Pestulon's Impressions...
Posted: Fri Dec 12, 2008 7:01 am
Yesterday, after three rough months, I finally finished Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon.
I've never been a SQ fan, primary 'cause I'm not a sci-fi fan nor a fan of comedic adventures. I didn't like the first two games in the series - particularly the second one, which I found poorly executed and not funny at all - and the first half of SQ3 left me with pretty much the same impression: wacky without any real sense (as opposed, in this regard, to LSL in which, for example, comedy was always a medium, not an end); zany and extremely superficial (LSL, at least the first trilogy, was always very human, and Larry always had a coherent, moving personality); incoherent and (way too much) unforgiving.
Then I landed on planet Pestulon and things changed.
The game gained a new dimension, thank to the humor that, from meaningless (in my opinion) parody of everything, becomes sharp sarcasm and to Roger that finally starts to show hints of a personality. Moreover, the meta-game finale, with Ken Williams welcoming the Two Guys from Andromeda, really drove me away, since I'm a total sucker for this kind of things (and that's one of the reason I love so much LSL3, for its marvelous finale!).
Following the wave, and curious to see how things would have unfolded, I fired up Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers and started playing it. Now, the main reason I disliked the first two games was a certain lack of continuity (same reason I'm not a fan of LSL6-LSL7, otherwise great games), with Roger that seemed to retain scarce or no memory of its previous efforts, but from the very beginning of SQ4 I felt this sense of continuity - the game clearly shows that time has passed, that something has happened on Xenon from Roger's last visit; to cut it, the game really gave me the impression of a vivid, coherent world - and now I can't wait to play it (add to this that I adore time travels and I found ingenious how the Two Guys treated them in this one!)
I've never been a SQ fan, primary 'cause I'm not a sci-fi fan nor a fan of comedic adventures. I didn't like the first two games in the series - particularly the second one, which I found poorly executed and not funny at all - and the first half of SQ3 left me with pretty much the same impression: wacky without any real sense (as opposed, in this regard, to LSL in which, for example, comedy was always a medium, not an end); zany and extremely superficial (LSL, at least the first trilogy, was always very human, and Larry always had a coherent, moving personality); incoherent and (way too much) unforgiving.
Then I landed on planet Pestulon and things changed.
The game gained a new dimension, thank to the humor that, from meaningless (in my opinion) parody of everything, becomes sharp sarcasm and to Roger that finally starts to show hints of a personality. Moreover, the meta-game finale, with Ken Williams welcoming the Two Guys from Andromeda, really drove me away, since I'm a total sucker for this kind of things (and that's one of the reason I love so much LSL3, for its marvelous finale!).
Following the wave, and curious to see how things would have unfolded, I fired up Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers and started playing it. Now, the main reason I disliked the first two games was a certain lack of continuity (same reason I'm not a fan of LSL6-LSL7, otherwise great games), with Roger that seemed to retain scarce or no memory of its previous efforts, but from the very beginning of SQ4 I felt this sense of continuity - the game clearly shows that time has passed, that something has happened on Xenon from Roger's last visit; to cut it, the game really gave me the impression of a vivid, coherent world - and now I can't wait to play it (add to this that I adore time travels and I found ingenious how the Two Guys treated them in this one!)