Summary
Help Roger Wilco get rid of those pesky life insurance salesmen
The Good
In his
previous adventure, Roger Wilco, janitor sub-extraordinaire, got the Star Generator back from the Sariens, an evil race led by someone named Vohaul, and received the golden mop for his bravery and commitment to save the galaxy from destruction. Unfortunately, heroes come and go. Roger is now working for Xenon Orbital Station 4 as a janitor, where the boss orders him to clean the shuttle that just came in. Roger goes ahead and cleans it, only to find that Vohaul and his gorillas occupy it and that Vohaul won't kill Roger for ruining his plan, which was to use the Star Generator to destroy the galaxy. Instead, he plans to infest his home planet Xenon with genetically-engineered life insurance salesman. He is then transported to Labion, the jungle planet inhabited with Labion terror beasts, funny looking creatures, and other wildlife; and it is there that Roger will spend the rest of his life.
Space Quest II is slightly better than the original
Space Quest, especially in terms of graphics. When you start off, you are on-board the XOS4, and have to make your way to the shutttle area, and will take three scenes to get through. The graphics in these few scenes are quite marvellous. The guys who made SQ2 made the effort of improving the graphics to make sure that they are better than SQ. It is not until you get to Labion that the graphics are even better than what you see in the game later. For instance, there is a landing pad in which Vohaul's gorillas dock the ship on, and when you view what's below, it's really looks quite spectacular, and earlier in the game, there is a magnificent whirlpool in one of the caves. Back in 1988, Sierra's graphic gurus must have had a hell of a job drawing every scene in the game to perfection.
Since it was made in 1988, SQ2 still uses the old AGI engine, despite games made with the newer SCI engine like
Codename: ICEMAN and
The Colonel's Bequest. Like SQ, you still have to enter a name before you begin play, but at least you are referred to by that name. I believe that SQ doesn't make use of the name you type in, but at least SQ2 does make full use of the name. If you don't enter a name at the log-in screen, you are referred to as "Roger Wilco". Since SQ2 is made using the AGI engine, that means that you have to control the character using the arrow keys and perform actions by typing in commands, rather than use the mouse as you would normally do in Sierra's SCI games.
SQ2 is definitely a much larger game than SQ1. There are heaps of locations, and they all seem to be varied and original.
The Bad
The sound in this game is through the PC Speaker, which means that you'll hear nothing but beeps or boops of different pitches. A low boop here, and high beep there, put them all together, and you'll get something resembling music. The sound is sometimes loud, and unless you turn off the sound by pressing F2, you'll be annoyed by this type of repetition.
SQ2 also introduces new puzzles than SQ1 did, and they require you to think before solving them. For example, unless you draw up a map of the cave, you'll become lost in its tunnels. To give you another example, when you reach Vohaul's asteroid towards the end of the game, you have to know how to destroy robots that you'll come across, and survive some of the hazards like pools of acid.
The graphics, even though they are stunning to look at, still have the same detail as SQ and are still quite bad compared to today's standard. This game was made in 1988, but accept that VGA cards didn't exist back then so the graphics were like that at that time. Sound Blaster wasn't even introduced, so the only way to produce sound was through the PC Speaker, but without the sound, the game would lose its appeal.
Other than that, the game is good.
The Bottom Line
This game is good, but it isn't that good compared to future Space Quests. ***
