posted by Juss

The original - and the best?

If Judd Apatow were making video games right now, I think he’d be looking to sign up to produce the next Leisure Suit Larry sequel.  The appeal of this supposedly lovable cretin has apparently passed me completely by; but then I’m no longer an overly hormonal teenager or a sad lonely, balding middle aged man.  Right now I’m somewhere in the middle and just don’t need to play games like this one.

Naturally, I played it. (for all you geeks, that’s the VGA remake and not the original)

Perhaps I should cut this game some slack for being one of Sierra’s earlier outings.  But I’m not going to because it cut me none.  The first noticeable thing about this game that pissed me off right royally is the stupid age protection scheme wherein you have to answer questions to prove that you’re over 18.  Being British I couldn’t answer most of them as they were largely about American Presidents, so already I felt pretty bad having to resort to cheating before I’d even started the game.  The second noticeable thing was that my main character was some retarded middle aged dweeb who, understandably, hadn’t yet had sex with a woman.  So, I’m thinking, why do I want to play a game as this guy?  Surely I want be some handsome knight on a noble quest, a young boy discovering his true destiny, or at the very least a virile manly cop beating the crap out of society’s wrongdoers.  I loaded this up thinking I was going to be playing a manly game for manly men about SEX.  But nope.  Apparently I get to be the dork.  This game is rapidly going downhill for me and I haven’t even got started yet.  Oh well, I think, I’m playing a dweeb but at least there’ll probably be a good storyline attached.  Adventure games are all about the storyline, after all.

The remake

Well, Leisure Suit Larry is not so keen on giving away its secrets in that area either.  No, it’s not stupid enough to tell you what the point of the game actually is.  You have to work that out yourself in much the same way that you have to work out to buy the whiskey from the bar, so you can give it to the collapsed drunk so he gives you a remote control so that you can change the channel with it 9 times, so that the pimp let’s you through the door.  Yes, it’s that obvious.  So again, I look it up.  Apparently, according to the internet, the aim of the game is to get laid.  That’s not an especially compelling storyline, is it?  But don’t worry because once you’ve managed to sleep with the local prostitute it all changes.  You then have to get married and get laid again.  Well, Ok, I figure that getting laid in a computer game should supply me with a certain amount of entertainment.  Well, guess what?  Even though I had to undergo the torture of having to answer questions on Richard Nixon to prove that I’m old enough, when you get to the sex scenes, they’re all censored.  Yes, byt this time I started feeling despondent and I’ll tell you why – because of what I had to suffer to get to this point.

Infuriating as they can be at times, the puzzles in the game are for once not the most annoying thing by a long shot.  What’s actually annoying is everything else.   This game plays like a dog: a really obstinate pissed off Rottweiler.  That stupid Sierra icon system is made even worse by the addition of taste and smell icons,and one to remove your clothing.  This is not great, given that you don’t need to taste anything to complete this game and it means that hours are spent selecting the right icon to use.  Added to that, all the icons look the damn same.  It would have been quicker to type the words into a text parser.  Yet there are greater headaches than this.  The game is split up into a few locations – the bar, the convenience store, the disco, the casino etc and you have no idea which one you need to be at.  Fine – explore.  Only, every time you want to go somewhere you have to hail a taxicab and endure a non-skippable sequence which involves the taxicab going faster and slowing down before you reach your destination. This doesn’t encourage exploration of the game world, it makes you determined to avoid unnecessary trips.  Then there’s the fact that using a taxi costs money.  The only way to get more money is to play at the casino.  I didn’t sign up for umpteen rounds of Blackjack, I wanted an adventure game, but I have to endure them to progress.  Of course, there’s no clue to how much money I need so guess what happens?  Right, the $250 I win is not enough so I run out of money after my bride to be takes $200 and can’t pay for the cab back to the Casino to get more.  This was roughly where I lost patience and threw my PC into the toilet.  I haven’t even mentioned that when Larry enters the casino for some reason he walks at ¼ speed, or that there’s a 15 minute long comedy routine of one-liner jokes you have to endure.

So, beyond the gamers identification with the lead character and the promise of some sexual scenarios, is there any reason to grapple with the game and take the few hours it would actually take to play and finish it? (it’s a fairly short game provided you don’t get deadended financially like I did.).   Well, the real shame of it is that underneath it all, game creator Lowe clearly has a fine wit and a great sense of humour and the game does deliver some good belly laughs every so often.  Every room is littered with funny descriptions, a good example being the bar toilet, which is scrawled wall to wall with amusing graffiti.  The excruciating embarrassment of buying condoms at a convenience store is well represented by a longish sequence where the storekeeper asks you if you prefer mint, ribbed, coloured etc and at the end of it he yells out “Hey everyone, he’s buying…. x” and a whole bunch of people leap out yelling “YOU’RE A PERVERT”.  Having had my own awkward condom buying encounter, that one struck a comic nerve.  When you meet a girl in the disco she shows no interest in you whatsoever and scowls.  As you hand over roses, chocolates and a ring the expression rapidly changes amusingly to a grin and the girl offers to sleep with you – but only if you’ll marry her first.  The joke is brazenly politically incorrect, yet I can’t help giving Lowe the benefit of the doubt and thinking that he is actually winking at potential misogyny of his audience here not trying to persuade them that this is somehow a better version of reality.  That the girl later ties you to a bed also suggests that Larry is really going to need try a little bit harder to genuinely connect.  Like Apatow though, for Larry success ultimately comes a little too easily and so any sense of genuine feminine empowerment gets wiped away in a smug air of “I got to have sex in the end anyway”.  Disappointing, but not unusual.

If you’re feeling patient and you love Apatow then maybe this game will appeal.  However, there’s not enough good in it to make it the retro classic it has become in the minds of many and I can’t help thinking/hoping tha,like King’s Quest, it’s the superior nature of the sequels that people have truly latched onto.  I’ll be playing them - I’ll let you know.

My weekend just planned itself.

Those of you with access to steam may have already noticed that the weekend deal starting today is the Oddworld series (which includes Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee and Oddworld: Abe’s Exoddus) for 75% off. This is a cracking good deal, and I expect each and every one of you dear readers (all 3 of you) to take this offer up. You can get the games seperately for $2.50 each or buy them together for $3.75 total. Not to sound like an informercial douche, but that’s less than the cost of a super fancy delux-o coffee with low-fat no sugar soy whipped non-dairy creamer.

Aside from the outstanding price, you should get the games for their cleverness and humor. The games involve a rather weak, ugly alien creature who is trying to escape from an evil corporation that wants to turn him and his friends into snack treats. Your only real weapon is mind-control, which you can use to (wait for it) control the minds of the guards that would otherwise be out to kill you. You can then make the guards do various things, push buttons to let you in to previously locked areas, kill other guards, or even walk off the edge of a platform and into a bottomless pit. The first part of the first level is basically a walkthrough, telling you what to do for every scenario. On one screen, you run into one of your co-workers, who is busy scrubbing the walls. The walkthrough tells you to go up to a lever and push the action button. When you do, a trap door opens underneath your coworker, and he disappears with a slowly dimming, “AIIIEEEEEEE!” Followed by an eventual thud. You don’t really expect for a tutorial to screw you over (the more coworkers you save, the better your score) but Oddworld lets you know that you should take everything with a grain of salt. Just because you can do something doesn’t necessarily mean that you should.

The game is part platformer, part puzzler, part stealth. You sometimes have to hide from the guards as much as possible to get past certain areas, while other times you just have to run like hell and hope that you jump, sneak, or roll at the exact right moment. It’s less Mario and more Flashback with a little bit of The Lost Vikings thrown in for good measure.

Yes, this looks a little shitty, doesn't it?

Nostalgia aside, let’s face facts here, the original King’s Quest games were a little bit shitty, which isn’t to say that they weren’t monumentally groundbreaking. For the first time they allowed the player to move a 3D character around and to interrogate a fully realised 3D environment (and by fully realised, I mean not very well realised at all,but that’s all history), but sadly, playing them now is an excruciating and unique form of torture. It’s a nightmare wrestling with that bloody text parser, wondering which random, unrecognisable item on the screen is worth examining and having your player die by constantly dying, falling off of cliff faces. Narratively, they hardly fare any better. Compare the Original King’s Quest adventure, for instance, to the far superior graphics-free text adventures from Infocom during the same period like Planetfall, wherein an intriguing (and frequently funny) plot is revealed to the player slowly as a reward for good game-play and perseverance. I recently played the original King’s Quest: Quest for the Crown and found it a boring, plodding affair which amounted to nothing more than King Graham embarking on a treasure hunt to retrieve three magical items to save the Kingdom. Furthermore the puzzles were obscure and stupidly difficult, giving the player no real reason to care about any aspect of the game or gameplay.

However, fond memories of wrestling with the virtually impossible King’s Quest III as a child (I never did manage to kill that blasted wizard.) has kept me intrigued by this franchise. Good reviews of AGDInteractive’s recent remake, boasting improved graphics, speech acting, an icon click user interface and a new, improved storyline just about convinced me to give it a go, even though I still have so many adventure game classics still to play. I downloaded the game for free (yes! For FREE!), honestly expecting to be bored of King Graham’s Quest for his Bride-to-be within the hour, but found myself playing throughout the whole day unable to switch the damn thing until I’d found the gems, freed the bride and thwarted the evil witch Hagatha. I had to get to the end of this game even when my dinner was cold on the table and my cats were peeing all over the furniture. Housework be damned, for I was in the middle of doing battle with an evil Vampire lord!

Actually, not much of the Original Kings Quest 2 really remains in place here. The basic plot framework and central concepts have been kept. King Graham, bored and seeking a bride sees a vision in his magic mirror of a damsel trapped in a tower and decides to go and rescue her. Finding himself in an unknown land he soon learns that if he can find the three gemstones (in the original its three keys to open a magic door) he’ll be able to go through a portal to another realm to save her. Pretty standard stuff you think, and for sure, in Sierra’s hands it certainly was. AGDInteractive, on the other hand, have simply used this as a jumping off point to create a unique and charming fantasy gaming experience. Like all good narrative games the charms aren’t self evident and you have to patiently play through the first hour on blind faith. Initially the experience felt something like this:

“Ok, a screen with trees and rocks. Pretty. Ok, more trees. Oh, more rocks. Oh, I can put my hand in this hole and oooh a mallet. Now, a lake. Now more trees. A house I can’t get into. More trees. More rocks. OOOHH how many goddamn screens are there like this anyway?”

Play on though and you begin to see the bigger picture; how everything is interconnected. Being based on an old adventure with fairly free form puzzles, King’s Quest 2 presents its entire world for you to explore all in one go, but as you make your way to the town, meet some of its characters discover the library, the antiques shop, and Hagatha’s cave it begins to develop into something much more intriguing. Whilst the game never morphs into a fully-fledged narrative like modern classics such as The Longest Journey, gradually King Graham starts to be led by the nose a little, only allowed into one area, for instance, until he’s finished with another. Night falls, for instance and the town closes and the mysterious church opens up. Trips to the library allow you to read books on the history of the town and its magical citizens. Certain mini quests , to retrieve a Nightingale for the antiques shop owner or an ancient tiara for the local vampire not only give the game a lot of colour but also reveal characters with a lot of personality and interest. Some are resolutely evil; some are not what they initially appear to be. Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, for instance, turn out to be part of the local vampire family. Additional depth is added to the game by some wonderfully affecting cut scenes, the most noteworthy being when you retrieve the second gem. The cloud spirit asks you to prove your worth in order to obtain the gem and does so in an almost Dickensian way, showing you scenes from your childhood and your desolate future, asking you how you’d respond to these events. This not only adds to your view of King Graham’s character, but also builds into the King’s Quest mythology and making it an overall richer experience

The other real draw, of course, is the game’s humour. At times I wasn’t sure if I was playing a King’s Quest game or Monkey Island. To be fair the overall construct of the game isn’t as humorous or intelligent as the Lucasarts classic, but AGDInteractive have done their best to make every scenario and every encounter as engaging as they can. And to AGD engaging often means hilariously funny. There’s much goodness to choose from, but my favourite character is the local librarian, a play on the traditional stereotype she resolutely refuses to sign you up to the Library even though there’s no reason not to, meeting every one of your reasonable requests with a sturdy “No”. Eventually you get to the point with her whereby you have a card (stolen, of course) but it’s not signed and she won’t let you use the desk pen in order to sign it.

I’m always personally more interested in narrative conceits than great graphics and sound, but gameplay is still important and KQ2 fares pretty well in that department. The graphics are light years ahead of the original although most modern gamers will probably still scoff at them. What’s important to me though is that the screen designs are frequently attractive, making you want to know what’s on the next screen and excited when a new area opens up. The icon interface is frankly a little frustrating, asking you to right click to choose between a talk icon, a walk icon and a use one. Tedious at best it’s frustrating in timed sequences that lead to your death if you don’t act quickly and sometimes these appear out of the blue when you don’t have an up to date save handy. The puzzles have been completely redesigned from the original game are frequently clever and fun and only sometimes impossible to figure out. There’s the age old Sierra problem of not always knowing if you’ve picked up everything you should have or if you’re just not using what you have in the right way. There’s also the occasional moment when I felt it poorly signposted as to what to do next. For instance, having used the magic carpet to ascend a cliff then come back again, it didn’t occur to me that I’d have to return to that area when I figured I’d already finished with it! Still, if you like these games you are patient with these problems and good at using walkthroughs like I am. What’s really relevant is that the puzzles have been re-jigged to much positive effect, leading the storyline and adventure onwards rather giving you too much endless walking about and searching to do.

To sum up, AGDInteractive have produced something incredibly special here. The sceptical will simply not play this, wondering why we need an updated version of an old classic. The rest of us will be rewarded with one of the finest of adventure gaming experiences, one that both fills our geeky need for nostalgia but also gives us new and exciting challenges, new characters to meet, places to explore and puzzles to solve. Did I mention that this is all free? Congratulations and thank you for providing this piece of high quality entertainment AGD and for not only keeping alive, but solidly improving on a wonderful gaming franchise.

I’m now right off to download their latest, Al Emmo. Alas, not free, but hell they actually deserve the cash.

10/10

Awesome links

Kings Quest II: Romancing the Stones Game Site
AGDInteractive (formerly Tierra) – Play their King’s Quest One or Quest for Glory 2 remakes for free, or brand new adventure Al Emmo and The Lost Dutchman’sMine
JustAdventure Game Review