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This is how I remember Kings Quest 5
You guys remember Kings Quest 5, right?
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM
A POOOooooOOOOooOOOOOOsonous snake!
You guys remember Kings Quest 5, right?
GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM
A POOOooooOOOOooOOOOOOsonous snake!
Category All / Fanart
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 800 x 604px
File Size 286 kB
The Sins of Sierra Games:
-Frequent Points of No Return:Be sure to have everything before you leave or else you will die when you need the item at the finale of the game!
-Easy to Fail Objectives: Don't blink or you'll miss a chance to progress! (King's Quest V did this with the goddamn rat).
-Pixel Hunts: See that thing over there? No? Even with the 'look' command? No matter how hard you try? Well it's there and you need it!
-Illogical Puzzles: Use the shoe you found in the desert to stop the cat from killing the rat! What's that? Use your own shoe? Or another item? Don't be stupid!
-Frequent Points of No Return:Be sure to have everything before you leave or else you will die when you need the item at the finale of the game!
-Easy to Fail Objectives: Don't blink or you'll miss a chance to progress! (King's Quest V did this with the goddamn rat).
-Pixel Hunts: See that thing over there? No? Even with the 'look' command? No matter how hard you try? Well it's there and you need it!
-Illogical Puzzles: Use the shoe you found in the desert to stop the cat from killing the rat! What's that? Use your own shoe? Or another item? Don't be stupid!
Kings Quest is the worst of the lot. Space Quest had a few of these problems, but I only remember a few points of no return really frustrating me. Quest for Glory was pretty good at avoiding them from what I remember. But you really did have to hand it to LucasArts for going out of their way to avoid all these shitty design elements.
KQ5 kept doing all these fancy perspective shots, so like you're looking out over the town from over the rooftops and, yeah, it looks nice, but now it's nearly impossible to see that little barrel in the alleyway where you need to get that dead fish.
KQ5 kept doing all these fancy perspective shots, so like you're looking out over the town from over the rooftops and, yeah, it looks nice, but now it's nearly impossible to see that little barrel in the alleyway where you need to get that dead fish.
I'm playing the Sierra collections right now and I can say the least offending games from them so far are Space Quest III, Ecoquest I and Gabriel Knight 2 (although GK2 has the godawful museum level where you need to search absolutely everything before the story can progress).
I agree that LucasArts did point and clicks a LOT better. They had a couple loopy puzzles now and then but they avoided points of no return and pixel hunts.
I agree that LucasArts did point and clicks a LOT better. They had a couple loopy puzzles now and then but they avoided points of no return and pixel hunts.
I fucking hate that owl so much. Sure, everyone thinks Navi from Zelda is annoying but she at least provides hints with puzzles and enemies (and helps Link focus with the oh so awesome Z-target). This guy is beyond useless (sides helping you fly in the intro). And he seems to like to warn you about death just half a second before you fall over to one of the game's many wacky deaths. Apparently Cedric was so hated by fans that Sierra made him as a joke in other Sierra games.
King's Quest V is awesome though. If you get past him and some really cruel Sierra tricks.
King's Quest V is awesome though. If you get past him and some really cruel Sierra tricks.
I missed the Kings Quest series growing up, but I've discovered it in recent years mostly through groups like Retsupurae riffing on it. Cedric is the best/wort thing about V character wise. The best moment though is probably the fate of the yeti. That's gotta be a pretty embarrassing way to die. :^)
ISTS
KQV was heralded as THE BIGGEST THING EVER IN ADVENTURE GAMEPLAY when it came out because of its (for the time) amazing graphics and actual voice actors acting (although because no one could ever get all the persnickety adjustments in their computer settings just right, no one ever got the voice acting to work.). But the gameplay left A LOT to be desired. if you'd played any other adventure games by that point -- Space Quest, Quest for Glory, Monkey Island, even previous Kings Quest -- you'd find KQV puzzles just obnoxious. And that stupid owl.
I remember caving and buying the guidebook, which alleviated my frustration with KQ5, but also increased my frustration by telling me all about the awesomeness in five other King's Quest games I would never own and not gain access to until years later. (KQ3: floppy disk piracy in junior high, 1-6: borrowing the collection disc from my wuffie in adulthood)
They actually ported it to the NES... and there is a bug in that version that can make your game randomly unwinnable from the very beginning, but there is no way to know until five minutes from the end when the bug triggers. Fortunately, in these enlightened times, people have graciously posted passwords that correspond to a saved game (the NES version uses a password system in addition to four save slots, since it doesn't actually have battery-backed saves) in the exact spot of the bug, but with a non-bugged playthrough.
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