I seriously cannot STAND that they are making yet another ******* Halo game.
Sorry for being a bit of a lurker the last several weeks – I've been intending to post something, but I've been so intensely busy at work, I really have just not had the required amounts of time and energy at the same time. I can't promise that this is a triumphant return, I have yet to see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, however I've had this blog here on my computer for about a few months now, and I figured now was as good a time as any to get it out there.
It was initially going to be my 100th blog on here and I wanted to do kind of a rundown of one of my favorite franchises. There's actually quite a bit of info to go with these games, so while this blog will be lengthy, it's still going to be a flyby.
My first interaction with a Role Playing game came about 1990. I got my hands on a board game called 'Hero's Quest' which was essentially a watered down D&D. The quests and maps were all laid out in the accompanying manual, which made no sense at all to my 9 year old self, and while I did play it with a couple of friends, following the rules as best we could – it usually ended up just being a really nerdy version of ninja turtles beating up tiny plastic figurines….. with multisided dice as grenades…. I was NINE, back off. :evil:
The game is actually downstairs in my office/guest bedroom closet as I type this. Mostly still together I believe. It has moved with me over the years, but never re opened, and remains in obscurity, reminiscent of my brief foray into RPGs before I was ready.… I'm sure Donatello's +10 bo staff of Radical Awesome is still in there.
The real love affair started with King's Quest V several years later. It was part of a Sierra Classic's 10-Pack that came with my family's first computer that wasn't some kind of hand me down and could actually function. It sported Windows 3.1 and was just the fanciest magic box on our street.:roll: This 10-pack that also had another gem in it called Space Quest IV, which was also a lot of fun. Now – I understand that these are not actually RPGs – they are point and click adventure games to the core… but I'm getting to that. Adventure games to me, looking back, were my spring board. These games had virtually no role playing elements beyond "assuming a role and playing it" - they were digital storybooks interspersed with puzzles. There were no 'unscripted' conflicts, so everything had a set outcome, and usually only one way to get there. This entailed clicking everything in your inventory on every person and item on the screen. The more things you found, story elements and countless easter eggs, the more points that went to your completion score. After completing these games several times over in a silent protest against the FPS genre that had begun to plague me, I thirsted for more. Not really knowing what RPGs were at the time, and having no reliable way to access the then infant internet. I could only go by the company name, and box art. My mother had dragged me to, I believe, an Office Depot. They had some utility software with a very small selection of games. Amoung them, I saw a game then known as 'Hero's Quest' made by none other than Sierra. (Since renamed to Quest for Glory I due to the original board game getting a digital incarnation with the same name and held the rights and trademark)
Using a combination of puppy dog eyes and some verbal maneuvers that would make a politician audibly gasp, I got my mom to spring for the game. I should mention that at the time, I was grounded. Which doesn't sound like it would be a huge obstacle… but bear in mind that grounding me was my parents primary form of punishment at the time, and thus my groundings tended to last for periods much longer than anyone else had ever heard of. I'll spare you the details.
ANYWAYS, all I could do is look at the artwork on the box and read the manual. I read it front to back on almost a daily basis, pining for the day I would finally get this thing installed, and play.
That day finally came about a month later when my parents collectively took pity on my apparent lack of interest in anything, having not played a game or watched tv in months, not to mention not played with friends. They allowed me "computer privileges" which kept me in the house, and they still had control of their TV. (No doubt my father's stipulation) You guys probably remember installing games back in the day. DOS made me it's ***ch on a regular basis by way of overcomplicated installation and setup programs. Set the IRQ to 5 or 7, install and activate the mouse driver separately, test the Soundblaster, do you hear sound? No? Change another variable… and round and round we go.
After probably an hour of battle, I was finally ready to type hq.exe into the command line.
The familiar Sierra logo and its signature accompanying music came on the screen, and I knew I was in for a new adventure. Upon clicking the new game option, I was given a choice that would define my role playing characters from then on. Fighter, Mage, or Thief?
These archetypes have been around for decades, but this was my first real interaction with them. (Aside from reading about it in the manual) Before this, D&D was already lost to me as it seemed too complicated to be interesting to me, and my Hero Quest experience solidified the fact that I would never have interest in the Table Top RPGs… not to mention it requires a certain level of nerd that I hope I never attain, as I like having a social life and touching boobies on occasion… *ahem*
The fighter didn't really interest me…. And I didn't want to be a thief, because I associated it with being bad, which I didn't want to be(I had yet to gain my deviant abilities) – so Mage it was. This was all new to me, so I was completely enthralled – gaining levels, assigning points, getting stronger, smarter, faster. I was the bionic woman. Or man. That was also worth a million dollars circa 1970's money. Shutup. :evil:
I loved it, and promptly sought out Hero's Quest II… joke was on me though. Turns out my copy of the game was actually a REMAKE of a game released in 1989 with basic EGA (16 colors) graphics that was not in circulation anymore, along with its sequel, lost for all time. Now these were also not full on RPGs… they were hybrids of the adventure games, with a lot of RPG influences… again, my relative inexperience kept me ignorant of this. So I didn't care about the semantics.
I'll go ahead and point out now that a major shortcoming throughout the entire series is the combat system – it's very simple, but clunky, and barely worth mentioning beyond that. Click on the sword to use your sword (or physical attack) the spell icons to cast the associated spell, and the bag to use an item. The end.
I showed the game to a friend, proud of my accomplishment in finding this title. He looked at it briefly, and said it reminded him of another Sierra game he had laying around, but due to its being a NON-fps. he had lost interest in it pretty quickly. "Here you can have it." He went into his closet and came out carrying a box; I could hear the disks moving freely about inside, despite being a fairly recent release, it was the signature of an outdated game in a time when all the latest and greatest were coming out on CDs. (i.e. Doom 2) He threw the box in my direction which I caught in that awkward way a kid catches things that are unexpectedly flung at their faces…. By that I mean it hit me in the face and it fell into my lap. The game was Quest for Glory III. I flipped through the manual briefly; the opening page touted it as the long awaited sequel to Quest for Glory II, now in full VGA splendor! The thing that caught my attention and eventually led to the realization of the above few paragraphs was in parenthesis next to Quest for Glory II (Sequel to the formerly named Hero's Quest) Coming to the realization that I had in my hands *A* sequel, if not the direct one was almost too much too handle. I suppressed my excitement, as I didn't want my friend to change his mind. I then promptly started feeling "sick" and peddled my bike back to my house as fast as I could, QFGIII tucked safely under my arm. This game quickly became my favorite, firstly because it picked up my saved character from my Hero's Quest game, and gave me the option to have my character become a Paladin. Which gave me more experience points at the start, and more spells to cast. I couldn't follow the references to the previous game, having never played it – and didn't quite get why I was suddenly the 'Prince of Shapier' however, the NPCs also referred to me as 'The Hero of Spielberg' which was the name of the land in the first game, to which there are numerous references as well. I appreciated the fan service, and the idea that I was still with the same character amused me. That coupled with fun puzzles, side quests, and interesting characters endeared the game to me, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It was about that time I found the first Final Fantasy game for the NES, which was technically my first real RPG, it solidified my love of the genre, but aside from Phantasy Star on the Genesis, my interaction from that point was fairly limited and I was reluctantly returned to my sidescroller action games by the lack of other options. (It's hard for a kid to feed this expensive habit)
Sometime later, as a sophomore in high school, during a lull in my gaming life, as my friends were wrapped up in Goldeneye, I was wandering aimlessly around a best buy, having just gotten my drivers license, wandering aimlessly was sort of a hobby. I strolled down the PC gaming aisle, and out of the corner of my eye, and I saw it. Quest for Glory V : Dragon Fire.
There was a Quest for Glory IV!? Why did no one tell me this!? BLASPHEMY! I grabbed the box from the shelf and promptly went searching for part IV. Which I did not find.
I played through the first part of V, and it was a real treat – point and click adventure games had by then lost their place in the spotlight, replaced my more advanced gameplay mechanics and graphics intensive games. So I was pretty much alone in my enjoyment, and I didn't mind one bit. I did research QFGIV a bit and found that it had more or less bombed and had become notorious for an excessive amount of game breaking bugs and glitches. However, it still existed and could be found in an anthology that had the first 4 games in a reportedly patched form. Which I set out to find and purchase soon after, abandoning my Quest for Glory V game thinking I will return with a character that has played through all 4 games. A lofty goal, and a foolish one at that. I played through Quest for Glory I : So you Want to Be a Hero in a day. It was effortless as I knew the game backwards and forwards. I installed Quest for Glory II : Trial by Fire, and was met with the original EGA version. I tried to make it past this, but the graphics were so awful, I literally could not tell where I could and couldn't walk, let alone figure out where I was going or what I was supposed to be doing, on top of this, it turns out the original two games used typed commands, and thus no mouse interface. (There is finally a remake floating around out there by AGD Interactive released late last year free of charge, which I admit is making me consider trying this series again from start to finish) So beaten, but not broken, I moved to Quest for Glory III: Wages of War. This game took me about a week, this one didn't stick with me as much as the first one had apparently, but it was still every bit as enjoyable as I remembered. Then on to Quest for Glory IV: Shadows of Darkness. This game was significantly more difficult that the previous entries, and it sported a much darker theme and more adult oriented humor.. not x rated by any means, but definitely more mature. I remember the lines between good and evil being a bit more grey – where before you always KNEW who the bad guy was. I did not complete this game however as I came face to face with one of those glitches that were supposed to be fixed and I lost the game save. After several days of giving the box angry looks, I put it out of my sight and focused on Quest for Glory V: Dragon Fire. This game sported a great story, and was kind of a return to form, while still retaining it's more mature themes – a fan service for those of us who aged along with the IP I suppose. These games can't hold up to our standards 10 to 20+ years later, but they were fairly outdated already by the time I found them except for part V, which it was on the dying end of the genre anyways. So that never entered into it for me, I guess I get to view them with more nostalgia than most fans probably would. Each game had a different story, and setting, the first one was more of a Germanic story town; part two (apparently) has a Middle Eastern or Arabian Nights kind of thing going on, part three is more of an African plains motif, part four has heavy Russian influences and the final entry is based on the Roman Empire. Throughout all these parts, there are recurring characters from the previous games, and new characters each time, and they manage to keep most if not all of them interesting. It's odd that a series in which I've only played every other one can keep itself with me for so long. I don't know if I'll ever play them again, I'm not even sure I can, as old games aren't exactly a favorite task of newer, more powerful systems. My laptop is probably 100x more computer than the desktop I had when I first typed HQ into the command prompt. The mere thought of trying to get a game more than 10 years old running gives me a headache by itself… I know there's DOSBOX out there – but I have Vista and I'm afraid of what it will do to me and my loved ones if I ever tried to enjoy doing something that it doesn't allow on its own.
None the less, the memories have earned this crazy, but charming series of games with the quirky humor a permanent place on my gaming shelf.
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