The thread where you share your take on the worst games in great series'.

King's Quest 7. Just so Disney. It doesn't feel like a King's Quest game at all. More like a kids game, ages 6+. Puzzles are pretty bland and easy, too.

King's Quest 8. Feels more like Quest for Glory 6, if you ask me. Without, you know, all the fun and originality and strategy. also, abysmal puzzles and interactivity.

[chapter11studios]

King's Quest 7.

Hmm, I really liked KQ7.

King's Quest 8. Feels more like Quest for Glory 6, if you ask me. Without, you know, all the fun and originality and strategy.

Agreed, KQ8 was pathetic.

For me:

- QFG3
- Space Quest 6
- Escape from Monkey Island
- Broken Sword II

[Hammerite]

Broken Sword 2. It was a great game, but it just didn't match the quality of 1 or 3.

QFG3 and EMI are good games, but I agree. They just can't live up to the others (though I think QFG5 is the worst in the series).

[RLacey]

Space Quest 4. So what if the idea was nice - the sheer number of stupid ways to die (and let's gloss over that whole shopping mall chase thing) was ridiculous.

King's Quest 6. Ooh, controversial, this one. Again, a nice idea, but I hated this game as soon as I had to replay an entire section of the game because I forgot to pick up a brick in a completely unrelated section of the game. Did nobody at Sierra ever playtest their games??!!

That sort of trial is in every Sierra game.

[RLacey]

Originally Posted by SamNMax

That sort of trial is in every Sierra game.

And it's what has always annoyed me about Sierra games .

Yeah, me too.

[Venkman]

I don't understand why everyone hates EMI. I thought it was damn fine.

Leisure Suit Larry 5. As Al Lowe said, "this is from my 'oh, I get it, people want games that are like little movies!' phase."

[Jake]

EMI made me laugh (possibly more than CMI) but it was completely unfulfilling and had a really weak ending.

I also don't like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade that much, but whatever, it also wasn't too bad.

Also though it sort of goes without saying, I didn't particularly think the 11th hour was all that good despite liking the 7th Guest, and I didn't like Myst 3 despite liking Myst and Riven (haven't played Myst 4)

[ATMachine]

I vote for EMI, as its ending was just bad. While I don't much care for MI2's ending (I feel the designers should've left out the "emergency exit", or done it entirely differently), what EMI did was rip me out of the 17th century piratey feeling and replace it with a 20th century Saturday morning cartoon atmosphere instead.

(The whole Giant-Monkey-Robot idea was left out of MI1 for a darn good reason, I'd say.)

Besides that (which is my major bone to pick), the puzzles were more obtuse than CMI's and much more contrived. Big example of this is the manhole-Deadeye Dave-prosthesis thing on Lucre Island.

Though CMI's story was rather lacking, it was redeemed by amazing art and music, and good puzzle design (plus the cutscenes in the first 4 parts were awesome. Did anyone besides me notice the KQ6 reference in the shipwreck scene?). Also the ending, while rather bland, actually made sense in regard to the setting of the games.

Indy 3 is certainly the worse of the two Indiana Jones adventures; the chief flaws are the mazes and the trial-and-error dialogue puzzles.

On to Sierra games...

I've not finished the original parser version of KQ2, but am I still allowed to nominate it?

Four words: THROW BRIDLE AT SNAKE.

Space Quest 6 never really impressed me; the storyline never really explained in detail what had happened since the previous game, and many of the puzzles were not hinted at enough. It ties with SQ2 (which wasn't very funny to me) for Worst in the Series.

[Udvarnoky]

Eh, it's not fair to put Indy3 against Fate of Atlantis. Not fair at all.

I'd agree with EMI, not because it's a bad game but because its competition is amazing.

[Shodan]

EMI. Not bad if considered on its own, but it just didn't live up to the excellent standards set by the previous Monkey games.

I recently played Broken Sword 1, and was pretty disappointed, because I rather ejoyed BS3 (I have yet to play the second, though). George's character and sense of humour were far better developed in the third, I felt. What was up with BS1-era George approaching random people all the time and saying, "Have you seen this man? No? Well, he's a COLD BLOODED KILLER!!" Yeah, I say that all the time when conversing with people I've only just met.

[NemelChelovek]

"Have you seen this man? No? Well, he's a COLD BLOODED KILLER!!"

Well, in his defense, he HAD just met a cold-blooded killer, which is something that probably doesn't happen to the rest of us when we meet new people.

Now, my opinions on the topic at hand:

EMI: Monkey Kombat. That's all I have to say about this. Monkey. Frigging. Kombat. There was no redemption after that.

KQ5: The first one I played after King's Quest 6, my favorite in the series, so that may have colored my decision, but this game barely had any story at all. Minimal character interaction, walking-dead puzzles around every corner, and a choppy area-to-area progression make for a really unenjoyable game.

QFG1: I loved this whole series, but as they kept getting better after each one, I guess this was the worst for me. Note: I never played QFG5.

BS2: I enjoyed it, but nowhere near as much as the other two.

[Kolorabi]

Originally Posted by NemelChelovek

QFG1: I loved this whole series, but as they kept getting better after each one, I guess this was the worst for me. Note: I never played QFG5.

I loved the whole series too, and QfG 1 (EGA) is perhaps my favourite. I still play it from time to time. QfG 2 is also extremely underrated, it had some extremely fun puzzles (including a few "physics-based" ones, like in HL2).

The worst game in the series would have to be QfG 3. It's a good game, but it's far too short, and it's really not up to the quality of the rest of the games. Both QfG 4 and 5 are better in my view (though they don't quite recapture the magic of the two first games in the series).

[Ariel Type]

Curse of MI - series went in the wrong direction.
KQ2/SQ2/Larry2 - the weakest in the series, for some coincidence.
Prisoner of Ice - after wonderful Shadow of the Comet such a weak sequel.

[UPtimist]

Originally Posted by Ariel Type

KQ2/SQ2/Larry2 - the weakest in the series, for some coincidence.

A conspiracy, eh?

[Josho]

Originally Posted by Venkman

Leisure Suit Larry 5. As Al Lowe said, "this is from my 'oh, I get it, people want games that are like little movies!' phase."

In Al's defense, I recently reminded him (and I was amazed that he hadn't remembered!) that LSL5 arose the way it did because Ken Williams had learned from reading our customer surveys that a significant percentage of players never finished the games they started. "We're making them too hard," Ken said, and since LSL5 was the next game to start up, he told Al to make sure that 100% of players would be able to finish the game, even if this was the first adventure they'd ever played.

Al was only giving Ken what Ken asked for. And to Ken's credit, LSL5 went over VERY well with a large number of people who wrote to us and said, "Thank you! I've never been able to finish one of these games before!" But the number of people who reacted badly greatly outnumbered the people who were grateful, so there was never a repeat of the experiment.

--Josh

[fov]

Funny... maybe I had less discriminating taste back then, but I can't remember disliking any of the games I played as a kid (all the King's Quests, most of the Police Quests and a few of the Space Quests). The ones I wasn't as thrilled with were Phantasmagoria, King's Quest 7, and Police Quest 4 (the ending) -- and I was over 18 when I played them. I wonder if those games are really worse, or if my expectations changed.

I never got mad at the games for making me go back to replay a section (I had to replay KQ4 entirely because I shot one of the arrows off at the beginning of the game) or for the many ways to die. I just saw those things as a natural part of the game, I guess.

[BerserkerTails]

Fov, you sound exactly like me. I grew up on Sierra games, so their walking-deaths and numerous real deaths didn't bug me at all. As for worst in all the series...

King's Quest 2: Didn't really know where it was going, plus it seemed like it was cobbled together from different parts of nursery rhymes and children's tales.

Space Quest 6: Didn't really capture the raw sense of adventure in the other games. Plus it gives Roger another love interest, which is terrible considering he HAS to have children with the other to live.

Police Quest 4: PQ wasn't the same without Sonny Bonds.

Leisure Suit Larry 5: I just didn't really enjoy this one.

Quest for Glory 3: It had an excellent setup, and could've been excellent, the gameplay was just too poor. The wilderness was not fun to cross, and it had a really weak (laughable) ending.

Escape from Monkey Island: While a fun game, it didn't capture the style of the first three.

Tex Murphy Overseer (Not counting Mean Streets and Martian Memorandum): After the pure brilliance of Pandora Directive, Overseer just wasnted as good. It was fun, but it was just an ordinary case, whereas Pandora Directive was epic.

That's all I can think of for now...