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General discussionSierra adventure games one can finish without a walkthrough(54 posts)(54 posts)
(54 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted April 10, 2022
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Jorev: I think claiming a game is poorly designed because you couldn't figure it out or made a mistake is an excuse.
As someone mentioned above, dead ends + forced restarts back in the late 80's was less about "Real 'leet gamer wanting an Ironman challenge and everyone else sux and is too stupid to play" and far more about the company profiting from selling hintbooks / game guides / premium rate phone support. Al Lowe literally came out and said "At one point we sold more hint books than copies of the game", so given the LSL series has sold 10 million copies over the years, it was clearly profitable to intentionally add 'manufactured forced restart frustration' to encourage people to 'pay to de-frustrate' gameplay (or the early version of "pay2degrind" for games deliberately made overly-grindy precisely because you can buy "booster packs" that everyone mocks today).

The late 80's / early 90's was a learning experience for all genres, from 'experimental' FPS controls to point & click adventure mechanics, and in the end "LucasArts style" won out for a good reason that has little to do gamer intelligence. Is The Longest Journey (where its 21hrs of content is a genuine 21hrs of unique content) "dumbed down" compared to a 3.5hr Sierra adventure game x6 forced restarts = the same 21hrs? Of course not.
Post edited April 10, 2022 by AB2012
Posted April 10, 2022
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PixelBoy: Back then, dead ends... were all considered good design choices.
By who?
Posted April 10, 2022
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PixelBoy: Back then, dead ends... were all considered good design choices.
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StingingVelvet: By who?
Yeah, that's what I was asking myself, too.
But I decided against addressing this bold claim...but now that you posed the question, I will eagerly wait for the answer.

:)
Posted April 11, 2022
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StingingVelvet: By who?
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BreOl72: Yeah, that's what I was asking myself, too.
By all parties.

Developers made games like that because they were trying to create the best games they could, reviewers gave those games top scores, and gamers kept buying (or illegally distributing) them.

If dead ends and everything else had been considered bad ideas back then, wouldn't the industry have abandoned them after a couple of unsuccessful tries, wouldn't reviewers been bashing them, and end-users avoiding them?
But none of that happened, until much later.

I really recommend reading old game magazines, Retromags and Archive.org are good places to start from.
To make sure, I very quickly checked reviews for Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry 2, two titles that have later been made icons of "bad" Sierra dead end design.

I had time to check one magazine only, but that magazine gave Space Quest 4/5 stars and Leisure Suit Larry 2 5/5 stars, the latter even receiving praise for its playability.

I also encourage reading old game covers. Some covers even make it a selling point that the game can take several months to complete as it is so hard.
Obviously you should consider that as sales speech, as it's not even technically speaking true. Some time ago I played one of those "months to complete" games, and if you know what you're doing, you can complete the game with about 20 parser commands.

But the point is proven there, having games ridiculously challenging or even unfair by modern terms was something that was considered good game design back then and for a surprisingly long time, considering how unwanted such features are these days.
Posted April 11, 2022
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BreOl72: Yeah, that's what I was asking myself, too.
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PixelBoy: By all parties.

Developers made games like that because they were trying to create the best games they could, reviewers gave those games top scores, and gamers kept buying (or illegally distributing) them.

If dead ends and everything else had been considered bad ideas back then, wouldn't the industry have abandoned them after a couple of unsuccessful tries, wouldn't reviewers been bashing them, and end-users avoiding them?
But none of that happened, until much later.

I really recommend reading old game magazines, Retromags and Archive.org are good places to start from.
To make sure, I very quickly checked reviews for Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry 2, two titles that have later been made icons of "bad" Sierra dead end design.

I had time to check one magazine only, but that magazine gave Space Quest 4/5 stars and Leisure Suit Larry 2 5/5 stars, the latter even receiving praise for its playability.

I also encourage reading old game covers. Some covers even make it a selling point that the game can take several months to complete as it is so hard.
Obviously you should consider that as sales speech, as it's not even technically speaking true. Some time ago I played one of those "months to complete" games, and if you know what you're doing, you can complete the game with about 20 parser commands.

But the point is proven there, having games ridiculously challenging or even unfair by modern terms was something that was considered good game design back then and for a surprisingly long time, considering how unwanted such features are these days.
In fact it was abandoned once LucasArts changed the paradigm. Even for Sierra themselves, because the Lucas paradigm was successful, obviously, and the public you say loved and demanded "dead ends" didn't loved them anymore, maybe never wanted them, in Sierra adventures or years before in Infocom IF.
Posted April 11, 2022
Anyway I am not convinced that every dead end in the oldest Sierra adventures were conscent design decisions. In the majority of the cases they were just overlooked holes in a time were the betatesting was relative and the teams small, even in Sierra, maybe just two guys from Andromeda.
Obviously a company like Sierra never would recognize this like a glitch and they called it "design" "difficulty"
But there is one thing I agree, probably Sierra didn't gave it the importace we do, and public was much more tolerant to those things.
But when they could chose between two quality ways of understand an adventure the paradigm was changed gradually. For the good and also for the bad.
Post edited April 11, 2022 by Gudadantza
Posted April 11, 2022
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Gudadantza: In fact it was abandoned once LucasArts changed the paradigm. Even for Sierra themselves, because the Lucas paradigm was successful, obviously, and the public you say loved and demanded "dead ends" didn't loved them anymore, maybe never wanted them, in Sierra adventures or years before in Infocom IF.
LucasArts didn't invent too many things, but they made them popular for sure, like point and click interface. They never were sure about their own paradigm though, as it kept changing all the time. The last couple of games weren't even point and clicks anymore.

In the bigger picture they obviously were more consistent than Sierra, which is partially because Sierra also made about 10x more adventure games so there's more room for variation even based on numbers.

What public wanted was a guess at times, sometimes they got it right, sometimes they didn't. Getting rid of dead ends was probably appreciated by majority, getting rid of point and click interface, not so much.


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Gudadantza: Anyway I am not convinced that every dead end in the oldest Sierra adventures were conscent design decisions. In the majority of the cases they were just overlooked holes
This is true, although if dead ends were OK, they didn't even bother to look for them, as whether they were intended or not, they fit what gamers at the time were expecting.

In the long run however, they must have been design decisions. If memory serves, even as late as in Gabriel Knight there were dead ends, not too many but a couple anyway, so by that time they already knew about doing games differently, but they still were using dead ends, or in the very least case, failing to get rid of unintentional ones.

Then again, Jane Jensen even today thinks every game must have a maze, so these are also someone's personal preferences, and if that person happens to be one of the lead designers, you get what you get then.


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Gudadantza: But when they could chose between two quality ways of understand an adventure the paradigm was changed gradually. For the good and also for the bad.
Yeah, they kept reinventing themselves, it's funny how in the end both Sierra and LucasArts moved away from what paying customers loved the most.
Posted April 11, 2022
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PixelBoy: There is a niche group of players who even today prefer those things. I forget the game, but at least one point and click game that was crowdfunded made hotspot indicators optional, because some backers badly wanted to have the challenge of pixel hunting,
Did they also ask for the game to be unwinnable if you missed a spot in the right timeframe? This is the first time I see someone claim that there are players who consider(ed) this a good design decision instead of a bug or conscious exploitation to sell hintbooks or artificially prolong gamelength stats. Also the first time I hear point and click adventures were meant to be "challenging" in the same vein as rogue-likes with permadeath ...

Hidden points of no returns are not comparable to difficult puzzles.

(Also, positive ratings and reviews for the whole game are not proof that dead ends were seen as good design decisions; IMO, they were too rare to be part of a concept anyway, you might not even have run into them in your playthrough, but there was a possibility; and the games definitely had more to offer than dead ends, it would have been unfair to rate them badly due to one single issue that you might or might not run into - and most reviewers probably didn't.)
Post edited April 11, 2022 by Leroux
Posted April 11, 2022
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BreOl72: Yeah, that's what I was asking myself, too.
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PixelBoy: [...]I really recommend reading old game magazines,[...]
I've read some German magazine reviews about Space Quest I. One review gave it a 1 out of 12 while calling it trash. Other reviews gave the Amiga version 72%, the Atari ST version 61% ,and the PC version 80%. The remake had also mixed reviews. In one magazine the Amiga version had 45% and the PC version 90%. Another magazine gave it 71%. Leisure Suit Larry 2 had also mixed reviews: 77%, 10 out of 12, 11 out 12, and 76%. King's Quest V (iirc one of the worst offenders with dead ends) had also mixed reviews from 48% to 85%. Similar situation with every other Sierra adventure game.

All Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games had much better reviews and ratings in German magazines in comparison to the Sierra adventure games. Usually, you had ratings above 80%. The later games had ratings around 90%.

I remember that Sierra adventure games weren't popular at my school. They had the reputation of being unwinnable and not fun. They weren't shared on floppy disks very often. Everyone wanted to play the Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games, especially Monkey Island I and II. I remember that I played King's Quest I. After one hour I had enough of the typing words in the parser and continued with other games which were more fun and actually looked better.

I am not sure what you are trying to construct here.
Post edited April 11, 2022 by toma85
Posted April 11, 2022
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PixelBoy: [...]I really recommend reading old game magazines,[...]
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toma85: I've read some German magazine reviews about Space Quest I. One review gave it a 1 out of 12 while calling it trash. Other reviews gave the Amiga version 72%, the Atari ST version 61% ,and the PC version 80%. The remake had also mixed reviews. In one magazine the Amiga version had 45% and the PC version 90%. Another magazine gave it 71%. Leisure Suit Larry 2 had also mixed reviews: 77%, 10 out of 12, 11 out 12, and 76%. King's Quest V (iirc one of the worst offenders with dead ends) had also mixed reviews from 48% to 85%. Similar situation with every other Sierra adventure game.
Haha... I really should download and read some of those old German magazines, tough crowd there it seems.
Any place to find them online?


Anyway, the legendary game reviewer Jyrki J.J. Kasvi who later became a member of parliament for the Green party among other things (is dead of cancer now) wrote even more legendary review of Space Quest IV in Mikrobitti magazine.

On 0-100 scale he rated the game as follows:

Dorkiness: 98
Graphics: 95
Sounds: 99
User interface: 95
Appeal: 115 (sic!)

Overall score: 99


The editor even added in parentheses a comment that take the score with a grain of salt... :-D


I guess we can say that Sierra games were and still are a source of discussion and a lot of opposing arguments.

But my overall understanding is that whatever those games were about and like back in the day, was very much appreciated and with the possible exception of German press, their reputation as unfair is something that has been later attributed to them.


I personally went Space Quest games through few years ago, and I think, at least from today's perspective, SQIV is one of the worst in the series. That zero gravity swimming with Sequel Police blasting deadly shots was the worst really.

Mr Kasvi liked the game though.
According to him, it's "a divine game".
He also briefly referenced a dead end by saying "one should write down time codes to get back where you start from", but he obviously didn't give any score deductions for that, or in any way comment that such dead end in the game is bad or annoying.
Posted April 11, 2022
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toma85: I've read some German magazine reviews about Space Quest I. One review gave it a 1 out of 12 while calling it trash. Other reviews gave the Amiga version 72%, the Atari ST version 61% ,and the PC version 80%. The remake had also mixed reviews. In one magazine the Amiga version had 45% and the PC version 90%. Another magazine gave it 71%. Leisure Suit Larry 2 had also mixed reviews: 77%, 10 out of 12, 11 out 12, and 76%. King's Quest V (iirc one of the worst offenders with dead ends) had also mixed reviews from 48% to 85%. Similar situation with every other Sierra adventure game.
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PixelBoy: Haha... I really should download and read some of those old German magazines, tough crowd there it seems.
Any place to find them online?
[...]
For example here:

https://www.kultboy.com

--> Tests/Vorschauen
(Note the Top 100 of user ratings of this website)
--> In the search field: Entwickler --> Sierra
--> Treffer --> Alles
and then "Suchen starten"

You should see 202 entries for Sierra games now. For example, you can click on Space Quest IV and land here:
https://www.kultboy.com/testbericht-uebersicht/521//
with more entries for scanned review articles like:
https://www.kultboy.com/index.php?site=t&id=547

This is from the magazine I've read back then. You can see in the review that there are two opposing opinions: "Super" and "Geht so" (So-so) (For extreme shitty games they said "Hilfe" (help) *G*). The left guy loves the Space Quest series and the humor. The right guy likes the jokes but he dislikes the action puzzles and warns impatient gamers. And this is pretty much how I remember the Sierra adventure games. Love or hate them.

Personally, I didn't know that the dead ends or dead man walking situations were part of the game design until I read it on the internet when these games were discussed and analyzed. I realized then why people couldn't finish some of these games and were frustrated.
Post edited April 11, 2022 by toma85
Posted April 11, 2022
One dead end that was perfectly designed without any doubt just for annoying the player at levels never suspassed was the so called shoe and cat situation "puzzle" in Kings Quest V. And it is not the old AGI Space Quest I or II anymore. It was 1990!!

This game needs a great amount of paranoid savegames and you still are not even sure if you messed up things.
I am sure people loved this "puzzle" at release date and wanted more :D.
Posted April 11, 2022
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PixelBoy: [...]I really recommend reading old game magazines,[...]
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toma85: I've read some German magazine reviews about Space Quest I. One review gave it a 1 out of 12 while calling it trash. Other reviews gave the Amiga version 72%, the Atari ST version 61% ,and the PC version 80%. The remake had also mixed reviews. In one magazine the Amiga version had 45% and the PC version 90%. Another magazine gave it 71%. Leisure Suit Larry 2 had also mixed reviews: 77%, 10 out of 12, 11 out 12, and 76%. King's Quest V (iirc one of the worst offenders with dead ends) had also mixed reviews from 48% to 85%. Similar situation with every other Sierra adventure game.

All Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games had much better reviews and ratings in German magazines in comparison to the Sierra adventure games. Usually, you had ratings above 80%. The later games had ratings around 90%.

I remember that Sierra adventure games weren't popular at my school. They had the reputation of being unwinnable and not fun. They weren't shared on floppy disks very often. Everyone wanted to play the Lucasfilm/LucasArts adventure games, especially Monkey Island I and II. I remember that I played King's Quest I. After one hour I had enough of the typing words in the parser and continued with other games which were more fun and actually looked better.

I am not sure what you are trying to construct here.
Yes British magazines such as PC Format and PC Gamer (same publisher) all rated Lucas Art adventures significantly higher than Sierra adventures too.
Posted April 11, 2022
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Gudadantza: One dead end that was perfectly designed without any doubt just for annoying the player at levels never suspassed was the so called shoe and cat situation "puzzle" in Kings Quest V. And it is not the old AGI Space Quest I or II anymore. It was 1990!!

This game needs a great amount of paranoid savegames and you still are not even sure if you messed up things.
I am sure people loved this "puzzle" at release date and wanted more :D.
I still have bitter memories from that game. IMO it only got a free pass because of the amazing graphics for the time. Me and the other kids were awed looking at the game because to our young minds it was almost like looking at a Fantasy cartoon.
I suspect that if the game only supported 16-color EGA graphics, the floppies would have flown out the window.
Posted April 11, 2022
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PixelBoy: If dead ends and everything else had been considered bad ideas back then, wouldn't the industry have abandoned them after a couple of unsuccessful tries, wouldn't reviewers been bashing them, and end-users avoiding them?
You are saying:
"because [thing A] (= dead ends in games) existed (at a certain time), AND because [thing A] was not considered a general cause for thrashing games, [thing B] (= reviewers/players loved dead ends) must be true".

But that assumption is wrong.

Reviewers may have simply not encountered dead end(s) in their playthrough of a game, so they could hardly criticise a game for having them (don't forget: reviewers of magazines often received walkthroughs and/or cheat codes along with the games, so they could actually play through them in time for the printing deadline).

But either way: that a possible(!) dead end existed, didn't necessarily spoil the fun of playing the game in general (as you yourself will prove further down with your SQ and LSL examples).

If a serious dead end existed, it most probably got mentioned in one of the many "tips & tricks" columns in the gaming mags of old.
And thus could be circumvented by the players who had be warned.

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PixelBoy: I really recommend reading old game magazines,
You are aware that I was reading these reviews when they were new, right? ;)

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PixelBoy: I had time to check one magazine only, but that magazine gave Space Quest 4/5 stars and Leisure Suit Larry 2 5/5 stars, the latter even receiving praise for its playability.
What has the praise for its playability to do with dead ends?
A game can be very playable - yet have some massive flaws in other departments.

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PixelBoy: I also encourage reading old game covers. Some covers even make it a selling point that the game can take several months to complete as it is so hard.
I'm quite sure, we're talking RPGs here. Not (P'n'C)-Adventures. But please: prove me wrong.

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PixelBoy: Some time ago I played one of those "months to complete" games, and if you know what you're doing, you can complete the game with about 20 parser commands.
"Know what you're doing" after consulting a walkthrough?

Name of the game and link to the review saying "it takes months to complete", please. Thank you in advance.

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PixelBoy: But the point is proven there, having games ridiculously challenging or even unfair by modern terms was something that was considered good game design back then
Sorry to rain on your parade, but nothing has been proven here.
I will only admit that early games were hard as hell. For a reason.

When "gaming" started, it took place in Arcades, and the goal was to drain as many coins out of the players as possible. That's why early games were hard as hell.
A quick failure meant a new coin quickly inserted.

Later on, when the homecomputers and consoles arrived, their games were still hard (naturally, since most of them were basically 1:1 conversions of their big Arcade brothers), but - over time - received more and more "comfort features" like savegames, levelcodes, different difficulty levels, etc.

That shows already, that the focus on side of the devs, had shifted from "draining as much coins as possible" to "offering as much gaming fun as possible".

Now, granted - dead ends were sometimes(!) deliberatley put into a game by the devs (as already stated earlier: to sell hintbooks), but most times they were merely design/programming flaws.

Anyway: nobody ever loved them.
They always have been (and still are) considered a nuisance.
A massive waste of any player's time.

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PixelBoy: the legendary game reviewer Jyrki J.J. Kasvi
Well, legendary in Finland, maybe. I never heard of that guy, so...

I guess, if I would want to invest the time, I could point you to reviews of other, equally legendary (though maybe not in Finland) reviewers, that came to different conclusions in regard to SQ IV.
But, honestly - what would that prove?
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionSierra adventure games one can finish without a walkthrough(54 posts)(54 posts)
(54 posts)