Tag Archives: PC Adventure Games

PC Games

Cruise For a Corpse

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Publisher: Erbe Software
Developer: Delphine Software
Year: 1991
Platform: DOS, Amiga, Atari ST

A decent mystery wrapped up in sloppy game design, the only corpse to be cruised for is the shell of a game that’s been left rotting on the promenade. On board a cruise, invited by the wealthy owner, you’re soon knocked out cold after coming upon the dead owner’s body. When you wake up you have the rest of the day to interview all of the suspects (read: everyone on board) and pin the murderer.

Because there are so few positives, let’s start with those. Delphine Software introduced their vector graphic engine that became popular in the Alone In The Dark series. While it is impressive, it is unnecessary (especially in an adventure), and the more polished sprite-based artwork of the time would have been sufficient. Some cut scenes add good flavor to the story. The dialogue is fairly banal, but it is translated from French so I’m giving it the benefit of the doubt. The plot itself is also fairly deep, with each suspect having a motive. At the end of the game, you have to accuse the perp, with the ending changing based on who you pick (with one ideal ending, of course).

Cruise for a Corpse Amiga Intro: After your arrival somebody got killed

The game itself has a Gabriel Knight time system, with the clock advancing every time you do something important.  This is fine, and actually a system that I prefer, as I become frustrated when I miss a clue because I didn’t happen to be in the right place at the right time. However, the logic the game uses to advance the clock is ridiculous beyond compare. For example, you can ask a lady about a topic at 2:00 in the afternoon and nothing happens.  But talk to her about the exact same thing a half hour later and the clock advances. Perhaps even worse, every time the clock advances, characters and items get distributed seemingly at random throughout the ship. Check that drawer and 10:00 and there’s nothing in it.  Go back to that drawer at 12:30 and you’ll find a key item you need.  Why is that item now in the drawer when it wasn’t before?  That’s an even greater mystery than the whodunit.

What these failures in logic amount to is tedious and aimless wandering throughout the ship, ruining continuity and interest in the story.  Thankfully, you can bring up a map of the ship to warp to any (unlocked) place you like, but that’s little consolation. Even playing with a walkthrough did little to relieve the boredom of this meandering investigation. Unless you have completely run out of games to play, don’t touch this corpse with a ten foot pole.

Cruise for a Corpse Amiga Exploring the ship.

PC Games

Runaway: A Road Adventure

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Publisher: Dinamic Multimedia
Developer: Pendulo Studios
Year: 2001
Platform: Windows, iOS

I think I am going to write a review now of the game Runaway: A Road Adventure. Yes! That is what I am going to do. I’ll put my fingers on the keys and type out words that describe my feelings about this game! For starters, I will tell you about the plot. Runaway was originally developed in Spain, by guys who obviously like Tim Schafer’s work on Full Throttle. I also liked Tim Schafer’s work on Full Throttle. This game emulates that one in style and graphics. However, what this game has is a stripper! Yes, a real live one, who escapes from the mob after watching her father get killed. However, during her escape, she gets hit by a car driven by Brian, a college student on his way to Berkeley. After helping her escape the hospital, she convinces him to let her tag along and solve a mystery as to why her father was killed. Sounds like fun, don’t ya think?

I really liked the concept of this game to begin with. And I’ll tell you why I liked the concept. There’s a nerdy college student, a stripper, and the mob. Though, I probably already told you that, how could this game not be great with that formula? You control Brian (that’s the main character played by you), and you get to pick up lots of random items and use them to solve puzzles! However, I didn’t like the puzzles. I’ll tell you why I didn’t like the puzzles. There are many objects very hard to find, so you spend a lot of time searching pixels instead of solving anything. Also, sometimes Brian will (realistically) not pick up an item until he has a use for it. But then sometimes, he will just pick up a random item (like a poker) hoping he can use it sometime later. I will tell you one more reason why I didn’t like the puzzles. Brian will often have an item that would easily solve a particular problem he is having, but when he tries to use that item, he is not able to. Not only that, a reason isn’t given! So Brian must find the really bizarre solution to the problem that involves tricks MacGyver wouldn’t even try. Wow, who would think one could write so much about puzzles!

Runaway: A Road Adventure Windows A very strange laboratory

The stripper–by the way her name is Gina–is cute and nice, but unfortunately, I didn’t like the way she is used in the game. I bet you want to know why, too. I didn’t like the way she is used in the game because she never actually does anything except get in trouble or get injured. So what I am trying to say is that she was just eye candy, a plot device to make the game more appealing. And, if I’m being perfectly honest, she didn’t really have that great of a personality. So that is what I think about Gina.

I will tell you one thing I did like about the game, and that is the cut scenes. I really liked the cut scenes because the graphics were nice and the underlying plot was kind of fun. But that’s all I have to say about the cut scenes.

Runaway: A Road Adventure Windows A shot of the thugs chasing Brian and Gina.

Finally, I should summarize my feelings about Runaway. So, to summarize, I will tell you that an interesting plot is made boring by uneven and mostly uninteresting puzzles along with uneven and mostly poor acting. Those are the feelings I have about this game, so you can probably guess that I will not be rushing out to play the sequel any time soon! Well, that was fun writing that review. I sure hope you enjoyed it too!

Disclaimer: The entire review was written exactly the way Brian talks, which may be the primary reason I loathe this game. Unfortunately, I don’t know whether to blame the original script writers or the translators. Amazingly, I seem to be one of the few people who feels this way, as this game is generally held in high regard.

Interactive Fiction, PC Games

The Lurking Horror

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Publisher: Infocom
Developer: Infocom
Year: 1987
Platform: Every computer ever and now smartphones

Review: One of Infocom’s most overrated titles, The Lurking Horror is essentially the company’s only foray into the horror genre. Unfortunately, it feels more like a Zorkian dungeon crawl then an atmospheric mystery (not surprising given it was written by Zork’s author). While there are some creepy parts to this college campus caper, it is mostly a disjointed puzzlefest with a smattering of Cthulhu mythos. But what really sent my annoyance through the stratosphere was a hunger daemon, illogical walking dead situations, and unrealistic inventory restrictions. Coupling that with NPCs that aren’t fleshed out and a rather abrupt and unsatisfying ending, I can’t really recommend this to those looking for a good fright.

PC Games

Star Trek: The Next Generation: A Final Unity

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Publisher: Spectrum Holobyte
Developer: Spectrum Holobyte
Year: 1995
Platform: DOS; Macintosh

With characters, actors, visuals, and sounds straight from one of my favorite television shows, I figured this game would have a hard time displeasing me. But it missed on all cylinders, and probably needs a new warp drive to boot.

In A Final Unity, you find the Enterprise unwillingly involved in a Garidian civil war and later in a race with the Garidians and Romulans to discover the power behind the mythological Unity Device. Several missions await, and on the way you run into Ferengi, Klingons, Vulcans, and a few new alien species. The plot is dished out slowly and effectively in gameplay and cut scenes, culminating in a satisfying end game reminiscent of Judgement Rites.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity DOS A zoological society governed by females.

Sadly, the plot is the only redeeming quality of the game outside from what the show itself brought to the table. The ship interface is downright maddening. The battle station and engineering are simultaneously slow and confusing, let alone uninteresting. While you can leave the controls up to Worf and La Forge, respectively, I was left yearning for the system in the Interplay games, which says a lot. Navigation is damn near impossible when the game doesn’t automatically set the course and speed for you.  You’re given a three-dimensional view of space, and discerning between sectors, neutral zones, and nebulae is a puzzle in itself. Finally, Starfleet gives many vague orders that are misleading at times. Sometimes, the plot advances simply by waiting for an indefinite period of time, with little clue that waiting, is in fact, what advances the game.

If that were all, I could forgive this section of the game. But away team missions are not much better. You can take any member of the crew on your away teams, and who you take matters very little, most of the time. Each crew member is given a ton of generic responses to every possible action and are not always in character. Who you control on the away mission is also usually irrelevant, and more or less is up to whose voice you’d rather hear at that moment. And while there are some conversation trees, there are rarely consequences for saying the wrong things until the end game, where you must control Picard. The puzzles themselves are fine, with some creative and original ideas and some clunkers. Regardless, some of the puzzles simply involve, again, too much waiting.

Star Trek: The Next Generation - A Final Unity DOS Romulan Warbirds closing in.

Yet, all of these faults pale in comparison to the most glaring atrocity in A Final Unity. The series was a veritable joy to watch week in and week out for two reasons.  The first one, intelligent and engaging stories, is present. But there was hardly an episode of TNG where I wasn’t laughing out loud on several occasions. There was a sense of humour underlining nearly every story, and sadly, there is absolutely nothing worthy of a laugh, or even a smile, in this game. Riker makes no mention of his exploits with women.  Data doesn’t ramble off his thesaurus nor makes any social faux-paus. Worf doesn’t even get to say, “Klingons do not play video games!” In short, the characters, while having the voices of their original actors, had none of the charm or personality. A significant reason for my enjoyment of 25th Anniversary and Judgment Rites was how well the writers embodied the characters and integrated them into the story. The rivalry between Bones and McCoy was there, as well as Scottie’s pleas in vain about the damage to engineering. And William Shatner’s overacting was funny enough on its own accord. I was hoping that perhaps Wesley Crusher could make an appearance so Picard could belt out, “Get the boy off my bridge!”  But, alas.

If you are a hard-core fan of Star Trek, you will probably enjoy this game, at least to some degree. But I found this adventure, despite the few positives, an insult to the fans.

PC Games

Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patti Does A Little Undercover Work

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Year: 1991
Designer: Al Lowe

One can sum everything up by stating Larry 4 was by far the superior game.

Leisure Suit Larry 5 is the most abominable commercialized computer game ever, though I admit I have not played Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. Al Lowe hated the latter and went out of his way to make sure people knew he had no role in its design. For some reason he hasn’t apologized for this game yet.

The “new and improved” graphics are so wretched that after five minutes you’ll find yourself wishing you were staring directly into the sun. The music will make you want to go listen to a middle-school band performance. The point-and-click interface is only there to give you tendinitis. The puzzles are insultingly easy, the worst of them having you get into a wrestling ring where you must grab as many female private parts as you can; it’s like whack-a-mole, only less arousing. The great news is you can skip several of the puzzles if you feel like three hours is too long for an adventure game. The plot is more thread-bare than the women Larry meets. Nearly every joke falls flat. There is not one redeeming quality in this entire game.

Play it only to see how low Sierra sunk in the early 90’s.

PC Games

Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco And The Time Rippers

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Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1991
Platform: DOS, Windows, Mac, Amiga, PC-98

Rating: 1

One one would think that taking a previously hilarious science fiction character and throwing him into a time travel story would be the easiest formula for success, but Space Quest IV is one of the laziest adventure games I have ever played, putting me to sleep even with a walkthrough at hand.

Roger Wilco, per usual, is gloating about his success in the previous Space Quest games when he’s captured by Vohaul’s goons. At the last minute, he’s saved by some mysterious men and zapped headlong into Space Quest XII, in the middle of his now desolate home planet. After figuring out where he is, Roger must thwart events happening in the future (a la Marty and Doc), save his own skin, and get back to his own time. All along, he’ll be traveling to other Space Quest games to do so, trying to avoid Vohaul’s police force.

6833462-space-quest-iv-roger-wilco-and-the-time-rippers-windows-3x-intro

Sadly, most of what happens during the game feels more like it belongs to Leisure Suit Larry’s universe than Roger’s (including an over the top narrator). Very few of the game’s puzzles relate to science fiction, and are often tacky and obtuse (which also describes the graphics), including some unbelievably boring arcade games (e.g. making burgers!). Worse yet, many of the puzzles require extensive backtracking; I think I spent more time walking from one place to another than I did interacting with the game world. The only interesting diversion is a trip to Ulence Flats from Space Quest 1, but this excursion lasts only a few short minutes.

When Sierra updated their engines for point’n’click play, their games in every one of their long-standing series temporarily suffered (even Police Quest 3, which I enjoyed). It was as if the designers and producers spent so much time playing with their new toy that they forgot what made their games great in the first place.  Many people consider this their favorite game in the series and one of the best adventure games ever made. Usually when I hate a game, like with Broken Sword or Syberia, I understand why people would love it. With Space Quest IV, I’m left utterly baffled.  

PC Games

King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride

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Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1994
Platform: DOS, Windows, Mac

Rating: 1

Inigo Montoya: Do you hear that Fezzik? That is the sound of ultimate suffering.

Fezzik: From what?

Inigo Montoya: People playing “The Princeless Bride.”

Vizzini: Inconceivable!

While I adapted to the four-icon point’n’click style of adventure gaming, I longed for a change that was more intuitive while remaining challenging (much like the LucasArts catalogue). Well, once again Roberta Williams ushered in a new style of gaming with the single icon. The fucking thing lights up whenever you run the mouse over something important, removing virtually all the challenge and turning the game into an interactive movie. Since KQ7, some developers have been able to utilize a single icon and still make engrossing, challenging games. Not surprisingly, Roberta Williams failed spectacularly. Not surprisingly, the story is insipid.

Valanice is quite perturbed with her only daughter because Rosella has decided that marrying handsome hunks on the drop of a hat like her mother was so last plot line. Valanice taunts her daughter with stories of blind matronly love, while Rosella covers her ears and yells “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” But her mother does not comply, which drives Rosella to dive into an obviously dangerous whirlpool, most likely to commit suicide. Valanice, determined to bring back her daughter to the sophisticated world, dives in after her. Unfortunately for her, she gets dumped off in a desert, far away from the place Rosella winds up bemoaning, over and over and over, her new troll status.

Amazingly, the plot actually develops in this game.  Chapter by chapter, the player learns more objectives while maneuvering plot twists. It’s a shame that the material therein is a conglomeration of all the crap that’s ever been put into a computer game. The graphics consist of a poorly defined cartoon world with characters that are generally unpleasant to look at. Not only that, every sentient being is caricaturized to the point of skin-crawling pain, making the game devoid of the minimum amount of pathos necessary to give a shit. Puzzles range from incredibly easy to incredibly nauseating. There are even walking dead scenarios, which is ridiculous in a game that is otherwise insultingly easy. As for the sound, well, nothing memorable.

There are exactly three points during this game where I enjoyed myself:

1) The introduction, where Rosella tells her mother to bugger off.
2) The ending, and not just because the game was over.
3) The raven who spouts countless degrading insults at both Rosella and Valanice. I used some of them myself.

I was grateful the series was over after this game. Yes, there was a 3D action game that came a few years later utilizing the King’s Quest name, but the series death was already established.

PC Games

King’s Quest V: Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder!

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Publisher: Sierra
Developer: Sierra
Year: 1990
Platform: DOS, Windows, Amiga, Mac, NES, FM Towns, PC-98

Possibly the first big-name adventure game to be on CD-ROM and completely eschew the need to use the keyboard, King’s Quest V spends way too much time focusing on its shiny new features, leaving the actual game to suffer immensely.

After a leisurely walk through Daventry, Graham returns home just in time to see the castle vanish before his eyes. A nearby owl–a talking one, natch–reinforces Graham’s despair by recounting the details of the tragedy. He then sends the king to go see the local benevolent wizard. A lengthy dialogue ensues where the Good wizard tells Graham that a Bad wizard (who is related to Mannanan from King’s Quest III), is out for revenge against the royal family. The Good wizard gives Graham the wand necessary to destroy the Bad wizard, and more or less leaves Graham to his own adventuring wits, which he will need to get anywhere near the Bad wizard. While the plot does help tie the series together a bit, it is in true Sierra fashion detailed in full before the player even touches the mouse. Seriously, there is virtually no plot development the entire game.

The point-and-click interface dumbs down play to merely finding the correct pixel or combining the right inventory items together. While this does relieve the player of parser ignorance, and the dreaded “You can’t do that” messages, many of the puzzles in KQ5 require inane logic, forcing the player to randomly click until the solution is found. Pixel-hunting creates even more “You are a pathetic imbecile” responses than ever, and solving puzzles by accident isn’t exactly satisfying.

The one thing this game does get right is the implementation of all the pretty features. The graphics are excellent, and were simply amazing in 1990 to those who were used to sixteen color games. The voice acting is mostly pleasant; however, whoever’s idea it was to create Cedric, Graham’s sidekick owl, should be given a medal by Satan, as I’m sure he uses Cedric to torture the damned.   Cedric follows Graham practically everywhere, is rarely helpful, and when he would be helpful, he is nowhere to be found. And if you want an idea as to what he sounds like, think of Jar-Jar Binks, only condescending.

But what really gives the game a black mark is the cruelest walking dead situation in history. While Leisure Suit Larry 2 had several cruel walking dead scenarios, they were aggravatingly funny in an Andy Kaufman sort of way. Not only is the situation here not funny, it is one working channel and there’s a marathon of King of Queens cruel. Either that, or an honest mistake that the shittiest beta-testers in history missed. There’s a spot in the game where a mouse is being chased by a cat. You must save this mouse by throwing a boot at said cat. Then, later in the game, the mouse will save you from an otherwise lethal predicament. But this event ONLY HAPPENS ONCE, and it happens so fast that if you turned away from the your computer for a few seconds, you would never know it happened! And if you don’t figure it out then, it isn’t even obvious later that you would need a mouse to save you. I know walking dead situations occur in nearly every adventure game before 1995 (heck, there’s even more in this game), but this one pissed me off more than any other. Having Cedric taunting me probably wasn’t helping.

Take all of the above annoyances and leave the player with a cliched and suddenly insultingly easy endgame, and you have a game you couldn’t pay me to play again.

PC Games

Loom

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Publisher: LucasArts
Developer: LucasArts
Year: 1990
Platform: DOS; Windows; Amiga; Atari-ST; CDTV; FM Towns; Macintosh; TurboGrafx CD;

Review: One of the most original adventures ever conceived, Loom largely succeeds at just this, while failing to engage the player in a captivating story or with interesting characters.

As a 17 year-old member of the guild of Weavers, you must guide Bobbin Threadbare through a mystery, trying to learn why you’ve been outcast from the guild, and why the rest of your guild have been transformed into swans. There is no inventory. Progress through the game entails casting spells with your staff by weaving musical notes, with more powerful spells available as things move along. For example, you may learn that the spell for Open is the note sequence C-D-E-D; play this sequence on a particular object and see if it works. On easy difficulty level, you are shown the correct notes for each spell.  On medium, you see the notes played on your staff without the letters. On the expert level, you only hear the notes. Unless you are tone deaf, even the expert level is not too difficult.

While many of the spells are interesting, it is usually obvious which spells are needed where.  And with no other types of puzzles available, progress is incredibly easy. I finished the game in a mere four hours, even on expert level. Unfortunately, the characters (of other guilds) you meet are classic stereotypes with rather banal dialogue. Even Bobbin rarely acts consistently, vacillating between an appropriate meek teenager and a highly philosophical elder. Moreover, there are few surprises in the plot until the ending, which is confusing, alluding to a sequel that never happened.

Thankfully, the music is gorgeous, heavily borrowing from Tchaikovsky. There is a CD-ROM version with 256 color graphics and voice acting. Sadly, to fit the game on the CD, much dialogue was cut (though the acting is generally below average), as were additional scenes that rewarded the player for playing on expert level.

It is easy to see why Loom has a cult following, as therein is a unique experience in gaming. And while I would recommend this to anyone looking for something different, it is too short and underdeveloped to be considered a great game.

Contemporary Rating: Medium.

Cruelty Rating: Merciful.

PC Games

Portal

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Publisher: Valve
Developer: Valve
Year: 2008
Platform: Windows; Macintosh; Playstation 3; Xbox360

Review: When I first played Portal, I had never played Half-Life, nor been particularly fond of first-person shooters. Basically, I’m more interested in engaging my mind than I am my reflexes. Portal manages to do both at the same time, striking the perfect balance of action and strategy. While using a similar environment as in Half-Life, you control a subject who is trying to advance through test chambers in a research laboratory. What is being tested is a device that fires beams of light that create portals in walls for easy transport or escape. For example, say you need to traverse a pit and you can’t jump across; create a portal on the wall across the pit and one on your side. Walk through and—voila!—you’re on the other side. Valve fleshes this idea out considerably, with several chambers testing your mind, and in some cases, your agility. 

Yes, that’s you you’re looking at

An excellent learning curve is aided by the computer, who explains things to you along the way and gives you some tips early on. Eventually, a plot of sorts develops that is aided by superb voice acting and a chilling atmosphere. At no point did the sounds or colors feel superfluous, the designers proving themselves a model of efficiency.

Speaking of efficiency, the game can be won in a cool four to six hours. For the low price, this is certainly acceptable. And as always, too short trumps too long (at least in gaming). But if you finish and are still thirsting for more as I was, you can play challenge missions or download user-created missions, some of which rival the quality of the original. Or you can go ahead and get the sequel. Despite how one feels about this genre, there is no denying that Portal is one of the best developed games of all-time. This one is definitely staying on the desktop.

Are you still there?

Contemporary Rating: High.

Cruelty Rating: Merciful. There are regular checkpoints that the game sends you back to if you kick the bucket.