Posted on: July 27, 2012
KingCrimson250
Zweryfikowany użytkownikGry: 240 Opinie: 7
For Completionists Only
The package of King's Quest 7+8 is hardly a tantalizing purchase. Let's start with the worst of the two. King's Quest 8 is widely panned, and it deserves all it receives and more. What we are faced with here is a dull, bland action-adventure with a couple of tie-ins to King's Quest here and there. Many have complained that it isn't a King's Quest game. I would go further and say it isn't even really much of a game. Even imagining it were unrelated to the KQ series, it still wouldn't be worth picking up. Why not? A combination of many different factors. The controls are abysmal and directing Connor feels like leading around a drunken monkey with a banana. No better is the non-existent plot or the bland and empty locations that feel excessively large just to pad out the game. Combat is repetitive and unfulfilling, with AI swarming into the player's mindless clicks, what few puzzles exist are both frustrating and mindless (jumping puzzles with these controls?) and the dialogue is cheesy and stilted. Even at the time of release, the game could really only lay claim to one positive achievement, and that's relatively impressive graphics - but as you can see by the screenshots, beauty is a fleeting thing indeed. King's Quest 8 isn't even worth playing, and even should you buy this package, I wouldn't recommend opening it. By comparison, King's Quest 7 is the greatest game of the 90s. But that's by comparison to KQ 8. All things considered, KQ 7 is a rather mediocre adventure game in its own right (and as KQ7 was the first adventure game I played, all those years ago, it pains me to say that). It is in virtually every way an improvement upon its successor, with interesting locales, a coherent and even somewhat intriguing plot, better dialogue, actual puzzles that require some thought, and, ironically enough, it is much better looking - its Disney-style animation has stood the test of time much better than KQ8's "cutting-edge" 3D graphics. Still, though, it's far from perfect. Perhaps the game's most egregious flaw is being easy to the point that it feels "dumbed down." It is literally "point-and-click" in the sense that you have a magic wand that glitters over things you can interact with. Clicking on those things makes whatever needs to happen, happen. In other words, the game is quite playable by travelling around mindlessly clicking everything. The game also streamlines death, allowing you to continue from the screen before, which is a mixed blessing. First, it reduces the frustration of the "Save early, save often" gameplay from earlier KQs. However, it also removes any tension or need for preparation from the game, knowing that you can just magically respawn without consequences should your next action lead you to disaster. The final questionable aspect of the game is a more subjective matter, and that is the Disney-fication of KQ. The game has an awful lot of annoying, cartoonish characters which are often cringe-worthy and some even pushing you to get away from them as soon as possible. The ultimate problem with KQ 7 isn't that it's not a good adventure game. It is. It's just not as good as most of the other adventure games on this site, and the fact that it is coupled with the unplayable mess that is KQ8 leaves me strongly encouraging adventure gamers to spend their hard-earned money on other titles here, and to only come back once they've exhausted other options or if playing KQ 1-6 has left them jonesing for some more.
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