Media Share 9/MEDIASHARE_09.ISO/private/mpc93mar.zip/KQV.DAT

Text File | 1993-02-18 | 11KB | 187 lines

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          ░░░▒ █ █ █ ▒ ░░░░               King's Quest V
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            ░▒▒█■████▒▒░░        by Tom Petrocelli, Buffalo PCUG
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     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
     "Kings Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder" is the fifth
     installment in a very popular series of fantasy/adventure games that
     stretches back to the early 1980's. The King's Quest series is not
     only a classic example of the genre, but it also helped to define it.
     These games also draw from classic elements of mythology such as the
     hero's journey, shaman figures and the duty to vanquish evil. These
     elements contribute heavily to the games' appeal, in conjunction with
     the marvelous humor and exciting graphics usually found in all Sierra
     games.

     In general, I really don't like this type of game. I usually get bored
     with them all too soon, and get tired of thrashing about aimlessly to
     find some particular piece of an all-important puzzle. It is
     discouraging that to win a game of this ilk is to also render it
     obsolete.

     My preference lies with the strategy and tactics games that continue
     forever and vary considerably every time you play. I mention this to
     expose my own prejudices toward games of this sort, so that this bias
     doesn't color the attitudes of others. First things first. The
     installation. Smooth and simple are the best ways to describe the
     installation procedure of this games. You change to the floppy drive,
     type install, answer a few short questions, and it does the rest.
     After that, all you do is change disks when prompted. This happens
     quite often as there are nine disks to change.

     The program interrogates your system to determine your hardware and
     automatically configures the system accordingly. Ther e are two
     complaints I have with the installation. First, it is somewhat
     presumptuous. If you don't already have a directory called Sierra on
     your target disk, the program goes ahead and makes one, then creates a
     subdirectory for its own particular software within that subdirectory.
     What if you want it somewhere else, perhaps in another directory? As
     they say on "Wayne's World," NOT! I had to use the Norton Utilities
     NCD program's prune and graft utility to move the directory to the one
     I keep my games in. The installation program s hould have asked me
     first.

     The second thing I didn't like about the installation was it was
     messy. It goes to the trouble of checking with the computer and human
     installer as to what graphics driver, sound cards, and input devices
     are present, but then copies them all to the hard disk anyway. I found
     it necessary to delete these files, which can cause real problems if
     you delete the wrong ones. The game itself is a take on the old "save
     the family" story. King Graham's whole family (and his castle to boot)
     has been snatched by a rather annoyed wizard. Graham must make his way
     across mountains to the wizard and defeat him before the ever so
     impatient wizard decides to waste the whole family. The wizard has
     shrunk the family down to mouse-size and is going to feed them to his
     cat if Graham can't get there in time (anyone see Dorothy and Toto
     around?). Graham, of course blunders around, doing many irrelevant
     things until he can confront the wizard and save the day.

     The play doesn't differ greatly from any of King's Quest's
     predecessors. You move the good king around a scene and when he gets
     to the edge, he walks onto another scene. It's not unlike a comic
     strip where the action occurs in distinct, self-contained panels.
     Along the way, Graham can pick things up, put them down, talk to
     strange and interesting people (and creatures) and have many horrible
     things happen to him. In the first few hours that I played the game,
     Graham: fell off a cliff, was eaten by a large plant, killed by a
     scorpion, turned into a frog, murdered by thugs and bitten by a
     poisonous snake. Nasty!

     Things have been jazzed up considerably from the days of the first
     King's Quest game and the interface has evolved in a positive way. You
     can use a mouse to do everything. The left button is used to choose an
     action (walk here, talk to this person, etc.) and the right button is
     used to change the cursor type. The cursor type defines the type of
     action taken, so there is a cursor to denote walking mode, talking
     mode, "do something" mode (pick up, drop, open), use the current
     object and look. If you move th cursor to the top of the screen a
     series of large icons appears that you can click on to do other
     functions. Some change the mode, others save and restore games, change
     the active item in your inventory, and pause and stop the game. It's
     very easy to use.

     The most outstanding feature of this game is its graphics. The screens
     are beautifully painted in 256 colors. It is almost like being in a
     child's storybook. The imagery is rich in detail and tone. You can
     truly sense the proper "feel" for each area. Even the character icons
     like Graham and his faithful pet owl are detailed and recognizable.
     Interactions within each scene are handled with a small popup window.
     This occurs whenever Graham talks or enters a building. The graphics
     are some of the best and most beautiful I have ever encountered in a
     computer game.

     The soundtrack is good, but not great. I've heard better. Of course, I
     can only use my PC speaker. Not nearly as many people have Sound
     Blaster or Adlib cards as game companies seem to think, and if it
     sounds better using a sound card, then the rest of us won't ever know
     it. Still it's entertaining enough, and you can shut if off easily
     enough if you don't care for it. After a while I found it annoying and
     did. In playing this game I still find my old complaints about the
     genre popping up. I dislike the fact that if is easy to overlook
     something, and have to thrash about for an hour looking for something
     you previously overlooked. There is no hint mechanism here that tells
     you anything beyond the obvious. I would have preferred something like
     the help feature in Martian Memorandum, which will give you a stronger
     hint if you keep asking. I know that sounds like cheating, but I
     really detest being stuck at some minor juncture for want of one
     stupid item that I missed previously.

     I don't particularly like the "scene" arrangement. It breaks up the
     flow of the games, switching constantly from one scene to another.
     It's too easy to accidentally walk into another scene and then have to
     walk back again, a slow process on my computer. It's like insisting on
     recording your vacation on slides when you own a camcorder; it's an
     old fashioned technique that should be abandoned. A major concern for
     anyone who is considering buying this game is whether or not your
     computer has the horsepower to handle it. Complex graphics require
     resources. This is by far the largest game in terms of disk space that
     I have ever encountered that didn't come on CD-ROM (although I
     understand there is a version on CD-ROM). If you want 256 color
     graphics (and who wouldn't) you will give up over 9 megabytes of disk
     space. Whew! That's a lot!

     On a 386, this game would move pretty well, but on a 286 performance
     is almost unacceptable. When moving from scene to scene, the program
     has to often read a graphic from disk (slow!) and paint the screen,
     all 640 by 480 pixels worth (that's about 600K of information). This
     can bring a 286 to its knees, even with a fast hard drive. You can use
     a 16 color version that takes less disk space and would be faster, but
     then you lose one of the chief reasons for playing this game, the
     wonderful graphics. There is one thing that I think needs to be said
     about this game and all of the games that Roberta Williams designs for
     Sierra. They do seem to show a more feminine approach to game design.
     This is not meant in a sexist way, but in the most positive way. The
     game emphasizes beauty, honor, and fantasy of the best kind. The
     male-designed games tend to be more violent and frightening. This is a
     game the whole family could enjoy. It won't give the kids nightmares
     or offend anyone, yet is n't sappy.

     There is not much to be said about the documentation other than it
     looks nice. It has very little useful information other than how to
     install the program, which is pretty straightforward anyway, and a
     synopsis of the five previous games and a short introduction to the
     current game. The latter isn't even necessary. The introductory scenes
     in the game itself give you more information. There are also a few
     numbers here for technical support and the Sierra BBS and how to get
     hints on major on-line services like Compuserve and Prodigy, something
     I think is worthwhile.

     All in all, this game is fun for people who like adventure games. The
     graphics are wonderful, even if they are a bit slow, and the game
     challenging. The fantasy, almost storybook quality to King's Quest V
     will make this a winner with the kids, assuming that you are around to
     help them through it (or they are substantially more intelligent than
     I am). A real family game.

                        Technical Specifications:

                        RAM - 640K (not kidding!)
          Disk Space - 9 megabytes for the 256 color version
                       6 megabytes for the 16 color version
          Sound - Adlib, PS/1 sound, PC Speaker, Game Blaster,
                  Roland (MT-36, LAPC-1, CM-32L) and Sound Blaster
          Game Control - Keyboard, Mouse and Joystick
          Graphics - 256 and 16 color VGA graphics (EGA and
                       Tandy available separately)

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