King's Quest and Leisure Suit Larry
I was watching playthroughs of the aforementioned series on YouTube, and it was kind of interesting. YouTube is a great resource for watching playthroughs of the games you missed when you were younger, or just never were able to beat. (Or new games that are more entertaining to watch than to play.) I should get into Space Quest next.
The first game in both series was pretty much open, as was the first Quest for Glory, allowing you to wander freely. The first King's Quest was more of a novelty than a real game, and I think, sad though I am to say it, that this style of game is more of a novelty than a viable genre. Once gaming became more sophisticated, Sierra-type games kind of floundered and never quite regained their footing. I brought this up on Transformers Universe and pretty much everyone agreed that Sierra never quite made the transition over to VGA and point-and-click (or point-and-grope for Leisure Suit Larry) properly. Their first VGA games were very spotty and didn't quite live up to the later EGA games, though they did look nice.
As I said, King's Quest was sort of a novelty, as many early computer games were. It was as much a "Look what we can do!" as a proper attempt at a game. It was completely open and getting through it was really just a matter of poking around until you figured out everything. Honestly, I think this format works better than a linear story, as we'll find out. You would nearly always have something to do, so if you were stuck you could go poke around someplace else, whereas in a linear game, you have to just sit and stare at that screen until you figure it out, sometimes leading to starting over entirely. Ack. Anyways, the first King's Quest had a quaint charm. The second game was pretty similar.
King's Quest III was quite cool. You start out as the prisoner of a wizard, and you get to explore while he's away, returning everything to its rightful place before he gets back. This eventually leads to finding ingredients and creating magic to free yourself. That's only the beginning, but it's one of the cooler segments of a game I've seen. King's Quest IV was well done, but with some screwy bits. I expect these two games would have been among my favorites if I'd had them while young. I can certainly see how they'd leave an impression.
King's Quest V was pretty crappy. The first VGA point-and-click game. It's weird how most companies really started to flourish when they transitioned into VGA, yet Sierra's first VGA games seemed to all be worse than the EGA game that came before them. Growing pains, I guess. First, that stupid owl. Between this game and Ocarina of Time, my blood grows cold every time I see an owl in a video game. He follows you around, and you have to wait for his animation to finish on each screen, and for him to say something unhelpful in many cases. Argh. This is also one of the worst Sierra games I've seen for the old "You missed something earlier on, so you can't win! Sorry!" that this genre is so notorious for. Obtuse puzzles make this even worse. The most infamous is when you walk onto a screen, you see a cat chasing a mouse. If you VERY SWIFTLY toss a boot at the cat, you save the mouse and it saves you later, in turn. If you don't react fast enough or don't think anything of it, which you really should if you've played a game like this before, the cat gets the mouse and you can't win anymore. D'oh! The worst of the series. King's Quest VI is a great improvement over the previous game, but still kind of cludgy.
King's Quest VII goes in a strange new direction, trying to look like traditional animation. Much like polygons on the DS, though, it suffers from a low resolution, which makes it look pretty off. The intro almost scared me away from the game entirely, but I was glad I stuck around. Once you get into the game proper, you get the most polished game in the series since IV. The animation is properly timed in most cases, and the voice acting is actually... good! A satisfying game.
I can see why Leisure Suit Larry was popular at the time. It was the perfect "naughty" game for the time it was created in. As said before, it's completely open, like King's Quest. You ride around from location to location in a taxi. There are tons of silly little jokes and goofy things. Your goal is to lose your virginity by morning, or you shoot yourself in the head! If you type "masturbate" it tells you "The point of all this was for you to stop doing that!" If you call a number on a payphone, you do a phone survey. The next time you walk past the phone, it rings, and it fills your answers into a sort of suggestive Mad Libs call. In the convenience store you can buy a "lubber," carefully looking around to make sure nobody is watching. The guy at the counter asks you a number of questions, then loudly tells you to enjoy your " small lubber" whereupon people pop up from behind shelves and whatnot and yell, "Pervert!" (He says small no matter what size you say you want!) The biggest problem is that you need to gamble in the casino to get enough money to win. This is easy, since you can save before each hand of 21, for instance. It's still tedious, though. Though very suggestive, it's surprisingly non-vulgar. I'd rate this as an all-time classic.
Leisure Suit Larry II and III are far more complex and long and story-driven than the previous game, which is not a good thing, as it turns out. III (or was it II?) is even worse than King's Quest V for losing due to missing something early on. And the puzzles can be very obtuse indeed. Many are just plain bizaare and require you to do things that make no sense at the time. Still, they were pretty amusing to watch. The Passionate Patty segments in III were funny, due to the silly messages, such as when you gets some coconuts: "You take the big brown hairy nuts in your hands. A sensation not wholly unfamiliar to you." You get the idea. II has a disturbing sequence where Larry goes into a shower and you get an angle from below the floor as he walks around the shower naked! Eep! (Or was that III? I'm getting these two mixed up in my mind a little, I think.)
Leisure Suit Larry V and VI were the first VGA point-and-grope games in the series. V suffers from the growing pains I've described above. In an old issue of InterAction (Sierra's magazine) Al Lowe, the hilarious creator of Leisure Suit Larry (look up his website!) says he made multiple solutions to the puzzles, easy and more obscure, but people would just find the easy solutions and say, "This game's too easy!" I watched it on hard, and it still didn't look too tough. VI was perhaps the best game in the series, with good puzzles and designs and a large game area. (You make a swimsuit by combining a lens cleaning cloth for a pair of sunglasses with a piece of dental floss.) There was no Leisure Suit Larry IV. It was kind of a joke; it would get vaguely referenced, but it never happened.
I didn't watch Leisure Suit Larry VII (or the wretched-sounding post-Sierra games) or King's Quest VIII. I did watch Sam and Max Hit the Road, which had MUCH better animation than the Sierra games of the day, plus the wretched Les Manley games, since a friend had those back in the day. Anyways, interesting stuff.
The first game in both series was pretty much open, as was the first Quest for Glory, allowing you to wander freely. The first King's Quest was more of a novelty than a real game, and I think, sad though I am to say it, that this style of game is more of a novelty than a viable genre. Once gaming became more sophisticated, Sierra-type games kind of floundered and never quite regained their footing. I brought this up on Transformers Universe and pretty much everyone agreed that Sierra never quite made the transition over to VGA and point-and-click (or point-and-grope for Leisure Suit Larry) properly. Their first VGA games were very spotty and didn't quite live up to the later EGA games, though they did look nice.
As I said, King's Quest was sort of a novelty, as many early computer games were. It was as much a "Look what we can do!" as a proper attempt at a game. It was completely open and getting through it was really just a matter of poking around until you figured out everything. Honestly, I think this format works better than a linear story, as we'll find out. You would nearly always have something to do, so if you were stuck you could go poke around someplace else, whereas in a linear game, you have to just sit and stare at that screen until you figure it out, sometimes leading to starting over entirely. Ack. Anyways, the first King's Quest had a quaint charm. The second game was pretty similar.
King's Quest III was quite cool. You start out as the prisoner of a wizard, and you get to explore while he's away, returning everything to its rightful place before he gets back. This eventually leads to finding ingredients and creating magic to free yourself. That's only the beginning, but it's one of the cooler segments of a game I've seen. King's Quest IV was well done, but with some screwy bits. I expect these two games would have been among my favorites if I'd had them while young. I can certainly see how they'd leave an impression.
King's Quest V was pretty crappy. The first VGA point-and-click game. It's weird how most companies really started to flourish when they transitioned into VGA, yet Sierra's first VGA games seemed to all be worse than the EGA game that came before them. Growing pains, I guess. First, that stupid owl. Between this game and Ocarina of Time, my blood grows cold every time I see an owl in a video game. He follows you around, and you have to wait for his animation to finish on each screen, and for him to say something unhelpful in many cases. Argh. This is also one of the worst Sierra games I've seen for the old "You missed something earlier on, so you can't win! Sorry!" that this genre is so notorious for. Obtuse puzzles make this even worse. The most infamous is when you walk onto a screen, you see a cat chasing a mouse. If you VERY SWIFTLY toss a boot at the cat, you save the mouse and it saves you later, in turn. If you don't react fast enough or don't think anything of it, which you really should if you've played a game like this before, the cat gets the mouse and you can't win anymore. D'oh! The worst of the series. King's Quest VI is a great improvement over the previous game, but still kind of cludgy.
King's Quest VII goes in a strange new direction, trying to look like traditional animation. Much like polygons on the DS, though, it suffers from a low resolution, which makes it look pretty off. The intro almost scared me away from the game entirely, but I was glad I stuck around. Once you get into the game proper, you get the most polished game in the series since IV. The animation is properly timed in most cases, and the voice acting is actually... good! A satisfying game.
I can see why Leisure Suit Larry was popular at the time. It was the perfect "naughty" game for the time it was created in. As said before, it's completely open, like King's Quest. You ride around from location to location in a taxi. There are tons of silly little jokes and goofy things. Your goal is to lose your virginity by morning, or you shoot yourself in the head! If you type "masturbate" it tells you "The point of all this was for you to stop doing that!" If you call a number on a payphone, you do a phone survey. The next time you walk past the phone, it rings, and it fills your answers into a sort of suggestive Mad Libs call. In the convenience store you can buy a "lubber," carefully looking around to make sure nobody is watching. The guy at the counter asks you a number of questions, then loudly tells you to enjoy your " small lubber" whereupon people pop up from behind shelves and whatnot and yell, "Pervert!" (He says small no matter what size you say you want!) The biggest problem is that you need to gamble in the casino to get enough money to win. This is easy, since you can save before each hand of 21, for instance. It's still tedious, though. Though very suggestive, it's surprisingly non-vulgar. I'd rate this as an all-time classic.
Leisure Suit Larry II and III are far more complex and long and story-driven than the previous game, which is not a good thing, as it turns out. III (or was it II?) is even worse than King's Quest V for losing due to missing something early on. And the puzzles can be very obtuse indeed. Many are just plain bizaare and require you to do things that make no sense at the time. Still, they were pretty amusing to watch. The Passionate Patty segments in III were funny, due to the silly messages, such as when you gets some coconuts: "You take the big brown hairy nuts in your hands. A sensation not wholly unfamiliar to you." You get the idea. II has a disturbing sequence where Larry goes into a shower and you get an angle from below the floor as he walks around the shower naked! Eep! (Or was that III? I'm getting these two mixed up in my mind a little, I think.)
Leisure Suit Larry V and VI were the first VGA point-and-grope games in the series. V suffers from the growing pains I've described above. In an old issue of InterAction (Sierra's magazine) Al Lowe, the hilarious creator of Leisure Suit Larry (look up his website!) says he made multiple solutions to the puzzles, easy and more obscure, but people would just find the easy solutions and say, "This game's too easy!" I watched it on hard, and it still didn't look too tough. VI was perhaps the best game in the series, with good puzzles and designs and a large game area. (You make a swimsuit by combining a lens cleaning cloth for a pair of sunglasses with a piece of dental floss.) There was no Leisure Suit Larry IV. It was kind of a joke; it would get vaguely referenced, but it never happened.
I didn't watch Leisure Suit Larry VII (or the wretched-sounding post-Sierra games) or King's Quest VIII. I did watch Sam and Max Hit the Road, which had MUCH better animation than the Sierra games of the day, plus the wretched Les Manley games, since a friend had those back in the day. Anyways, interesting stuff.