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KQ MoE
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:03 pm
by Gav
AAAAGGHH! I just acquired and played KQ MoE for the first time and I am amazed at how bad it seems. It doesn't (so far) play much like an adventure at all. In fact, it appears to be more of an action game that even a RPG.
People regularly knock QFG5 and say it really didn't live up to the series. (I for one thought it was reasonably good, though a slight let down after Shadows of Darkness). If QFG5 is a disappointment, then what can I say about KQ MoE? It is a blight on the excellence acheived between KQ3 and KQ6.
I don't like KQ7, but at least it is clearly an adventure game and was made in the same spirit as the others. MoE to me is an insult to Roberta Williams' name.
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:12 pm
by Alias
KQ MoE
Whats that?
PS- KQ7 sux, KQ8 rules and QFG5 is a master piece.

Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:29 pm
by KKuhlman
Mask of Eternity aka KQ8..
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:33 pm
by bartonjo2
personally moe does not deserve th kq part of its name i mean the game shoudlnt be about killing and the music is so dark. Plus its has reaaaaaally slow load times. i cant wait for kq 9, kq3, kq 2.5 and kq4 those are bound to be a lot more satisying
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 10:42 pm
by Spikey
KQ8 an adventure game? True. But not a point-and-click-adventure, which was an improvement of the text-parser-adventure, both no-arcade-sequence-adventures. It didn't stick to the tradition, which was a great loss to me.
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:01 pm
by Gav
Even small aracde sequences would be ok - eg: the seahorse ride in KQ2VGA and the robot fight at the end of sq(3?) - but having the fight legions of zombie in real time 3d combat from the offset is not what I was hoping for.
Rog, I don't know if you were serious with what you said, especially since you added a

, but I do think QFG5 was a good game. It played very similarly to the other games in the series with some changes made since it was 3D. Other than the combat and the map system (both of which i didn't like), the game was more or less the same as the rest and, in my opinion, worthy of the series.
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:04 pm
by adeyke
It's not an adventure game and it's not a KQ game. However, more importantly, it's not a good game. So even if you don't care about KQ or adventure games, and just want a violent action game, MoE still fails because it's a bad violent action game.
Posted: Sun Oct 17, 2004 11:06 pm
by KKuhlman
All I can say about it is that someone stole my copy and I feel sorry for the thief..
Re:
Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:35 am
by ThreeHeadedMonkey
MoE was an adventure game just as well as the other KQ's were. Only MoE took a different approach at the gameplay.
an insult to Roberta Williams' name
Sierra was sold during production, so Roberta didn't have total control over the game.
Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 12:38 am
by Jafar
If you want to hear rants about MOE, talk to Storm. She despises that game so much that it almost scares me.

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 2:27 am
by bartonjo2
its a wonderfl well designed game!!!
until you turn 4 years old
the puzzles are terrible too, i spent hours trying to figure out how to open a door and it turned out to be an illusion, you could walk right through it
Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 3:25 am
by Senor Matt
I played that game a couple of years ago and I couldn't even bare to play past the second level it was so terrible!
I think that game should be permanently blotted out from the memory of all sierra fans and faculty and if another offical KQ is ever made it should be named KQ8 instead of KQ9.
Yes.. there is no mask of eternity and there never was one...
... that game never existed...
and freedom is slavery and ignorance is knowledge.

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 4:59 am
by Erpy
I actually played it all the way to the end and if you look on it as an independant game, rather than another KQ game, it's not that bad. The controls are awkward, but the game was fun enough to keep playing.

Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 5:47 am
by Kurdt
I enjoyed the game kinda. The real problem is that it is basically a Tomb Raider knock-off. I mean, I enjoyed it when I played it and some of the concepts were really cool (I really liked the Dimension of Death), but in all seriousness it just gets tedious after awhile. I played all the way through it I think twice and then I haven't in a long time. If I ever play it these days, I play to the Dimension of Death and then quit because the DOD and Daventry were my favorite parts. Sad, yeah, but that's just how it goes.
Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:19 am
by adeyke
I did also play all the way through, mainly because it wouldn't be fair for me to judge it if I didn't. While I was playing it, I actually did want to continue playing it.
I think this is mainly due to the addictive nature of the RPG elements. There's just a drive to kill more things to get more experience and more loot and to work at getting better equipment. This drive exists even in really bad games. This is clearly illustrated in
Progress Quest. The "game" consists solely of rolling a character (picking a name, class, race, and stats, none of which make any difference). The rest is all automated; the computer will defeat monsters for you, complete quests, sell items, buy equipment, etc. There are status bars for everything. The disturbing thing is that Progress Quest is actually fun. It's satisfying to make progress there, even if it's completely meaningless. Thus the great appeal of the Number That Goes Up. MoE has this is as well.
Despite this, I stand by my statement that it's a bad game.
The graphics are hideous. Being able to see the polygons is always a bad sign, as is seeing the pixels on a texture. MoE was released in 1998. That year also had Half-Life. However, MoE was closer in graphical sophistication to Quake 1, released in 1996. That is, when it came out, it was already severely outdated graphically. And when that's supposed to be one of the strong points...
It also misses one of the necessary features in 3D games: the ability to set your resolution. You only have 640x480, unless you have 3Dfx, in which you can get up to 800x600. There's simply no excuse for not allowing higher resolutions.
Then there's the interface. One of the essential parts of an action game is smooth control. You should be able to control the game effortlessly, not even noticing that you are using your keyboard and mouse. A clunky interface will kill the game. MoE's is about as clunky as you can get. You can't edge forward; you always make a huge step instead. The jumping is horrendous. You can't jump, only leap. So there's absolutely no subtlety of control there. And there are the ridiculous black flips. And then there's the awful thudding when you run into things. There's also no strafing at all, nor mouse look. And, perhaps worst of all, you can't attack and move at the same time. Combat consists solely of "click, click, click," or perhaps "run away, click, click, run away." So, considering how often precise movements are necessary, the interface is very clunky, and considering how important combat is for the game, the combat system is really awful.
There are also the ridiculous wait times. Saving and loading takes some significant time. Worse, though, is the time it takes to load a new area. Instead of giving you the option of a full install, it'll always just copy new areas as you need them. And delete them afterwards. And it takes a long time to copy them. So, while you're saving perhaps a few hundred megabytes of hard drive space, you're spending minutes upon minutes of your time waiting. Whoever thought of this system, and didn't think to allow users to make a choice (even in 1998, the extra hard drive space wouldn't have a been problem), should be forced to watch that loading screen for a week straight.
Then there are the puzzles. Especially the jumping puzzles. The "try to jump with the clunky interface, die, wait for it restore, and try again" kind. Those just make the game so much more fun.
Then there's the plot. Or rather, there isn't.
Really, even if I completely disregard that it's not a KQ game or an adventure, I still can't say that it's good.
Posted: Mon Oct 18, 2004 7:28 am
by Erpy
I agree with the clunky controls and limited combat. I guess that's what you get when you try to build an action game with a flight simulator engine.

Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 6:21 pm
by bartonjo2
youre not serious about the flight simulator engine are you erpy?
Crazy!
Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 7:02 pm
by Alias
Re:
Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:04 pm
by ThreeHeadedMonkey
Actually, it isn't KQ8, just KQ MoE. The number 8 was never shown on any release.
And QFG5 was awesome indeed, perfect ending for the series.
Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:12 pm
by Alias
Yeah so whats everyones problem with 3D action/adventure/RPG games?
Posted: Tue Oct 19, 2004 8:36 pm
by Blackthorne519
Plain and Simple, I didn't like KQ:MoE.
It wasn't good as a King's Quest game and it wasn't good as a FPS.
That's it.
Bt
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 1:06 am
by bartonjo2
for all the people still trying to click the blue thingy mentioned by broomie by rolling your mouse over the screen, FPS is First Person SHooter
Yeah MoE wasnt up to scratch too dark as well kq is supposwed to be HAPPY
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 2:18 am
by adeyke
Yeah so whats everyones problem with 3D action/adventure/RPG games?
I really don't have anything against 3D action/adventure/RPG games. I do have something against
bad 3D action/adventure/RPG games and I do have something against 3D action/adventure/RPG games made as part of a series that has nothing to do with them.
If they had fixed all the issues with MoE, gave it a better plot, better graphics, better puzzles, a better interface, better combat, etc., and didn't claim that it was a KQ game, then I'd like it.
I actually think the KQ name on MoE is a large part of why MoE wasn't an absolute flop. Many people bought it just because it was supposedly a KQ game. Even if they'd heard that it wasn't an adventure game, they might still buy it out of some sense of loyalty to the series. Also, if people generally only played KQ games and the like, such that MoE is their first 3D action/adventure/RPG game, they might not see all that's wrong with it. So, if they'd made it an independent game, market towards fans of the genre, it would almost certainly have done much worse, since the audience would actually know what such a game is
supposed to be like.
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 9:52 am
by Alias
Why not make a Kings Quest 8? same plot but everything else new? 2D though.
well,
Posted: Wed Oct 20, 2004 11:03 am
by Radiant
because it's more fun making a KQ2.5
Or a KQ9.