Space Quest 6: Roger Wilco in the Spinal Frontier

The Good
This is a great spoof on sci fi! Sporting numerous major sci-fi movie/games/etc. sequences that will have you chuckling and laughing nonstop, making full use of a great and often wacky sense of humor.

The graphics are nicely made using plain 2D sprites which give the game a unique feeling and a great sense of humor (those aliens wouldn't be nearly as humorous if they were digitized or pre-rendered characters). And there's also a nice sense of exploration thrown into the game, as you don't get to die as often as before. Finally, the puzzles are usually on the good side of things, which is a must for these types of games.

The Bad
Unfortunately it's not that good a game. The fun is there, but the game at times feels like a Frankensteinian creature made of disjointed parts that don't really fit well together. Some of the sequences are fun (Polysorbate!) and others are merely ok (inside Santiago) but the problem is that these sequences seem to be stitched together using nothing but chicken wire and duct tape! You spend 3/4 of the game playing one game, and then somehow you are thrusted into a crappy "Fantastic Voyage" spoof and then a hasty ending that leaves you high and dry. Add to that the usual problems of graphic adventures (hunt the pixel!) a more cookie cutter and less edgy approach (family friendly Wilco!!) and a mostly simplistic design (they even got rid of most action-like sequences!) and you've got yourself a merely ok graphic adventure that tries but never quite manages to reach it's predecessors.

The Bottom Line
Very funny but ill-conceived game. Quite frankly SQV was much more entertaining, and this game simply fails to achieve the level of cohesiveness that made it's prequels not just funny spoofs, but good games too.

Still it's worth the shot for the sake of all the sci-fi references and in-jokes.