Video Games- At least 2023 looks like a banger

[Ran]

11 hours ago, IlyaP said:

It appears there are multiple sequels? Like...Sam & Max: Beyond Time and Space, Save the World, etc. 

Yes. I have them but they moved to a 3D engine and it just doesn't have the charm of the original game, which was closer to Steve Purcell's comic designs.

10 minutes ago, Darryk said:

As do I, although my favourites were always the Sierra games, especially Quest for Glory.

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is one of my all-time favorites, and King's Quest VI as well. Loved that style of game, and the sense of humor in them.

[Werthead]

12 hours ago, RumHam said:

I was interested from your last post, but I think this just sold me. I remember doing this in a lot of games like Rimworld and Stellaris that I still play regularly.

It's very good. It's basically Frostpunk meets Startopia. It's not quite as polished as Frostpunk and it doesn't have the super focus of Frostpunk that being able to put away a campaign in 3-4 hours gives you (i.e. ballsing up a whole runthrough isn't too bad because it's not too much time "wasted," and you learn things to help the next run). It does try with the chapter delineations, but because progression is held over chapter to chapter, you can still gimp yourself in a previous chapter without realising. That does become less of an issue as you get more used to the game's systems though.

[IlyaP]

47 minutes ago, Ran said:

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is one of my all-time favorites, and King's Quest VI as well. Loved that style of game, and the sense of humor in them.

Looks like the first five Quest for Glory games are on Steam, but not the King's Quest games, aside from some kind of...remake? I don' tknow what to make of it. 

[Ran]

1 hour ago, IlyaP said:

Looks like the first five Quest for Glory games are on Steam, but not the King's Quest games, aside from some kind of...remake? I don' tknow what to make of it. 

Here in Sweden they have the King's Quest Collection, which includes the first seven games (Mask of Eternity can be considered KQ8), including I think the higher res SCI (click-and-point instead of keyword) version of KQI, while it looks like you'll need ScummVM to get the higher rest art for KQVI. GOG also has the games in a couple of collections.

I strongly think that unless you are deeply nostalgic that King's Quest VI is head and shoulders the best game in the series and the only one I'd really recommend. King's Quest V is all right, it introduced the visual style and controls of KQ6, but it had a lot of bugs that in the worst case prevented you from completing the game entirely. But KQ6 is just delightful.

Actually, I almost forgot that there is an alternative to the first three KQ games (and, indeed, to QfG II), and it's free: AGD Interactive managed to get permission to make fan remakes of those games, with VGA art and mouse interfaces and so on, so perhaps more worth giving them a look to get a sense of what it was like to be playing adventure games back in the EGA graphics days. They've gone on to produce a couple of original adventure games with a similar style and feel to Sierra's games.  Their forum mentions that you may have to use ScummVM to run the games properly because I guess successive Windows updates caused instability issues, but fortunately ScummVM is free.

[Darryk]

4 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Looks like the first five Quest for Glory games are on Steam, but not the King's Quest games, aside from some kind of...remake? I don' tknow what to make of it. 

There were only 5 Quest For Glory games,  not sure they'd appeal to modern gamers.

Not sure what search term you typed in but the King's Quest collection definitely is on Steam, but also not suited to modern gamers, although Kings Quest VI is so brilliant that it's worth giving it a shot anyway. Definitely read plot summaries of King's Quest III and King's Quest V if you do play King's Quest VI

Edit: The Kings Quest VI enhanced windows version is a lot prettier to look at than the DOS version though I'm not sure how to access it. Apparently there's a way to do it by using SCUMM to run the KQIV install files off Steam.

An @@Ran mentioned AGD Interactive made remakes of the first three King's Quest games that are excellent and suitable for modern gamers, and they're free. They also did a remake of Quest for Glory II.

[Darryk]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Yes. I have them but they moved to a 3D engine and it just doesn't have the charm of the original game, which was closer to Steve Purcell's comic designs.

Quest for Glory II: Trial by Fire is one of my all-time favorites, and King's Quest VI as well. Loved that style of game, and the sense of humor in them.

King's Quest VI was pure magic and by far the best King's Quest game.

Quest for Glory IV was my favorite QFG game and probably my favourite Sierra game overall, although I loved all the QFG games, even the rather wonky 5th one.

[Rhom]

Speaking of games and sales and whatnot... The Shadowrun Trilogy is currently on sale on GoG for 80% off.  All three games for less than $12.

[Ran]

4 hours ago, Darryk said:

King's Quest VI was pure magic and by far the best King's Quest game.

Quest for Glory IV was my favorite QFG game and probably my favourite Sierra game overall, although I loved all the QFG games, even the rather wonky 5th one.

I've heard QfG4 is considered the best of the series, but I admit I've not played it.

Not sure if you know, but the designers/creators of the QfG series, Lori Anne and Corey Cole, made a spiritual successor called Hero U: Rogue to Redemption. Reviews were fairly positive, but I admit I've not tried it.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

Speaking of games and sales and whatnot... The Shadowrun Trilogy is currently on sale on GoG for 80% off.  All three games for less than $12.

Excellent value. Epic fantasy + cyberpunk is a combo that works better than it ever should, and the story and gameplay are pretty good, even if the first game is more of a demo for what Dragonfall and Hong Kong then deliver on.

[Rhom]

Just noticed that XCom2 is 95% off.  So its $3

[IlyaP]

9 hours ago, Ran said:

Here in Sweden they have the King's Quest Collection, which includes the first seven games (Mask of Eternity can be considered KQ8), including I think the higher res SCI (click-and-point instead of keyword) version of KQI, while it looks like you'll need ScummVM to get the higher rest art for KQVI. GOG also has the games in a couple of collections.

I strongly think that unless you are deeply nostalgic that King's Quest VI is head and shoulders the best game in the series and the only one I'd really recommend. King's Quest V is all right, it introduced the visual style and controls of KQ6, but it had a lot of bugs that in the worst case prevented you from completing the game entirely. But KQ6 is just delightful.

Actually, I almost forgot that there is an alternative to the first three KQ games (and, indeed, to QfG II), and it's free: AGD Interactive managed to get permission to make fan remakes of those games, with VGA art and mouse interfaces and so on, so perhaps more worth giving them a look to get a sense of what it was like to be playing adventure games back in the EGA graphics days. They've gone on to produce a couple of original adventure games with a similar style and feel to Sierra's games.  Their forum mentions that you may have to use ScummVM to run the games properly because I guess successive Windows updates caused instability issues, but fortunately ScummVM is free.

... 

@Ran, have I told you that you're amazing and a stunning fount of knowledge? 

[IlyaP]

6 hours ago, Darryk said:

Not sure what search term you typed in but the King's Quest collection definitely is on Steam, but also not suited to modern gamers, although Kings Quest VI is so brilliant that it's worth giving it a shot anyway. Definitely read plot summaries of King's Quest III and King's Quest V if you do play King's Quest VI

When I go into Steam, and type in King's Quest, this is what I see. So there *are* King's Quest games, but it...doesn't look like they're the same as the original games. 

 

[Ran]

4 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

When I go into Steam, and type in King's Quest, this is what I see. So there *are* King's Quest games, but it...doesn't look like they're the same as the original games. 

 

The chapters and season pass are a new King's Quest game, again a fan-made effort that Vivendi (rights owner) gave them a cheap license to produce. Sadly, reviews were so-so, but still, it was made with real love for the setting and characters.

Looking at Steam DB, yeah, the King's Quest Collection is not available in your region. Weird. So, anyways, AGDI's got the first three, and GOG maybe has episodes 4-6 for you, if you want to check them out.

[IlyaP]

6 minutes ago, Ran said:

Looking at Steam DB, yeah, the King's Quest Collection is not available in your region. Weird. So, anyways, AGDI's got the first three, and GOG maybe has episodes 4-6 for you, if you want to check them out.

So what you're saying is that once upon a time, someone pissed off Gabe Newell enough that he was like "That's it 'straya! You've done gone and right pissed me off, so no King's Quest for you! That's what you get!" 

And Australia was like: *shrug* "Yeah alright mate. Guess we'll just go to the pub!"

Or...something!  

[Ran]

12 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

So what you're saying is that once upon a time, someone pissed off Gabe Newell enough that he was like "That's it 'straya! You've done gone and right pissed me off, so no King's Quest for you! That's what you get!" 

And Australia was like: *shrug* "Yeah alright mate. Guess we'll just go to the pub!"

Or...something!  

I suspect it's a licensing issue -- maybe the collection is still sub-licensed to an Aussie publisher and they never worked out a deal to allow the collection out on Steam there? 

Also, a correction: the fan version of the game, The Silver Lining, is actually not what Steam has. That fan effort is a sequel to Mask of Eternity. I forgot that there was an official attempt to "reimagine" the series by the developer Odd Gentleman, so the multi-chapter/season-pass thing on Steam is that game, and it basically.. it's not exactly a remake of the first game(s), but basically tries to fit between the games, with some events recontextualized and given a new spin. More details at Wikipedia here.

(BTW, if you find yourself just interested in old-timey point-and-click adventures, you could do a lot worse than getting ahold of The Longest Journey, which Adventure Gamers has ranked as the second best point-and-click adventure of all time, right behind Grim Fandango. Very memorable and compelling game.)

[Werthead]

I think I came to the Quest style of game a bit too late. I'd already played most of LucasArts' adventures up through Monkey Island 2 and Delphine's games like Future Wars, as well as Lure of the Temptress and Legend of Kyrandia, so the likes of King's Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest were all too primitive and pedantic by that point. My abiding memory of Police Quest was hitting "fire gun" and promptly blowing my own leg off because the game did not specify you had to type "draw gun" first.

The only one of those games that I actually finished was - ha! - Leisure Suit Larry 1, which had the same engine. And that was ten times easier than any of the rest and about 10% of the size.

One of the two games I really missed out from that time were Delphine's Cruise for a Corpse, which was a Poirot-style murder mystery on a boat and had stuff like characters all on time schedules, so you had to slip in and out of cabins looking for clues at just the right moment and if you sat there and did nothing, the killer would strike again, but if you were really good you could stop him after just one death. Very smart and advanced game for the time. The other one was Beneath a Steel Sky, which I've been meaning to get back to before playing the recent sequel Beyond a Steel Sky (I know someone who worked on it).

[IlyaP]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

(BTW, if you find yourself just interested in old-timey point-and-click adventures, you could do a lot worse than getting ahold of The Longest Journey, which Adventure Gamers has ranked as the second best point-and-click adventure of all time, right behind Grim Fandango. Very memorable and compelling game.)

I've looked at The Longest Journey, and oh boy was it in need of a remaster/HD update. Which - someone apparently has made. Have you tried this "mod" (I guess?): https://tljhd.github.io/ Or know anyone that has tried it? 

[Werthead]

This is a cool concept demo.

It does feel overdue that we've had excellent Batman and Spider-Man games but no good Superman ones until now.

[Ran]

32 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

I've looked at The Longest Journey, and oh boy was it in need of a remaster/HD update. Which - someone apparently has made. Have you tried this "mod" (I guess?): https://tljhd.github.io/ Or know anyone that has tried it? 

I have not tried it, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun's comments were mostly complimentary.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

I have not tried it, but Rock, Paper, Shotgun's comments were mostly complimentary.

Will give it a try then, as the score is magnificent, and it's the first in several games in what looks like an excellent series.