30th July 2003, 5:24 PM
(This post was last modified: 30th July 2003, 5:43 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
Sanitarium WAS a great game! I don't own it, but I managed to play through the whole thing when my aunt got it. I loved that cute "ruby fish" item that I never quite "got" until I watched the movie Clue after playing some of it :D. And yes, I am well aware that both Jill of the Jungle and Claw are probably only there because naustalgia overwhelms me (well, with Claw it was mainly because I missed those old 2D platformers, and that perhaps brainwashed me, that and I love pirates).
KQ5 and KQ7? Well, not really bad examples of the series, certainly not "Mask of Eternity" bad, but I find it amusing you missed both of what I consider the best of the series by adding 1 :D. KQ5 was a bit too linear. In fact it took me several tries to find out how NOT to get a perfect score :D. It was decent I suppose, but they hadn't quite got the whole cursor interface down I think until the next one. KQ7 wasn't that bad, and I loved the more lighthearted mood too, but they pulled a Wind Waker and made it too easy. First off, they gave one all purpose interaction cursor instead of the old having to find out how to interact with stuff at least. Second off, and this is something that makes the first deal not so big, and in fact it might not have even mattered had they just not done this, the cursor flashes over whatever you can interact with. I mean, that just ruins the whole having to guess and find out what you can interact with thing. That is likely the thing that most hurt KQ7. It was still a fun game and all, but the puzzles were just made far too easy when you could see exactly what you could click on for one, and second off, whenever you COULD use an item on something, it would also highlight as well. You could pretty much beat the whole game by just waving the cursor around randomly with and without items to see what you needed to do. Fortunatly, I didn't have the patience to do that, most of the time, so I managed to get myself stuck well enough.
I'll say this ABF. Of course there's nothing wrong with finding the frustration of realizing either you saved too long ago or you saved too late to do the correct thing to get through many of Seirra's adventure games (and KOM), but I'll say this about KQ7. KQ7, despite it's easyness flaws, did a couple great things. First off, whenver you die, you can simply choose to instantly go back to the game just before you made the wrong move. This way, saving isn't even needed, so the frustration or in many's case, a fear to do exploring, is eliminated, but the sense of danger is maintained. Also, the game design was done as such that you can never get stuck, as opposed to every previous KQ game, and in fact a lot of the other Sierra adventure games. It kinda sets you up so if some really early step is needed, you are either forced to do it or some alternate "lesser" way of doing it will be made available. Of course, Lucasarts always did this :D. It was just a matter of deciding what stuff makes a game enjoyably hard and what stuff just makes it frustratingly hard. Personally I still love the aspect of worrying about death, and yet I still explored as much as I would want, but in KQ7 it managed adding that thrill without the annoyance. Also, with chapter selection, should you actually get stuck (due to any unforseen design problems Sierra didn't find, which fortunatly there weren't) or just want to quickly go to some place to solve a puzzle a different way, you can go to 6 different "check points" and do so quickly. So, KQ7 wasn't a bad game, and it was fun and added a couple things, but in the end I still find it not as good as others in the series.
Oh, the subtitles are missing there, mainly because I didn't add them.
KQIV is "The Perils Of Rosella". KQVI is "Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow".
I did in fact play The Castle of Dr. Brain a long time ago. That was a fun game with more "pure" puzzling than most. Seems it was aimed at using computers to teach kids in the classroom. Remember Conquest of Camelot? I think that's what it was called. It was another parser interface game. To be honest, I never got very far because the computer I played it on had a bad install so after a certain point the game would just fail to load a resource file and crash. It seemed fun, but I suppose we've got plenty of Sierra games as it is, and from what little I played, it wasn't one of their best.
Oh, and yes there are two Monoliths. One is Monolith Soft, the Xenosaga company, and the other is the one who made a lot of substandard games, and a couple good ones.
Megarace... Yes, that sounds right. I don't remember FMV, as that wasn't on CD at all I should note. It was polygonal, not good mind you. Think Starfox quality :D. I think it was also a shareware version, or maybe not, it could have just had two versions, one on CD and one on floppy. Megarace does sound right though... What company was that?
Edit: No, I checked up on it. It's NOT Megarace. That game has weapons and this racing game had NO weapons. It had real cars on stunt tracks, the stunt tracks weren't from the future or futuristic looking, just stunty, all done out in a field in nature with a bright sunshiny day, not in some grimy metropolis or anything like that with permanently red skys with black clouds (you know, stereotypical futuristic racer look :D).
I imagine Duke Nuke 2 was superior to the first. From the shareware I played it did seem that way. I also found the over the top action parody funny. Of course, the very first thing I noticed among the better graphics was that Duke no longer had different frames for his left side and right side, like in the first one, so that he was always holding his gun in the same hand. Weird thing to notice actually, and not really a big deal since most left/right sprites are just done with sprite mirroring.
Epic Pinball! Yeah! I played the demo of that the same time I played the demo of One Must Fall, and I think I liked that one more. Being sheltered slightly, that was one of the first pinball games I played. It just seemed so right, so pure :D. Fun little game.
KQ5 and KQ7? Well, not really bad examples of the series, certainly not "Mask of Eternity" bad, but I find it amusing you missed both of what I consider the best of the series by adding 1 :D. KQ5 was a bit too linear. In fact it took me several tries to find out how NOT to get a perfect score :D. It was decent I suppose, but they hadn't quite got the whole cursor interface down I think until the next one. KQ7 wasn't that bad, and I loved the more lighthearted mood too, but they pulled a Wind Waker and made it too easy. First off, they gave one all purpose interaction cursor instead of the old having to find out how to interact with stuff at least. Second off, and this is something that makes the first deal not so big, and in fact it might not have even mattered had they just not done this, the cursor flashes over whatever you can interact with. I mean, that just ruins the whole having to guess and find out what you can interact with thing. That is likely the thing that most hurt KQ7. It was still a fun game and all, but the puzzles were just made far too easy when you could see exactly what you could click on for one, and second off, whenever you COULD use an item on something, it would also highlight as well. You could pretty much beat the whole game by just waving the cursor around randomly with and without items to see what you needed to do. Fortunatly, I didn't have the patience to do that, most of the time, so I managed to get myself stuck well enough.
I'll say this ABF. Of course there's nothing wrong with finding the frustration of realizing either you saved too long ago or you saved too late to do the correct thing to get through many of Seirra's adventure games (and KOM), but I'll say this about KQ7. KQ7, despite it's easyness flaws, did a couple great things. First off, whenver you die, you can simply choose to instantly go back to the game just before you made the wrong move. This way, saving isn't even needed, so the frustration or in many's case, a fear to do exploring, is eliminated, but the sense of danger is maintained. Also, the game design was done as such that you can never get stuck, as opposed to every previous KQ game, and in fact a lot of the other Sierra adventure games. It kinda sets you up so if some really early step is needed, you are either forced to do it or some alternate "lesser" way of doing it will be made available. Of course, Lucasarts always did this :D. It was just a matter of deciding what stuff makes a game enjoyably hard and what stuff just makes it frustratingly hard. Personally I still love the aspect of worrying about death, and yet I still explored as much as I would want, but in KQ7 it managed adding that thrill without the annoyance. Also, with chapter selection, should you actually get stuck (due to any unforseen design problems Sierra didn't find, which fortunatly there weren't) or just want to quickly go to some place to solve a puzzle a different way, you can go to 6 different "check points" and do so quickly. So, KQ7 wasn't a bad game, and it was fun and added a couple things, but in the end I still find it not as good as others in the series.
Oh, the subtitles are missing there, mainly because I didn't add them.
KQIV is "The Perils Of Rosella". KQVI is "Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow".
I did in fact play The Castle of Dr. Brain a long time ago. That was a fun game with more "pure" puzzling than most. Seems it was aimed at using computers to teach kids in the classroom. Remember Conquest of Camelot? I think that's what it was called. It was another parser interface game. To be honest, I never got very far because the computer I played it on had a bad install so after a certain point the game would just fail to load a resource file and crash. It seemed fun, but I suppose we've got plenty of Sierra games as it is, and from what little I played, it wasn't one of their best.
Oh, and yes there are two Monoliths. One is Monolith Soft, the Xenosaga company, and the other is the one who made a lot of substandard games, and a couple good ones.
Megarace... Yes, that sounds right. I don't remember FMV, as that wasn't on CD at all I should note. It was polygonal, not good mind you. Think Starfox quality :D. I think it was also a shareware version, or maybe not, it could have just had two versions, one on CD and one on floppy. Megarace does sound right though... What company was that?
Edit: No, I checked up on it. It's NOT Megarace. That game has weapons and this racing game had NO weapons. It had real cars on stunt tracks, the stunt tracks weren't from the future or futuristic looking, just stunty, all done out in a field in nature with a bright sunshiny day, not in some grimy metropolis or anything like that with permanently red skys with black clouds (you know, stereotypical futuristic racer look :D).
I imagine Duke Nuke 2 was superior to the first. From the shareware I played it did seem that way. I also found the over the top action parody funny. Of course, the very first thing I noticed among the better graphics was that Duke no longer had different frames for his left side and right side, like in the first one, so that he was always holding his gun in the same hand. Weird thing to notice actually, and not really a big deal since most left/right sprites are just done with sprite mirroring.
Epic Pinball! Yeah! I played the demo of that the same time I played the demo of One Must Fall, and I think I liked that one more. Being sheltered slightly, that was one of the first pinball games I played. It just seemed so right, so pure :D. Fun little game.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)