Space Quest 5 -- Need help with something (not hints)

[Uhfgood]

Okay this is just bugging me.  After saving Ambassador Wankmeister you're supposed to catch up to the Goliath (now manned by a mutated Captain Quirk) -- only, there's no clue as to where i'm supposed to go to find the goliath.  (This is after you've been through the genetix labs) -- So I look online, and I look at every single hint and walkthrough I can find, which tells you the exact coordinates but not how you get this information.  How does the player find out what planet to go to next?

Anyone who can figure this out will get my congratulations ;-)

[GarageGothic]

If you just mean where do you get the coordinates, they're in the manual. It's part of the game's copy protection. If you mean why you're going to Gingivitis to find the Goliath, I don't have a clue - it's been 12+ years since I played it.

[smiley]

You have to ask W-D40 to scan for ships.

[MrColossal]

I recommend searching here before starting posts about commercial game hints.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/

or here

http://www.uhs-hints.com/uhsweb/sq5.php

[Uhfgood]

smiley - usually when I "command" wd40 it says something to the effect of I can't take command of the situation.  However I will attempt to do it again.  It is possible that i'm not clicking on the right hotspot to command wd40 -- if I just talk to wd40 she tells me "the plan".

MrColossal - I wasn't looking for a hint as to what to do next.  I looked in alot of faq's and walkthroughs -- I know exactly where to go.  I wanted to know why you were going there, it's something that most of these sites don't tell you, they just tell you exactly what to do.

GarageGothic - Yes exactly what i wanted to know why am I going to Gingivitis to find the goliath....  And I think smiley has given me what I needed to know, assuming it works (when usually it's failed).

[Uhfgood]

Little did I realize there's buttons next to roger's right hand that I can use.  This is how I'm supposed to get wd40 to tell me i need to go to gingivitis (or whatever 81100 happens to be in the version you have).  To me this is a design problem, although it's very possible I could have missed some instructions somewhere.  The manual that comes with the space quest collection (the new one) for 1-5 is actually the one from the old collection.  It merely tells you how to get started at first, and then goes on about copy protection. 

So finally I tracked down a walkthrough that tells me I can press one of those buttons, that i've never used the whole game (although I could have got wd40 to scan that one toxic planet earlier).

Thanks for the help!

[Uhfgood]

Okay I have a similar question.  In space quest 4, once you head to Ulence Flats for space quest 1, you need to do some stuff there (I won't tell you what to spoil it).  Then you don't know what to do.  Basically the walkthroughs tell you to go back to space quest 12.  My question here is, how do you know you're supposed to go back to space quest 12?

Nothing tells you other than the fact you can enter in other coordinates, and if you wrote down the original coordinates then you can go back to space quest 12.  But again, the question is how do you know you are supposed to do this without looking at a walkthrough?

[Radiant]

As I recall, nothing. It's even a dead end if you haven't written down the coordinates back when you first were in #12. SQ3 and SQ4 are designed along the philosophy of "it's an adventure game, so go everywhere you can and see if you can get to the next room" - because you don't have much of a solid reason to go to the other planets (SQ3) or spacequests (SQ4) either.

[stevetheblack]

As much as I love the Space Quest games (which I really do) this is one of the things that infuriates me about some of them.  The amount of things you are expected to know to do without any clues is ridiculous, especially in SQ4. 

There's only so many times you can see a sarcastic death screen before it becomes annoying.

[Baron]

There can never be too many sarcastic death scenes.  Ever.

[Uhfgood]

Hmm yeah.  I guess you're just supposed to explore, of course in ours we should at least give them a little hint.  I always think you should let the player know what he/she is supposed to be doing, even if you don't give them little more than that.

From what I understood of particularly Sierra games is they made it to where a hint book or the hint line was necessary.  So they could make more money.  I remember reading this somewhere about the real early ones.  King's Quest 4 is notorious for this (as i never played king's quest 1-3 originally).  You could get stuck in there bad because there was a specific sequence of events you needed to go through.

I don't remember troubles I had with space quest 3 though.  Because the parts were fairly clearly deliniated.  For instance you are on the garbage scow at first.... when you finally get off of it, you're presented with these different planets.  If you get off at Ortega without the thermal underwear then you die.  If you land on Phleebhut, you are chased around by Arnoid.   If you get the underwear and do your stuff on ortega only then will Pestulon be available to you, and you can't get passed the security measures without wearing the invisibility belt. 

Okay sorry for the spoilers but you catch my drift... in SQ3 you got an idea at least by dying.  in SQ4 if you're caught it doesn't matter if you die or not, you still don't know where to go, other than exploring where you've been to last.

[MillsJROSS]

I think part of Space Quests charm is that it didn't always give hints. Of course, there was many a time that it didn't give hints in the game, but there were subtle clues in humorous magazines that came with the game. The collection that they now sell, lacks these items, but they can be found on the internet with a quick google search.

Yes, there were infuriating moments. But those are the parts of the game I've come to love the most. I think if anything the lack of hints allows you to become more emersed in the game. You're uncomfortable with the stark reality that you're alone in space and no one is going to help you.

-MillsJROSS

[stevetheblack]

You're uncomfortable with the stark reality that you're alone in space and no one is going to help you.

You've got a point I suppose.  It just bugs me when games require you to go searching outside of themselves for you to work out what to do. 

I suppose, technically, you could claim that the extra magazines are part of the game, but if so then they really should include them with the new collections, the fact that they were left out is just laziness on Sierra's part I think.

[Uhfgood]

well no one there is going to be original sierra anyways, so they're not going to care, they're vivendi-universal games (or whoever owns them)... we're lucky they re-released them at all.

And by the way space quest 6 really stinks.  You know I don't even remember it much when I first played it, maybe I didn't get around to finishing it.  At least having a walkthrough helps.

[MillsJROSS]

While I agree SQ6 is not up to par, I will argue that the level of detail in the game is fairly nice.  There are so many jokes packed into each room. By contrast, the other SQ games seemed to lack this. Other than that, the plot wasn't compelling, and the sense of saving the universe was never present. Nor the sense that Roger was ever really in that much danger. Still, it wasn't a bad game, just not a good SQ.

-MillsJROSS

[Wellington]

I loved SQ4, and solved it without a hint book. That said, the "write down the code" thing was one of the nastiest walking deaths ever.

[m0ds]

Merged, both topics far too similar to warrant 2 seperate posts.

Cheers!

[Uhfgood]

I originally thought 4 was not quite as good as 3... I like it a bit better now, but only because i've had a chance to play it a couple of times (Plus Gary Owens narration never hurts ;-)

But 6, i mean you had no idea what to do at all in the first half.  The characters weren't compelling at all, and you're right in 6 he wasn't saving the universe really.

The graphics looked like 16 color, with all the dithering in the background (Yes I realize it was 256 color, but using dithered gradient fills everywhere just makes it look bad.

[stevetheblack]

The weird thing about SQ6 is that I really liked the demo.  In fact I liked it alot more than the full game.  It had a bit more of a SQ5 feeling about it than the full game did, being a completely original storyline that spent the entire time parodying star trek.

I think that's why I loved SQ5 so much, all the Star Trek jokes, just a shame they pretty much dropped it in 6. 

I agree with the narration for SQ4 though, my favourite part of the game I think.

[Uhfgood]

I'm also reading on the space quest 7 (fan made sequel) in their faq, someone (I assume it's Josh Mandel but I might have just read over who was being quoted), talking about how some critics of sq6 blasted it for not having a goal in the beginning, and then basically saying that the other space quests were the same way.  When I look at the earlier space quests, there's an extent to which it's true, but not really. 

In SQ1 I believe Roger is on board and comes back to find that the ship he's on has been taken over, so he at least has a mystery to go on, find out who and why these aliens are taking over the ship.  In SQ2 he's kidnapped by Sludge Vohaul, and then they crash land on a jungle-like planet, so there the immediate goal is getting off the planet.  In 3 he's in an escape pod that's been brought on board a garbage scow, so he has to find a way off of that.  In 4, some guys from the future come to help Roger get away from Vohaul again by putting him somewhere in the future, so you basically try to find a way off of space quest 12's xenon.  5 is sort of where it starts to stray (as only one guy from andromeda was involved instead of both).  But even then you start exploring, and usually most of the characters tell you where you're supposed to be (ie clean the floor, go to the classroom or whatever). 

sq6 just drops you off and then you're just supposed to explore (supposedly on shore leave, although why anyone would want to go there is beyond me ;-).  It would have helped if Roger made a comment about having to get accommodations or something (Then I would have known I was supposed to get a hotel room there).  I don't know I just feel kind of cheated. Plus you don't have any idea about the scanner/homing beacon puzzle, or especially (as at least you get some hints in the book that came with it) have no idea about the fuel intermix puzzle.  I had to look at a walkthrough, and then i pulled out my old book which showed the periodic table of elements.  Which I deduced had something to do with the codename.  (I didn't want to fully look at the walkthrough to solve the puzzle).

By the time I was toward the end, I was just relying exclusively on the walkthroughs, even though the last half of the game is not so bad.

But I think the biggest faux pas an adventure designer can make is not to give the player some kind of goal.  All of those I stated for each of the games were a starting goal, most of them didn't have anything to do with the end goal of the game.  (Like for instance space quest 3, where you get off the garbage scow, and then later learn about scumsoft which is the main plot of the game).  I just get annoyed when people go "You're playing an adventure, so go adventure."  If I want to play something where I have to figure out how to play it, i'll go play a crossword puzzle -- oh wait I already know how to play those ;-)