I was going around picking things up and trying to work things out, but it seemed to never find the sweet spot of puzzles between "too obvious" and "brain-melter". Surprisingly though, I actually enjoyed the challenge of climbing the beanstalk. At least I knew what I was meant to be doing. All in all I am glad I played it, just so now I know what it's all about. Anyway... onwards to KQ2!

Thanks for all the replies, much appreciated. I decided to start playing the original KQ1 yesterday and played it for several hours. I'm finding it... ok. It's enjoyable, but I almost feel like it's a bit too open-ended in places. Like with the troll - just hand him a random thing that's close enough to work while thinking, "mm, I wonder if that item was really meant for something else." Or where the game is like, "here's a magic ring, use it whenever the heck you want!" I've definitely used the ring in a sub-optimal way already :( I guess the open-endedness avoids some of the frustration of other games, like where you might need to get a stick to solve a puzzle and you HAVE a stick, but it's the wrong kind of stick so you need to go find another stick and you're thinking, "dammit, just let me use the stick I've got!" I get the impression KQ1 would probably let you use any stick in a scenario like that. But it also feels very random to me in the game, it feels like I haven't really figured out some clever puzzle, I've just sort of done a bodge-job on it and it's randomly worked, so it feels a bit less satisfying. I know that means that there is replay value in going back through and finding the "best" ways to do the puzzles, but eh, I kinda just wish they'd only let me do it one way! The other thing I quickly realized is we're not dealing with "normal" answers to some of the puzzles here. Like get the bowl, give it to the woodcutter - that's logical enough. But then what to put in it? Not the cheese, not the carrot? Aw come on, those are perfectly good foodstuffs! Oh, you have to randomly say "fill" and it fills itself even though you have nothing to fill it with? Whaaaaaaaaaaaat. So then on that occasion, it's not open-ended at all, in fact it's so specific, that it's something that only works if you're on the same planet as the game designer. I think I'll definitely give KQ7 a go, as it sounds a bit more relaxing than the others, and I'm kind of on the fence about the other games from what you've all said so far... It seems like KQ2 is the most skippable one? And KQ4 is the best of the first four?

I've only ever played King's Quest 5 and 6... is it worth playing 1-4 and 7? Or are there some I should avoid? In general, I like to avoid things like arcade sequences, things where there is a timer, and dead ends. So would those earlier King's Quests be too frustrating for someone like me?

It's a shame that LucasArts never did a Star Wars adventure game... seeing as they did Indiana Jones adventure games you would have thought they might have... Would have been cool to travel the galaxy as Luke Skywalker picking up objects, talking to aliens, etc.

Scariest for me was when I was in the time pod in SQ4 for the first time -- once I put in the correct code thing, the game would freeze and crash my computer... I was scared I would never see the next stage of the game.

MIND, BLOWN.

I've had a tape worm... not so bad really lol

For me it starts amazingly, and then just gets more boring in terms of locations as it goes on... I think it's not necessarily that the computer system and inside-the-body areas are horrible, they're ok, it's just that they take up too much of the game and it means the game winds down really unsatisfactorily for me. Those areas feel like "filler" areas rather than main events. I think if there had been even just ONE more big area at the end that was maybe on an alien planet or something like that, then I think SQ6 might have been my favorite of the series. I just get a sense of disappointment when I think about it though, with the way it progresses as it is.

Gotta admit that I've never done a replay of any of the SQ games (though finished all of them once)... If I was going to replay one, I'd probably go with either 4, 5, or 6 as I don't really want to put myself through playing a parser game at the moment. Probably would be 5, as that's the one I remember the least about, or maybe 6 (but I'd stop before the filing system parts and the end section inside the body). I guess the thing that stops me replaying them is that while I LOVE certain parts of all the games, all the games also have parts where I think, "eh, I don't really want to go through that part again," and that puts me off.

To be fair though, it's five out of ten... 50% of the electorate, which is pretty high. Would be interesting to run the same poll somewhere with a higher sample size, to see if these results scale up at around the same percentages.

I didn't mean to imply that anyone here is racist, or pick on anyone's specific mention of it being Korean in this thread, it was more of just a general observation about something that I find interesting and something I thought/did as well... I find it genuinely amusing/interesting that without any conscious collusion it has been pretty much automatically established as a shorthand for "cheap and outsourced to people who don't know what they're doing" in the same way that "made in China" is often used as shorthand for "this product is cheaply mass produced and of low quality" by a lot of people. I found it funny because it's something that I did as well, instinctively, the first time it was brought up, even though it's so random and specific, like, "oh yes, Korea... that's true it, must be cheap." As if everyone on some level just knows that if you want cheap computer game remake art work, you obviously go to Koreans for it!

I find it funny when it's mentioned about the Koreans... it's always implied that that means it's obviously bad quality and that they don't know what they're doing, I guess because they're Koreans and live in Korea... Kinda like, "well everyone knows Koreans produce substandard adventure game remake art and will impose their incorrect sci-fi aesthetic on it..." I wonder if the art was made in the USA if people would think about it differently.

1 -- Around SQIV, KQVI 2 -- I think the main problem was how computers in general were advancing very fast at the time, going from very, very basic graphics and sound, to full video stuff, etc. I think because that was happening, there was a huge emphasis on every new release taking full advantage of all the new technology... (there is still that to a certain extent now, but nowadays it's going from "very good" graphics to "very, very good" graphics, rather than from no graphics to full video during that 80s to mid 90s period) I think that really hurt adventure games at a certain point, because there was the need to force technological innovations on them past the point where they benefited from them. Nowadays you can choose -- shall we make it in 2D or 3D? But around the late 90s there was a lot of pressure to use the new 3D look to make your game seem "up to date", even when it hurt gameplay. Also companies figured out that most people just want to shoot things and that's about it, so first person shooters took over. 3 -- Three guys 4 -- If I'm being brutally honest, I think the following will happen: I think the first couple of games will come out and they'll be ok, but they'll try for a mix of old school flavor but with new approaches to appeal to new audiences, and the games won't really be that distinct due to this mixture... This will result in relatively few new fans because kids today have never heard of things like King's Quest and the games will be wishy-washy enough to not really make any impression on them... They also won't do that well with actual fans of KQ and the other series, because they won't have the character and charm and proper puzzles, and they will half-ass the experience by trying to appeal to younger gamers. I think then it'll either disappear or it'll focus on making non-adventure games of some kind, that they find sell better.

I love both and they're pretty different styles really... at the time I preferred 2 and it had a big impact on me when I was a kid, but if I had to choose now I may end up going with 1 just because it's so raw and direct.

I started playing the first Broken Sword: The Shadow of the Templars, as I hadn't played it before. I know this is meant to be a classic, and it's well done, but I'm already getting a bit bored with it... It feels like there is a LOT of story and talking, talking, talking, and I feel like the puzzles are kinda obvious things just to move to the next talking part. Though maybe I'm being harsh on it and need to play it some more...

I love the art in both games, though I prefer the style of the original just slightly. Also, I don't think the remake is actually that different in style as people like to make out, a lot of it is just a pretty general update, with only a few stylistic liberties taken. If I was to replay one of them now, I'd probably go for the VGA just to be kind to myself and have an easier time, though the original is obviously the definitive, classic version.

I would be quite interested in seeing naked ladies, though the rest of the internet appears to already have that covered rather comprehensively.

I was just looking over some of the old SQ7 designs from 1997, here: http://www.spacequest.net/archives/sq7/sq7sketches/index.shtml Don't know if it's been brought up before, but I noticed a few similarities to things we've seen from SpaceVenture... I'm guessing some of Scott's ideas from that era made it through to SV? Similar van/spaceship thing: Rooter/Robo-pup: This one is a little more tenuous, but it's like the SQ7 version has both the tubes from the hose place and the circles from Nurbs combined into one place...

I can definitely appreciate that lack of deaths takes the edge off a game, and some people definitely prefer having deaths included... I'm not that bothered with that personally... With the stories though, I think LucasArts was similar to Sierra in that the actual story wasn't usually THAT important. I think again it's more to do with the characters, the puzzles, the humor, and the interesting locations rather than the actual "plot". Monkey Island 1 and 2 don't really have a prominent story to them, nor does Sam & Max or Day of the Tentacle... it's basically a rough outline to get you moving from one location/puzzle/joke to the next... Full Throttle, Fate of Atlantis, and Grim Fandango have more story elements to them, but again, more so just to give an interesting setting to fun characters, locations, and puzzles... The Dig is probably the one that hinges mostly on its story, but even that is a lot about atmosphere and exploration of the setting. I think with most adventure games, if you just recapped the "story" for most people, there usually isn't that much going on in most of them. And a lot of the story is often built specifically to introduce an interesting puzzle (eg. Guybrush sword-fighting random people is only really interesting because of the insult-sword-fighting puzzle).

Btw, new King's Quest logo screen at sierra.com now...

Yes, very good points... Especially with the Space Quest series, I couldn't really tell you much about the actual story to be honest. To me the whole enjoyment is the humor/satire/references, the sci-fi elements with the cool/funny/interesting settings and characters, combined with the interesting puzzles. Of course you need a bit of a story to drive things forward, but it really doesn't have to be that involved. All it has to do is send you to a new interesting location once in a while with some more objects and characters. I gotta disagree on this, for me personally... they're different experiences to the degree that the later one has more detail in the look and sound, but otherwise they're very, very similar. You play as a character who goes around locations picking up objects and talking to people and uses those objects on other objects and characters to solve puzzles before moving to a new location to do more of the same. In fact, that pretty much describes 99% of the classic adventure games that came out from the late 80s and early 90s. There are the rare exceptions like Loom... though it's pretty telling that no one else adopted Loom's style of play, and that even though it sold well, its two sequels were never made.

They're all sub-sections of the "wait and see" camp though... the only non-wait-and-see camps I can think of are: --The "let's storm the gates of Odd Gentlemen's offices and force them to do what we want" camp --The "I don't want to wait, so I've built a time machine to see what happens right now" camp Everyone else is essentially waiting-and-seeing whether they want to or not. Though thinking about it further, I'm not sure if Sierra's innovations in their golden age (around 1983-1995) were all that innovative... The main "innovations" just came from the improvement in computers: --Graphics got more detailed --Mouse to move, instead of arrow keys --Text read out by actors The only main innovation I can think of outside of that is: --Instead of typing "use/talk/pick up/move/etc." those became icons Everything else remained pretty much the same from KQ1 to the later games - roam around picking stuff up, talking to people, looking at things, combining items and using them on things, as part of a story... that was their formula for about 15 years.

Just out of interest, what are the other camps? I think I'm in the "wait and see" camp, but when presented with other options, I may change my mind.

I agree in that instance...when that happens, it does indeed suck balls in a majority of cases.

I don't vastly disagree with anything you said, other than probably the level of innovation we're talking about. Eg. Grim Fandango changed the controls, but not drastically. In fact, they went back to moving the character with the arrow keys, so they kind of just regressed back to the parser controls. I think 3D graphics can be used if they're done well, though I'd probably steer away from something like a first-person view. For adventure games in general, I'm not against the kind of simplification/reduction you're talking about with Journey... though I don't think it would suit a King's Quest game to have no dialogue, as I think that's a key part of what makes KQ great/fun. With the graphics, I would assume that the Odd Gentlemen are updating the graphics, in a similar way to Space Venture, and that's great if they do a good job (which they seem to be able to do, based on their other games). My preference for low-res only really relates to fan games. With the retro thing, I wouldn't look at it as retro so much as "what works". I think a good game is a good game across generations and I think that the core things that made the adventure games work shouldn't be messed with too much if you want an enjoyable game. I agree that it would be awesome if they experiment and it pays off. But having seen most attempts to experiment in this area, there is a high, high chance they could mess it up, thus messing up the reboot. When you say, "the game scene of today is very much one strike and you're out" I think for that very reason they shouldn't start reinventing the wheel too much. People far more experienced in adventure games tried that and fell flat on their faces. For a new KQ, I'd say update the graphics, maybe do something a tiny little bit different with the controls if you want, but otherwise keep everything else pretty much intact. (Also I don't know what the Odd Gentlemen have in mind for controls. From what they have said, I assume it might be something with the mouse for movement and then certain keys for use/talk/etc. as in Full Throttle.)