[Macflyer]

New to the forums. Hi to everyone.

I registered for two reasons: I re-discovered my love for adventure gaming. I officially proclaim I hate Sierra now.

What happened, you might ask?

Historical background:

I started with computers around 1988. Not too late to come across many marvels of home computer gaming history but for some reason it took me until 1990 to get hold of my first Sierra games: PQ1 and later LSL 1.

I enjoyed them, despite language barrier, very much. Thought they were great games. I didn't mind that I couldn't achieve full high score ever. At times, I got stuck but somehow found a solution.

I did not get hold of any other Sierra games then but was fully aware of their catalogue. For some reason, it never happened.

Naturally, I had a go at Maniac Mansion, Zac, Monkey Island.

Back to present day. Somehow the adventure gaming bug bit me this week and I discovered GOG.com and their offerings.

Purchased the complete PQ collection among other stuff.

To revamp the childhood I played through PQ1 AGI once more and even found out more stuff than back then (less of a language barrier nowadays I guess) but still I missed out some points. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride and was set to continue the story with PQ2.

And boy, did the game flow nicely. I progressed rapidly, no need for hints, rich atmosphere. I could draw from real life experience and pure logic and thought this game is it. Besides, I really like the blocky EGA looks and prefer it over the VGA remakes for their plain looks. VGA always looks washed out.

I never thought of the parser being a major problem or dealbreaker per se once you know the flaws Sierra's parser contained and how to work around. Until now.

So, while I was praising myself for really getting a lot out of the game, I ran into two problems that all accumulated to my outburst of hate I have to spill over the late Sierra studios, or precisely over the PQ2 designers.

1) lack of hints through description: I cannot really elaborate on this to not spoil the experience for others but so much can be said: if you got blocky EGA plus a limited parser then at least give me more detailed descriptions of what I I am *remotely* supposed to see or look out for.

It just doesn't make sense and ain't fun if a couple of pixel difference between my character standing and not seeing anything significant versus Sierra's scripting for more detailed description make you get stuck.

Yes, the dreaded dead ends I never thought Sierra games really suffered from until now. I mean, if I look under a bed from one side, why shouldn't I be able to see an object of reasonable size that is laying somewhere under the bed? Why would I, without any further hint from the script, go to the other side of the same bed to trying to do the same when the game has told me already that "You see nothing special", or "You can't do this right now". Even if I were to go to the other side to pick it up the game could at least have told me that I see something but cannot reach it.

In my mind I did the right action at the right time at the right place but for the evil in Sierra's script it didn't help me at all.

And when you happen to do the right stuff, like going into the bathroom at a crime scene, but there is no new screen to give you a graphical presentation (after all, it claims to be a graphics adventure; that means, I do not need to think in text adventure terms when I come up with my instructions to get the game doing something useful), I expect a more detailed description upon looking around. Not just merely stating that this is a bathroom with a shower, a sink, and a toilet. Especially, if the WHOLE game from here on depends on this one scene that is NOT graphically presented in a GRAPHICS adventure game.

Or, for starters, if I miss the clue I'm already penalized by not achieving full points. But at least script a solution for this problem (my partner could have found the so important clue) so that I do not need to start over or restore way before. Everything I did from here on was for nothing but I found out that I'm in a dead end way later. This might reflect the risk of real police work but takes away from a game that tries to entertain.

2) parser and description problems:

basically what I said above including the following example (changing it a bit for no spoilers). When the script tells me that I can see the "corner of a paper sticking out" and I type "get paper" but the game responds " you can't get that right now". What do I do? reparsing or trying something different? Right, knowing that there's something important I try to come up with a different approach by "opening the drawer" in order to get the paper. But what if the "corner of the paper" never was meant to be a sheet of paper, a "paper" in parser English? Then, of course, I was never meant to be able to pick up a "paper" in that scene precisely but rather "a corner of a paper". If I had typed "get corner" all would have been good for the script and the game's progress.

But, since I decided to do something different in order to get what was there in my mind but in game logic factually wasn't, I lost. When I tried to "open the drawer" (i changed this event for no spoilers but people familiar with PQ2 will know) the game progressed unexpectedly but never gave me the chance to look at or pick up what it described to me earlier and it would have been decisive as well for atmosphere as for progress. Another clue gone down the drain.

So, rant over. For now, I just cannot go back to the game and start earlier. I will have to leave it for now and come back in a couple months or so. Of course, I want to know how it unfolds but I hope you guys can understand my pain and anger.

I don't want to get hints from anywhere since it spoils the fun. But I doubt I ever would have gone back to those scenes I described remotely to see if I had missed something. I tried to do everything that was required and the parser led me to believe that my actions were the right thing to do but just did not lead to anything new.

Then, reading in a walkthrough what I missed out although it reflected my ideas and actions with other words, was a huge let down. And in my opinion, if not pure evil by the designers, a big and extreme flaw. But with the limitation of technology, RAM size, disk size and all that, the unexcusable sin is to not have provided a safe alternative for me getting the information, like I said by my partner, etc.

Rant over. Will be doing KQ3 for the first time ever the next days. Let's see how that goes. Finished KQ1 and KQ2 and found them actually quite charming. The graphics/description/parser problem is present at times but hasn't led to any serious dead end like in PQ2.