- Joined
- Feb 10, 2013
- Messages
- 232
Jeez, the game obviously isn't exactly incline, but "massive decline"? Talk about edgy tryhard Codex.
Most of the characters are too silly not to cringe, of course, but it's not like King's Quest had been a complete stranger to such before this game. And the new kids at least are very likeable, even if naturally fairly flat so far, as is Old Graham, and Young Graham isn't too annoying a kid, either.
Almost every puzzle has multiple solutions, often more than two. On top of that, there are several optional ones, and there's a little bit of C&C (which I don't expect to do much but still more than in the old games, where almost all consequences of note, other than the occasional (read: extremely rare) imperfect/bad ending, were oodles of unknowably unwinnable--or rather, unfinishable--states).
And there are lots of funny classic Sierra deaths, but instead of being utterly unfair surprises, they have fairly fair reset points. (Autosave itself is decline incarnate, of course, but sadly enough, I've already gotten used to such in mainstream games, so I can't raise the energy to be properly pissed off about it anymore.) And frankly, achievements are IMNSHO at least better a system of tracking play actions than adventure points.
As for the action sequences: Several adventure games of the 80's and 90's (some good ones, too) had such as well, and (to my utter surprise; after the first trailer I expected the game to be a glorified Dragon's Lair) the ones in the first chapter of this game are far better executed and less obtrusive than any of those. And have people completely forgotten about almost every staircase and mountain path in a KQ game ever? Or pixel-hunting (which I otherwise never minded) on a timer? I'd take hours of bow-shooting in this game over any of that.
Not to mention that one's got to consider the major present day competition: Absolutely every aspect of gameplay King's Quest (2015) offers is several orders of magnitude better than the tedious stream of samey QTE's and inconsequential dialogue choices in Telltale's recent "games".
Gamepad(-style) controls in adventure games are decline as well, of course, and a lack of multiple ways of interacting with things even more so, but at least the controls work much better than in vanilla Grim Fandango. ("Tank controls" are one of the reasons (next to manual saving) the original Tomb Raider pentalogy is better than the first reboot (since camera movements can't fuck you up) with its depressingly futile overarching trilogy plot, never mind the popamole second one, but for adventure games they're about the worst you can do.)
But most importantly, it actually has item-based puzzles! In fact (unlike the also likeable Life Is Strange) it consists primarily of such! In a post-TWD:S2 world, I would've never expected that! And their average level of difficulty seems fine to me as well.
Plus a world of reasonable size you can actually walk around in mostly at will instead of the linear progressions from one barely (if at all) interactive scene to another. And in part due to this a surprisingly healthy length for an episodic game which, however, does not feel artificially bloated by backtracking (at least if you have any sense of appreciation for the classics at all; and if you manage to get lost in that single square of 3-5 similar forest screens, you fail at gaming so hard, you should just stop). And the world of this first episode (and presumably also those of the next four) surely feels more open than the chapters of King's Quest VII at least. (Didn't mind that structure in Torin's Passage, though, as the chapters actually fit the story--and even the setting--in that one.)
TL;DR
There's many an indie adventure game (and some by boutique publishers) in the last decade or so I like better, but King's Quest (2015) is the closest thing to a classic adventure game we've gotten from a AAA publisher/aiming for the mainstream since... what? Monkey Island 4? (Ugh.)
And concerning the original series:
KQ1-2 are utterly terrible games merely of ludohistorical importance. Only KQ3-6 are great. Although KQ7, decline as it may have been, isn't wholly without merit. Also, the early AGI versions of KQ1-2 are fucking fugly as fuck. The late AGI versions of KQ3-4 are at least noticeably more refined, while the SCI EGA versions of KQ1+4 definitely do look nice, but comparing them to the SCI VGA versions of KQ5-6 is nevertheless like night and day; makes me weep that KQ4 AFAIK has yet to get a fan remake (most preferably--and sadly most improbably--by AGDI, but I'd take pretty much every--completed--valiant effort). (I'd consider KQ7 pretty in its own way if it weren't for those damned four-fingered hands; almost as annoying as its gameplay.) Anyway, KQ6 is still best!
As for parsers: Fuck that shit. In theory, potentially unlimited options are cool, of course, but in practice it's just tedious to guess what special words the designers might have deemed appropriate in whatever situation. And most of the time they offer no more than your average amount of SCUMM verbs or SCI icons, anyway, while being far less convenient to use. They're still games, not perfect simulations of interactions with worlds; I like my options consistent and concise.
That said, there is nothing I hate more about modern adventure games than the popamole restriction to (at most) "inspect" and "interact" (plus the occasional item use), which all but extinguishes all sense of freedom/curiosity/discovery/immersion. I am still able to enjoy such games, of course, but unless the game is otherwise truly spectacular, that alone is ample reason to lose a whole star in any rating of mine. (And yes, I do realise that even the golden age of adventure games already had several such specimens--and some fantastic ones at that--, but it isn't bad design (to me) because it's recent; always hated it, always will.)
In a nutshell: Classic Lucas/Sierra multi-verb point'n'click is the perfect middle ground between grognard parsers and popamole single-click designs.
Most of the characters are too silly not to cringe, of course, but it's not like King's Quest had been a complete stranger to such before this game. And the new kids at least are very likeable, even if naturally fairly flat so far, as is Old Graham, and Young Graham isn't too annoying a kid, either.
Almost every puzzle has multiple solutions, often more than two. On top of that, there are several optional ones, and there's a little bit of C&C (which I don't expect to do much but still more than in the old games, where almost all consequences of note, other than the occasional (read: extremely rare) imperfect/bad ending, were oodles of unknowably unwinnable--or rather, unfinishable--states).
And there are lots of funny classic Sierra deaths, but instead of being utterly unfair surprises, they have fairly fair reset points. (Autosave itself is decline incarnate, of course, but sadly enough, I've already gotten used to such in mainstream games, so I can't raise the energy to be properly pissed off about it anymore.) And frankly, achievements are IMNSHO at least better a system of tracking play actions than adventure points.
As for the action sequences: Several adventure games of the 80's and 90's (some good ones, too) had such as well, and (to my utter surprise; after the first trailer I expected the game to be a glorified Dragon's Lair) the ones in the first chapter of this game are far better executed and less obtrusive than any of those. And have people completely forgotten about almost every staircase and mountain path in a KQ game ever? Or pixel-hunting (which I otherwise never minded) on a timer? I'd take hours of bow-shooting in this game over any of that.
Not to mention that one's got to consider the major present day competition: Absolutely every aspect of gameplay King's Quest (2015) offers is several orders of magnitude better than the tedious stream of samey QTE's and inconsequential dialogue choices in Telltale's recent "games".
Gamepad(-style) controls in adventure games are decline as well, of course, and a lack of multiple ways of interacting with things even more so, but at least the controls work much better than in vanilla Grim Fandango. ("Tank controls" are one of the reasons (next to manual saving) the original Tomb Raider pentalogy is better than the first reboot (since camera movements can't fuck you up) with its depressingly futile overarching trilogy plot, never mind the popamole second one, but for adventure games they're about the worst you can do.)
But most importantly, it actually has item-based puzzles! In fact (unlike the also likeable Life Is Strange) it consists primarily of such! In a post-TWD:S2 world, I would've never expected that! And their average level of difficulty seems fine to me as well.
Plus a world of reasonable size you can actually walk around in mostly at will instead of the linear progressions from one barely (if at all) interactive scene to another. And in part due to this a surprisingly healthy length for an episodic game which, however, does not feel artificially bloated by backtracking (at least if you have any sense of appreciation for the classics at all; and if you manage to get lost in that single square of 3-5 similar forest screens, you fail at gaming so hard, you should just stop). And the world of this first episode (and presumably also those of the next four) surely feels more open than the chapters of King's Quest VII at least. (Didn't mind that structure in Torin's Passage, though, as the chapters actually fit the story--and even the setting--in that one.)
TL;DR
There's many an indie adventure game (and some by boutique publishers) in the last decade or so I like better, but King's Quest (2015) is the closest thing to a classic adventure game we've gotten from a AAA publisher/aiming for the mainstream since... what? Monkey Island 4? (Ugh.)
And concerning the original series:
KQ1-2 are utterly terrible games merely of ludohistorical importance. Only KQ3-6 are great. Although KQ7, decline as it may have been, isn't wholly without merit. Also, the early AGI versions of KQ1-2 are fucking fugly as fuck. The late AGI versions of KQ3-4 are at least noticeably more refined, while the SCI EGA versions of KQ1+4 definitely do look nice, but comparing them to the SCI VGA versions of KQ5-6 is nevertheless like night and day; makes me weep that KQ4 AFAIK has yet to get a fan remake (most preferably--and sadly most improbably--by AGDI, but I'd take pretty much every--completed--valiant effort). (I'd consider KQ7 pretty in its own way if it weren't for those damned four-fingered hands; almost as annoying as its gameplay.) Anyway, KQ6 is still best!
As for parsers: Fuck that shit. In theory, potentially unlimited options are cool, of course, but in practice it's just tedious to guess what special words the designers might have deemed appropriate in whatever situation. And most of the time they offer no more than your average amount of SCUMM verbs or SCI icons, anyway, while being far less convenient to use. They're still games, not perfect simulations of interactions with worlds; I like my options consistent and concise.
That said, there is nothing I hate more about modern adventure games than the popamole restriction to (at most) "inspect" and "interact" (plus the occasional item use), which all but extinguishes all sense of freedom/curiosity/discovery/immersion. I am still able to enjoy such games, of course, but unless the game is otherwise truly spectacular, that alone is ample reason to lose a whole star in any rating of mine. (And yes, I do realise that even the golden age of adventure games already had several such specimens--and some fantastic ones at that--, but it isn't bad design (to me) because it's recent; always hated it, always will.)
In a nutshell: Classic Lucas/Sierra multi-verb point'n'click is the perfect middle ground between grognard parsers and popamole single-click designs.
