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Cheet Sheets 1995 July
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2UESTREV.TXT
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1995-07-07
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~Quest For Glory
1
QUEST.PCX
Reviewed by Martin Keen
A man walks into a doctor's surgery complaining of ill health. The
doctor gives the man an overall check-up but cannot find the cause of
the problem.
"Have you been eating well?" the doctor asked.
"Actually I haven't" the man replied, "I've only been eating snooker
balls."
The doctor was puzzled.
"Well" continued the man, "I ate 3 red balls on Monday, a black and
pink on Tuesday, and a brown, yellow and blue on Wednesday".
"Oh, I see the problem" said the doctor, "you haven't been eating
enough greens!"
Ahem... just a little joke to lighten the review. To clear up any
confusion I may have caused Quest For Glory is not a snooker game, or
even a pool simulator. It is actually a graphic adventure from those
nice people at Sierra.
For those not in the know Sierra doesn't actually produce games, it
produces series. If they bring out a game that doesn't have a number
as the last part of its title then you can be pretty sure it the first
in a long line of titles based on the characters in the particluar
game. Kings Quest 7, Space Quest 6, Leisure Suit Larry 6. The list is
seemingly endless. Far be it from Sierra to look a gift horse in the
mouth. If a game is successful the programmers will not only look the
animal right in its eyes, they'll flog it to death until every last
bit of life has been wringed from its body.
Its quite easy to see if this particular game is any good. Just take
a look at Sierra's back catalogue. Quest For Glory only spawned two
sequels which in comparison to their other titles is rather lacking
so you could probably assume that Quest must be pretty rubbish. You'd
almost be right.
As this is a review of Quest For Glory 1 (which is probably available
for a budget price now - it's been knocking around for a couple of
years) a brief description of the game is in order. The twist on this
graphic adventure is it has a RPG element where you can pick your
characters attributes like magic ability, strength, and intelligence
which all become relevant when you are in a fight. The rest of the
game is just what you'd expect: wandering from location to location,
talking to people, solving puzzles, (and because this is a Sierra
product) restoring a saved game after you've been killed yet again
for nothing other than curiosity. The graphics though are superb,
and the music is appropriately twee.
There is probably no need to say any more. You should know exactly
what to expect. If you've played one Sierra series then you might as
well have played them all. They all have high production values, but
girly plots, and such poor game design you can almost be certain that
during some point of your playing time you will get in an "impossible
situation" where you need an object from a location you visited
earlier in the game which is now inaccessable. Sudden death gameplay
is quite annoying enough as it is, but when you've been playing a game
for 40 hours only to find you can't quite complete it because you
didn't buy the pickaxe in the armory right at the beginning of the
game things become very annoying indeed. And there is really no excuse
for that sort of thing - its just plain bad game design.
Whats really annoying is Sierra is very close to being the producer of
some of the best games in the genre. But the poor (or lack of) humour,
sudden death gameplay, and regular occurances of those "impossible
situations" brings down its products from being great to simply
above average. Its been the same old story for years, yet they STILL
haven't seemed to have got the message.
If Jane Jensen and her pals would just take heed of the LucasArts game
philosophy (which says you buy games to be entertained, not to be
whacked over the head every time you make a mistake or pick up a sharp
object) Sierra might be able to seriously rival the likes of Sam And
Max, and Full Throttle. But while they keep churning out the same old
stuff, and while the Americans keep buying it up, some of the most
talented people in the computer game industry will continue to waste
their efforts on flawed products.
Once you've gone through the LucasArts back catalogue don't rush off
to buy too many Sierra adventures. You'd get more entertainment
telling a few jokes down the pub (even ones as bad as that snooker
gag!).
Text Copyright (c) 1995 Eurowave Leisure Ltd.