King's Quest (PC)

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Adamant1
Posts: 2088
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

King's Quest (PC)

Postby Adamant1 » October 28th, 2007, 6:57 pm

King's Quest was the first graphical adventure game ever made, combining the command-based gameplay from games like the original Adventure with the exploration and control of your character found in...  well, the 2600 version of Adventure. You control your guy around an expansve world wit the arrow keys, while entering commands with the keyboard, giving you complete control of everything your character does. The plot is fairly simplistic, despite taking up an insane amount of room in the manual; The kingdom of Daventry is in ruin after it's three magical treasures have been stolen, and the dying king sends his bravest knight, Sir Graham, out to retrieve these, with a promise of the throne should he succeed. Unlike most other games in the genre, the game is extremely non-linear. The three treasures have been stolen by different villains, and can be retrieved in any order, and the items needed in each of the separate quests are never found halfway through the quest for a different item. This way, if you aren't able to figure out a puzzle, you can ignore it and try searching for another treasure instead. This system really should be appearing in more games.

The land of Daventry is based on famous fairy tales, and the game pretty much demands you are familiar with these. In one instance, it even demands you are familiar with the english-language version of a specific tale, effectively alienating every single foreigner - incredibly unfair, and an element that was thankfully removed in later sequels.

Since you have complete control of your character, the game has some passages where you need to manuever across tiny areas of "land", where the slighest misstep will spell instant death. Unfortunately, the collision detection is dodgy at best, and though you can save the game at any time, you'll get somewhat tired of watching the same death animation time and again. This kind of "challenge" doesn't really belong in the genre.

The puzzles themselves, when not overly reliant on fairy tales you haven't heard ("What do I do with these magic beans?"), are mostly logical and easy to solve as long as you spend the beginning of the game exploring every single screen of the land, searching for items and puzzles. The parser is generally cooperative, though it annoyingly enough claims "examine" is the same thing as "look at", no matter whether it's a shoe or a hole we're talking about. If you want to look inside that hole, you're typing "look in".

The point system that appears in most early adventure games appears here as well, and while the game isn't really score-based like the original Adventure was, this game has a ton of small treasures you can look for that does nothing other than give you some extra points. The game doesn't tell you this, however, so near the end of the game you're bound to be lugging around a ton of items you have no idea if can even be used for anything. The game is nice enough to deduct points if you use an item for something it's not meant to be used for, often rendering the game unwinnable, allowing you to realize your mistake and reload an old save. The game is mostly completely open, having few situations where you're completely stuck if you enter an area without certain items. There is one such place, but if you drop down that hole in the ground that has no seeming exit, then save over all your old saves without checking what obstacles lie around the corner first, that's really your own fault.

Sadly, the game has that bane of adventure game: random encounters. Some areas will sometimes make a character or monster appear when you'e wandering around, and while most of these are just annoying obstacles, some are characters you are required to meet to progress, and if you've passed that area several times without said character appearing, there's no way you can even know it exists in the first place, and that will leave your horribly stuck.

The game does a lot of things right, and is fun to play, but has some many flws that are just pure bad deign that I can't rate this one higher than B-

steerforth

King's Quest (PC)

Postby steerforth » October 28th, 2007, 8:08 pm

I played a ton of Sierra games back in the day, but I do not believe I have played the first or 2nd Kings Quests. The 3rd one, I think, the one with Rosella, that is a GREAT game, loved it.

didn't they recently release a collection of these old Sierra games? I know they are freeware/abandonware all over the web as well.

Adamant1
Posts: 2088
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

King's Quest (PC)

Postby Adamant1 » October 31st, 2007, 7:24 pm

[QUOTE=steerforth]didn't they recently release a collection of these old Sierra games? [/QUOTE]

Yeah, that's technically what I used to review this game. The collection includes the rerelease of the first game, though, but I have played the original before, so I'm mostly sure this review is compatible to that version. Never beat the original, though, due to that god-awful random encounter system; Never got that one absolutely required encounter then either.

As for Rosella, she's the lead character in KQ4, and one of two playable characters in KQ7 (the other one being queen Valanice). KQ2 and 5 have Graham again play the hero, while KQ3 stars some guy named Gwyndion, and KQ6 stars prince Alexander.

steerforth

King's Quest (PC)

Postby steerforth » October 31st, 2007, 8:51 pm

I gonna check that out!

back in the day, our computer eventually got to old to play the 'new' Sierra games, we did not keep up, lol. So the last Sierra game I ever played was Space Quest 3, which was awesome.

Gentlegamer1
Posts: 687
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

King's Quest (PC)

Postby Gentlegamer1 » October 31st, 2007, 10:46 pm

For those who are interested, there are freely available VGA remakes for KQ I through III, with IV being worked on right now.

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VideoGameCritic
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King's Quest (PC)

Postby VideoGameCritic » November 1st, 2007, 11:11 pm

I had this game for my Atari ST computer way back in the day, and I LOVED it!!  Somebody should release a compilation for the consoles.

Marriott_Guy1
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Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

King's Quest (PC)

Postby Marriott_Guy1 » November 3rd, 2007, 4:31 pm

KQ games were awesome.  Let's not forget the great Sierra Quest For Glory collection of games- possibly my favorite pc series of all-time.



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