MusicallyInspired

SQ6 definitely had some of the best laughs in the whole series. It was incredibly funny. I didn't mind the fourth-wall breaking either.

How, exactly, if you don't mind my asking? Other than being a sci-fi comedy set in space, I didn't really see any relation. Maybe Dr. Lazarus' thick sarcasm lol.

I still need to play Tex Murphy...

I did miss it, but discovered it later on. Also, I should note that my opinion of the game is not as glowing anymore. After the rush of excitement of seeing a new "adventure" game by Tim Schafer wore off, there were no lasting feelings of fondness. I wasn't that impressed. The story is great as all of Tim's stories are, but the gameplay is extremely lacking. The puzzles are extremely easy. EXTREMELY easy. I now realize Tim doesn't believe in extreme puzzle difficulty anymore (if he ever did) and that makes me very sad. Please, Two Guys, please please please don't go the popular route and make SpaceVenture an easy story game about atmosphere and characters more than multi-tiered and complex puzzles. Story is important, but so are the puzzles. The two most important aspects of any true adventure game must be balanced evenly. Give me reasons to explore and stick around areas. Make me stop and really think. Make me stuck! Yes, stuck! I'm not going to find that experience at Double Fine or Telltale Games.

Not as good as it sounds. The viscosity is lower than you might think. In reality it's just a chilled variation of the lubricant used in old hyperdrive cores with all of the grimy qualities. It also tends to leave a slimy residue that takes fourteen years to pass through your system. On the plus side, if you're ever stranded on a desert planet it makes a great permanent cooling agent when applied directly to the skin. For some added fun, its luminescent appearance makes it a great way to freak out your friends into thinking you're radioactive! "When crunchy just isn't gross enough." The lesser-known eleventh ingredient in Grog XD.

If you haven't played all six, do that. They're all good.

Space Quest would be a pretty sweet 80's Saturday morning cartoon.

It was a hard lesson he had to learn. Unfortunately, I don't think he learned anything.

Yoy know what goes best with cheese, right? Whine. :)

I've had it for a while now, but haven't played it yet. I really dislike the interface. No walking around. Reminds me of Telltale's Jurassic Park.

Would anybody really believe that was Josh? It's so incredibly out of character....ridiculous. I hope this is just some random moron trolling and not the Troll himself. I'm tired of hearing from that guy. That comment seems to be gone now, or I can't figure out how to view it. There are only 3 replies there now by Josh, Tom King, and Irishmile.

Sounds like it might work. :)

Yeah, I'm aware of his shtick. Doesn't mean it's not hard to hear :). I always agreed with most of Yahtzee's reviews. Strange to hear something so grossly different for a change.

"I once owned Space Quest IV which I believe to be the absolute worst..." :o "I chose Space Quest III because it was one of the worst..." "...one of the reasons I picked this one was because it is very boring....there's no 'Quest' in it..." :( "Space Quest III is just depressingly dull..." :angry: They spend the rest of the episode comparing them to LucasArts and how they were so much better.

At least The Matrix doesn't get the primary blame for that anymore...

Nevertheless, it is the oft-practiced method of doing business.

It looks like Double-Fine has rescinded the review embargo stating that it is obviously "very exciting" for people and controlling that would be difficult. They've graciously allowed all reviews and let's play videos of the game asking only to keep yourself from spoiling the ending (which is GOOD, definitely keeps you wanting more). I highly recommend pre-ordering on Steam for those who haven't backed or bought it yet. For those interested, here's my review of the game I put on Steam: As a backer of the Kickstarter for this game, I was given early access to Act I. So I won't spoil any of the story, but I will say that this is a very good adventure game experience, on par with the classics of the Golden Era (80s & 90s). I've been waiting for these games to come back and what better way to re-usher them in than with a brand new game from Tim Schafer himself, an adventure star who designed the likes of Full Throttle, Grim Fandango, and Day of the Tentacle. He also had a hand in designing the first two Monkey Island games by Ron Gilbert. These are adventure gaming classics. I've only played half the game so far, but the other half is coming in a few months as of this writing. That said here are my thoughts: The Good Story: Very intriguing. I was very invested in both the girl and boy's characters and was quite interested to see where their stories would take them and how they'd eventually intertwine. The experience was not unrewarding and definitely wasn't a disappointment! Writing: Tim's humour is expectedly very present in the game. His trademark sarcasm and wit are strewn throughout the dialogue and even into some of the look of the locations. It's a very bizarre and funny world Tim has created, but not too bizarre. Just recognizable enough to not seem too far out and unrelatable. Art style: The 2D painted artwork style is fantastic. I was initially skeptical in the beginning of Bagel's art style, once I'd seen some of his work in one of the hidden backer forum threads on the Double Fine forums. But I have to say that my skepticism was misplaced. This game has a lovely quality and very pleasing aesthetic. The artwork truly does resemble a beautiful painting come to life. And despite this it is absolutely brimming with detail in every scene. It's beautiful to just sit and watch, but it also works very well for the gaming experience and story. Some of the girl's locations actually reminded me of Curse of Monkey Island, even though the styles are wildly different. While the boy's space ship is unlike anything I've ever seen for a space ship. It's all very unique and with just a dash of familiarity in it as well. Animation: Truly charming and natural. Everything seemed so alive. Not like puppets on strings, but real characters that were moving on their own. Special care was given to these animations. Every one showed amazing attention to detail and added a great deal of character to everything that moved. Every character in the game had their own unique persona that spoke volumes about their motivations and intentions. One of my favourite aspects of the design of the game! Voice acting: Top notch. Every voice puts a life and an identity into their characters in a way that binds them to their personas where I could not justify turning voices off and just reading subtitles. The voices are truly special and unique and are really part of the experience in a huge way. So don't mute them. Soundtrack: Peter McConnell did a fantastic job with the soundtrack. The themes are very fitting and atmospheric, yet the themes for the boy and girl and their locales are separate and distinct from eachother, as should be expected. Peter doesn't disappoint. As a backer, I also received the soundtrack to the game which I immediately put straight on my player for my long drives to work. And it's played by a live orchestra. Can't beat that. Truly effective work. Bravo, Peter. The "Wish-It-Was-Better": Puzzles: The heart of the adventure game experience (combined with story). There are some great puzzles in this game, but as a veteran adventure gamer I was expecting a bit more of a challenge. Especially in the beginning, the puzzles were fairly simple. I assume to ease in new or rusty players. Luckily these simple "tutorial" puzzles didn't last long at all end began to become more complex soon enough, to my relief. As long as I was thorough, however, I never missed anything. Years of adventure gaming has taught me to leave no stone unturned and to keep a mental map image in my head of where certain characters, objects, and puzzles were located. This made it easier to deduce when and where I'd be needing certain objects or what objects I might need in certain areas. I ended up acquiring all of the objects I needed ahead of time before I needed to use them, which sped up the gameplay a bit. But that's due to my obsessive style of exploration. Other gamers might not share this and thus wouldn't run into the same problem, which would probably extend the experience for them. There was no so-called "moon logic" in this game, which many classic adventure games were infamous for. Personally, I never had a problem with extremely hard puzzles and enjoyed them, but many others (especially nowadays) don't share this feeling. Luckily, they won't be disappointed with this game as a result. Length: Keeping in mind that I have only played Act I, I still have to say it was somewhat shorter than I expected. If Act I is truly an exact halfway point in the game, then I can only hope that the puzzles in Act II are much more difficult. I wish it was longer. I'll have to put it away for a year or two after completing Act II and come back to it to see just how long the game actually is with a fresh perspective from beginning to end. Overall The world of Broken Age is an immensely pleasing and fun one to live in and explore. The story is gripping and mysterious. By the end of Act I you are left wondering just WHAT in the world is going on! It left me wanting more, but in a good way. Luckily we will be getting more! I encountered no bugs whatsoever. The game played extremely smoothly and there were no unexpected quirks. I was finding myself missing the skip dialogue function from the older LucasArts SCUMM engine games by pressing '.'. Instead it only lets you skip entire "cutscenes" of dialogue. Not a huge issue, as there never really was anything that I needed to skip specifically to get at something new from a repeated conversation. I would like a "retro" filter shortcut for the game to make it seem all pixelated and 90s looking if only for the novelty. ;) I highly recommend this game to those who enjoy a good story in gaming and those who appreciate a work of art. Newcomers to the adventure genre who are mildly curious but fearful of ominously difficult puzzles needn't worry as everything is intuitive and logical, but still challenging enough I feel to give you a great experience without seeming too easy or too short. Adventure veterans may find the challenge a little lackluster, but what little it may lack in puzzle challenge it makes up for in pretty much everything else. It won't be the next puzzle masterpiece adventure game, but it is surely a very good start to the great Adventure Resurgence! It appeals to old and new fans alike and, I feel, is the perfect bridge to link the two together. Take us onward, Double-Fine! Here's hoping for more adventures after Broken Age!

:D

Well, Act I of Tim Schafer's Broken Age has just been released for backers to play. Played a bit myself earlier this afternoon, going to play some more now. Exciting! There's a review embargo set until the 28th, so I guess we can't really share anything about it, but it is exciting!

Right after they promised everything would be "business as usual". Whatever, LucasArts was a shell of its former self anyway.

Hah! What a neat trick!

Such a ridiculous thing to do. Just toss out all of your new assets from the most successful game company at that time. I've heard that competitor companies rallied together as a scheme to take down Sierra just to get them out of the way. If that was true, it makes sense that they'd just destroy everything they'd ever done. But my goodness, even if that was true, it's such a stupid thing to do. I can't think of another instance of a buyout or takeover where they just tossed everything in the trash.

Make a fangame. ;)

You're just echoing everyone else's sentiments for the most part. Sentiments that have been spoken for the past 15 years. However, you do have some facts wrong. Most likely, no. While a few developers have tried to acquire licenses to the Quest games, all ActiVision (the current owners of the old Sierra IPs) will say is that they "have their own plans" for them. Which is little comfort and probably just a lie. Vivendi merged with ActiVision some time ago. It's ActiVision who is uninterested in giving out licenses to the games for the "reason" I mentioned above. Sierra was bought by CUC group (or something like that). They are the ones who decided to shut down the Oakhurst facility (where all the adventures were made), lay off all the employees, and destroy all the assets. Literally destroy them. They dumped EVERYTHING in the dumpster. Literally. Even technology that was valuable and innovative to the industry, one source said. Just didn't care at all. Just trashed it. So the source code for all these games is long gone, making any attempts to upgrade or add to them feasibly impossible, without reverse engineering the software. That's not something any company has any desire to do for ancient IPs that, in their eyes, have no profitable use in what they perceive as today's game market. After that, two high level executives were charged with embezzlement of some kind....or some kind of illegal business activities and were sent to prison. After this, the IPs changed hands again to Vivendi. Vivendi wasn't so bad, they put forth the work to get some of the old Quest game collections repackaged and playable on modern systems (via DOSBox) and rereleased them. They also offered licensing contracts to certain fangames to allow them to continue. All of the remakes by AGD Interactive (KQ1-3 & QFG2) were officially authorized. I know because I was involved with one of them. As was The SIlver Lining project. A few years down the road Vivendi merged with ActiVision, which acquired all of Vivendi's assets. ActiVision was not so lenient to fangames and saw no potential at all in the old IPs whatsoever other than offering the Vivendi-made collections to be available on Steam, and also later to allow the games again to be on GoG, which is probably the best thing they could have done. AGDI's KQ3 wasn't yet released when this happened, so although ActiVision had no interest in allowing any more remakes to be made under contracts, they decided to honor the agreement previously made with those fangroups who had already signed contracts, and so TSL and KQ3 were allowed to be released. They either do not know anything about IA's adventures or the other SQ fangames, or are intentionally turning a blind eye. Either way, I think this is for the better. The makers of these fangames have all decided to move on to original works anyway and since the recent Adventure Kickstarter revival, companies have been keeping a close eye on the scene. It would probably be impossible to release a new fangame now, with the threat of C&D's from company lawyers being a much stronger possibility in the current climate. ActiVision has turned down everyone's requests to acquire any of the old Sierra IPs. They apparently revoked TellTale's license (which had been given previously, but nothing was ever done with it), they denied Replay Games' attempts to acquire them (they only got LSL because it doesn't belong to them, being already sold to CodeMasters years earlier), and they denied the Two Guys' themselves access to the Space Quest IP. So it's safe to say that nothing is ever going to happen any time soon with the old Sierra IPs, and they'd be far too expensive to attempt to acquire. They simply do not care. But then again, there is the rumour that companies are keeping a close eye on what's happening with the current Kickstarter revival, as I've said. So who knows? Either way, I think the Quest games have had their time....long AFTER their time. They can rest finally at last, if that's the way things will go. It's better than seeing somebody take them and ruin everything about them. Are you referring to the fanmade screenshots from the very old Starcon Federation website? With 3d rendered backgrounds and sprites taken from SQ6 (dubbed the Space Quest Special Edtion)? Awesome as they were, they were only created for fun and not in any way an attempt to create an actual remake. Indeed they are, though not with money. As making money to create a fangame would be in a legal gray area that no company (ActiVision or Sierra itself) would ever allow. The amount of time and energy required to create these games with the quality they'd deserve would simply not be worth it, when you can just create something original. Something the original creators of the old remakes have decided to do. AGDI became Himalaya Studios and already has one game under their belt, with another on its way. IA became Infamous Quests and is working on the extremely promising Quest For Infamy. The Silver Lining team, Phoenix Online Studios, has already been working on original games as well as working with Sierra legend Jane Jensen for a Gabriel Knight I remake, which is the most anyone has ever gotten ActiVision to do with the old Quest titles! And that is being made for money. But no word on any other Quest games....again, we'd have to see how it goes. Again, you mean ActiVision, not Vivendi. Vivendi are long out of the picture. If only we could be so lucky. I think you overestimate the loyalty ActiVision may have to an extremely niche group of fans of one of their oldest IPs. ActiVision doesn't owe us anything. They could care less. They are a business and will only put money into what will make them the most profit and right now that is an endless stream of Call of Duty sequels and little else. While that doesn't seem fair, in their eyes it is. They go where the money is. It's not like it was back in the 80s and early 90s where companies made their games with passion. Much of that passion is gone now in the quest to create the biggest and highest-grossing mundane gaming experience they can. The problem is that they just don't care what we want. Simple as that. That's sad, but the unfortunate harsh reality. Much like the 4th King's Quest. It'd be nice to see all the Quest games get VGA-ified for completedness' sake, but it doesn't look like it'll happen any time soon anymore. As I said, it takes a very long time to make a quality game. KQ3Redux took 7 years. SQ2 took 5-6. The other fangames took equally long development times. It's just not worth it anymore unless ActiVision was supporting and funding it, or at least allowing profit to be made from it. And the reality is that that is just probably not going to happen. I don't think many were ever intending on creating VGA "demakes" of SVGA Sierra games. There'd be no point. It'd be neat to have, again for completedness' sake, but that's a LOT of work involved to create something just for the sake of it. It's unnecessary. SQ6, KQ7, QFG5, etc are all very nice looking games. They have their problems, but really they all had problems. But they are all just fine on their own the way they are. I couldn't disagree more. The games are absolutely fine as they are. While it would be neat to see such changes, again it's simply too much work for too little return or reward. And it'd only turn out to be a neat experience at best, it wouldn't take the community by storm. And still others would berate it simply for being different (this has already happened on at least two occasions). Just not worth it. We'd be lucky to get one at all. Finding capable voice actors with decent hardware and equipment to create a quality voice pack is extremely rare and difficult in the best of circumstances. The voice packs for the KQ remakes specifically were as high quality as they were by extreme luck, due to special connections and networks of some of the people involved. Almost half of SQ2's voice pack was recorded solely by one man, who did the voices of Roger and the narrator. That man is insane and a trooper. He put in INSANE amounts of hours to get that thing completed. I doubt you would ever find anybody else as dedicated to something so huge for a free project. And he was incredibly talented and professional to boot! Even he has said that he'd never do something like that again unless he was paid. I find the notion of an upcoming voice pack for VSB to be exceptionally admirable and I feel extremely lucky as a member of the community to be able to have one. It's not something that can be done easily and is not a forgone conclusion to expect. It requires so much work and effort to be done right. And even so it'll still probably be ridiculed and criticized by some, which is unfair and unfortunate. It's not just money but a whole myriad of other issues. You can't just pay anybody to do voice work for you in that industry, even if you have the cash. Your project and company would need to have a lot of things in place to even allow for such notable actors to come in and work for you. They are all a part of a voice actor's guild or club or something to that effect which protects them and ensures that their work is only available to certain projects and people. Consequently, they can't just work on nay project they wish either. So even if Gary was willing to do it for free, it still wouldn't be possible. As I said, a harsh reality we live in, but at least there IS the Adventure revival and good things are coming from it. If we never see the old games come back in any way again, I'm honestly ok with that. I'm looking forward to what new adventures can be had anyway. It's not good to be TOO stuck in the past, at least for too long. :) Oh, and welcome to the forums!

Awesome! Can't wait to try it!