King's Quest

The Good
Well, the title screen is quite nice, what with the beeper song and all... And I guess this game was the first to use Sierra's "move the little Lego-man around and try to guess what to type"-interface, which I quite like. I suppose that if I had played this when it first came out I would have been really impressed with it - the graphics, the gameplay and, indeed, the whole concept of an animated 3D adventure game. Now all I can say is that the yellow geek with the funny hat is pretty smoothly animated. (All right, the graphics aren't all that bad for low-res EGA alltogether.)

The Bad
I didn't like the fact that it's an arcade game with a bad parser and puzzles. I do appreciate the fact that back in those days you really couldn't fit a lot of storyline and a complex parser AND 16-color graphics and animation in an IBM PC. What I don't appreciate is the really pathetic overall plot and mood, and the puzzles that are not only simple but often frustrating instead of puzzling. The idea of adventure games should not be to try everything until you find a solution that doesn't kill you or stop you from advancing - I refer you to the gnome's name puzzle (which was made easier in later versions).

The Bottom Line
King's Quest is not a very good game, and it certainly isn't a good adventure game. It isn't loads of fun to play nor particularly rewarding. However, it is a classic and a ground-breaker, and since its relatively cheap these days, you might as well try it out - its not half as bad as a lot of other games, and not playing it just because its not very good is like not reading "War and Peace" just because its dead boring. (Figure that one out for yourself...)

The Good
The best is compare the game to what was available when King's Quest was shown on PC-s for the first time. Other adventure games of that time were either text-only or static screens with text descriptions. Compared to that, King's Quest was really vibrant. It was first of its kind in that regard.

Another nice point (on PC) is that even if some other adventure games had static screens graphics, this graphics was mostly CGA and in many cases quite ugly. King's Quest I came with PCjr/Tandy support with already first 1984 release, using all 16-colors and graphics, even if quite low-res, was really nice and full-screen. The game gave fairy-tales vibes to player perfectly.

Regarding gameplay, puzzles were ok (I think I looked into walkthrough only once), many puzzles were possible to solve in different manners (having different points). Exploring Kingdom of Daventry was enjoyable.

The Bad
Story is really simple, a bit naive. Just find 3 treasures in the kingdom to become new king. And yeah, puzzle with eagle was really a bit frustrating (this is the point when I looked into walkthrough).

The Bottom Line
Good start into series, which I enjoyed playing even in modern times for the first time. There were adventure games before, but for me, this one was the first which defined the genre.

The Good
Sir Graham is sent by King Edward to find the three lost treasures of Daventry. Find them to become King yourself. The graphics are dated today obviously but at the time they were incredible. The story is simple & a knowledge of fairy tales will help in knowing what to do next. There are sometimes two different ways to solve a puzzle, an okay way & a good way for maximum points. A fun way to kill a few hours even today.

The Bad
The inane gnome puzzle, so bad it was simplified in later versions.

The Bottom Line
This piece of gaming history marked the point when PC games went from interactive fiction to graphical.