Quest For Sanity

I thought I was cool with King's Quest after I played through KQI: the remake edition.

I mean, I was okay with the accidental pixel slip = death schtick. It's Sierra, y'know? I'm all mature and growned up now, I can deal with hardcore permadeath. That's what saving every five minutes is for, right? Especially on a hard disk, rather than grinding away painfully on a floppy disk drive.

I was fine with the multitude of badly drawn screens with nothing to do but wander around, maybe make an oldschool map or risk getting hopelessly lost, while meandering about with arrow keys, trying to stop on a dime or fall off a cliff/wander into a poisoned lake, etc.

I was even cool with the weird randomization factor, where nasty bad guy enchanters and wolves and witches would pop out of nowhere and zap you if they caught you. Or the stupid dwarf who would rob you of treasures and thus a point score (or even screw up your game permanently if he took a necessary item)... because it harkened back to the ancient-est game of all, Colossal Cave and XYZZY and stuff like that.

Besides, my reaction times seemed to have improved from my childhood days, and by strategically hugging the walls of the screen, I could evade 90% of the time, and for the rest, there was a savegame every changeofscreen.

I was enjoying my ability to pick up random pixelated objects, while guessing the verb/noun correctly, and speaking in simple two word [verb] [object] commands for the parser.

I was even thinking myself fairly smart for finding quite blatantly laid out clues and solving the puzzles correctly.

Sure, I used some UHS hints from time to time, but I was solving most of King's Quest I fair and square. Yes, the remake did make things much fairer - I boggled at the UHS walkthrough for the original version where you practically had to solve a code and read the puzzle writer's mind to guess a riddle, whereas some logical thought brought me to the answer for the remake.

I was even admiring the ability of King's Quest to provide alternate solutions for the same puzzle. Some would give you less points, of course, and some were dependent on right place-right time-being stinky lucky to get a good type of randomization magic protection spell kind of deal, but still, alternate solutions!

And then I tried King's Quest II.

This was the original version, not a remake, as proven by even worst pixelated graphics than the first.

It was also blatantly MUCH unfairer than the first game I played. For the first 50% of the game, it seemed quite normal.

But I found myself hitting the roof at this one puzzle. You're faced with a snake. You got here previously by rubbing a lamp and getting a magic carpet out of a genie, which you rode on. So I naturally rubbed the lamp, and voila, the genie provides a sword. Looking at the sword, there's a snake's head on the hilt.

Aha! Straightforward enough, ain't it? Edge close to the snake, accidentally move one pixel too far, get bit and die... Whoops. Nevermind. Reload. Edge close. Kill snake. The sword chops it up into itty bitty pieces. Yay. Then you go into the cave, get the magic key you need, wander 10 screens to the door, unlock door with key, wander another 10 screens to the next chapter, fool a boatman with a disguise, ride across a poison lake, and then face the impassable obstacle of poisonous brambles which kill you every single time.

Huh? Finally stumped, I check the UHS hints, which say, "Did you kill the snake? (tsk, tsk, tsk.)" Turns out that you should NOT kill the snake. You have to rub the genie's lamp one more time. He gives you a bridle. Which you then PUT BRIDLE ON THE SNAKE. (Wtf?) The snake then turns into a magic horse. Who thanks you for saving it. And gives you a magic sugar cube, which will protect you from the poisonous brambles.

That is, after you go through the cave/get key/10 screens/unlock door/10 screens/fool boatman/ride boat rigmarole.

That is just fucking stupid. I'll forgive it if I looked at the snake and saw something out of the ordinary, like a goddamn horseshoe or something. But no, the snake is purely this evil green scaley menace of a hissing viper. SOMEHOW, you are supposed to know that you have to rescue a viper by putting a bridle on it to turn it into a magic horse, without anyone telling you so, or having a clue anywhere.

This just stinks of "Hi, we want to earn money for the Sierra helpline."

So anyway, I bit my lip, reloaded a game 10 saves earlier (thank goodness I still had one), got past the brambles with a magic sugar cube, tussled about in Dracula's castle... only to find out that I cannot kill Dracula because I did not find a mallet in a hole in a tree in some obscure screen. I have a stake though. Evidently it's not enough.

Theoretically, I don't need to kill Dracula. I have protection against him from a cross. I could probably just walk out, minus a few points. And continue on from there.

But I have hit my unfairness limit for the day. I shall have to reload again at some later date, find the fucking mallet before going to Dracula's castle, and probably I shall play the rest of the game with an internet walkthrough in the other monitor. An unfair game deserves unfair tactics. Let's hope the other games in the genre aren't as badly written and designed as this second offering.