Game 42: King's Quest Remake - Final Rating
This is going to be tough. There are a couple of reasons why giving a rating to this game will be a struggle. Firstly, I’d played King’s Quest within the last three years prior to playing this time around, meaning I recalled exactly what to do in the vast majority of instances. It’s hard to judge how solvable puzzles are or how frustrating the interface is when you’re breezing through on memory. The second reason is that this is a remake. Judging a story now that was originally developed when the adventure genre was in its infancy is perhaps unfair, and the increase in technology doesn’t necessarily equate to a high score in that category since it needs to be compared with other games released around the same time. Oh well, I’ll just take each category as it comes and see where we end up!
Puzzles and Solvability
As mentioned above, it’s really hard to judge how difficult the game actually is, since I already knew the solutions to the puzzles going in. I can see many cases where changes have been made to the dialogue, graphics, and even the environment, to make puzzles that were once stupidly difficult easier. Are they now “fair”? I can’t know for sure. The Rumpelstiltskin riddle is a perfect example of this. Originally the player not only had to guess who the old man with the walking cane was, they were then expected to reverse the letters of the alphabet (a=z, b=y etc.) and type his name that way. In the remake, the player has much greater chance of figuring out who the man is, since he’s sitting next to a spinning wheel that has clearly turned straw into gold. The game will then accept his name merely backwards rather than reverse-alphabetized, making the whole thing reasonably solvable. Would I have solved this unassisted if I’d approached it for the first time? Perhaps, but I guess we’ll never know. One definite positive when discussing puzzles in the game is the large amount of alternate solutions. Quite a few puzzles can be solved in three or more different ways. For example, the dragon can be dealt with by throwing water at it, using the invisibility ring, being protected by the Fairy Godmother, or throwing a dagger at it. In typical Roberta Williams fashion, it’s generally the least violent approach that receives the most amount of points. Giving the player this sort of choice is praiseworthy, although it does result in a whole variety of items having no use whatsoever. The original got 6, but that was much more to do with its place in history than anything else. While things have been improved here, I can't go higher than a 5.
Rating: 5
Interface and Inventory
With the significant jump in technology, I was actually pretty surprised to find that the movement issues of the original had found their way back into the remake. Whenever I was required to climb anything, such as the beanstalk, I found myself dying over and over, and forced to resort to saving and restoring to get through within a reasonable amount of time. Eventually one of the readers informed me that using the mouse, which obviously wasn’t available in the original, makes things much easier, and from there on in I was fine. It also took a while to figure out that the movement detection was based on Sir Graham’s hands while climbing, which didn’t feel completely intuitive. While it’s difficult for me to fully judge the parser (since I generally knew what to type and when), what I saw was pretty impressive. Someone posted a YouTube video that displays the huge amount of things the player can type while still receiving a proper parser response, and this rings true to my experience. I received very clear and concise descriptions of surroundings and items, and custom responses to pretty much all my commands. Finally there’s the inventory, which was as good as you might expect, with detailed descriptions and attractive visual representations. It even plays a role in the solving of one puzzle in that you can clearly see the word FILL inside the bowl just by looking at the item in the inventory. All up the interface was pretty good, and if it wasn’t for the slightly clunky movement, I might have gone higher than the below rating.
Rating: 5
Story and Setting
Back when King’s Quest was made, stories were more setups than full-scale plots. The small amount of disk space available meant that dialogue and narration always had to take a backseat to graphics and code. By 1990 that had well and truly changed, with games such as Loom placing as much importance on story as anything else. In this (more) modern environment the King’s Quest remake seems a bit primitive. The player is quickly informed that they need to find three treasures to gain control of the kingdom and then sent on their way. Things wrap up just as quickly at the end, with the King dying the moment the hero returns. It’s true that the dialogue has been greatly expanded upon in a couple of key sections, but that merely pads out what remains a simple and cliché tale. All that was missing was a damsel in distress, but that would be resolved in the sequel soon enough (which never got remade after this game’s failure to sell). As for the setting, well Daventry is a fitting place for puzzles based on fairy tales and myths. Once again it’s all pretty cliché, with a predominately grassy land filled with forests, magic items and monsters, but that’s excusable in this instance. The original got a 4, but we've come a long way since then.
Rating: 3
Sound and Graphics
Alright, this is where you would expect the remake to be miles ahead of the original. If you put them side by side, then there’s no question that it is, but if I compare the remake to other games released around the same time, it’s less impressive. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the visuals, and now that I know that Jerry Shaw and co. were given the mandate to reproduce the original as much as possible, it has to be said that they did a fine job. However, there are much more impressive examples of the SCI0 engine being put to good use, including games released a year prior, such as Hero’s Quest and The Colonel’s Bequest. The main issue lies with the colour scheme (which is incessantly green) and the lack of variety in the environments. Still, it’s nice to be confronted by a dragon that actually looks like a dragon, unlike in the original. The animation isn’t too bad (the King falls to the ground at the end in a very convincing way), and the various animals that scurry and flutter around look pretty nice, so I won’t be too harsh. As for the sound, there’s no doubt that a great deal of effort was put into thematically linking the music into what was occurring in the game. I can’t say any of it was particularly memorable though, and my pet hate of wandering around in complete silence occurred more often than I would like. The use of digitized sound effects was a nice touch, but these sounds pop up rarely, and so can't play a large role in the result of this category. If the game had taken the best technology the industry could offer in 1984, and transitioned it to the best technology 1990 had to offer, I would have been forced to give it at least the same 5 I gave the original. As it is, I was a bit underwhelmed.
Rating: 4
Environment and Atmosphere
As mentioned above, the developers’ mandate was to replicate the experience of the first game while adding a new coat of paint. They succeeded in that task, with a very similar look and feel throughout. It should come as no surprise though that this decision resulted in a lot of the original’s flaws being replicated in the remake. The environment becomes very samey after a while, with the vast majority of screens being grassy fields with a few “natural” details such as rocks, trees and rivers. There are a few darker, shadow drenched screens, but they were more filler than anything else, with little of note occurring there. As with the original, the regular random occurrences are annoying and stupid. I really thought the ability to walk on and off screens to make creatures appear and disappear would have been replaced by some other more realistic system. Unfortunately it came back with a vengeance, and actually caused me some drama. The dwarf appearing and stealing game-critical items was nasty, but I also had a fair bit of trouble figuring out how to find the third and final treasure due to the eagle only appearing randomly. It was fine that the eagle only appeared after I’d collected the first two items, but the fact I had to visit the cave screen multiple times before he arrived was unreasonable. Other things that I feel make for a strange and unmoving atmosphere were the numerous trinkets and treasures just left all over the place in an apparently struggling realm and creatures simply disappearing in a flash of light when they are no longer required. Still, the did ok with what they had to play with.
Rating: 5
Dialogue and Acting
There’s not much to say for this category. I’ve already covered off how much more dialogue there is while discussing the story, and talked about the huge amount of responses you can get from the parser while covering the interface. All that’s left is to talk about the actual quality of the writing, which is pretty much as you would expect in a King’s Quest game of this era. The descriptions get straight to the point (“You have encountered an old stone well in the middle of the woods”) and the little dialogue there is at least attempts to endow the inhabitants of Daventry with some character (“Gimme somethin’ valuable and maybe, JUST maybe, I’ll letcha cross dis bridge.”). There’s no doubt the dialogue expansion gives certain scenes a bit more gravitas, particularly the woodcutter expressing his wife’s plight, but there’s more silliness than effective drama on offer throughout the game. All up the word adequate is probably the best one to use, and I'll go with the same score I gave the original.
Rating: 4
So that's 5 + 5 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 4, which equals 26, divided by 60 comes to 43 when rounded down. Hmmm, that feels low, but I'm not compelled to increase my individual scores. The original got 48 though! I guess this shows how much I'm taking into account when a game is released, which is why it's so important that I get the release dates as accurate as possible. I'm going to use my discretionary point to raise the score to a 44, for the simple reason that I probably didn't enjoy the game anywhere near as much as I would have had I gone in with no prior experience.
55 CAPs for Lars-Erik
• Sponsor Award - 20 CAPs - For sponsoring the blog with free games
• Research Award – 10 CAPs – For helping me figure out when certain 1991 games were released
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
35 CAPs for Laukku
• Expertise Award – 20 CAPs – For informing me of all the alternate puzzle solutions
• True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with me and finishing the game.
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
30 CAPs for Ilmari
• Dark Seed Award – 20 CAPs – For solving my Dark Seed riddle
• Billy Goat Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me of the original billy goat tale
20 CAPs for Corey Cole
• Industry Insight Award – 20 CAPs – For giving us priceless insight into the industry
20 CAPs for Jerry Shaw
• Industry Insight Award – 20 CAPs – For giving us priceless insight into the industry
20 CAPs for TBD
• Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs - For correctly predicting what score I would give the game.
• Riddle of Awesome Award – 10 CAPs – For making a great riddle that trumped anything I’ve done.
20 CAPs for Aperama
• Research Award – 10 CAPs – For helping me figure out when certain 1991 games were released
• True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with me and finishing the game.
20 CAPs for Canageek
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
10 CAPs for Kenny McCormick
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Bitterness Award – 5 CAPs – He’ll get over me not playing The Scoop one day
10 CAPs for Novacek
• Use the Frickin Mouse Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me that I really need to get with the times.
10 CAPs for Andy_Panthro
• True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with me and finishing the game.
10 CAPs for Rowan Lipkovits
• Drawa Tebahpla – 10 CAPs – For reminding me just how nasty the original Rumpelstiltskin riddle was
5 CAPs for Charles
• Samara Award – 5 CAPs – For spotting my Ring reference
Puzzles and Solvability
As mentioned above, it’s really hard to judge how difficult the game actually is, since I already knew the solutions to the puzzles going in. I can see many cases where changes have been made to the dialogue, graphics, and even the environment, to make puzzles that were once stupidly difficult easier. Are they now “fair”? I can’t know for sure. The Rumpelstiltskin riddle is a perfect example of this. Originally the player not only had to guess who the old man with the walking cane was, they were then expected to reverse the letters of the alphabet (a=z, b=y etc.) and type his name that way. In the remake, the player has much greater chance of figuring out who the man is, since he’s sitting next to a spinning wheel that has clearly turned straw into gold. The game will then accept his name merely backwards rather than reverse-alphabetized, making the whole thing reasonably solvable. Would I have solved this unassisted if I’d approached it for the first time? Perhaps, but I guess we’ll never know. One definite positive when discussing puzzles in the game is the large amount of alternate solutions. Quite a few puzzles can be solved in three or more different ways. For example, the dragon can be dealt with by throwing water at it, using the invisibility ring, being protected by the Fairy Godmother, or throwing a dagger at it. In typical Roberta Williams fashion, it’s generally the least violent approach that receives the most amount of points. Giving the player this sort of choice is praiseworthy, although it does result in a whole variety of items having no use whatsoever. The original got 6, but that was much more to do with its place in history than anything else. While things have been improved here, I can't go higher than a 5.
Rating: 5
Would you know who this man is?
Interface and Inventory
With the significant jump in technology, I was actually pretty surprised to find that the movement issues of the original had found their way back into the remake. Whenever I was required to climb anything, such as the beanstalk, I found myself dying over and over, and forced to resort to saving and restoring to get through within a reasonable amount of time. Eventually one of the readers informed me that using the mouse, which obviously wasn’t available in the original, makes things much easier, and from there on in I was fine. It also took a while to figure out that the movement detection was based on Sir Graham’s hands while climbing, which didn’t feel completely intuitive. While it’s difficult for me to fully judge the parser (since I generally knew what to type and when), what I saw was pretty impressive. Someone posted a YouTube video that displays the huge amount of things the player can type while still receiving a proper parser response, and this rings true to my experience. I received very clear and concise descriptions of surroundings and items, and custom responses to pretty much all my commands. Finally there’s the inventory, which was as good as you might expect, with detailed descriptions and attractive visual representations. It even plays a role in the solving of one puzzle in that you can clearly see the word FILL inside the bowl just by looking at the item in the inventory. All up the interface was pretty good, and if it wasn’t for the slightly clunky movement, I might have gone higher than the below rating.
Rating: 5
Maybe they were going for realism? After all, it can't be easy climbing a beanstalk!
Story and Setting
Back when King’s Quest was made, stories were more setups than full-scale plots. The small amount of disk space available meant that dialogue and narration always had to take a backseat to graphics and code. By 1990 that had well and truly changed, with games such as Loom placing as much importance on story as anything else. In this (more) modern environment the King’s Quest remake seems a bit primitive. The player is quickly informed that they need to find three treasures to gain control of the kingdom and then sent on their way. Things wrap up just as quickly at the end, with the King dying the moment the hero returns. It’s true that the dialogue has been greatly expanded upon in a couple of key sections, but that merely pads out what remains a simple and cliché tale. All that was missing was a damsel in distress, but that would be resolved in the sequel soon enough (which never got remade after this game’s failure to sell). As for the setting, well Daventry is a fitting place for puzzles based on fairy tales and myths. Once again it’s all pretty cliché, with a predominately grassy land filled with forests, magic items and monsters, but that’s excusable in this instance. The original got a 4, but we've come a long way since then.
Rating: 3
Pretty much the entire story is made up of the intro and the outro.
Sound and Graphics
Alright, this is where you would expect the remake to be miles ahead of the original. If you put them side by side, then there’s no question that it is, but if I compare the remake to other games released around the same time, it’s less impressive. There’s nothing particularly wrong with the visuals, and now that I know that Jerry Shaw and co. were given the mandate to reproduce the original as much as possible, it has to be said that they did a fine job. However, there are much more impressive examples of the SCI0 engine being put to good use, including games released a year prior, such as Hero’s Quest and The Colonel’s Bequest. The main issue lies with the colour scheme (which is incessantly green) and the lack of variety in the environments. Still, it’s nice to be confronted by a dragon that actually looks like a dragon, unlike in the original. The animation isn’t too bad (the King falls to the ground at the end in a very convincing way), and the various animals that scurry and flutter around look pretty nice, so I won’t be too harsh. As for the sound, there’s no doubt that a great deal of effort was put into thematically linking the music into what was occurring in the game. I can’t say any of it was particularly memorable though, and my pet hate of wandering around in complete silence occurred more often than I would like. The use of digitized sound effects was a nice touch, but these sounds pop up rarely, and so can't play a large role in the result of this category. If the game had taken the best technology the industry could offer in 1984, and transitioned it to the best technology 1990 had to offer, I would have been forced to give it at least the same 5 I gave the original. As it is, I was a bit underwhelmed.
Rating: 4
Just a little reminder of how far we've come!
Now that's a dragon!
Environment and Atmosphere
As mentioned above, the developers’ mandate was to replicate the experience of the first game while adding a new coat of paint. They succeeded in that task, with a very similar look and feel throughout. It should come as no surprise though that this decision resulted in a lot of the original’s flaws being replicated in the remake. The environment becomes very samey after a while, with the vast majority of screens being grassy fields with a few “natural” details such as rocks, trees and rivers. There are a few darker, shadow drenched screens, but they were more filler than anything else, with little of note occurring there. As with the original, the regular random occurrences are annoying and stupid. I really thought the ability to walk on and off screens to make creatures appear and disappear would have been replaced by some other more realistic system. Unfortunately it came back with a vengeance, and actually caused me some drama. The dwarf appearing and stealing game-critical items was nasty, but I also had a fair bit of trouble figuring out how to find the third and final treasure due to the eagle only appearing randomly. It was fine that the eagle only appeared after I’d collected the first two items, but the fact I had to visit the cave screen multiple times before he arrived was unreasonable. Other things that I feel make for a strange and unmoving atmosphere were the numerous trinkets and treasures just left all over the place in an apparently struggling realm and creatures simply disappearing in a flash of light when they are no longer required. Still, the did ok with what they had to play with.
Rating: 5
It all starts to look a bit like this after a while.
Dialogue and Acting
There’s not much to say for this category. I’ve already covered off how much more dialogue there is while discussing the story, and talked about the huge amount of responses you can get from the parser while covering the interface. All that’s left is to talk about the actual quality of the writing, which is pretty much as you would expect in a King’s Quest game of this era. The descriptions get straight to the point (“You have encountered an old stone well in the middle of the woods”) and the little dialogue there is at least attempts to endow the inhabitants of Daventry with some character (“Gimme somethin’ valuable and maybe, JUST maybe, I’ll letcha cross dis bridge.”). There’s no doubt the dialogue expansion gives certain scenes a bit more gravitas, particularly the woodcutter expressing his wife’s plight, but there’s more silliness than effective drama on offer throughout the game. All up the word adequate is probably the best one to use, and I'll go with the same score I gave the original.
Rating: 4
I'm sure my experience caused me to miss innumerable eye-rollingly corny yet strangely entertaining death quotes though.
So that's 5 + 5 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 4, which equals 26, divided by 60 comes to 43 when rounded down. Hmmm, that feels low, but I'm not compelled to increase my individual scores. The original got 48 though! I guess this shows how much I'm taking into account when a game is released, which is why it's so important that I get the release dates as accurate as possible. I'm going to use my discretionary point to raise the score to a 44, for the simple reason that I probably didn't enjoy the game anywhere near as much as I would have had I gone in with no prior experience.
Did anyone pick 44? As is usually the case, someone nailed it! Congratulations TBD! He's won himself a copy of The Secret of Monkey Island, as donated by our amazing sponsor, Lars-Erik. His reasoning was spot on too: "I'll go with a 44. In my opinion, most other games were much more complex and interesting by 1990 so if time of release is taken into account it won't fare as well as the original did." Isn't that what I just said?!
55 CAPs for Lars-Erik
• Sponsor Award - 20 CAPs - For sponsoring the blog with free games
• Research Award – 10 CAPs – For helping me figure out when certain 1991 games were released
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on GOG
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
35 CAPs for Laukku
• Expertise Award – 20 CAPs – For informing me of all the alternate puzzle solutions
• True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with me and finishing the game.
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
30 CAPs for Ilmari
• Dark Seed Award – 20 CAPs – For solving my Dark Seed riddle
• Billy Goat Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me of the original billy goat tale
20 CAPs for Corey Cole
• Industry Insight Award – 20 CAPs – For giving us priceless insight into the industry
20 CAPs for Jerry Shaw
• Industry Insight Award – 20 CAPs – For giving us priceless insight into the industry
20 CAPs for TBD
• Psychic Prediction Award – 10 CAPs - For correctly predicting what score I would give the game.
• Riddle of Awesome Award – 10 CAPs – For making a great riddle that trumped anything I’ve done.
20 CAPs for Aperama
• Research Award – 10 CAPs – For helping me figure out when certain 1991 games were released
• True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with me and finishing the game.
20 CAPs for Canageek
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game on Steam
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
10 CAPs for Kenny McCormick
• Genre Support Award – 5 CAPs – For announcing a new adventure game sale on Steam
• Bitterness Award – 5 CAPs – He’ll get over me not playing The Scoop one day
10 CAPs for Novacek
• Use the Frickin Mouse Award – 10 CAPs – For informing me that I really need to get with the times.
10 CAPs for Andy_Panthro
• True Companion Award – 10 CAPs – For playing along with me and finishing the game.
10 CAPs for Rowan Lipkovits
• Drawa Tebahpla – 10 CAPs – For reminding me just how nasty the original Rumpelstiltskin riddle was
5 CAPs for Charles
• Samara Award – 5 CAPs – For spotting my Ring reference
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