Those of us fortunate enough to have witnessed the dawn of the PC as a gaming platform will remember the ground-breaking King’s Quest from Sierra Online as an adventure game with 16-colour graphics and hardly any music or sound.
Gameplay was through textual commands like “push rock”, “look in tree” and “open door”, which means plenty of trial and error and anguish. What really gave us a kick are the witty rebuttals the game throws back at you for suggesting wrong or silly actions.
The unmatched wit of Roberta Williams, the legendary developer, was what made the fiendishly punishing King’s Quest series extremely fun despite all its flaws. That was in the 80s when gamers were still happy to go through such pain for a rewarding gameplay.
Purists of old games who are brave and masochistic enough to take on the challenge can still purchase the original King’s Quest titles at GOG.com.
So, how does the new King’s Quest compare from the point of view of a nostalgic gamer?
My advice – don’t have any expectations of similarities with the old King’s Quest and you’ll enjoy it a lot more. It’s a completely different game in terms of gameplay, puzzle-solving logic and structure. Only the characters, names and setting bear some resemblance to the old King’s Quest. Take a look at Graham then, in his pixelated glory, and now.
The land of Daventry, too, was so much more vivid and well-rendered than I remembered.
King’s Quest: A Knight to Remember (KQ:AKTR) features an aged King Graham telling stories to his granddaughter of his glorious adventures during his quest for knighthood in Daventry. The game is friendly, comedic and story-driven, with entertaining dialogue and well-structured narrative peppered with a good dose of wit. What stands out is the quality of the voice-acting – with Christopher Lloyd as the old King Graham – and charming, fairytale-like graphics, as well as a generous dose of cinematic cutscenes and endearing characters.
But oftentimes, I felt like I was watching an animated film rather than playing a game. In a way, the gameplay seemed secondary – it felt like the developers were trying to insert gameplay elements in the story which is rather contrived at times. For example, a simple act of climbing over a wall forces you to hit the spacebar to grab a very obvious path of handholds, or crossing the river with only one path of stepping stones requires you to use the spacebar to move from stone to stone. Also, there was no option to combine items in Graham’s inventory, making the puzzles very straightforward.
KQ:AKTR serves up everything on the platter for you, almost like it was apologising for the frustration and hardship it put the gamers through in the 80s. Onscreen prompts tell you which key needs to be pressed to perform an action, and when something can be interacted with. Shortcuts will even open up after you complete an arduous journey to a new place, which is a real luxury for adventure gamers.
In the original King’s Quest, I remembered the incredible frustration of suffering many unexpected instant death situations that led to anguished cries of “I didn’t save!”. Now, anytime Graham dies, the game sends you back to old King Graham or his granddaughter saying, “That’s not what happened,” or something to that effect, and you will return to the same point for another attempt.
There are choices in the game that let you choose solutions that feature bravery, compassion and wit, but it is difficult to compare how these options will affect the game’s outcome since the game is autosaved and you can only “Continue” and not load back to a point prior to making a decision.
But what bugged me was that there was very little puzzle-solving element – solutions seem very obvious and there isn’t as much trial and error needed. A major annoyance of the game is that the cutscenes cannot be skipped, so if you accidentally interacted with the same object or are re-attempting a puzzle, you will need to sit through the entire cutscene, which isn’t funny and gets annoying after a few times.
With gameplay of less than five hours, KQ:AKTR is a great game for younger players, who might enjoy the humour, but adults may find it a tad childish. There were too many attempts at comedy involving people falling over which I don’t find funny.
Puns were also featured strongly as a comedic element, which seems to be a trademark of this new Graham. There are four other chapters in the series to be launched in the future, but I am ambivalent about it. I am attracted by the story and the nostalgia of Graham’s adventures in Daventry but I felt the game lacked both replayabilty and challenge as an adventure game.
Nevertheless, if you’re new to the adventure game genre, or are in the mood for a light-hearted medieval jaunt and a good family-friendly story, KQ:AKTR is a worthy title. But if you seek a challenging adventure game that lets you experiment and explore, give this a miss. That Daventry no longer exists.
