Casual Reviews – King’s Quest Chapter 1: A Knight to Remember

/ sevenflorins

King’s Quest made me feel like a kid again. That sounds great at first, but think back to being a kid for a second. Think about choices you made, things that seemed so important at the time…the games you played over and over again because you had no other options.

That’s the kid King’s Quest awoke inside me.

If you can’t relate to that inner child, then you either grew up in a rich family with guardians that didn’t restrict your games, or you just didn’t play video games. In either case, I just can’t comprehend you.

Environment

Graphically the game is similar to The Walking Dead/Borderlands with a dash of Disney design. It looks good, and will certainly age more gracefully than others. The world is very Disney, with goofy characters and childish jokes, and the story is…the story is much like this post…uninspired. I am having such a hard time writing this because I don’t know really what to say about it. You play as a dude who wants to be a knight and must pass a bunch of tests by solving puzzles. It’s great…if you’re a kid who has no other gaming options.

The honest truth is…your character is a douchemiester. You basically cheat your way through every trial…with different varying levels of douchery. I wanted me to fail. I would turn the wrong knob simply to see my smug, feathered, caped self get smashed by a boulder or bed.

I only completed the game because my wife enjoys puzzle adventures and she kept reminding me I have a blog to maintain. Nothing kept me wanting to come back. Nothing in this world brought it to life. Ironically, I would have preferred to continue the iZombie marathon my wife and I were on when this game became free.

Gameplay

You run around picking up random objects and try to use them on things. This becomes infuriating as there is no way to track quests or know what you should be looking for. Much like a toddler taking a stroll through the home while mommy is on the phone, you’re left to pretty much try anything on everything. ‘Maybe I try poking the pumpkin with the fruit picker?’…’Or perhaps I should show my weed whacker to the old lady?’ By the end I was fully prepared to shove my weed whacker into an outlet should that have been an option. At least something would happen.

Having just reviewed The Walking Dead, I felt as though someone took everything good about The Walking Dead gameplay…

that’s it…they took it…

It’s gone now and all you have left is King’s Quest. Enjoy.

That may be a little harsh, but considering the gameplay in The Walking Dead underwhelmed, this game took underwhelm to subsurface whelmage.

Replay Value

I have no desire to return. I know all the puzzles, I’ve heard all the jokes, and I hate my character. Unless my wife wishes to play through it once since she enjoys puzzle games, I will delete it and forget I ever walked in that knave’s shoes.

Online

Nope

Conclusion

Seriously, this character is like watching an old 90’s flick about an adorable brat that gets away with anything and everything. By the end you want to punch him/her back a decade to explode like everything else in the 80’s.

Should you buy it? Let me answer that by asking you…do you like not knowing what you’re doing? Do you enjoy repetitive gameplay? Do you like predictable stories? And finally, can you stand Dennis the Menace?

If you answered no, don’t buy this game. If you said yes to all of those, don’t buy this game. Just sit on the couch and ponder what went wrong during your early childhood development.

King’s Quest is still free for PS+ members. Go for it if you want to, but I wouldn’t waste my time if I were you. I served my time so you wouldn’t have to. I know people will think I’m being extremely hard on this game, and I agree, I am. We should have high standards that encourage games to continually improve and grow as technology allows. Games need to break new grounds or perfect current ideas. At least even Destiny was trying something new.

I don’t understand the high rating this game is getting. Have we become so accustom to remakes, sequels, and remasters we don’t expect anything new/better than average anymore?

King's Quest

 

Advertisement

50 thoughts on “Casual Reviews – King’s Quest Chapter 1: A Knight to Remember”

    • Hahaha! No I haven’t, I knew it was a big deal a while ago so I was excited to try it out on PS+. I’m sure in its time it would have been amazing. Had this game been the same but released years ago, I’d have given it a much better score. Creepy is always fun.

      Like

      Reply

  3. Wow, and this with 94% positive reviews on Steam. Hm, well, Deponia has a jerk player character, too, and that’s what put me off of that one (among other things). I also never played the old games, but I’d have been skeptical anyway about a re-using of an old brand where Disney is involved.
    And one negative review on Steam was enough to ease my decision: It informed about Sierra’s bad publishing apporach of reserving an epilogue part of the game (episodic, bah) to buyers of the Complete Edition with no chance of getting it later separately and additional difficulties on the Steam platform.
    Considering that I already have way more games than time to play, it’s something I won’t be missing.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Yes, trust me you won’t be missing much at all. I’m really looking in to building a rig so I can get back into steam and PC gaming. Fingers crossed as next year begins I will have the funds!

      Like

      Reply

  5. Good grief Kings Quest… I thought that franchise was dead and buried already! I saw it on PS+ but I was never really a fan and tbh this kind of puzzler has been done to death and been done far better… i.e. by TellTale Games and Nintendo. I ended up not downloading it and using up some of my remaining wallet balance to get Minecraft Story Mode instead.

    Great review though fella. I look forward to reading more.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      • The thing is that I’m not selling the games, I’m selling the acount with the game that’s why is cheap because you download the game from one acount, if I would sell the games from the store it would be necessary a lincense, but im renting my acount until the client download the game, after he got the game the account returns to me. But I can never get the game back that game will be of the client for ever.

        Liked by 1 person

      • 🙂 any ways you use your account, the game will download in to your personal account, the account I give to you it’s just like the CD… Do you understand? I mean you will play with your own account, but to download the game you have to go only one time to that account after the play station 4 will let you download the game, I sold so many games already by my own the thing is now I want to sell the games to more people and to have my own Web page.

        Liked by 1 person

  9. I had downloaded this as well while it was a PS+ freebie, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet. Maybe it’s just the first chapter that blows chunks? One can hope, anyway. It looks like it would be an interesting game, but if even the main character makes you shake your head it’s a bit disheartening, no? Ha-ha. I enjoyed reading your honest review of it all the same.

    Slightly off topic, I saw a comment further up about the Layton games… *feels the need to put in two cents* If you and your wife haven’t snatched one up yet, for all that’s holy, DO IT. I might fangirl a bit here, but it’s one of my favorite series. The puzzles are wide ranged and the story is amazing. And-and-and. I could write a whole blog post in my comment about it, ha-ha.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • Wow, I really do need to try a Layton game. And yeah, it is possible only the first episode is like this. I might watch a lets play of the next just to see if there’s anything new. Wouldn’t spend money on it though as we begin 2016 with the promise of some good new games. I don’t even know what my most anticipated is. Maybe persona 5 if they can actually release it this year.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      • Indeed you do. 😉 Agreed–might as well see what’s coming before shelling out money on something that was already disappointing! Hopefully the rest of the series isn’t such a let-down.
        Ah, there’s so many things set for this year that I’m excited for. I’m hyped up for the new Zelda for sure. And The Last Guardian I’m hoping we’ll actually get our hands on. It looks incredible. Persona 5 would be a great release for this year, too–last I heard it was set for this summer, but goodness knows SDs change all the time.

        Liked by 1 person

  10. Still have to play this game, as I played all the old games (at least 1-7, the 8th was an action-RPG, even though I’d like to try it out). Those weren’t perfect, and the best might be “King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow” because of Jane Jensen’s involvement, before she went on to did the amazing Gabriel Knight series. Ah, so many great adventure games. Too bad you didn’t like this one. There’s actually a fan remake called The Silver Lining which I found pretty good. It was episodic as well, from Phoenix Online Studios who would later do other adventure games (like the great “Cognition”). Still might try this game, though. But I agree with you that if you hate your main character, the game usually doesn’t have a chance. That’s why I didn’t like the Deponia games…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      • I didn’t particularly like the old ones, as I found them frustrating to play and with some horrible storytelling. But if all the dead ends are done away with and it has a good story with some interesting puzzles, I’m all for it ;). But then again it seems it doesn’t have those… something which bugged me with “The Book of Unwritten Tales 2”.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Well, I loved “The Walking Dead” series, so I CAN live without puzzles. It’s just how well they’re integrated and if they’re fair. I’m a point-and-clicker fan, but I’m not strict about that sort of thing. The Portal games are awesome, yes ;).

        Liked by 1 person

      • Sorry to step in your toes here florin, but if you’re a point and click fan I have a few recommendations…

        I highly recommend square’s Life is Strange, it recently finished its season run and it is an amazing game and it has some decent things to puzzle out and an excellent story.

        I also recommend another telltale series called The Wolf Among Us. It’s based on a comic, like TWD, but it’s a crime mystery with fairy tale characters and the player character is the big bad wolf.

        Just a couple of suggestions that I really enjoyed recently.

        Liked by 2 people

      • It’s so much fun. I’m basically at that point where my brain tells me “it’s Telltale, it’s at least going to be a damn good story”…

        I don’t think I’ve ever regretted one of their games.

        Liked by 1 person

      • Yeah. They’ve always been really solid storytellers. And I’m in love with the cell shaded art style they’ve adopted.

        Like

      • Everything before TWD was also great and more point-and-click adventure game, at least in the classic sense, like the Sam & Max and Tales of Monkey Island series. Those were even better than the original and had some pretty cool puzzles, perfect humor and some good stories. It’s too bad Telltale won’t go back after the success with TWD, but any game from that era comes highly recommended :).

        Liked by 2 people

  11. Hey, sevenflorins, what I want to know is how much like the original King’s Quest series is this? I don’t have PS+ but King’s Quest was my jam on floppy disk back in the day. The allure was the inventiveness you’d have to play the game with in solving its puzzles and interacting with your environment. I still remember how funny it was to type in “kick” and then select “cat”.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • That wouldn’t surprise me either honestly. I never played the old games and it really isn’t that much to talk about in modern games. Honestly if you want to get an episode game, tale tale games would be better. I also don’t do the episodic gaming though…unless it’s free.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

What do you think?

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s