MusicallyInspired wrote:It's interesting. The parser is usually a source of incredible love or incredible hatred, and the reaction is vice versa to P&C for each party. Myself, I've liked them both and never truly favoured one over the other. The parser can be difficult to figure out what it wants you to type sometimes, but you can also blame P&C for being simply too easy sometimes.
I loved the parser. Was it 100% easy? No, not all the time. But once you got the hang of Sierra games, and realized how "sentences" worked - the parser was, over all easy. (Except for the one scenario in LSL2 in the airplane...) When I played KQ5, which I believe was the first Point & Click Sierra game I had played; I actually wrote them a very strongly worded letter about it. I strongly disliked it. (I still do, in Sierra games, to this day). The typing parser is the main reason I believe I type as fast as I do. And the point and click, you didn't need to look on the screen for anything; you just could click where ever until something happened. To me, it took the "thinking" out of Sierra games.
For example in SQ3... right in the beginning, where the wires are dangling... One could have randomly clicked all over the screen and got points for clicking on it, rather than taking the time to notice it, and look at it, and get the wires, all by typing.
I dunno, perhaps that's why I still enjoy replaying the text parser Sierra games, over the clicky. Because I remember feeling more challenged. And thus, got more enjoyment out of it.
Collector wrote:I understand and appreciate the appeal that many have for the parser. My only problem with it is when you have continually play 20 questions to find just the right word, even when you already know what you need to do. This is usually just because the vocabulary is not inclusive enough. Additionally, SCI's parser pausing the game as you type is a big improvement over that of AGI.
I will agree, this was a huge improvement (most notably in SQ3) on the conveyer belt in the beginning!
MusicallyInspired wrote:It probably comes from the games not having the opportunity to be properly beta tested the way games today are. If parser games were still released today you can guarantee that they wouldn't release it without getting as much feedback as possible from testers on what would be acceptable parser input.
Actually, it'd be kind of neat to create a kind of fanmade patch for AGI games to ammend to all the parser inputs that people complained about over the years. It's certainly possible with AGI Studio/WinAGI.
Well not only beta testing, but these days games can be patched over the internet, by coding within the program. Like I can launch Left 4 Dead 2, or even something like GoldWave and it will hit the internet in the background and say, "Hey, there's an update for this..." Which fixes or improves the game.
None of the games back then were capable of that; and for the most part, most of the world did not have a constant internet connection. If they were lucky, they had a 56K, or 28.8 (or 14.4) baud modem... the unlucky ones were still on 2400 Baud! Or didn't even have - or know! - what the internet was!
Rath Darkblade wrote:I didn't like Cedric the Owl. But I don't think many people did, so I'm not particularly unusual there!
Irony being, I believe you're the first to mention it...
Rath Darkblade wrote:
- QfG1 VGA could freeze at the character selection screen (though QfG1 EGA was fine).
I don't remember that ever happening to me...!
Rath Darkblade wrote:
- QfG3 was fairly buggy - it could CTD during the race against Yesufu. Also, why did you come here, friend of Rakeesh? Why did you come here, friend of Rakeesh? Why did you come here, friend of Rakeesh? Why did you come here, friend of Rakeesh? ad nauseum.
I don't think I ever experienced that one either.
Rath Darkblade wrote:
- QfG4's most annoying bug was in the swamps (error 52), but could also happen when you slide down the path at the start.
I remember this as painfully as the stick in the mud in the KQ game.
Rath Darkblade wrote:Timer puzzles are what REALLY irritated me in Sierra games.
The mummies in GK1 have been mentioned, but for me, the most irritating one happened very late in LSL3, when
Patti has to take a ride on a log down the river. I hated the fact that even with fairly slow computers, you only had a second or so to react before Patti smashed into a rock or something. It's an adventure game, dammit, so why am I suddenly playing a dodge 'em?
There was a dodge'em in SQ also... Was it SQ2? SQ1? One of those had it... I don't think it was SQ3.
Where you're going across the desert...