Right… and if you’re a fast typist, it’s much quicker to type “move rock” than to point and click with the mouse.
I hadn’t thought about it before but you’re totally right about not being limited to clickable objects. Something that can bum me out in Monkey Island or similar PnC games is getting to a new room and being excited. … only to realize it’s mostly background art and only 3 things are clickable.
But in Sierra games you have to walk beside the object to use it. Even if you are quick typing “move rock”, point and click would be still much faster - and less frustrating: I don’t know how often I cried out: “But I’m standing in front of it!”. 
Yes! If this were the case I would go back and play them a lot more… if someone could take the existing ones and just program away the dead ends, etc. that would be amazing.
The Two Guy’s SpaceVenture, if it ever comes out, should be the closest we get to a LA type of Space Quest, as they have said they won’t use dead-ends, etc. like they did in SQ.
I think it starts off amazingly, though I found it really tough and also I seem to remember it didn’t have the scope of the others, in terms of locations. I think if I had played it first I would have liked it a lot as well, as an introduction to the series… it’s just having played IV and I first, it seemed a step backward.
To me, KQ1 is mainly interesting to play from a historical perspective, to see how they went about doing puzzles and everything at that time, but some parts are almost too random to play without a walkthrough.
Glad someone else liked KQ2, to me it is the most enjoyable, but it never really gets mentioned much.
I made myself finish the whole thing, partially with a walkthrough (I just wanted to complete the whole series a few years back)… after the timer part, it actually gets pretty great, it’s just the timer part is so terrible that you can’t really ever recommend it to anyone.
Yeah, and it kind of ruins the surprise to know what you can and can’t interact with, without any interaction on the player’s part first.
Oh yeah, I forgot that. That was a bit annoying. But sometimes funny
That’s why Sierra games got me nervous…
Yeah, it looks quite a good mix. The screenshots and snippets of gameplay I’ve seen along the way look promising, but…
…mm hm.
I think that’s why I struggled with it. It’s too disjointed. I guess conversely to my earlier point about nostalgia, playing an old game like that today has the opposite effect - it feels a bit crap. I feel like I should see it through and finish it, but I’m going to need a walkthrough.
I will give Zak a try if you play all the King’s Quests, Space Quests, Police Quests, and Leisure Suit Larrys…
I have played LSL 1, king quest 1. Funny to play with a walkthrough, for me.
Guys, you know what would be nice? If someone could list here all the unfair puzzles of SQ, Larry, King’s quest, and Zak (if any). For example, I have read that, in Space Quest 2, if you trade something with something else, then much later you end up in a dead end. I want to know these things in advance, before I start playing, because then I will be careful not to trade that thing when the time comes. And it’s not a giveaway, because that was not even a puzzle, just a game flaw, from my perspective.
It would be easier to list all the fair puzzles. 
To be serious: There are a lot of unfair puzzles, including timed events. For example in the Space Quest games there are several mazes. If you take the wrong path, you are dead.
LSL2 had a similar puzzle: If you take that particular object, Larry dies later in the game.
When I played through the King’s Quest games, I used this site that lists all the dead-end “no-win” things you can do in each game - Dead end | King's Quest Omnipedia | Fandom
It was really helpful and for most of them I read that beforehand… it spoils a few puzzles, but it’s worth it because then you can relax playing the rest of the game…
I don’t know if there is something similar for SQ, Larry, and Zak…
Space Quest dead ends:
This is very true, and why the Lucas verb interface is superior.
But I still like the illusion of open-ness that the text commands give you. It retains some of the feeling of a Zork text adventure.
Theoretically you can type all kinds of wacky things just to see what will happen. Even though in the Sierra world, you usually just get responses like:
Try something else, Sir.
or
I don’t know what the definition of “is” is.
Well then beep you!
or
Would you want your mother to hear you say that?
I loved that they factored in commands that would warrant that response.
You know, not that I did that.
Well, if the main goal was to make players call the Sierra hint line, I would say that those weren’t game flaws.
That was the reason why I never enjoyed that type of adventure game. That kind of difficulty is “difficulty by obscurity”.
I’ve always enjoyed making deductions and solving logical puzzles and this implies that the game has to give me a few information so that it’s technically possible to understand what the next step is. On the contrary a “difficulty by obscurity” game just leaves the player free to try random stuff, with no or few leads; it may be pleasing to other players, but that “random” part is definitely not my cup of tea.
Everything in that screenshot suggests that I could never play this game. Every shiny pixel of it radiates frustration.
What I have observed is that some players like to find in a room just the objects that are needed to solve puzzles, while other players would appreciate a larger (but useless) quantity of interactive items.
It would be interesting to understand how useless object affect the gameplay of modern adventure games. Did the stuffed chinchilla in Thimbleweed Park mislead some players? Is it OK for today standards to show useless objects to players or do modern players expect to get only items that play a role in the narrative?
Yeah, it’s a shame, as the rest of the game is good. SQ3 is even worse for that - there’s a fight sequence that is not only ridiculously difficult but also glitchy. I don’t know why they always included those bits - if people wanted to play that kind of quick-time game they wouldn’t be playing an adventure/point-and-click.
I think that some people like hybrid genre games. Machinarium, for example, has a few arcade mini-games in it. They are not difficult, but they can be boring for those who would prefer a game based just on narrative and puzzles.
This is an upcoming PnC adventure game which has also action sequences: Theropods.
@All : What about Sierra’s “Quest for Glory” series? Can these games be considered point-and-click adventure games, at least in part?
There is a free game called “Heroine’s Quest: The Herald of Ragnarok”. It seems amateurish, in some aspects, but I think that it is a good homage to Quest for Glory:
Of course. It´s a mix, the RPG elements are there but not particular strong IIRC.
I came to Lucas Arts titles pretty late, my original adventure gaming fix was almost exclusively concentrated on Sierra series (and a dash of Coktel Vision).
My top three remain Conquest of Camelot and Laura Bow (the first one) and GK2.