Which Sierra games do you like?

The Space Quest games are replete with funny dying situations, which were intended to poke fun at Sierra’s other games. They were graphic in a cartoony way, and were followed by some sarcastic remark. They brutally exaggerated the arbitrary and frustrating deaths of the King’s Quest games.

I’d like to stress that this was very much on purpose and part of the charm of the game. As every new game in the series came out, you found yourself seeking ways to die (making sure to save before) to see what Roger Wilco (the main character) would do or to see how he would react. It seldom disappointed in that regard.

Now, the problem was that some of those deaths were not just incidental, like falling off a cliff or drinking something that clearly warned you not to. Some where actually part of the main game puzzle logic, in which you had to die to advance your understanding of the environment and be able to move forward.

My biggest problem wasn’t that, though. My biggest complaint was regarding the many arbitrary puzzles and interface quirks. As someone mentioned before, you had to be facing the right way and next to an object in order for the game to respond properly. The text parser was also very terse, and lead to many fights with the interface like that classic Gilbert example of trying to pick up a bush.

In some situations, if you were one or two pixels off, the game would not acknowledge the interaction or give you a response that was not useful, and you would just miss an entirely important element of a puzzle. This is infuriatingly frustrating! :angry:

Some puzzles made no sense at all. They required you to carry a specific item or perform a specific action or series of actions for which you had no possible motivation other than “the designers thought it would be funny.” We’re talking worse than rubber chicken with a pulley in the middle here – imagine if you had to also figure out that you needed to paint the rubber chicken blue and find a pretzel, all before being able to use it. Yeah, that bad.

Then there were the timed “action” sequences, where you had to control the character/ship/cursor/etc. in a precise, accurate, and careful manner for which the UI was utterly unsuited. Imagine the Thimbleweed Park arcade games with less responsive controls, as a key element in order to solve a puzzle. Absurd!

However, having said all that, the story, locations, graphics, and jokes were indeed very interesting. In my opinion, the humour was witty and irreverent, and more than a bit cheeky. It kept you wondering what else comes next, and made up for most of the transgressions. Mostly.

One of my favorite jokes/puzzles when I was younger is a can of Dehydrated Water, which you find in a survival kit. It says “HO, just add air” (i.e., it’s missing one “O” from “H2O,” which the ambient air can supply). It’s silly and nerdy, and pure Space Quest. Hilarious! :slight_smile:

It is important that you all understand that most of these quirks were par for the course in most adventure games of the time. None of these flaws were Space Quest specific. What SQ did was wrap them around a layer of sarcastic and zany humour, which helped soften the edge a bit. SQ games tried to kill you a lot, just like any other adventure game – they just did it in a funny and clever way, with lots of style and sometimes a little cynicism, but all in good fun. You knew they were parodying a similar situation from some other game, just with a funny twist.

I have very fond memories of playing these games, and armed with a hint guide (not a walk-through) they are indeed very entertaining. You just have to be ready to accept the insta-deaths and arbitrary sequences. As they say, save fast, save often; pick up everything that is not bolted down; and try everything with everything.

dZ.

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I think this sums all Sierra adventures up:

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That’s hilarious!!! (And so true!!) :laughing:

The thing is that, that was already there in Sierra games. The Space Quest designers added funny and sarcastic comments for each death to parody that. It helped make it more entertaining, but you still had to save-die-restore over and over to pass such sequences.

It’s funny for the first three times, the other 100 are pure *beeping* frustration. :angry:

Thankfully, there were only less than a handful of such sequences in each otherwise sprawling game, so there was much more than that. Some felt almost impossible, but once through, you could enjoy the rest of the game.

That’s not an excuse, but I wish to point out that there is a lot to like in these games, and that the fans are not in it for some masochistic punishment fetish.

dZ.

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I’m absolutely sure that to most modern gamers this kind of saving/restoring-centered gameplay would be considered just a titanic design flaw.

Of course. I wouldn’t recommend any Sierra game to modern gamers. I would recommend it to classic adventure gamers, though.

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This is very funny! :rofl:

David Fox has recently said here

that Sierra developers shared with the company the revenues from the telephone hint-line :joy::rofl:
which tells you how sadic and with a second purpose was sometimes their design!
There’s also a parody of it in Monkey Island 2:

Unfortunately, I’m aware of that. :frowning: Christy Marx (“Conquests of the Longbow”) said:

There were designers at Sierra when I started there who would deliberately make some of their puzzles difficult or even nonsensical in order to sell more hint books (designers got a cut on the sales of hint books). I was appalled by that attitude. I wanted every piece of my game to fit within the logic of the story and be reasonable to figure out. It didn’t have to be easy, but as a designer I felt I owed the player the courtesy of something that made sense.
(Source)

That’s not a parody of Sierra’s hint line, that’s a reference to LucasArts hint line (they also had one).

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Really? I didn’t know that. Ha! Never got the meaning of that part in MI2, and eventually I thought I got it as an external reference…

Just to clarify: You can actually play Stair Quest:
https://www.nomorefortoday.com/stairquest

Reading this I feel very discouraged from giving these games another try.

But why did this work as a commercial strategy? Didn’t they think “we’ll make more money from the hint line, but we’ll make less money due to forgone sales”. As a long term strategy this seems suicidal to me. Maybe they believed that marketing is the major factor influencing sales, and quality is unimportant…

Although I have to say I played KQ1 and Larry 2, 20+ years ago, without any hint or walkthrough. I didn’t finish them, but I think I got close to finishing both. In KQ1 I finished almost all the puzzles on land, then arrived in the clouds and got stuck. In Larry 2, I was able to get past the cruise on my own. Then got stuck, probably because I did not pick up something. These games didn’t seem to me to be unfair, just very difficult. But of course since I didn’t finish them, I can’t say they aren’t. AFAIK the unfair puzzles could be exactly the reason why I could not finish them.

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People would have bought the games anyway, because in those years that kind of gameplay was accepted and maybe also because the competition wasn’t tough as it is today. Sierra could “afford” to design the games in that way.

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And even later, when the “good” games came out (Monkey1), they didn’t sell more, but far less. This suggests that, yes, people would have bought the games anyway, and marketing is almost the only thing that matters. :frowning:

I think that the gaming culture of that period of time played a very big role. When more “modern” adventure games were published some people lamented their simplicity. I remember reading an old review in which the fact that the player couldn’t die was considered a negative aspect of the game.

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Sierra games have this bad reputation, but when you actually play them and get into them, I find that those things that seemed scary become a non-issue… like you’re expecting this terrible experience, but it’s mostly really good.

It seems intimidating with “loads of arbitrary deaths, plus dead-ends!” so you build it up in your mind as this crazy game, but mostly they’re pretty straightforward… if you look up the few dead-ends beforehand and just save pretty often, then it’s great.

For me, I found Maniac Mansion a lot more frustrating and random than the Sierra games, because it’s so open and it lets you do more random things that don’t help you… the only Sierra game that is like that is KQ1, and even that is more obvious in its goals.

The only one I’d really avoid is KQ3, as the timer makes it crazy. If there was no timer, the actual stuff you’re doing is pretty good/enjoyable.

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Maniac Mansion

“Staircase out of order”

If Maniac Mansion was a Sierra Game:

“Dave walked up the spiral staircase, a step broke, he fell down, broke his neck and died. GAME OVER”

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I can understand that the gaming culture believed that dying was a good thing. After all, in arcade games this was normal. You learn by dying. (Do you remember “Rick Dangerous”?).

But I can’t believe that the gaming culture believed that illogical puzzles were a good thing.

Sweet dreams are made of this
who am I to disagree
I’ve travell’d the world and the seven seas
everybody’s looking for something…

Some of them want to use you
some of them want to get used by you
some of them want to abuse you
some of them want to be abused…

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Don’t switch the blade on the guy in shades, oh no
Don’t masquerade with the guy in shades, oh no
I can’t believe it
'Cause you got it made with the guy in shades, oh no

Oh wait a minute…I always mix those two up! :upside_down_face:

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I agree, and that’s what made it acceptable to me. It was part of the style and humour, and often was a bit deserved. Especially if you got complacent and tried everything with everything without using any logic. It didn’t mollycoddle.

I didn’t know this was them parodying their other games, though.

Apart from that jagged piece of metal :wink:

Edit: Oh wait, it does have bolts in it actually

sciv_095

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I actually prefer the guitar riff on that one. And the Swayze-80s seriousness :sunglasses:

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