Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon

The Good
The graphics are good, though I reckon another Space Quest game in the AGI format would've been fine. I like most of the problems/solutions, the planets are good, Ortega is especially atmospheric with its deadly heat and lava surrounding you. Bob Siebenberg's new Space Quest theme is very good also.

The Bad
I felt that Space Quest isn't the same when you're not protecting Xenon, no matter how Xenon dissed Roger in SQ2 by sending him back to his janitor job. Xenon was the serious part of Space Quest, in the first game its sun was dying and in the second game Vohaul was going to destroy it(in a silly sort of way). I felt the idea of rescuing Scott and Mark and taking them to Sierra was ok, but kind of "sub-plotish". I wanted to get back to Xenon even if they dissed me again.

The Bottom Line
It's a good text-adventure, looks and plays good, just has a silly story.

The Good
Now I'm not going to spend much time writing a review for this game. Which took 4 hours to finish. You know, like I wouldn't want to spend more time writing the review than actually PLAYING THE GAME?!?

It's fun. OK, I admit it. The graphics are good-looking, really, no kidding. You'll even cast a shadow occasionally. Everything's quite colorful, there's a lovely space burger bar to visit, a cool cheesy space-ship, an amazing incredible fantastic load of junk (it's not really that amazing but you'll spend half the game in it, so there must be something special about it, right?), a hot volcano lava planet, a couple of green planets. Empty black space. Diversity. I liked the new menu style, and the text-box style - it immediately looks a lot more professional and thought-out than in the previous game. I even got to use the mouse to point where I want to go and press some buttons! If only game designers today would think of stuff like that.

The sub-games were fun, the best part for me. Astro-chicken, message ring decoding, battlebot fighting game, the space ship simulation. It was actually very cool to have your own ship. It was also cool that you weren't stuck in the same viewing style the whole time - at times it switched to a bigger scale, another time it switched to pseudo-3d as you're walking through a circling hallway, and the spaceship has its own big screen with just your huge static head indicating your presence. It's things like that make you feel appreciated and loved.

The non-existent plot aside, the writing and scenes were good - at one point you even have to play intergalactic James Bond and infiltrate and blow up a big generator, previously viewing it in a telescope left there by some men who were conducting experiments there and can be seen leaving in their own spaceship (see? it's actually explained why a bunch of objects are there!). The initial junk-yard exercise is also very well thought out, with plausible objects and working mechanisms and a quaint plausible atmosphere, with lots of cool broken thingamajigs lying around to be explored. And one of the greener planets has a neat statue of a huge monster in it, and you can actually get inside and ride a big lift up its leg or something.

As for the humor, I thought that the dying messages weren't quite as funny as in the last game, and I kinda generally don't seem to remember all that huge amount of humor that the other reviewers here have noted (and I just finished it an hour ago so I hardly could've forgotten it). The accountants scene at the end is hilarious and very sarcastic, and the terminator that goes after you because of an unpaid bill from the previous game is amusing, and the Astro-chicken is funny of course but aside from that there weren't all that many jokes there. But it was generally tasteful and well-written (the ending aside), and actually I think that the sort of a mild humorous sheen over it all might've very well influenced the Monkey Island series - for example, the way you shove a ladder in your pants. And the way your character comes across as a big fat dope. (Btw, it's probably the Space Quest series that were parodied in Monkey Island 1 the time you fell off the cliff and "died".) And check out the space burger bar - doesn't that visually remind somewhat of Sam and Max Hit the road? Or maybe I'm just imagining things.

The Bad
Ok, the game is just too short. It's also very badly paced (the seemingly "introductory" scene in the dump in fact takes up about half of the game) and - look people, it HAS NO PLOT! This is just the pits - for most of the game you have no idea whatsoever what you are supposed to be doing, and then it turns out that you must save the game's two designers from the clutches of "ScumSoft" and deliver them back to the Earth so that they can make more Space Quest games for Sierra.

As if that wasn't enough, they managed to make the game both linear and unlinear at the same time, incorporating the worst of each approach with admirable grace and stupidity: for most of the game you're free to do whatever you choose with no purpose being thereby provided, but the key location of the game only becomes available when you succesfully beat the Astro-chicken game and a coded message suddenly appears on the screen. The "plot" thus becomes apparent to you, the fact notwithstanding that you most probably have already blown up the huge generator that imprisons the hapless game designers for no other good reason than that it was standing there and you're supposed to "interact" with things in adventure games. Like Max would say, "we just like blowing up huge force field generators".

As for the length issue - I admit that I took the occasional peak in the walkthrough and didn't spend the obligatory 2 weeks trying to figure out which burger bar menu item has the decoder ring in it or that you - thank god for point-and-click interfaces - have to STAND UP before JUMPing to safety whilst being gently nudged into a shredding machine. But - brilliant mind-benders like this just can't compensate for the fact that most of the locations here have at best 2 or 3 things you can interact with (allowing for the fact that interaction with at least one of these will result in the death of your character), and mostly don't have even that. The objects you can have in your inventory probably total under a dozen, and there are virtually no "use this with that" puzzles which IMO is one of the basic ingredients of any adventure game worthy of the name. All the objects in this game have only the most obvious of uses, and unless you count "using invisibility belt when you have to pass a bunch of guards" a challenge, then you're probably bound to start wondering at some point as to whether this isn't some sort of a predecessor to the interactive movie, mini-games and all.

The Bottom Line
A definite improvement over the previous games in terms of graphics and production values (there is even appropriate midi mood music for most of the scenes), but the game still has obvious trouble taking itself seriously (and even humorous games should do that, as Monkey Island proved), and, while some of the seperate locations are involving and very nicely done, as a whole the game doesn't even begin to make any sense. Still, its commitment to being (mildly) humorous and providing various unusual and eye-catching locations was probably quite influential, and can be appreciated even in this day and age.

The Good
The first Space Quest pretty much defined the whole series with its lighthearted, amusing space tale about an extraordinary janitor who keeps surviving against all odds. The second installment was less funny and focused more on various hazards. Space Quest III goes back to the template of the first game, but enhances it with more humor and personality. Filled with all kinds of wacky situations, weird encounters, and silly fun, Space Quest III is perhaps the most typical game of the series, its most "pure" representative. Together with its sequel, it is also the one fans of the series usually remember most fondly.

Gameplay-wise, Space Quest III has decidedly more to offer than the previous games. The new text parser allows you to choose more concrete verbs and some very specific actions. There is an excellent variety of different situations and actions you could perform in the game. From traditional exploration and item-gathering to playing funny minigames, navigating a spaceship, or infiltrating a company building disguised as a janitor (what a disguise, indeed...), there is always plenty of things to do, keeping the game fresh and exciting. There is not a bit of repetitive gameplay in Space Quest III, and it is amusing and diverse from the beginning to the end.

The humor is also much more evident in this title than in the two previous games. There are more weird characters, all sorts of funny situations, plus the traditional death scenes that were the trademark of Sierra's adventures at that time. Pop culture references, movie spoofs (a terminator called "Arnoid"? Really?..), and situations far surpassing the earlier installments in comedic entertainment value (such as a mecha fight against a dorky office boss) are much more prominent. The game is more verbose and descriptive, having somewhat warmer, eloquent writing. Also, while in the two previous games you were still a nameless "player" (although the hero's real name was mentioned in documentation), this is the first game where Roger Wilco acts under his own name. In this game particularly, the charming "loser" personality of Roger comes to life. Later Space Quest installments added more character development, but Space Quest III made a step in that direction.

Technically, this game is a noticeable step forwards compared to its immediate predecessor; with a new, updated version of classic Sierra text-based interface, the game's interaction became richer, more intelligent and satisfying. The graphics are also much more impressive than in the first two installments; until now, Space Quest III is remembered as one of the finest examples of late EGA art. Even compared to other Sierra games made with the same engine, those visuals have something that make them stand out.

The game presents a good variety of locations, classical Space Quest-style planet-hopping that was lacking in the second game. From a spaceship graveyard to an intergalactic burger restaurant, from a mysterious planet with a purple surface and a shop that sells tourist souvenirs to the headquarters of an evil corporation, the locations of Space Quest III always keep the player interested, pressing him to continue playing and see where he would be taken next.

The Bad
Space Quest III has its weaknesses. Firstly, while it does expand the game world and increases diversity, it is still a rather short and fairly straightforward game. There is hardly any exploration of a continuous world in the sense of King's Quest. In fact, most of the locations are very small and there isn't much you can do there besides performing the necessary actions to advance the plot. The only exception is the initial junkyard - which is, frankly, not a particularly thrilling area to begin with. It is also disproportionally long, occupying about a third of the entire game. And while you can visit several planets afterwards, the whole thing is over a bit too soon, with only the tightly scripted hazards creating the illusion of a longer adventure.

In terms of storytelling, Space Quest III is a disappointment. The two earlier games were hardly groundbreaking works of fiction, but at least they had overarching goals and objectives that made sense within a larger context. In this installment, you escape from the lengthy junkyard sequence only to travel to the few available planets without any compelling reason. The actual plot information is handed to you almost by accident, and by that time you might have already completed areas you had no idea were crucial for your quest.

The Bottom Line
Amusing characters, all kinds of weird deaths to avoid, funny locations - the classic Space Quest ingredients are all there. Space Quest III feels a bit too simple at times and suffers from traditional Sierra-style strange logic; but it is also a dynamic, entertaining game that stays in your memory with all its silliness and charm.