🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 2 Mar 1998, Raymond Pat wrote:

> thya...@sol.com.br wrote:
> 
> >   How could such a bad game designer become famous?
> >   Let's face it: the woman hasn't got one single good game in her curriculum!
> 
> That's YOUR opinion.  The Colonel's Bequest is own of the best games ever, in fact
> I daresay it's better than ANY of the Monkey Island series.  I was never so
> frightened and so enthralled at the little nuances in the game...from stublimg
> into bodies, finding crime scenes, spying on people, finding new secret passages.
> It was SO thrilling.  The only gripe is that it's too hard.

	The Colonel's Bequest?!?  Too hard?  You've GOT to be kidding!

> King's Quest III was
> also only of my favorite.  In fact, any KQ with Alexader as the main character is
> very good. (there were only 2).

	Um...  Okay...  If you think King's Quest VI was very good, that's
your problem, not anyone else's...

> >   First, the dreadful King's Quest game: KQ6 was the most infuriating gaming
> > experience ever. In that stupid game you could screw things up just by not
> > entering the right screen at the right time !! I remember getting very close
> > to the ending and not being able to finish the thing because I had not talked
> > to this guy in the very begining of the game. And I only discovered that
> > because I got a walkthrough - if it depended on William's awful design, I'd be
> > wondering what to do forever !! If I had gotten my hands on the woman when I
> 
> Isn't that more of your own incompetency?  I finished KQ6 without any problems,
> without even looking at a walkthrough.

	Then you have a much less analytical mind than most people.  Most
of the people I know who played the game were frustrated because most of
the puzzles didn't actually make very much sense.  If you were able to
make it past the fact that logic wasn't required for too many of the
puzzles, more power to you.  (The original poster is right, though--the
lamp puzzle was >very< unfair.)

> I personally really liked the game.  Of
> course, it isn't very original, but it played great, has a good sense of humor,
> good NPC, derivative but enjoyable story, and TRULY EXCELLENT music (except for
> the cheesy duet at the end).  I had no problems with it, and I wouldnt fault
> Roberta on THAT.

	Of course not.  Everyone knows Roberta hasn't really had anything
to do with the King's Quest series for years.

> > found out I'd have to restart, we'd have been spared from Phantasmagoria.
> >   Phantasmagoria was mildly entertaining, but not a game at all. Besides being
> > ridiculously easy, the woman robbed all puzzles from previous games - like the
> > get-key-with-nail-and-newspaper... it was an original puzzle... IN ALONE IN
> > THE DARK 2 !!!
> 
> >   For God's sake, Sierra, get rid of the imbecile - the design in her games
> > are the ultimate proof of what you can achieve with a careful combination of
> > laziness and complete lack of any visible talents.
> >   I'm sure I'm not alone here. What do you guys think\?
> 
> This is stupid.  I'm SURE you haven't playedeven HALf os Roberta Williams' games,
> and here you are dissing her as if she was your whore.  WTF?You described only 2
> games of hers you had gripes with.  Sure, Phantasmagoria was a big step down (so
> was KQ7), but not everyone does something great all the time....

	Believe us, we >know< that!  Mrs. Williams is an excellent example
of someone like that!

> ahem, Lord British
> (UO and U8 are complete disasters). Have you played ANY of her earlier works?

	Yes.

> Have you tried Time Zone?

	Yes.

> It came out in 1981, and it was TOUGH.  Very
> challenging IMHO.  She really did a good job there, and I think that game is on
> par with any of Infocom's best.

	Compared to most of On-Line Systems' games of the period, there is
more to it (it's certainly a lot bigger, and at the time, it cost a lot
more--$99.95!), but harder?  No, not really.  Because it was bigger, there
was necessarily more to do.  But the game wasn't really >harder<.  The
puzzles were typical On-Line Systems fare for the time.  They might have
seemed harder to you >then<, but they weren't really that much different
from most of their other games around then.
	As for being on par with Infocom's best...  Um, last time I
checked, Infocom never had a line in a game that read:  You are in a
field.  There is a time machine here.  ;)  Say what you will about
Infocom's games, but they were mature from the very beginning, and having
to be restricted to two word commands is something that Infocom was never
saddled with.  As for Time Zone, it certainly didn't have too much of a
story, and it really wasn't that hard.  Have you ever played Suspended?
Now >that< is a hard game.

> You might not be alone, but the opinion you arrive
> with is so uninformed and unresearched that it does not give weight to your
> argument.

	The problem is that right now, the burden of proof is on you, and
you're not even trying!  You aren't able to defend anything about the
games.  That says more about you than it does about the original poster.

> Sure I think her works are getting worse, but dismissing her like this
> is very insulting, to her AND to readers who enjoyed her past works.

	He's not dismissing her at all.  Come on, at least try to >read<
the message you're responding to.  (Although, if you're a fan of more
recent Sierra games, I can see how your reading skill might have fallen
off a little bit.)

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Matthew A. Murray	    | The script calls for fusing and using our smarts,
			    | And greatness can come from the sum of our parts,
mmu...@cc.wwu.edu	    | From now on I'm with you--
			    | And with you is where I belong!
http://www.wwu.edu/~mmurray |		-David Zippel, City of Angels
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