In the beginning adventures were plain text.
Masters of the genre like Infocom quickly took these to high levels
of sophistication but people still wanted more. Graphic adventures
came along where locations were illustrated with pictures but these
tended to add little to the adventure save for the occasional clue
to be found in the pictures. Software writers tried their hand at
'arcade adventures' where the traditional style was replaced by
'action' - of a limited fashion - but few of these could match the
breadth of a text adventure and none were that good graphically. The
obvious answer, for those who wanted more than text, was a good
adventure with top class graphics and animation. Now Sierra On-Line
have come up with just that - 'animated adventures' - and Kings
Quest II and The Black Cauldron are a couple of crackers!
What companies have struggled to do on 8-bit
machines becomes fairly easy on an ST with 16 colours in low
resolution (the equivalent of 8-bit high resolution) and both these
adventures have excellent illustrations, although still based on the
style developed for 8-bit machines, and full animation with the main
character able to walk and swim, go behind or in front of objects
and such like. Other characters, who appear at random or according
to location, are also animated as are various sundry objects such as
rivers, waterfalls and animals. It is all quite different from what
you are used to and has sent paroxysms of delight through all those
I know who see it for the first time.
KINGS QUEST II
Kings Quest II is the first (I am not sure if
there is a Kings Quest I for the ST) of the two and comes well boxed
with a gatefold containing an outline of the story and some poems
which will help. Inside is a nicely embossed and illustrated booklet
which gives the rest of the story of King Graham and his quest to
find a bride and so ensure an heir to the throne of Daventry. The
story is not particularly strong and the choice of names
unimaginative (Daventry sounds as exciting as Wigan!) but it will
still tax all but the most advanced adventurers and give everyone
the joy of discovering new locations and action.
Your hero can be controlled by joystick or from
the keyboard and is able to walk in any direction at command.
Actions are supplemented from the keyboard by typing in the usual
commands such as look and get. Using the joystick or keyboard is one
of the major departures from the normal format for the program does
not recognise words like North and South! Quite frustrating if you
impatiently boot up the disk and begin to play! Odd villainous
characters will appear and you must learn how to deal with them and
you must explore everything in the usual fashion. Points are earned
for every little 'discovery' as you continue your quest and get
deeper and deeper into the game. I've played it a few times now and
each time the action has been different so that holds promise for
continued interest.
I'm not a great adventurer and therefore find the
game a sufficient challenge (I can't really say how complex the plot
is) but what keeps me at it is the continued discovery of more
superb graphics and I suspect many 'non-adventurers' will be
converted by this. There are a few gripes, such as a limited
vocabulary and the wait for each scene to load from disk as a screen
is exited but the program as a whole is so far ahead of any other
graphics or arcade adventures that these must be considered just
nitpicking. Mind you with a hard disk think how fast it would be!
THE BLACK CAULDRON
The Black Cauldron continues the style but shows
immediately how the programmers have learned from their experiences
in programming for the ST. Kings Quest II is very, very good but The
Black Cauldron is much better. The major improvement is that the
whole game can be played with the mouse which improves the flow of
the game considerably. Whilst it does inhibit the type of response
you can give to each situation I found it to be altogether more
enjoyable. One problem with the `hybrid' games that use both
joystick and keyboard is that it is often awkward to keep changing
between the two but The Black Cauldron overcomes this splendidly.
That's not the only thing that is better, the graphics are much
improved, the animation slicker and there is much more movement of
secondary characters. These are not major changes but subtle
improvements that give this game a much classier feel.
The story is based on the Walt Disney film of the
same name and your enjoyment of the adventure will depend to a
degree on whether you like the Walt Disney style of cartoon. I have
not seen the film, and would not go out of my way to do so, but
still found the game to be quite enjoyable. This is true fantasy
having been based on one of a series of books by Lloyd Alexander
and, whilst written for children, has many of the elements of
Tolkein. The story is basically the search by a small boy Taran for
The Black Cauldron to stop it falling into the hands of the evil
Horned King. Aided and abetted by Hen Wen, a pig with magic powers,
he must find The Black Cauldron and stop the Horned King from
capturing Hen Wen who alone has the power to locate the cauldron. If
it sounds too childish, don't let that put you
off. If you have children, buy it for them (or pretend to). If you
don't, who cares what people think, buy it anyway.
The class of this game extends to the packaging
for bound into the gatefold box is a beautiful 18 page booklet, in
full colour, illustrated with scenes from the movie. It really is
splendid. And you get a map of the kingdom as well as sundry other
papers to help you play or advertise other Sierra products.
With these two games, Sierra On-Line have opened
up a new era in computer games, with the promise of even better
things to come. At last we are approaching the true use of the home
computer as an art form in its own right. Almost interactive
cartoon, not quite but pretty close. These have to rank way up at
the top for the way in which they use the graphics of the ST and you
may well look back on them in the future as examples of a new
departure in computer games.
Sierra On-Line products are now distributed in the
U.K. by Mirrorsoft so these should be easily available from your
local dealer or by mail order.
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