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jp's King's Quest: The Complete Collection (PS4)

[November 8, 2022 12:32:58 AM]

I played the first chapter of the game Saturday evening. I never really played much of the original King's Quest games - any of the 7(?) in the series. It's kind of weird then to play this game - not really knowing much of the originals, and have it feel familiar to a vague sense of understanding of some of the things that happened in the original game. The characters hat (with feather) was pretty iconic - and it's referred to a lot in the chapter. But also I remember knowing something about a mirror and a dragon and stuff like that.

The game is narrated in raconto (I think that's the term?) - so, there's an old man narrator who is telling his grandkids about his adventures when he was younger, which is what you're playing. So, when you screw up, the narrator addresses the error (sometimes one of the kids pipes up to complain). It reminds of the Prince of Persia Sands of Time which had a similar framing. It really works well.

These kinds of games live and die by their puzzles and the writing - I enjoyed the humor in the first chapter, both from characters, situations, and even the art/modeling/animation. I thought it was interesting that there are multiple paths through the game - in this chapter there are 3 puzzles you can do, but you only need one to make progress (doing the other two, which I did, requires quite a bit of extra work - since the puzzles are "gated" buy requiring a coin which you spend on the first puzzle, so doing the other two (which also require a coin) means wandering around the game environment until you find where the coin might be.

I also thought it was interesting that some of the "puzzles" are quick-time events and others are real-time (the one where you move the yarn around to trip the strong guy!). So, dexterity and hand eye coordination matter this time around. But, overall it was neat to see the variety in the overall experience.

I've "soft" decided not to play the other chapters - mostly due to time (and huge pile of other games to get to) BUT, at least from the icons illustrating the other chapters - it looks like each one will tell a story from a different moment in the life of the King (main character). The character's portrait looks older in each, which I think is a neat thing to have in a game - you're living/playing through the highlights (presumably) of the character's life. This is a perspective that is not that common/usual in videogame narratives, so kudos for that. It also seems that the first episode is the highlight in terms of review scores, so perhaps it's best that I leave ahead as it where? I did like that once you finish the chapter you get a "picture" that has elements representing main decision points/choices you made in the game - so, did you spare the goblins (patience) or kill them quickly (speed?) and stuff like that.

Perhaps the biggest surprise (and pop culture touch point) was meeting the short knight (whose name escapes me), but whose voice sounds exactly like the short guy in the movie the Princess Brid. The character that does the poisoned cup switcheroo game. And, lo and behold, there's a scene with that character, with cups, one of which is drugged and then you play a boardgame. I wasn't able to win "fairly" (but got some help by changing the color of the drink in one of the cups, and was then able to trick my opponent into drinking from the drugged cup, thus giving me a turn to set myself up to win). Yay!

Is it cheating to cheat in a mini-game inside a game? lol.