Laura Bow 1 - The Colonel's Bequest: Pro's & Cons

[arj0n]

So I would like to know: what do you think are the pros and the cons of this game?

[Radiant]

Let me just cite this review by Matt McGrath.

Williams is the queen of one-dimensional cardboard characters.  Don't
get me wrong, graphic adventure game writers will probably never win
much praise with a college Lit. professor, but normally most GA's take
place in fantasy settings and are intended to be humorous.  Humor
above character and plot coherence is the essence of most comedy
movies, so most people can get past that shortcoming when playing
GA's.

                  THE COLONEL'S BEQUEST, IN-DEPTH REVIEW

A problem arises, though, when you put action above character in a
story that is supposed to rely on its characters.  Roberta probably
had a good idea for a mystery set in a New Orleans mansion, but then
just faltered when it came to creating unique characters and
situations.  None of the characters undergo any change throughout the
story, and true to her form, Roberta made them stereotypical and one-
dimensional.  I'm not here to give you a lecture on racial/gender
stereotyping and why it is evil, although I could if you really wanted
me to.  I will tell you that it makes a story very dull and
predictable when a writer uses stereotyping. In TCB we have the "Sexy
French Maid", "The Conniving Lawyer", "The Greedy Nephew", "The
Mysterious Voodoo Woman", and so on.  All Roberta left out was "The
Whore With A Heart Of Gold", although that character was probably axed
due to time constraints.

Plot logic is another stumbling block for Roberta and TCB.  Laura and
Lillian are supposed to be close friends, right?  So why doesn't Laura
react AT ALL to Lillian's obvious mental illness when Laura observes
her in the Doll House? Laura is more shocked to find Lillian's mother
Ethel dead, even though that woman was loutish and unlikable.  Another
problem with the plot is that Lillian is the only character (other
than the pets and Celie) that you can feel pity for.  Everyone else
has sinister motives (including Henri.)  Yet Roberta made Lillian the
villain, even though one could feasibly argue that the other members
of the household deserved to die because of their evil intentions.  I
am sure that Roberta made Lillian the killer because she was the least
likely suspect (other than the pets, of course.)  In the world of
murder mysteries, Roberta pulled the cheapest of all cheap shots.

In TCB, Lillian is not the most likely suspect.  Yes, she does have a
history of mental illness, and she is exhibiting some awfully strange
behavior in the Doll House.  Yet her history of mental illness was not
fully defined, and we cannot simply assume that she had a mental
illness that caused her to be violent.  For instance, lets assume she
was clinically depressed...more likely than not she would hurt
herself, not others.  The point I'm trying to make is that we the game
players are not given enough information about Lillian to make such
judgments.  Either Roberta has a very poor understanding of mental
health, or she is just plain ignorant (in both senses of the word.)

A good paraphrase to end this mess of a review is from none other than
Johnny Rotten: "Did you every get the feeling that you've been
cheated?"

TCB had so much promise, but in the end you have to wonder why Roberta
did not put even the slightest amount of effort into the story and the
characters.  Thankfully though, Henri's mansion is very fun to
explore, and if you can suspend you anger at a lazily written story
you might just think that TCB is one of Sierra's best adventure games.
At least better than the poorly written AND boring Space Quest, Police
Quest, and Leisure Suit Larry games...but that's a whole other 5
million-word review.

[arj0n]

Thanx R.

And what about the clock (which simply reacts on events)?
Should it not have been in the game or is it a plus?

[abstauber]

Oh I've read that review. I think the reviewer forgets that this is a game, not a novel.
Laura Bow 1 is one of my all-time favorites, btw. and I prefer it over it's sequel.

Pro:
+ atmosphere
+ EGA eyecandy
+ even more EGA eyecandy (this game just looks soo good)
+ great soundtrack
+ lots of characters

Cons:
- pretty hard
- dead ends and illogical puzzles
- stupid act system

To be honest, the first times I played I always got stuck or missed some elements (maybe due to the lazyness of not reading all the dialogs). So in the end I used a walkthrough - strangely I still was highly entertained.

[arj0n]

- stupid act system

These are basicly chapters aren't they?
So, the 'stupid act system' being a negative point because it's 'timed' (the clock) or for another reason?

[Radiant]

Oh I've read that review. I think the reviewer forgets that this is a game, not a novel.

I don't think so. For a game, it is pretty bad because almost everything you do in the game is completely irrelevant. The point of the game is to uncover all those plots by the cliched characters, but none of that matters since they all die like mayflies, and there's nothing you can do about it. None of the mysteries the game poses get resolved in any way (except who the killer is, but the killer has no motive other than "I'm craaaaazy"). You can even reach the bad end without realizing that it is the bad end, because you have no particular reason to care about one character over the other when they fight.

[abstauber]

@Arj0n: The act always broke the immersion for me. You could only finish an act if you did all things needed for it. Unfortunately only Roberta knew which thing that would be. So when you follow a line of clues, you always run against "act-walls" and have to finish other minor important stuff before you could progress further.

@Radiant: First of all: The guy in the suit is always the bad guy The plot certainly is cliché - no doubt about that. But all murder mystery is somehow and I actually expect all those characters to die. You could already tell at the dining table that next time you only need half the dishes
But yeah, the main murderer had pretty lame reasons for doing what has to be done - apart from that this was my first game featuring a pile of corpses Not to mention that epic Roland LAPC-I scream... yes, I'm not objective anymore

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Wow, that review is pretty scathing.  Normally I wouldn't disagree with anyone who criticized a Sierra game but bringing up cliches with a WHODUNIT?  Really?  Based on this review this guy must shit-talk about every Agatha Christie novel and game adaptation, too, because they are all formulaic, by-the-numbers mysteries where the protagonist often wades through a hill of corpses before he finds out the villain is someone they had no reason to suspect (but the reader/player probably did).

This is not a defense of the game but rather a criticism of Matt McGrath and his apparent ignorance about how most whodunits work, the typically one-dimensional characters which the author discards like fodder for the the killer, red herrings galore, and so on.  It reads more like he's being sensationalist than honest.

Quick summary of his review:  I wasn't expecting a generic murder mystery!  This is shit!

[Blackthorne]

Yeah, The Colonel's Bequest is a murder mystery, but it's done in a style pastiche with a touch of humor.  The cliched and cardboard characters, with their punny names on celebrities of the era, are part of the fun.  It's really supposed to be a fun who-done it game.  Like a game of Clue you'd play with your friends.

Bt

[mkennedy]

.... I am sure that Roberta made Lillian the killer because she was
the least likely suspect (other than the pets, of course.) ....

If she wanted to really have a suspect the player would never suspect she would have made Laura Bow the killer!

[OneDollar]

It's one of the only Sierra adventure games I've actually enjoyed playing. I agree with a lot of the negatives that have been said, and I never got the good ending myself (watched a let's play instead), but I thought it was unique and fun.

My main complaint was that there were a lot of things that were easy to miss. The clock/act system implies that the game won't advance without you witnessing certain scenes, but often something will be going on and you WILL miss it unless you're in that exact location at that exact time. Otherwise I thought the act system gave a nice sense of progression (and also told you that someone else had probably been murdered when it advanced). Without the time advancing you'd have to trek through the entire house everytime you did/saw something just to see if any characters had moved. Also for some reason I really like time as a gameplay device*.

I liked the lists of things you'd found/missed and advice it gave you at the end so that you could look out for things on a further playthrough. On the whole I thought the puzzles were logical and there weren't *that* many walking deads/stupid deaths (for a Sierra game). I didn't mind that the characters were one dimensional and clichéd, it's framed as a murder mystery play so I was kind of expecting that. Lillian did feel like a bit of a cheep shot though.

I dunno, I guess I liked it because I like detective/murder mysteries and the game was different to anything I'd played before. I probably love the idea and potential of Laura Bow more than the actual game. If I had more talent and time I'd make a game using some of the Laura Bow ideas/themes, but my writing is worse than Roberta Williams'.

*This is your cue to tell me I should play The Last Express.

[Secret Fawful]

Cons? What cons? The idea behind the game was to play through a typical murder mystery on the PC. It was an extension, if you will, of Mystery House. I don't really see the cons as cons. The only complaint I might have about the game is the exploitation of a mentally challenged person as the "bad guy".

[Radiant]

From a typical murder mystery, I would expect that through careful examination of the scene and interrogation of suspects, you find out who the murderer is; and that the goal of the game is bringing this murderer to justice. In TCB, nothing of the sort happens. Roberta may have tried to write a murder mystery, but what she ended up writing is a typical slasher movie: a bunch of people are in a remote location, that die one by one at the hand of a psycho.

[Secret Fawful]

That's a fair criticism, but the line here is pretty thin. I have a hard time not thinking the game is so cliche it's on purpose, with it's liberal use of things like secret passages, tombs, cemeteries, hedge mazes, plantations, and spooky swamps. The game does indeed have its slasher moments, but I think that comes more from the fact that it is an homage as well to things like Psycho. And some slasher stories, such as Dario Argento's Phenomena, can also be murder mysteries.

Is TCB a good mystery, or an original one? Eh, no, but it is fun, and in terms of mechanics, I wish more adventure games in the mystery or horror genres had followed it. I still need to give Laura Bow 2 a shot.

[Laukku]

The idea of time passing (relatively) independently is really good IMO, but yeah, the story and characters are pretty flat, even more so by today's standards. I do think that the gameplay outweighs the cons, though. I love the nonlinearity, and I wish more adventure games leaned in that direction. For comparison, I recently played Murder on the Orient Express, which was an annoying chain of compulsory tasks. This article came to mind multiple times while playing it. Although some puzzles could be solved in any order, everything had to absolutely be done or the game would not progress. Colonel's Bequest at least allowed a great deal of freedom, even allowing you to miss crucial stuff (which only leads to a bad ending and/or less points).

Adventure games are often too linear, with only one way to solve puzzles (and order to solve them in), no branching storylines, and so on. Where's the experimentation? The genre has been too stuck in a decades-old formula. Heck, even the original King's Quest had great replay value due to the many ways to solve puzzles in.