29th July 2004, 9:26 PM
(This post was last modified: 29th July 2004, 9:59 PM by A Black Falcon.)
Quote:Another thing, if you have the booklet, it has this key file translating various letters into the language of the land you are in. That was useful for the floppy version I hear, where the copyright protection was in the form of the game rarely popping up with a word you had to translate (apparently these old companies didn't think anyone had discovered the printer or the scanner). With the CD-ROM version, they took out the copyright protection, but left in that info for the sake of a little background info you'll never use .
Hmm... we have the box, so I'm sure I have the manual... somewhere in one in the box (well, box with these magazine holder-ish things in it full of manuals) full of pc game manuals... :) I could easily find the box, but the manual would be tougher.
Copy protection... huh, right, it would have it wouldn't it. I do not recall Quest for Glory I having any, and QFGII and III (also floppy games) also don't seem to have any that I have ever heard of, but the QFGIV floppy version does. But I've got the CD one so I don't have an issue there. The only Sierra adventure I have with copy protection is Space Quest 5... and it implements it really well. The protection is planet coordinates. You have to go to locations in your spaceship and only the coordinates, printed on a map in the center page of the manual, can get you there... :)
I have KQ1, 5, and 7. All not beyond the beginning. Space Quest 5, most of the way through but stuck at a extremely hard and extremely stupid timing/reflexes "puzzle". And Quest for Glory, which I have beaten the remake of 1 and now started on 3. I've said before hwy i don't want to play 2... :)
On that note, I could play 1 because I do own it so I could download that fanmade remake that adds the graphical interface... but I have too many choices. I need to just choose something... :D
I might play KQ5 just because it looks fun. ... that and QFG3.
Space Quest 5... it shows all of what is great and all of what is awful about the Sierra system of adventure games. It's very funny, has good graphics, the gameplay is great, the puzzles are interesting... it's simply a great game. But... the dying can be very, very annoying at times. Some parts are very hard because of it. You die random, meaningless deaths from doing things you'd never think would kill you. It gets very frusterating at times. There was a part fairly early on (maybe midway? It's really no that long) that had me stopped for years before I looked up how to do it... you beam down to this planet and have to escape a killer robot. Very challenging... thought it'd be the toughest part.
Then I found this idiotic EVA segment. ARGH!
Some danger... okay. Have occasional deaths. But make the reasons sane, not random and unexpected. And have a redo button so you don't potentially lose a lot of work. And don't make it annoyingly hard to complete!
Oh, and ideally, you have a way to get around it. Like Lucasarts did in Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and Curse of Monkey Island -- there is combat. But it can be avoided if you wish. Now that's the way to do combat in games like this...
I will admit that having a game with dangerous situations and never being able to be hurt seems odd sometimes. But Lucasarts does their games so well that I usually am not left thinking 'why can't I die here'... where I have felt that is in The Longest Journey. There have been a couple of "fights", but each is winnable with a click or two of puzzle and you can't die... if the sequel's combat is infrequent it actually could improve the game, I think. I was skeptical at first, but as I got farther into TLJ I really noticed how having no danger makes it seem odd at times...
So, while I am not opposed to combat segments, I absolutely feel that if you must have random death (not combat, but Sierra-style 'mess up and die') it should be for things that you can actually see coming and should be easily reversed with not much chance of major time loss.
No clicking on wires in the (Jefferies-style) tube and instantly being electrocuted, for instance, to use another example from Space Quest 5.
Humor. Interesting subject in these games. It's interesting because all the Sierra adventures I've played have it to some extent... most to a good extent. But they also have real stories that are serious, and a good amount of non-humorous story as well. Quest for Glory is the perfect example here. The graphics can be humorous at times, sure, but when it wants to be darker it sure can (see QFGIV!). And the script is great and very funny with lots of funny descriptions of things, but there is also danger and stuff... I think they mix humor and seriousness well in those games with some doses of each. King's Quest does that as well but with less humor, I'd say... KQ7 looks like a cartoon and has humor in it, sure, but based just on the beginning I don't think it looks like it's as funny as a QFG game. But that series isn't meant to be, it's meant to be a semi-serious fantasy adventure series... which it is and succeeds at. But you'll never find me saying that it matches QFG. :)
Oh, one thing on that note. I note in KQ5 that in a lot of screens just a couple of things have descriptions. As in, when you click on them with the eye you get a description of what you are seeing. Many screens just have a couple of them... doesn't seem like many, compared to QFG... maybe that changes later (and admittedly QFG doesn't have as much in its numerous very similar "forest" (/desert/etc, depending on game) screens... but still, it seems like less. For instance you can't click on some tree and have a humorous thing pop up like happens in QFG... :)
Yes, so that means that Corey and Lori Cole are probably my favorite Sierra adventure designers for making that series... I don't think they made anything else, but QFG is brilliant. Gameplay, puzzles, script... best at Sierra, IMO.
Space Quest, of course, comes down squarely on the humor side every step of the way. And while the game is very frusterating at times, SQ5 is also a really, really good game.
Oh yeah, one last thing. Quest for Glory IV has voice, but also has text boxes. So does EcoQuest, I'm pretty sure. I wish KQ5 (and 7, if you were right about that... I think you are, come to think about it...) had that too! I always turn on subtitles in games like this and I wish I could here too.
... darnit, all this talk of adventure games made me want to go back and continue The Longest Journey again... fantastic game, but I'm at an annoying puzzle. Annoying in the hard sense, that is... :)