Ratings by Lagomorph

I really like how this game is centered around the mansion and the routines of its inhabitants. Suspense permeates the game world as you never know when you might get caught. In addition to having to outwit the NPC’s, the player must also manage a team of three characters, which adds another layer to the gameplay. Maniac Mansion is one of the hardest LucasArts adventures, but puzzles are usually fair and occasionally clever. I particularly liked the one involving the chandelier.   

Maniac Mansion does have its limitations. While replaying the game recently, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated that there was no “look at” verb. This hampers the immersion a bit as does the lack of dialogue and characterization. I don’t really mind the deaths or dead ends, but the more fleshed-out stories and game worlds of later LucasArts adventures certainly mark an improvement over the sparse treatment given here.

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Time Played: 10-20 hours
Difficulty: Hard

While I did like Simon’s character and some of the humor, overall I found this game to be rather disappointing. The puzzles were largely uninteresting, boiling down to basic item fetching and combining items in ways that make little logical sense. One in particular, involving a druid, is among the most nonsensical I’ve seen in a game. The world is presented in a very open and unfocused manner, making the game even more difficult. The story is bare bones and the supporting characters forgettable. The artwork is nothing special either. Overall, Simon the Sorcerer feels like a poor imitation of LucasArts.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Hard

The third entry in the King’s Quest series takes a significant step in the direction of creating a more multi-dimensional world. Though the plot remains pretty basic, the story feels much more original than it did in the first two games. Gwydion’s struggle is more personal and unique than the more generic ones of Graham. What’s perhaps more important is how the gameplay and story become more closely intertwined. The addition of a time element represents an attempt to anchor interactivity to the linear nature of story. There are events that occur without the player’s doing. Mannanan’s unpredictable reappearances frustrate the player’s efforts, and not only add an element of realism, but also an element of tension and conflict. The player must battle an antagonist that acts (in some ways) like the player himself does.

Unfortunately, the real time element becomes less important as the game progresses. The game makes a somewhat awkward and underexplained transition and returns to the more traditional structure of its predecessors. It would have been nice to see the end section fleshed out more, with perhaps the conflict tying back in some way to Mannanan and Gwydion’s origins. Adding a real time element at the end would also have helped to create tension where it is needed most.

King’s Quest III takes major steps in shaping the King’s Quest universe into a unique one. Apart from the odd inclusion of the three bears, the game steers away from the direct adaptation of fairytales and instead contains characters that feel more at home with each other. The music this time is also mostly original. Graphically, the game is a major step up. The artwork is actually quite nice to look at in all its pixilated glory. Navigation is also drastically improved by the addition of the magic map that removes most of the tediousness of walking back and forth. We are also introduced to one of the best incorporations of copy protection that I’ve seen. The spells seamlessly fit in with the rest of the puzzles. The spells are also fun in how they allow the player to manipulate the game world in unusual ways.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Just Right

Following the basic formula of the first game, King’s Quest II was an instant hit when it was released. Gradually, however, the game has earned the reputation among fans as the worst game in the series. It is criticized for not fixing any of the annoyances of the first game, and also for including too many disparate fantasy elements (Dracula, Neptune, and Little Red Riding Hood in the same game?).

Yet despite this status, I enjoyed King’s Quest II immensely. This game is like a camp classic. All the diverse references collide to create a pastiche that’s impossible to take seriously. The story is framed by a typical fantasy premise and filled-in almost entirely with other recognizable allusions. Musical clichés abound as well with Chopin’s funeral march returning from the first game (I love the inappropriate upbeat ending tacked onto the end) and Tchaikovsky’s “Love Theme” from Romeo and Juliet. One Easter egg even has the Batmobile roll out of a cave with music and everything. In entertainment value, it’s a definite improvement over the original.

A slight improvement is also made in the construction of the world. While the north and south directions still wrap around, the east and west are blocked off. This makes it a bit easier to navigate and also gives a bit more of a shape to the world, a world that seems a little more varied and interesting. However, the increased linearity removes a dimension of interactivity. On the other hand, the story has a marginally stronger thrust. The puzzles continue to mostly consist of retrieving objects. It is not a very hard game, and despite what Robert Williams says, it’s not much longer than the first one.

While aiming to be unoriginal by constantly alluding to pre-existing material, King’s Quest II manages a spark of originality when its collage is seen as a whole. The juxtaposition brings new meanings to the material, adding some pleasantly absurd humor though perhaps lacking in substantial depth.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours

Perhaps King’s Quest’s primitiveness is its major downfall, but it is also the game’s redeeming joy. The simple aesthetics evoke not only a medieval fantasy world but a world where graphic adventure games were born.

Admittedly, the gameplay and puzzles don’t provide much satisfaction in terms of problem solving. But there is a satisfaction, at times ironic, in discovering how the genre’s first designers decided to craft a puzzle. I would find the difficulty of climbing stairs annoying in a game now, but here I can’t help but be amused. It’s as if watching a child take her first steps.

The writing is sparse and shallow. Yet it is interesting to see how an old narrative form such as the fairytale is merged with a new one such as the graphic adventure game. One new thing that becomes apparent is the nonlinearity that adventure games offer. The game contains allusions to multiple fairytales, and those fairytales can arise in the game’s narrative in an order determined by the player. They can be interrupted and revisited and even be completed or left uncompleted to varying extents.

Sierra would later demonstrate the artistic possibilities of low-res, pixelated art. However, here the graphics are rather bland apart from a few inspired screens, such as the beanstalk. The PC speaker tunes, on the other hand, are a delight.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Easy

Leisure Suit Larry is a rather brilliant game for its times and may have been one of the key games in bringing about the golden age of adventure games (which is roughly 1987-1994 in my mind). Compared to the earlier King’s Quest and Space Quest protagonists, Larry Laffer is a much more fleshed out character who we can sympathize with. Larry also helps make the game funnier than any of its Sierra predecessors.

The graphics of Larry 1 generally aren’t anything special, perhaps even a step down from its contemporaries. However, it does contain some wonderful close-ups, a first for Sierra, I believe. The sound, though minimal, is very good. The main musical theme is among the most iconic in adventure history.

The game is pretty short and easy, but that only plays into the game’s less ambitious appeal. The puzzle’s are pretty straightforward and the dead ends less numerous than in other Sierra games. Larry 1 is probably the best entry point into Sierra’s AGI period.

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Time Played: 5-10 hours
Difficulty: Easy