Not sure where exactly reviews should go but I have the urge to vent my proverbial.
A nice lengthy (ish) review of Kings Quest VGA for you. So, grab a cup of warm, leaf-infused liquid and read. Then post back and complain or something.
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Let me set things straight first, before I warp things beyond recognition: I know a good thing when I see it. A game that is released to the general public for free, made by a team of dedicated artists, coders and writers is a good thing. So, in fact, was this girl I once loved. She was smart, she was funny, she was beautiful. She was an utter bastard.
Um, sorry? What was that?
She was a complete git. For all her good qualities, she managed to completely defy convention and still be a bad person. I almost feel terrible being able to label her as such. For months I tried to force myself to accept her at face value - as the intelligent, wonderful person she was - but there was just one facet of her personality that tainted the rest, poisoning her very being.
To cut a long allegory short, King's Quest VGA is Verity King.
The graphics are a sight to behold. The music is lovingly crafted. The dialogue is well voice acted. Yet - and a part of myself is still trying to force me not to say this - the gameplay is so bad I can only loathe, hate and despise it.
There. I said it. I hate this game. This game is so bad, were I to throw it into the abyss of my own despair, the abyss would throw it back.
At times, gameplay reaches such a level I doubled up, laughing at how glaringly bad it is. Within the first six seconds of play after the introductory sequence I was dead. I was utterly astonished. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Established gaming theory states to go easy on the player early on and increment the difficulty as the game progresses. You're not supposed to just *die*. There at least has to be a good reason. Maybe even a warning, perhaps? Nope. The game then goes on to effectively ridicules your apparent stupidity.
It doesn't stop there either. Attempts at exploration are also rudely interrupted with the ever-present onset of death, be it at the hands of a gingerbread-loving witch, falling off overgrown plantlife or being flattened by a rock for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever. What can the player possibly gain from dying so often and so pointlessly?
It almost makes it hard to believe how much of a breath of fresh air games like Monkey Island were to this. I can't say I was around to play KQ in it's original incarnation, but perhaps that's a good thing. I am, to an extent, free of the shackles of nostalgia. Free to scrutinise the game for what it is, rather than what its status as a groundbreaking title has lead us to believe it to be. As a piece of nostalgia KQVGA succeeds. As a game it fails.
This is a valient attempt to fuse the gameplay of a prehistoric adventure with the graphical prowess of games made many years later, producing something that just doesn't work. Gaming as a form of entertainment and expression has long since outgrown the misconceptions of enjoyment this game shapes its foundations from. Some people, however, just can't let go. And they should.
In closing, KQVGA is like wallpapering Chernobyl: it looks better, but its still Chernobyl.
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A nice lengthy (ish) review of Kings Quest VGA for you. So, grab a cup of warm, leaf-infused liquid and read. Then post back and complain or something.
----------------------
Let me set things straight first, before I warp things beyond recognition: I know a good thing when I see it. A game that is released to the general public for free, made by a team of dedicated artists, coders and writers is a good thing. So, in fact, was this girl I once loved. She was smart, she was funny, she was beautiful. She was an utter bastard.
Um, sorry? What was that?
She was a complete git. For all her good qualities, she managed to completely defy convention and still be a bad person. I almost feel terrible being able to label her as such. For months I tried to force myself to accept her at face value - as the intelligent, wonderful person she was - but there was just one facet of her personality that tainted the rest, poisoning her very being.
To cut a long allegory short, King's Quest VGA is Verity King.
The graphics are a sight to behold. The music is lovingly crafted. The dialogue is well voice acted. Yet - and a part of myself is still trying to force me not to say this - the gameplay is so bad I can only loathe, hate and despise it.
There. I said it. I hate this game. This game is so bad, were I to throw it into the abyss of my own despair, the abyss would throw it back.
At times, gameplay reaches such a level I doubled up, laughing at how glaringly bad it is. Within the first six seconds of play after the introductory sequence I was dead. I was utterly astonished. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Established gaming theory states to go easy on the player early on and increment the difficulty as the game progresses. You're not supposed to just *die*. There at least has to be a good reason. Maybe even a warning, perhaps? Nope. The game then goes on to effectively ridicules your apparent stupidity.
It doesn't stop there either. Attempts at exploration are also rudely interrupted with the ever-present onset of death, be it at the hands of a gingerbread-loving witch, falling off overgrown plantlife or being flattened by a rock for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever. What can the player possibly gain from dying so often and so pointlessly?
It almost makes it hard to believe how much of a breath of fresh air games like Monkey Island were to this. I can't say I was around to play KQ in it's original incarnation, but perhaps that's a good thing. I am, to an extent, free of the shackles of nostalgia. Free to scrutinise the game for what it is, rather than what its status as a groundbreaking title has lead us to believe it to be. As a piece of nostalgia KQVGA succeeds. As a game it fails.
This is a valient attempt to fuse the gameplay of a prehistoric adventure with the graphical prowess of games made many years later, producing something that just doesn't work. Gaming as a form of entertainment and expression has long since outgrown the misconceptions of enjoyment this game shapes its foundations from. Some people, however, just can't let go. And they should.
In closing, KQVGA is like wallpapering Chernobyl: it looks better, but its still Chernobyl.
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