King’s Quest I & II remakes

Remember adventure games? Damn good times. Like anyone who did a lot of questing for glory, space questing, monkey islanding and so on back in the day, I’ve got a fond place in my memory for when games made us type and warbling PC speaker sound trills would make me worry if my computer was enduring vibration damage.

Well the good old days are back! Apparently there’s an adventure game engine available free to anyone, and people have been making free remakes of the classics, complete with voice packs and really respectable presentation. Now, I didn’t want to be disappointed by the realization that my old favorites weren’t as great as I remember, so I kicked off the nostalgia tour with some games I have no nostalgia for because I never played them, the first two in the King’s Quest series.

The King’s Quest 1 remake is loyal to the original, which actually means that once you get past the rush of using the old VGA Sierra game style, with the hand and eye icons, the game kinda sucks. You do a lot of reaching into holes and checking under rocks. There’s a lot of obnoxious walking over chasms on railless diagonal bridges, using arrow controls or tiny mouse movements and saving each step because you die every other step. More than anything, there’s lots of guessing upon solutions to puzzles that really don’t make any damn sense. There are only a very few characters to talk to to give the game a sense of plot. The game allows you to use up needed items, and there’s a dwarf that comes and steals items at random if he walks by you, so if he takes something important you can’t beat the game. If that happens, there’s nothing to indicate what was taken, or to tell you you can’t beat the game now, you can continue until frustrated. The remake does offer a mode that protects the beatableness of the game, so that’s nice, but like a fool I opted for the classic experience. Oh, there’s this horsebull “puzzle” where you have to jump and catch a condor by the feet, but you need to be standing and planning your jump to beat very unforgiving timing. It’s hours of disheartening pain until you check online and find out you need to stand on some rocks, NOT the marked x on the screen, and slow the game to the lowest speed. It might actually be better than I’m letting on; the bits between the points of frustration are enjoyable enough. KQ1 is alright overall, it’s a lot like Peasant’s Quest, the modern classic it inspired, but much less brilliant, funny, or fun.

Now the King’s Quest 2 remake is 100% sweet. Word is that the original was a lot like KQ1, and a lot like the KQ1 remake, so the remakers decided they’d take KQ2, wring out the lameness, pour on the spicy sauce and launch that sad jazz Up a Notch. The result is tasty, cut scenes full of plot, puzzles that make sense, genuine atmosphere and flavor. They’ve taken elements of the old and made an entirely new game, like DJs pluging some old disco sample you don’t dig into a hot remix that commands you to grove. Everything I read about what was altered shows the old version using some cliché, while the new twists that into something funny and original and better. The game has emotion, intensity, that cinematic interactive movie feel that the last game you played was probably missing. Scenes get tense, over and over you’re facing death, trying to think your way out of a spot with the timer ticking. When you do figure out to [SOLUTION SPOILER] escape the werewolf advancing on you while you have deadly swamp on three sides by dipping your needle into the poisonous morass, snapping a reed off the shore and nailing it with your new dart blowgun [END OF SPOILER], you feel like the god of cleverness.

What you need to do is check it out.