Nostalgia may help attract an audience for the new series of King’s Quest games, but you don’t need to have any affection for the glory days of Sierra On-Line to appreciate the fantastic first chapter in this renewed saga. Developer The Odd Gentlemen has absolutely nailed the fairy-tale spirit of the original franchise in A Knight to Remember, the first of five planned chapters. This is more than just a walk down memory lane, however, as Roberta Williams’ iconic creation has been reimagined for modern sensibilities. Old-time fans might find it tough to deal with some of the changes here, but the new approach livens up a series that has been mothballed since Bill Clinton was in the White House, and it certainly doesn’t shy away from offering up grueling puzzles that would have been tough to crack even back in the day.
Speaking as a member of the original Sierra adventure generation and someone whose very first PC games were , I really enjoy the way that A Knight to Remember looks back as well as looks forward. The story reboots the original epic while avoiding starting completely from scratch. While the protagonist is still Graham, king of the fantasy realm of Daventry, this version of the character is a grizzled monarch brought to life by actor Christopher Lloyd. The storyline of the whole series will actually skip over the original King’s Quest games to focus on Graham before he became heir to the throne, framing the adventures in each chapter as the recollections of the elderly king telling stories of his youthful exploits to his granddaughter Gwendolyn.
This new take on King’s Quest elevates the visuals and sound to contemporary levels and then some, with gorgeous cartoon graphics and Hollywood quality scripting and sound.
This narrative device does a fantastic job of setting everything up, respecting the original King’s Quest stories (even if some of the finer details have been retconned) while also allowing Lloyd to serve as an old raconteur spinning these tales with accompanying puns and hints. Anyone who loves Lloyd (and who doesn’t? he’s Doc Brown, people!) will immediately warm to his presence, which immediately makes the game more likable. The specific story being recounted here goes back to the beginning of it all, with the future ruler arriving in Daventry as a wanderer seeking fame and fortune in a pageant being held to name a new knight to King Edward’s court.
Just as this story mixes old and new, so does the game style, which is a cross between modern episodic adventures set on a linear path and old-fashioned adventures that force players to do a lot of exploring and sleuthing. Both design styles are well represented here, too, with neither being short-changed. So while there are a lot of button-mashing action sequences (the game is equally at home with a gamepad or a keyboard-and-mouse control setup), the majority of play focuses on gathering items, carefully examining the scenery, talking to anyone and everyone, and completing many deeply traditional adventure-game quests. There is even a dash of role-playing here, courtesy of occasional choices that need to be made between the three approaches of bravery, wisdom, and compassion (which very loosely equate to the old fantasy warrior, mage, and cleric archetypes).
Daventry at its finest.
This means that A Knight to Remember really does offer the best of both worlds. I thought the game hit a nearly perfect balance between arcade action with button-pressing brawls and wandering around trying to solve various puzzles to bypass obstacles and move the plot forward. Nothing here was particularly easy. This isn’t a Telltale-styled episode where you can breeze through it over a (admittedly long) lunch break. I spent a good eight hours here, having an extremely tough time with both some of the arcade challenges (the rope fight with Sir Cumference toward the end of the game drove me insane, and the closing chess duel wasn’t much easier on me) and the puzzles (which at times lived up to the infamous Sierra reputation for inscrutability).
For all of its newness, the game is actually a little too traditional at times. Some of the problems require leaps in logic, and the overall organization of the final section of the game leaves something to be desired due to a lack of structure. After following a pretty linear path through the opening couple of hours, the game then opens up to a fairly huge area loaded with clues and objects and screens to explore. As a result, I felt somewhat lost, especially given that there were few if any suggestions as to which order I should have been taking to deal with all of these options.
Even when I was frustrated, it was a good kind of frustrated. I always felt that I was moving forward, however slowly. And any sort of aggravation was always mitigated by the incredible charm of this heroic fantasy. A Knight to Remember has been adroitly scripted to mirror the whimsical nature of the original games, which were more like a little girl’s fairy tales than anything out of D&D. This is reflected in the light-hearted sense of humor maintained throughout, where even the villains aren’t really so much bad guys as they are misunderstood buffoons. This is even seen in the reactions to young Graham dying, which is often rewound almost immediately by old Graham serving as the narrator, who immediately says something like he must have misremembered things. Of course he didn’t die horribly—after all, he’s sitting in bed telling this story to his granddaughter, isn’t he?
As with the original King’s Quest games, klutzy Graham is a hero in only the loosest sense of the word.
Visuals and sound build this atmosphere even farther. The graphics have been smartly crafted to resemble a slightly unrealistic animated movie. All of the usual comic-book tropes are presented, from heroes with big blue eyes to hulking enemies who tower over the good guys to vaguely anthropomorphic animals. Almost everything here has been well calculated to bring a smile to your face. Audio also hits a Hollywood tone. As already noted, the dialogue is simply stellar and the voice acting even better, led by Lloyd but also bolstered by a cast of unknowns who ably handle the range of heroes and villains. Even heroes and villains who could have--even should have--devolved into cornball stereotypes impossible for the best voice-acting to save, like an outrageously French-accented bridge troll, are somehow rescued and made into believable characters. The score perfectly accompanies the action, and the music here would not seem out of place on a big budget movie production, with lilts and accents to play up everything taking place in the game.
Like the old saying goes--the king is dead, long live the king. Even though A Knight to Remember is not the King’s Quest of yesterday, this first episode in a new franchise ensures that the heart of the original series will live on for the current generation of adventure gamers. Bring on the new exploits of King Graham.
Lost Dimension masquerades as an average, everyday JRPG. Spiky anime hair, teenage angst, and crater-inducing special attacks abound, but this turn-based quest to prevent global genocide manages to successfully pair the expected with the aberrant. The tactical combat and deep pool of weapons, armor, and abilities are robust enough to stand on their own, but there’s a twist. Within your 11-person troupe lives a traitor, and knowing of this mole’s existence but not his or her identity forces you to tackle otherwise straightforward situations in unique ways--altering who you take into battle and how you interpret one-on-one conversations. Should you trust the doctor with a checkered medical practice history? Is the lavender-haired vixen with her admittedly fake accent out to get you, or is it the shotgun-toting knucklehead you can only pray remembered to leave the safety on? What could have amounted to a throwaway gimmick is instead used to enrich both combat and story, and while the elimination of party members devalues some character progression, Lost Dimension pulls off its bold gamble.
The cast can be comically bizarre, but the story itself is both bleak and highly self-serious. In the near future, the fate of the world is threatened by the pale, moody villain all-too conveniently named The End. This archetypical evildoer rides in on a massive structure from another dimension called the Pillar and wipes out a significant percentage of the population to show that, despite the red-frosted tips in his hair, he means business.
To combat this threat, the UN sends a special task force wielding psychic gifts to reach the top of the Pillar, battle The End, and save humanity. Codenamed “SEALED,” this peculiar group is little more than a mishmash of colorful strangers with foggy memories. Bonds between each member and the protagonist, Sho, need to be built from the ground up, but working against that process is The End’s declaration that a traitor is present among the group. Before advancing from floor to floor of the tower, your team must vote to not only oust this fraud but also sentence him or her to death. Each subsequent floor establishes a new traitor, and the identity of the turncoat is determined by your interactions with each of the characters along the way.
Like in any good relationship, building trust takes time and effort--and Lost Dimension makes that a surprisingly enjoyable task. Without knowing anyone’s background, you quickly pick favorites and identify people you don’t feel too comfortable watching your back. Continuing to chat and adventure with a specific comrade improves camaraderie between your two characters, and beyond the social benefits, this often leads to more assistance in battle. It’s important to vary whom you bring into skirmishes, too, because Sho can hear the thoughts of those he fights alongside and note whether or not they seem suspicious. By switching different members in and out of your lineup and keeping track of these guarded thoughts, you can more easily narrow down your search.
This unique system forces you to care about otherwise irrelevant dialogue and experiment with different combat concoctions. The identity of the first traitor becomes clear before you’re asked to cast your vote, but from then on, you’re often wracking your brain over the choice. You accumulate Vision Points that can be used to dive deep into the psyche of any party member you’ve battled alongside to out the traitor, but if you use up three vision points only to discover three clear consciences, you and your team are left taking a shot in the dark when asked to vote someone off the island.
"One of you will betray me."
The combat variation that comes with having 11 stylistically distinctive party members is both vast and delightful, even as your numbers dwindle over time. Any six members can be taken into a mission and moved within a restricted circle to perform group attacks, flank enemies, pick up items, or hit switches to open gates. You can both move and attack in a given turn, and because you’re often outnumbered, it’s critical to partner up with members of your team with whom you’ve become friendly to coordinate assisted assaults. Guns, blades, and magical gifts can all be used to clean out a given location, but even highly leveled and well-equipped SEALED members can be easily dropped when isolated.
Boosting stats and abilities is exceedingly rewarding, and Lost Dimension provides a healthy suite of techniques to learn. A character with basic fire-based Gifts can eventually learn area-of-effect attacks, abilities that drastically reduce enemy stats, or even devastating special moves that might smite a target in a single blow. It can be frustrating to build up an individual character only to learn that he or she is a traitor, but even fallen soldiers leave behind items that can be used to unlock even more powerful Gifts for those who are still standing.
What Gifts you unlock and whether you decide to invest more heavily in defense or offense can make the difference between earning the top S rank and limping to the finish line with just one of your six characters standing. Once you get a handle on the battle system--how to attack without constantly getting countered, maintaining your Sanity meter so you don’t lose control of a character, and taking out specific enemies to complete missions in a hurry--Lost Dimension becomes a smooth operation. However, the stuttering framerate muddies an otherwise even experience. Even the most basic attack animations can make combat sequences chug, and the dull, insipid environments and unspectacular visuals make for a game that rarely looks as good as it plays.
Careful planning and teamwork are essential when you're outnumbered on the battlefield.
What’s also uneven is the difficulty. Even if you keep up with the side missions and special character quests, some battles ambush you with a disheartening level of difficulty. The final battle is the biggest culprit, forcing you to grind out old missions over and over again to even stand a chance at victory. It’s not enough to sully the otherwise rewarding combat, but Lost Dimension’s sporadic degree of challenge can make hours of leveling up and character building feel moot.
Dialogue suffers from having far too many cooks in the kitchen, and it feels like whoever was writing the lines was forced to include a quip from each of the 11 characters for every single occasion. What’s actually said is almost never more profound than “Who could the traitor be?!” The one-on-one chats are much teresting and actually reveal valuable information about a given personality, but watching the camera swing from character to character during the story only to hear empty, repetitive lines is wearing.
Sure, Lost Dimension is another RPG in which a group of teens need to save the world from a maniacal villain with wonderful hair, but Lost Dimension thinks outside that box just enough to feel new. The goofy characters, rewarding progression system, and tactical combat supersede the stunted dialogue and inconsistent framerate, and while the difficulty can be a bit overwhelming, the mechanics are fun and fresh enough to temper most frustration. What really brings it all to life, though, is the suspense that comes from never quite knowing who to trust, which keeps you wary of much more than just the enemies on the periphery. This is a JRPG layered atop a tactical strategy game layered atop a murder mystery, and somehow, the resulting structure holds up reasonably well.
Santa Esperanza or Sin City? I found it hard to tell the difference between the two black-and-white burgs in the first episode of Blues and Bullets, a five-part adventure series from indie developer A Crowd of Monsters that sets a striking neo-noir tone. There are just as many shadow-streaked rooms, rain-swept streets, and bloody red accents as in anything scripted by Frank Miller, while the plot is stuffed with enough psychos, horrific violence, and cornball dialogue to make Dashiell Hammett roll over in his grave. This is an inspired rip-off for the most part, however, hitting the same notes as a good hard-boiled detective novel despite a few offbeat scripting choices and some technical glitches.
As noted above, the location is a crime-ridden fictional city called Santa Esperanza. The year is 1955. The protagonist is Eliot Ness, but not the historical figure or even the fake one from TV and movies. This take on the leader of the famed Untouchables who brought down Chicago gangland boss Al Capone is different from anything seen before. Instead of taking out old Scarface with a tax case, Ness wound the case down with a Schwarzeneggerian shootout, slaughtering a dozen or more mobsters single-handedly while so drunk he could barely stand up. Twenty or so years later, Ness is a haunted ex-cop running a diner and trying to run away from his past, which includes murdered friends, an unhealthy attachment to a dead buddy’s wife, and a whole lot of booze and guilt. All this is complicated by the fact that Capone has just been paroled and is asking his old nemesis to help find his daughter, who has been kidnapped by a sinister cult that is abducting, mutilating, and sometimes slaughtering little kids.
Blues and Bullets bleeds neo-noir style reminiscent of the Sin City movies. And not just because of the red slashes on the otherwise black-and-white scenery.
All in all, it’s an innovative look at an American icon crossed with a more modern serial killing saga. But it’s also kind of off-putting because everyone knows the story of Ness and Capone courtesy of decades of TV shows and movies. I eventually came to appreciate this bizarre new angle on characters I thought I knew, although I never completely abandoned the notion that all this messing with history was sort of unnecessary. This version of Ness only shares a name with the real person, and the same goes for Capone. Swapping out Chicago for Santa Esperanza is also an odd choice given the use of real names for the lead characters. Why not go one way or the other? Doing both makes the whole story feel somewhat off-kilter, for no real purpose.
Added alt-history weirdness creates a surreal mish-mash. Strange concepts are tossed in for kicks, like the apparent survival of the Hindenburg and its subsequent renovation into a luxury hotel in the clouds. You visit it early on in the episode as a real place, but it is so impossibly huge and luxurious that it’s more Xanadu than retrofitted zeppelin. Even though you’re supposed to be on board the big balloon, you also see that famous photo of the airship exploding into flames over Lakehurst, New Jersey framed in its hallways. I was never sure what to think here. All things considered, the plot is innovative and guaranteed to keep you guessing about what’s coming next.
Blues and Bullets’ gameplay is standard for an adventure game, although both the action and sleuthing is volved than that in other similar series in the episodic genre. This is more of a traditional adventure game than what Telltale produces, for example. The structure isn’t quite as linear. Many choices influence the flow of the story, and dialogue options run a gamut of emotions that subtly alter how interactions play out with other characters. There is also more of a necessity to explore environments. Investigations are hands-on. Ness tackles a gruesome murder by examining the entire scene, from the occult altar made of severed hands in the bathroom to the impaled corpse in the living room and the discarded spoon in the hallway, which may have been used to scoop out the victim’s eyeballs. Ness puts clues together on a deduction board that leads him to conclusions. Nothing here is particularly challenging, although the process replicates the step-by-step nature of a criminal investigation.
Surreal glimpses into Eliot Ness’s tortured mind are striking if more than a bit cheesy.
Action scenes are also volved. Button-press fights and reactions are similar to those in more casual adventure series, but they tend to demand a little more from the player. Again, there isn’t anything here too tough, although you do have to hit buttons a little more quickly and more often than in similar games. In addition to the bare-knuckle sequences, there are also firefights in which you take cover and blast away at enemies. Anyone with even the most rudimentary arcade skills will be able to take on these vaguely GTA-inspired battles without breaking a sweat, but at least the game goes through the motions and gives you more to do. I’m hoping that future episodes ramp up the challenge and take advantage of the gangster setting with some serious gunplay.
What makes Blues and Bullets really stand out is its atmosphere. The game looks like an interactive version of the Sin City movies. The entire game is cloaked in long shadows and a gloomy air of menace, which is built up to such an extreme that even Ness’s diner in the middle of a sunny afternoon comes off as a midnight spook house. Surreal touches add to this effect. A dream sequence illustrating Ness’s tortured thoughts plays out as a gunfight in and around giant headline letters recounting just how corrupt and awful his world has become. Other stylish touches add tension. While most of the game consists of high-contrast black-and-white, red accent slashes are everywhere. This is of course used to indicate blood and to create a constant threat of violence. Even Ness’s ever-present red tie is a warning sign that bad things are about to go down.
The dialogue is also very good, albeit in the cheesy vein of old-time noir. Ness is pretty much the prototypical self-flagellating private detective with a weakness for booze and dames. Many lines teeter on the edge of self-parody. At times it’s not entirely clear whether the game is actually laughing at itself. While most of the story takes everything as seriously as an IRS audit, some aspects are over the top. One moment in which Ness interrupts a knife-thrower to the disappointment of the crowd and his now-perforated female target is so played up for slapstick that the Untouchable briefly turns into Frank Drebin. The voice acting is all over the place, but the leads are good for the most part. Ness is played as kind of a growly, boozy take on Batman, and Capone is a no-surprises, marble-mouthed thug. The cast is small, though, and actors try to hide their multiple roles with broad accents that do nothing but make the game seem amateurish.
Eliot didn’t encounter gruesome stuff like this during his days leading the Untouchables.
Another issue that illustrates the indie nature of Blues and Bullets is the presence of a few bugs. Slowdown is the most noticeable problem. Every so often, the game will drop to single-digit framerates. This usually takes place during panoramic introductions that sweep across city blocks. On a couple of occasions, this brought the game to a complete halt for me and forced a restart. Another annoyance was a cursor that never stayed still. On selection menus in the options and within the game itself as I organized the investigation board, the selected option constantly clicked to the right regardless of whether I was using the mouse and keyboard or the gamepad controls, forcing me to push back against the grain to make a choice. This was merely an irritant, although it could have been show-stopping if the game had demanded teraction in this fashion.
Although Blues and Bullets isn’t without its flaws, this first episode sets a distinctive comic-book, crime-noir attitude compelling enough to keep you playing and looking forward to what the series will offer in future installments. Anyone who enjoys classic noir fiction or the decidedly modern, bloody take on it offered up on the grim streets of Sin City will find a lot to like here.
This week we talk about who's winning so far: Guitar Hero Live or the new Rock Band, what we want from Mafia 3 and how we feel about the first chapter in King's Quest: A Knight to Remember.
Following suit with the likes of Steam, Green Man Gaming, and other retailers, Sony has kicked off a new PlayStation Store sale dubbed the Summer Sale. Beginning today, PSN will offer new deals on . We'll report back when we receive more details about how long the promotion will last.
GameStop on Tuesday announced the games and other special events that GameStop Expo attendees can check out during the one-day convention in early September.
A scene from the 2014 GameStop Expo
A range of high-profile upcoming titles will be playable on the 250,000 square foot show floor, including a list of exhibitors and even more games that will be playable at the show.
Following this morning's announcement of at Hangar 13.
"Mafia III is the next installment in the popular series known for immersing players into a world of organized crime through rich narrative storytelling and a beautifully crafted game world featuring period-accurate cars, music, and fashion," 2K said in a statement.
--still doesn't make much sense, nor does the involvement of Nathan Prescott, the troubled son of the city's most powerful family. There is one particular puzzle in this episode that I found almost intolerable. Chloe and Max lay out every clue they have collected--literally lay it all out in front of them--and the player is tasked with matching up groups of clues that create leads for the duo to follow. When the puzzle began, I had no idea what I was looking for, and it was a long time before Max's voice-over offered any hints as to what I should be searching. The mystery gets too obtuse to follow, and only after slogging through scraps of paper and tattered photos does anything even remotely make sense. Things were tidied up far too quickly for me to follow, leaving the victory of discovery feeling a bit hollow.
But following this puzzle, the episode picks up again, leading to one of my favorite environment puzzles in the entire series to date. And from here everything spiraled out of control, leaving me the most upset I have ever been at a game's completion. I didn't sleep at all following my playthrough. I felt gross.
Dig deep enough and you may regret what you find.
The big "thing" for this episode, if you will, is that it demonstrates the effect your choices have been having on the series all along. Big decisions you've made in all three previous episodes--whether or not Chloe still has her gun, whether or not you killed Frank's dog, whether or not you saved Kate--have huge implications. If you saved Kate, you're treated to scenes you wouldn't have seen otherwise. If you didn't knock off Frank's dog, you have a real chance to connect with him. Things I forgot I did in episodes past have a major impact on what I dealt with in Episode 4, which means everything I'm doing really matters. Life is Strange may poke holes in its mechanics when it sees fit, but it a does a damn good job of letting you know that every little thing you do is contributing to a powerful butterfly effect.
That sense of confusion, however, floats on the top of my emotions. Dark Room is two very strong sequences with a lot of uninteresting stuff sandwiched in between--uninteresting in that the pacing drags, some scenes go on too long before the game allows you to rewind, and it becomes genuinely hard to care about anything that's not the adventures of Max and Chloe. It's a rollercoaster of an episode, with some disappointing holes punched in concepts that have been strengthened for three episodes, but it delivers a punch in the gut that makes the rest of the experience worthwhile.
As . The Windows 10 Edition also offers numerous control types and has a built-in feedback system, but in terms of actual gameplay, it sounds as if it won't differ from what you already know.
Mary and Jeremy spent some time with the first episode of King's Quest: A Knight to Remember and compare it to previous games in the series.
Fallout 4 development is “basically done”, Mafia 3 is officially announced, and Square suggests that Dragon Quest XI might come to Nintendo NX!
Watch extended gameplay footage from Guild of Dungeoneering featuring the Giant Bomb crew.
This week we talk about who's winning so far: Guitar Hero Live or the new Rock Band, what we want from Mafia 3 and how we feel about the first chapter in King's Quest: A Knight to Remember.
