State of (free to) play

Free to play is the new black, it seems. No longer associated with bad Korean MMO's, and cheap, simple flash games, free to play is really starting to hit its stride. There is an amazing amount of triple-a quality F2P games out there now, and many more in the pipeline. What has caused this seemingly sudden influx of F2P titles? To me it seems that a few strong games paved the way, proving that there was a burgeoning audience that were willing to pay for their games in small amounts at a time, via micro-transactions, and since the model has been proven effective, a lot of other publishers are trying to replicate the success of games like Lord of the Rings Online and Team Fortress 2.

But what does this mean for the gaming industry at large? Is the free to play model a direction that the industry is going to move towards perpetually, and every game will cease to be an iteration, and become more of a service, in which players have to pick and choose what they would like to pay for, smorgasbord style? I don't think so. I think there will always be room for both. There can be no complaints about the current crop of F2P games. There is a vast amount of free gameplay out there at the moment, thousands of hours that anyone can download and try without paying a cent.

Therein lies the only hitch in all this free to play goodness that I can see; there is just so many free to play games out there, and many more coming, that are wholly dependent on strong player communities, and every time a new one is released, is it sapping the player base from other existing games? When Blacklight Retribution and Tribes Ascend hit the web, does that mean an exodus of players from the Team Fortress 2 community? Is there just going to be so many F2P games out there down the track, so that no single game can grow a good, strong multiplayer community, each new game diluting the pool even further? I think some games will swim, and others will sink. The battle for free to play supremacy is going to get nasty, and if a game isn't at 100% at launch, as many games aren't, then they run the risk of not capturing that dedicated fan-base, and dissolving into un-patched, and unsupported obscurity. Maybe a champion will rise, much like World of Warcraft did for MMO's a few years back, and become the super-success that other developers strive to replicate. Only time will tell.

If you are interested in some free to play goodness, here are some of my current favorites that you can download right now, free!


Lord of the Rings Online - A vast, fantastic MMO RPG. This one came out in 2007, and I think it's aging nicely. Solid visuals, great atmosphere, and a gift from Vala for Tolkein fans. This thing takes it Ring's lore very seriously. You can play pretty well up to the mid level 20's without any real need to spend money, but with ponies, cool cosmetic gear and extra bag slots, they make it mighty tempting.


Team Fortress 2 - Smooth, well presented shooter chaos. Class based team matches, a great sense of character, a very strong player base, and the hats, oh the hats. You need never spend a dollar to get some great gameplay out of this one. Refined shooter goodness. Can't recommend it enough.


Blacklight Retribution - I would love to recommend this, as it's a great looking futuristic shooter, with player and weapon customization, all done on the Unreal 3 engine, but as the game currently has no Australian servers, I can't join a game with a ping less than 400ms, making the game essentially unplayable. The developer, Zombie Games, is promising Aussie support soon.


Tribes Ascend - Newly released sequel to the classic Tribes series. I'm heavily into this one at the moment. Great sense of speed and movement, thanks to the skiing mechanics and jetpack. Sci-fi setting, team based shooter gameplay, huge levels; a classic reborn.



 Age of Empires Online - An online RTS, with some persistent city building mechanics thrown in. This game had an underwhelming launch for some reason, but I pick it up from time to time, and I'm transported back to 1997, when I fell in love with the original Age of Empires. This is a great little game with a nice art style and some good RTS gameplay.

Devil's dopamine

Diablo 3 is finally upon us, and with under a month to go until it's launch, it feels further away to me than ever. The level of 'schoolgirl giddiness' is reaching fever point. The game has been eleven years coming, and for me it can't get here soon enough.

The thing about Diablo to me is that it's a very neatly perfected experience. In the same way that Call of Duty is to shooter fans, Diablo knows exactly how to push the hack 'n slash RPG buttons. It has such a clearly defined, and deceptively simple gameplay rhetoric, that to someone who's never played, and is just watching you over your shoulder, the cycle of play can seem mind numbingly boring.

This is the genius of Diablo's design. It bypasses the critical lobes and strikes right to the brains pleasure centers with trickles of warm dopamine. It's an almost pure grind and reward based system, and if you're the kind of gamer that's susceptible to this kind of thing, it's like a digital drug.

So just when you might have finally weened yourself from Blizzards other gaming addiction of choice, World of Warcraft, Diablo 3 is arriving. Time to take that week off from work, (just sight personal reasons and hopefully the boss will ask no more questions), stock up the pantry with some high protein, easy to prepare food rations, and fill the fridge with your favorite caffeine laced, high sugar carbonated drink, and get ready to descend into a state of gaming bliss.

If you can't wait a month, and God knows, I'm finding it tough, here is a list of games that know how to dangle that 'virtual candy' in front of you, and illicit the same kind of reward based, psychotropic response that Diablo does so well...



Titan Quest, 2006 - Diablo's sexy cousin. Rinse and repeat Diablo gameplay, with a mythical, classical antiquity vibe. You'll come for the delicious graphics (even by today's standards), and stay for the three skillpoints you get every level, and random rewards like 'Cleopatra's swift gladius of flame'.



Call of Duty, 2007 forward - Play any Call of Duty multiplayer post CoD 4: Modern Warfare, and you will find it hard to stop. Long after you should have become sick of the levels, and the refined shooter gameplay, the perk and gun unlock system will keep you playing, because you just really need the new scope and paint-job for the G36C!


Burnout Paradise, 2008 - I'm not a huge racing game fan, I dabble, but I've never reached the fanatical level that games like Forza or Gran Turismo seem to demand from their fans (both of which could easily be put on this list), but I do have a special place in my heart for this racing gem. It gives you a beautiful, colorful open world city to explore, great arcade racing mechanics, nice sountrack and cool, slick presentation, and then dangles these awesome car rewards in front of you. You know you don't need to unlock every car... but you need to unlock every car!



Dawn of War II, 2009 - It's hard not to love the Warhammer 40k universe. I've never played the tabletop game, just admired it from afar, and Dawn of War II stands as it's best representation in video-game form, or so I'm told from Warhammer players. I loved it. A great strategy/RPG hybrid, and upon completing every mission you get to level up your badass space marines, and you get wargear, oh the wargear! Chainswords, huge power hammers, massive plasma guns; nothing feels better than the first time you can don your squad commander in some mean looking terminator armor.


World of Warcraft, 2004 - I don't need to say much about this one. Even if you've never played it, reputation alone points to it's addictive qualities. This is the game that has had me doing some of the most ridiculous, tedious things in game, just to get some kind of carefully calculated, dopamine inducing reward. I've spent countless hours completing in-game achievements, just so I can add the title 'the explorer', or 'the Argent Champion' to my character. When you are in the throws of a serious WoW binge, you just know your life will be content and complete if you can just unlock that black proto-drake, but it's never enough. There is always something else around the corner that you know your little character is just going to 'need'. WoW turns you into a grown man that patiently sits around trying to 'dress up' your character to be the meanest and look the coolest, like a six year old girl dressing up her Barbie dolls. It's sad, it's silly, but I love it.

Interview with Corey Cole

A man that for any serious classic adventure gaming aficionado needs no introduction, Corey Cole, co-creator of the Quest for Glory series, agreed to do an interview with me recently. Corey was a chief programmer throughout the series and co-designed the games with his wife, Lori.

How did you get started at Sierra and how was is working there?

A friend we knew through science fiction conventions did contract animation work for Sierra. She had been in a meeting in which Ken Williams said he wanted an “expert tournament-level dungeonmaster” to create a new RPG for Sierra. Carolly thought of us and arranged a phone interview with Ken. When he asked, “Why should I hire you instead of some other designer?” I mentioned that I was an experienced programmer currently working on an Atari ST project. He immediately invited me to interview... not as a game designer, but as a programmer. After I had been at Sierra about six months, they talked to Lori about designing the game.

Your game was unlike any previous Sierra adventure in that it was an adventure/rpg hybrid. Was there any trouble getting Sierra to green light that project?

Our champion was Guruka Singh Khalsa, Sierra’s first producer. He was hired based on things he had written as a fan. During a green light meeting including us and Guruka, Ken said, “I really don’t understand this game.” Guruka said something like, “It’s going to be a major hit,” and Ken left the meeting saying, “I like this game. It’s going to be a major hit.” It’s possible that Sierra might have cancelled the first game without that support; we’ll never know.

What would you say were your main influences for Quest for Glory?

The combat and skill development system was based on a paper RPG Lori and I ran (“Fantasy Guild”, unpublished). It took a lot of ideas from “Arizona D&D”, a D&D variant Lori had played in Phoenix. Computer game influences included Wizardry and maybe Rogue and Dungeonmaster (to a very small degree). My mantra was to simulate the experience of playing in a paper D&D game with an excellent dungeon master. I also talked about combining the best parts of computer RPG’s and adventure games. Since Sierra’s tools were optimized for adventure games, that made sense.

Do you play current any current rpg's? Have computer rpg's gone in a direction you expected?

I play World of Warcraft to the level of addiction. I haven’t played any recent computer RPG’s. We still get together with friends a few times a year to play AD&D 2^nd edition, but I’m finding it less involving than I used to... I’ve replaced it with WoW. When people ask if we’ve thought about doing a Quest for Glory MMO, the answer is of course, “Yes,” but at this point we really feel that WoW is the MMO we would have hoped to make – It really exceeds expectations.

What do you think it would take to spark an adventure game renaissance?

Hard to say. Players are different today and much less patient. In the early CRPG days, players had to make their own maps on graph paper. Nobody would stand that today, but other aspects of adventures are almost as painful. The worst, in my mind, are puzzles that can only be solved by reading a walkthrough on the Internet. People used to buy hint books for this, but to me it’s just bad game design. So a start would be well designed, less frustrating games.

I understand that Telltale Games is doing very well with their games, so maybe there already is a renaissance. On the other hand, I can’t even solve their games without occasional Web searches. WoW has some similar issues with tough dungeon and raid encounters, but they’ve steadily made most of the quests easier and more accessible to average (and below average) players. Some people complain about this dumbing down the game, but I find it refreshing. I *like* being able to zip through a quest line and not have to spend hours searching for the right object or character to complete it. I hate “hunt the pixel” game mechanics and “try to read the designer’s mind” puzzles. We tried to fill Quest for Glory with reasonable, solvable puzzles... although I understand many players found the puzzles very difficult, so perhaps we made mistakes there too.

Would a re-imagining or sequel to the series interest you today? What would stay the same and what would you 'modernize'?

I don’t think it could get funded. What would be the business model that would attract a publisher or enough funding to make a high quality game? Certainly the graphics should be updated to modern standard... and that probably means 3D. I think we could make the combat more interesting, but at the same time I would probably reduce the amount of it. It would probably be a Web based game. I’d like to do an MMO, but that’s completely daunting, and I think that WoW and similar games have already addressed that space very well.

I’d actually see more point to doing a new Castle of Dr. Brain, probably for handhelds or Web based. I tried to push a project like that to Sierra, but management didn’t think a “brain game” would do well on consoles. That’s been disproved; the question is whether there is still room for such a game. I think there is. Of course, a Quest for Glory remake targeted at modern consoles could be a great idea also. I think there is a vast untapped market out there of people who want more intelligent games and less death and destruction. The question is whether there is a good way to find that audience and get them to try the game so they might buy it.

Fighter, magic user or thief?

I’m a Magic User by nature, but I also think the Thief game play is really fun and interesting. We didn’t do as much with Warriors as we might have – They were basically designed for people who wanted more straightforward game play. I like the way WoW has essentially given “spells” to Warriors, so they have as many options as other classes. In WoW, I play everything; my two main characters currently are a Night Elf Druid – I mostly play as a bear “tank” and occasionally as a healer – and an Undead Magic User. At level 80, I had a vast stable of characters of every role and most classes. No Warlock or Hunter, mostly because they seemed a little redundant with my Mage.

Which game of the series are you most happy with?

QG2, followed closely by QG4. Despite the occasional game crashing bugs (mostly caused by a memory leak we never fixed), my favorite is Quest for Glory 2: Trial By Fire. I think the setting was unique, the puzzles were good, and the storyline really carries through. The city mazes accomplished what we wanted – making the cities feel large and complex – but were too frustrating for players. The combat system works fairly well, with a good mix of simplicity and tactics.

Quest for Glory 3: Wages of War (or “Seekers of the Lost City”, since we had a copyright problem with the original name) probably has the best story line and most original setting. It’s a little light on puzzles. QG4: Shadows of Darkness was very buggy out the door, but most of the major bugs were fixed for the CD version. The voice acting on it (with John Rhys-Davies as the narrator) is fantastic. We also pulled off the atmosphere very well in that one. Young Frankenstein was an inspiration for the mixture of Gothic horror and comedy.

QG1: So You Want to Be a Hero (originally “Hero’s Quest”) gets an honorable mention for originality, as it set up the series and was the first real RPG / Adventure Game hybrid. Finally, QG5: Dragon Fire is the most epic game in the series. The artwork is gorgeous and the scope of the game – area to explore, quests, and story – is huge, yet I think very consistent and enjoyable. That’s hard to pull off with “huge”. And of course there is Chance Thomas’s fabulous sound track. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel the voice acting was up to par; some of the performances are too cartoony and over the top.

Actually music deserves its own mention, as we got fantastic compositions for all of the games – Mark Seibert developed a memorable theme for the first game. Mark also directed the music for Castle of Dr. Brain, which I think is amazing. Chris Braymen, Aubrey Hodges, and Rudy Helm also contributed some wonderful music to the series. Lori still likes to listen to Aubrey’s tracks while doing artwork, and we all had Chris’s QG2 harem theme on continuous loop for quite a while, especially while finalizing the design on QG2.

What is your name? What is your favourite colour? What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? Were you or Lori the Monty Python fan?

I sometimes post as Erasmus, but there’s a lot of competition for that name. Zartan is another one I use sometimes; it’s just a gaming handle I used to use for early BBS roleplaying. Lori uses Fenrus (I think even in the games, we sometimes called him Fenrus and sometimes Fenris). Purple, of course. Or royal blue. Lori’s is teal/aquamarine. As for the swallow, I’d need a lot more data on species, size, and environmental conditions. Otherwise, the best I could give you would be a rough average (which I’d look up on the Web). Yes. I was the Firesign Theater fan.

Quest for Glory is an undeniable cult classic. Have you had any encounters with over enthusiastic (or scary) fans?

No. Sometimes they demand a bit much. We’re either slow with such responses, or never get to them. But in general, our fans are fantastic. They appreciate our work, and let us know about it (which feels really good), without demanding too much of our time. Of course, we voluntarily sink a huge number of hours every week into www.theschoolforheroes.com, which is sort of our interactive follow-up to the games, but has morphed into a more serious site on being a real-life hero and living a successful and productive life.

The biggest problems we had weren’t with fans, but with people who complained about things that weren’t really in the games. For example, a Wiccan complained about the stereotypical portrayal of witches in Baba Yaga. Of course, she isn’t a witch, but an Ogress, and she’s lifted straight from Russian fairy tales, on which we based her appearance, the chicken-footed hut, and the laser-eyed skulls (ok, that might have been a *slight* variation) on the fence. Another complaint came from a woman who felt we were anti-Jewish because the villain used a six-pointed star for his rituals. She didn’t bother to read up on the Seal of Solomon or the other research on which we based that.

The one that really floored us was the complaint about the black people in the opening scene of QG3 using poor English usage and strong accents. We based Uhura’s accent on a Jamaican co-worker from my first job in Vancouver. We wanted people to have strong personalities, so we did that with memorable accents. Stereotyping? Maybe, but that’s what you have to do in the limited conditions of a game or film. But what really got us was that we were the first people to come out with a game with strong black role models, and that really made use of an East African setting... but instead of being applauded, we were criticized for the way we did it. That woman should have been our champion, not our critic! Uhura, of course, was inspired by Star Trek, but particularly by a Star Trek filk song with the words, “My name in Swahili means ‘freedom’.”

Do you have any funny/interesting development stories?

Well, we had a lot of fun with some of the incidental jokes and cameos. Many of them were contributed by team members rather than scripted by Lori or me. “Silly Clowns Mode” in QG2 was there because Brian Hughes commented that a lot of business applications had non-functional menu items intended for later expansions. The original idea was to have a menu item that did absolutely nothing, but at some point we decided to use it by changing the silliness level of parts of the game. Brian also collaborated with Kenn Nishiuye to create the Saurus Repair shop at a dead end in the alleyways. We really wanted to keep it in the game, but had to cut it when we exceeded our disk space budget. That scene was revived by AGDI in their fan-developed QG2 VGA remake. I loved producing the voice recording for QG4. All of the actors were terrific to work with, especially John Rhys-Davies even after he discovered he had about five times as much material to record as he’d anticipated when he signed the contract. (He renegotiated and got some additional money, but it was still pretty small considering his stature, talent, and the amount of work he had to do.) One of the best moments was trying to decide on voices for Hans, Franz, and Ivan. Two of the actors wanted to “do Jack Nicholson”, and I decided that their versions were just far enough apart to use them both. They also adlibbed some very funny lines, as you can tell if you compare the screen text with the voices in their scenes. The best parts of development were when we really got everyone on the team pulling together to make something work great. Those became harder as the teams got larger, and spread out throughout the building, in the later games.

When you look back at your time building the Quest for Glory series do you think of that period fondly or is developing games more stressful than the uninitiated might realize?

Yes. It was an amazing opportunity for us, and it was a *lot* of work. We pulled many 60-hour and longer weeks during all of the games. QG5 was by far the worst in amount of unpaid overtime and sheer number of months spent in crunch mode, but I think we came out with a very good game that might have been weaker without the extra work. QG4 was frustrating, because the team was really burned out by the end of the project and it Sierra shipped it months too early. It needed much more QA, bug fix, and tuning time. Fortunately, Sierra management recognized the problem. While we were working on recording voices for the CD version, they assigned one of the programmers full-time to fixing bugs. That he spent almost a year at that, and the game still has a few serious flaws, is a testament to how much work remained undone before the first release.

Lori’s “favorite” anecdote about the stress of working on Quest for Glory was when Sierra installed a security system to get into each section of the building. One day she showed up at work and spent about five minutes trying to remember her access code to get in. Finally someone (breaking company rules) opened the door and let her in. This was during QG2 development, and we wrote some of the stress and paranoia of the time into the game script (including using anagrams of several of the managers as villains – Ad Avis, Khaveen, and al Skurva). It’s not that they were bad people, but the challenge of mixing a very creative process with trying to run a profitable business caused some very stressful moments.

Thanks for your time.

Funny robots

I've played alot of really great games since I first gripped an Atari 2600 joystick back when I was a nipper. I've had alot of amazing gaming experiences over the years. Finishing my first Sierra adventure game. Playing SNES fighting games long into the night with my mates. The Goldeneye years. The first time I polished off Ocarina of Time. The first time I sat down and played the original Half-Life. Taking down Diablo. Taking him down again. The infamous World of Warcraft addiction that twelve million other players around the world can relate to. There are some gaming moments that are so memorable that they cling so vividly in your mind.

It is, however, rare that I would call any game 'perfect'. Not matter how amazing a game is there are always flaws. No matter how slight, there are always those niggles that you wish you could change. I don't think I could name more than about three games that I would truly call 'ten out of ten' games. Valves latest release, Portal 2, is one game that I could, without a doubt in my mind, give a perfect ten. This game is pretty remarkable.

I played the original Portal, and of course loved it, but I was skeptical about the sequel. The word 'sequel' can leave a bad taste in your mouth with alot of games series. I guess I always just expect a sequel to not to live up to it's predecessor when the original game was so damn good. Portal 2 comes through in spades. I would seriously doubt that you could even find a bad review for this game online. Without going into specifics all you need to know about Portal 2 is that it's a first person puzzle game, it's has amazing physics and level/puzzle design and it's totally engrossing from start to finish. This is a game that you will find hard to stop playing until you see those end credits roll. And if the words 'puzzle game' turn you off, you need to think of Portal 2 in a different way. It's unlike anything else out there. The description of 'puzzle game' doesn't even really do the game justice. It needs it's own genre classification. Something like mind-f#cking, hilarious, sci-fi action adventure. In any case, if you're a gamer and you are reading this you need to go to the Steam store now and buy Portal 2, because it's made for you. No if's, what's or buts.

One thing that does need a special mention in Portal 2 is the writing and voice work. Stephen Merchant's performance as 'Wheatley', your soccer ball shaped, robotic guide has to be heard to be truly appreciated. He is bloody hilarious. It's such a genius piece of casting that I just had to throw something about it into this post. And, of course Glados' passive aggressive musings are even more entertaining than the first game. Portal 2. Go play the damn thing. You won't forget it.

Gamespotting

Professional game journalism is an industry that has grown, like the gaming industry itself, by leaps and bounds over the past few decades. These days gamers demand up to the minute reviews and information on the in's and out's of gaming. One of the largest and most respected gaming sites is Gamespot. The core of Gamespot is gaming news, in depth reviews, detailed previews and interesting articles and opinions. Gamespot is also a space that has attracted a large and vocal community, ever eager to disucuss, comment and speculate on their gaming obsessions. Tom Mc Shea is one Gamespoter that takes on the coveted role of a professional game reviewer. As cool as it sounds to critique games for a living, any good reviewer must try and stay unbiased despite their personal passion for games, write a review that encapsulates the essence of what a game is about at its core, and at the same time be an entertaining read. Tom was kind enough to take some time away from the controller/keyboard to answer some questions about modern game journalism.


Me: How did you get your start in games journalism?

Tom: Halfway through college, I realized that I wanted to write professionally in some capacity. I wasn't sure exactly what that entailed, but I took journalism and fiction writing courses to get my writing skills up to a respectable level. At the same time, I started a blog with a friend of mine, and after a few years of putting time and energy into updating that, I decided that game journalism would be the best way to earn a living. I bounced around a little after college, but landed the GameSpot gig after a couple years. Good luck and good timing.


What was your first review as a professional journalist?

Katamari Damacy. While I was writing for my blog, Brendan Sinclair was running the entertainment section of a small town newspaper in Oklahoma. His current video game reviewer was quite lame, so he hired my buddy and I to contribute a weekly column. It was a very different take on gaming from what you'd typically get from a mainstream publication. We covered the games we were interested in, so Katamari, Alien Hominid, Battalion Wars got the big stories while lame games like Call of Duty were left in the cold.


What is the biggest change in games journalism you've noticed since the start of your career?

It's self aware. It seems as though everyone is intimately aware of what the general public is saying about their site and every rival publication. It's strange having immediate feedback forced your way even if you don't care to know, and that instant reaction to every piece of content ultimately shapes what people produce. I'm not sure I agree with that, but it make sense that the audience is the guiding hand since they're the ones devouring all this information. It was nice living in a bubble and just witting whatever came to mind without any fear or knowledge of how it would be received.


If you met someone who had never played a video game in their life, that didn't even know what a game was, which game would you show them as a definitive example of modern gaming?

Modern gaming is Call of Duty. The trend in the last few yeas has been to simplify everything so you get a streamlined experience that is nearly identical to every player's. Events happen all around that seem exciting, but they mirror a movie more than a typical interactive experience. It's about the sizzle now, what can draw your eyes to the screen and capture your attention. It's about eliminating any ounce of frustration so players can turn off their brains and take in the show. And it's about constant rewards that don't mean anything, but serve as treats to keep people engaged for just one more hour.


Do you have any little rituals or self imposed rules for when you are playing a game for review?

I'm in constant media blackout. I avoid pre-release coverage as much as possible because I don't want it to tamper with my expectations. I don't want to know what promises Peter Molyneux made or the development problems of Duke Nukem Forever. I want to just rip off the shrink wrap of whatever game I'm reviewing at my desk, and start with as clean of a slate as possible. Obviously, I can't avoid all information, but the less I know going in, the better.


Which of your reviews has created the most controversial or divided response?

Transformers: War for Cybertron, by quite a wide margin. This was an interesting review for me because I have no connection to the source material. I had a Transformer growing up (Bumblebee?), but I rarely watched the shows and don't really care about the lore. So I judged the game entirely on what it was, rather than what well-known characters were slapped on top. It's arguable if I should have been the person to review it, since Transformer fans obviously want to know if it makes good use of the source material, but I think I did a good job. It's important to have someone just break down what the game is and is not doing right, and it's easier to do that if you aren't distracted by a beloved license.


What kind of game do you dread writing a review for?

Completely average games. This often happens in the third or fourth iteration of a long-running franchise, when new ideas have dissipated and you're left with the same ol' gameplay as before. There aren't any interesting angles or insights because everything has been said already, there aren't major flaws because everything has been polished through the years, and there aren't spectacular moments because the creativity has been sucked dry. So boring!


How is the relationship between reviewers and game developers these days? Can you get honest information easily or is it a battle with developer PR?

I live in a bubble. I never talk to developers and I'd like to keep it that way.


Is there a shady side to game journalism? Bribe offers? Back alley deals? General skulduggery?

Ha! I honestly don't know. I avoid talking to developers because I don't want there to be any chance I could be influenced. For instance, I know someone who worked on BioShock 2, so I made sure to stay far away from that review when it came into the office. As far as bribes go, I think that idea is vastly overstated. It's easy to assume journalists are underhanded sleazes when they deliver a score you disagree with, but it's ultimately just a difference of opinion. It's not worth the hit in credibility to receive bribes, so I really doubt anyone in the industry is so underhanded.

I have been called hopelessly naive, though, so who knows?

What do you love about games in 2011? What pisses you off?

I love the indie scene. Some of my favorite games come from small developers -- Meat Boy, SpaceChem, Comet Crash -- and I think it's incredible that such talented individuals are given a chance to let their abilities speak for themselves. Digital distribution has made it possible for anyone to make games (As long as they're good enough), and that means more choice for consumers.

I hate that development costs have spiraled out of control. Last generation, there were all sorts of crazy retail games for PlayStation 2, hidden treasures that made it worth owning that system in the first place. Games like R.A.D., Graffiti Kingdom, and War of the Monsters were some of my favorite games, but it's just so rare to get (relatively) big budget games that are so quirky anymore. Games cost so much that companies are scared to veer slightly away from the norm, so you end up with a lot of very similar games with no personality.

What's your most anticipated game for the near future?

Right now, Mortal Kombat by a wide margin. I loved the first three MKs, and this seems to be returning to the old-school roots, so I think it's going to be amazing. For the rest of the year, Shadow of the Damned, Earth Defense Force, Skyrim, and Dark Souls are my most wanted. I'm crossing my fingers they turn out to be special.


What do you have the most hope for in the long run; the large corporate companies or independent developers?

Independent developers. They continue to innovate while the big guys are reluctant to try something new. But then I see something like the EA-funded Shadow of the Damned, and I have hope that creativity will find a way.


What is the greatest game of all time?

Super Mario World! My favorite game is still Super Mario Kart, though, and my desert island game is Perfect Dark. That still has more content than just about any modern shooter!


You can find Tom's blog here, or many of his in depth written and video reviews at Gamespot.

Burn my bra (with dragon's fire)

Dragon Age II. The big sequel. I won't get into too much of a review. You know what's what. Awesome Bioware single player RPG, complex characters, cool story, nice combat, sweet eye candy. Pretty par for the course for 'ol Bioware.

I will just take a few sentences to say what I think is improved over the original. They have 'awesomed' up combat. I feel like I'm alot more mobile during battles, particularly boss battles, than I was before. You have to physically get out of the way of some enemies when it becomes clear they are going to unleash a huge blast of magic or trample over the top of you. It's cool. It feels almost like an MMO boss encounter. There are also ability synergies between your characters that you can set up to make your party more effective. Touches like this are cool. It just adds a little more depth to the combat. I've seen plenty of comments on various sites about how the combat in Dragon Age II had been 'babied up' for consoles. I find this perplexing. To me it feels challenging, looks outstanding and theres plenty of strategic depth there.

Aside from combat, the game is great, just like the first. I really like some of the characters, I'm luke warm to others and some just annoy me (I'm looking at you Carver). I love that your character actually has a voice now. You're not just clicking lines of text for your responses. There is a dialogue wheel that will be familiar to anyone that has played Bioware's other epic RPG series, Mass Effect.

As for my character type, I picked a staff wielding female mage. I don't usually like to gender-bend, but it feels right in Bioware games. The actresses that did the voice work for both female Shepard in Mass Effect and Hawke (mine is called Tessa) in Dragon Age II did a fantastic job. They really bring the dialogue to life. I almost always find myself picking the 'lighthearted/comedic' response icon with my Hawke. It just feel right with my sassy, fireball flinging, red-headed mage. Girl power. Medieval fantasy girl power. I'm not done yet but it can be assured I'll be playing this game to completion. Baldur's Gate (one of my top five games of all time) lives on in Dragon Age. It's a great time to be an RPG player.

Insult swordfighting with Ron Gilbert

If there is one man that's had the average adventure gamer wandering around, collecting weird items and solving obscure puzzles ever since he released his first game back in 1987, that man is Ron Gilbert. The 'Grumpy Gamer' himself is among the highly respected few that defined the graphic adventure game back in the golden era of adventures, the eighties. Ron is, of course, responsible for the most famous mighty pirate to ever grace an EGA monitor, Guybrush Threepwood of the Monkey Island series. Ron was a writer, programmer and director on The Secret of Monkey Island and Monkey Island 2: Le Chuck's Revenge. More recently Ron worked on the awesome Deathspank games, action RPG's flavoured with Ron's trademark sense of humor. Ron currently works over at Double Fine, Tim Schafer's development studio. It's still a mystery as to what these two adventure gaming legends are working on over there but my guess is that it's going to be awesome.

Ron was kind enough to answer a few questions for me recently via email.

Me: Where did the concept for your original adventure game, Maniac Mansion, come from? Were you always interested in adventure games or were action/arcade genres discussed by Garry Winnick, yourself and Lucasarts?

Ron: Funny. I just gave an hour long talk in Germany last month on this very subject. I'll be giving the same talk at GDC this year and the video will be free online. The short answer is that Gary and I had a funny idea for a game about a bunch of kids that go into a creepy mansion and that was it. It wasn't until several months into the project that we figured out that it was going to be an adventure game.

Most of your games, classic and current, have a strong component of humor. Where do you think this stems from?

The humor in my games come from games being kind of ridiculous in the first place, so it's better to just have fun and not take yourself to seriously.

Of your classics, which are you most fond of?

Maniac Mansion. You never forget your first love.

What do you think of Telltales continuation of the Monkey Island series?

I think they did a good job. I'm glad Dave Grossman was there to watch after the project and make sure it was good.

You're somewhat of a legend of early adventure gaming among the classic gaming community. How do you feel about that?

It's a little mind boggling, but it's fun to have so many people love something you made.

Where did the concept for Deathspank come from? Is he a character you think you'll revisit after the first two games?

DeathSpank started out as a comic on my website that Clayton and I made (http://grumpygamer.com/comics). He was this over the top video game character and he was so fun to write for that we decided that he needed his own game.

You described Deathspank as "Monkey Island meets Diablo". Are there any other genres you'd like to bring your trademark humor to?

FPS really need to be funnied up!

If you had a free afternoon for pure, uninterrupted gaming, what would you play?

I do, everything Sat and Sun, and I play WoW.

Unlimited budget. Expert development team. Total creative control. What dream game would you make?

Monkey Island 3a. The true 3rd game.

If you could change one thing about the game industry today what would it be?

That developers were correctly compensated for the work they do, rather than asshole CEOs.

You probably have no favourites, but if you Guybrush Threepwood and Deathspank were marooned at sea, who would get eaten first?

Guybrush. No question. DeathSpank wouldn't even ask.

Thanks so much for you time Ron.

My pleasure!

Gaming anthropology

As the business of video games and gaming technology continually expands, as if an explosion of big bang proportions happened back in the late eighties in the gaming industry, pushing out an ever expanding universe of games, things have just gotten bigger, bolder and more expensive. It's sometimes easy to forget the gaming industry is in it's relative infancy. The industry as we know it is realistically only about twenty-five years old if you're being generous. Gaming development budgets are into the hundreds of millions and big name franchise launches attract millions of first day sales. Gaming is no longer the domain of the socially awkward, bespectacled nerd. It's mainstream whether the hardcore elite of gaming like it or not. But what happens next?

Fast forwards two-thousand years...

If the human race can keep it together and we aren't headed for some war or pollution induced dark age, or religious or political zealotry doesn't result in games being 'outlawed' and unceremoniously thrown to the bonfire and purged from the internet, and provided the world economy can keep things together so gaming can remain viable, imagine surfing the information mega-freeways of 4010. Imagine scouring an ancient archive of two-thousand years and change of historical gaming. I can imagine social anthropologists of the future studying gaming of the 20th/21st century, trying to gleam some understanding and insight about the people who made and played these games. In two-thousand years what is Super Mario Brothers going to say about gamers of the late eighties and early nineties? Maybe they will see the platforming exploits of the titular plumber, who was so inexplicably popular in his heyday, as some kind of folk hero of the late 20th century. When these anthropologists study the ancient interweb of our time and they find the countless sites dedicated to Blizzard's World of Warcraft, the fan fanaticism and worship, will they interpret this devotion, and in some cases addiction, as an actual religion? I shudder to think what Splatterhouse, Manhunt and Postal 2 will say about us down the line. Not to mention our current obsession with 1st person shooters. Maybe they will see us as a society of violence obsessed caffeine addicts.

Whatever the people of the far future think about us and our games, I am happy at least that so many talented designers and artists are creating a legacy and writing the first chapter of gaming history. We are living in the ancient Greece of video games. Gabe Newel is like our Hercules. Jeff Kaplan our Leonidas. This is the time when myths are made.

Valhallan Studios new title

I squinted at the little flat panel navman screen. It was hard to look at with all the glare from the Western New South Wales summer sunshine assaulting my white station-wagon, seemingly from every direction. According to the tiny screen I wasn't on any road. Brown nothingness surrounded the green arrow that represented my car. I hadn't heard the navman's eloquent, female voice for over half an hour, with it's calm, condescending perfect diction. She had shut right up since I went off the highway, down this ruler straight dirt road. I knew I was somewhere east of Wagga. The property I was looking for must have been somewhere in this general area, but wherever it was, it was off the grid. I was on my own. I pushed the accelerator and kept going, trailing dust and flicking gravel.

Immeasurable time passed. Out there it felt like half an hour, but it was probably only ten minutes. I was just about to turn back, to look for an off road that I must have missed, while glaring angrily at the GPS, when all of a sudden I saw a structure cresting the horizon of the impossibly flat landscape. The structure was a wall. Tall and concrete. Rimmed with wire of the barbed variety. I followed the gravel road right to the mouth of the only visible gate in the wall. The lens of a small security camera up on the wall above the gate spun as it focused on me. The iron gate swung open. A stocky gentleman, with a bald mango shaped head stepped out and marched up to my drivers side window. I wound down my window, perspiration dripping from my face, despite the air con howling flat out.

"Is this Valhallan Studio--" I tried to ask, but was cut off mid sentence.

"Go through the gate. Park near the white building on your left," the man said, deadpan, the glare off his bare head forcing my face into a squint.

I obeyed unquestioningly. I was clearly at the right place, and something about this guys emotionless, pig eyed stare told me not to argue. I had been told that Valhallan Studios, a small independent Australian game developer, had set up shop on a large acreage, not far from Wagga. But in actuality, this place was more like a 'compound'. The large concrete wall went right around the handful of buildings, creating less of a farm feeling, and more that of a youth detention centre. I was there to see their new title, still under development.

I parked where I had been instructed. As I opened the door and stepped out of the car two more bald headed, pig faced men came marching out of the front door of the white building purposefully towards me. They stopped with their glaring faces uncomfortably close to mine, hands at their side, fists clenched.

"Are you the blogger?" the first man said, spitting the word 'blogger' with contempt.

"Yeah, hi..." I managed.

"Chad is inside," he said matter-of-factly.

"Thanks," I muttered as the two men stepped apart to let me past. I strolled up towards the front door of Valhallan Studios, peering around the yard as I went. All I saw were the two men, eyeing me like angry pitbulls.

"G'day," came the greeting, somewhat over-enthusiastically, as I stepped inside. It took a second or two for my eyes to adjust. I managed to focus on the looming figure in front of me. If a man could be a wall, this man would be a granite wall, with stainless steel reinforced girders.

"Hullo," I said stupidly to this monster of a man.

He thrust his club like hand around mine, in what to him, was apparently a handshake. "I'm Chad VanLuen, head of P.R. here at Valhallan."

It was true. Chad had the telltale great white shark like smile of a public relations guy or a community manager. "So this is where it all happens, eh?" I quipped, waving a hand at the dimly lit room.

"Yeah, mate. Come through to the old 'war room'," Chad said, with a zealot grin.

I followed the walking bulldozer down a corridor and past an open door. I caught glimpses of more angry, bald men programming furiously at desktop computers, a patriarchal project lead standing over them, cracking the whip. Chad led me into a meeting room, empty except for a large desk and a half dozen chairs. On the desk was a flatscreen television and an X-box 360. One of the old white ones. The walls were adorned with promotional posters of Valhallans past library of games. 'The Decapitator', 'RPK (or Rape, Pillage, Kill)' and 'Axt Töten Fetisch' were among them.

"So, your new game..." I started once we were both comfortably sat down, my mini digital recorder on the table, taping.

"Jackboot Jack 3," Chad said proudly.

"Oh, a sequel?"

"Yeah. It's a sequel. We didn't develop those games, though. We just managed to secure the rights to the series recently, which is a big boon for us. Jackboot one and two were pretty big overseas. Especially Europe."

"I've not heard of, um, Jackboot Jack is it? Did it ever get an Australian release?"

"Well almost," Chad grimaced. "It was just about to come out here when the government had it declared a hate crime."

I paused a moment. "Sorry...did you say the game was declared a hate crime?"

"Yeah..." Chad said, nonchalantly. "You know what the government is like. Always sticking it's big nose where it's not wanted. Always trying to suppress honest, white Australians free speech."

"Um, yeah," I said as sympathetically as I could. "So tell me about Jackboot 3."

"Well, the series is traditionally a side scrolling shooter, but we're taking it in a different direction."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. Two words," Chad said with suppressed enthusiasm. "Open world."

"Oh. Cool." I said with suppressed under-enthusiasm.

"The cool, new thing about the current gaming generation is player freedom. Thats what we want in Jackboot 3," Chad said from the edge of his seat. "Jack's only real abilities in the original games were his punch, kick, jackboot stomp and pigsticker."

"I'm sorry, pigsticker?" I interjected.

"Yeah, mate. Pigsticker. It's a really cool lookin' fifteen inch blade," Chad said as he thrust a piece of paper in my face. It was a some concept art for the Valhallan redesign of the 'pigsticker'. A long, leather handled knife with a serrated edge and bloodstains on the business end.

"Cool." What else could I say?

"Yeah. Well Jack had all those things before but we want total player freedom this time around. That means more abilities. More weapons. We wanna give the player free reign over the game world." Chad was almost salivating as he talked up his game.

"Do you have any examples of new stuff?" I asked reluctantly.

"Well the cool new ability that we are all excited about is the curb stomp."

"Ah, cool."

"Yep. Just run up behind an enemy, stun 'em with a punch to the back of the head, and then you can drag 'em over to the edge of a road, then then a context sensitive action button will flash, and hey presto; you can perform a curb stomp!"

"Wow. What else?" I asked, knowing I was going to regret it.

"Well gunplay is going to play a much larger role in Jackboot Jack 3. We got all kinds of cool guns, modeled on real world versions of themselves. All the NPC's that populate the game world will have detailed location damage, and they are all deformable."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah. Why don't I show you. I have a small demo level set up here," Chad said, picking up a wireless controller and unpausing the Jackboot Jack 3 demo he had ready for me. "This is the mosque level. It's pretty early in the game."

I looked at the screen gingerly. There was Jackboot Jack. Fully rendered, light effects reflecting off his polished, knee high, spiked jackboots. The bald, leather jacket wearing avatar held a metal pipe in one hand. Chad started working the controller. He moved Jack into what looked like a nicely rendered Muslim mosque.

"Check this out," Chad grinned.

He moved his character down to the other end of the mosque, Jack running with a determined, athletic animation. Chad found a skinny, crooked backed, Muslim priest, kneeling and praying. With a pull of the right trigger button Chad directed Jack to club the priest with his metal pipe. Chad then switched weapons to a pistol. It was a Luger. Chad then proceeded to 'show off' the character deformation by emptying a clip into the priests face. Soon there was nothing but a bloody, pulpy stump where the man's head should be. Chad, the mountain of a man, giggled hysterically. I felt nauseated.

Chad proceeded to show me just how much 'freedom' was in the game. Edvard Griegs 'In the Hall of the Mountain King' played in my head as Chad feverishly outlined all the different ways you could club, shoot, stab, stomp, mash and bash Muslims, Jews and hippies in the game.

"So Chad," I finally asked, "besides all the killing are there any non-violent ways to get through the missions in Jackboot Jack 3? I mean does the player have the freedom to play in a more subdued way?"

Chad stared at me blankly, the veins in his tree trunk neck pulsating. "Missions? There are no missions. This game isn't about any of that sort of thing. This is a world simulator. It's meant to give the player a 'sandbox' world to play in, with total freedom to do whatever you want."

"So, I mean, can you finish the game without brutalizing people?"

Agitation crawled across Chad's face. "I told you, mate. You got the freedom to do whatever you bloody want. But there is no 'finish' to the game. It's just an open world sim. With total freedom. You can fight melee, shoot, do vehicular killings. Total freedom. Get it, mate?" Chad spat, red faced.

"Oh yeah, I think I get it now." I said, glancing at the door.

I listened to Chad's diatribe about Jackboot Jack 3 a little while longer, then thanked him graciously for his time. Once back in my car I left the Valhallan Studios property as quickly as humanly possible, while trying to look as calm and at ease as humanly possible.

Chad VanLuen told me the Jackboot Jack 3 is set for a 2012 release, and is totally open world where the player is free to freely do whatever they want.

Multiple nerdgasm's

If there's one thing the contemporary video game industry loves, it's sequels. Franchises are a big deal these days. Publishers love 'em. That's why we look set to see a new Call of Duty game every year why Bobby Kotik still has blood pumping through his veins. That's why the most hotly anticipated PC game is Diablo III. This is why Mario is a cultural icon of our generation. We all watched the sweet, fat, stupid little Italian grow from a hand full of barely animated pixels to a fully realized polygonal character.

But there are some franchises out there that are ripe for a sequel. When you can't take another CoD campaign, what games would you like to see receive the next gen sequel treatment. There are some games that are aching for a follow up. Here are the top five that would give me multiple nerdgasms.


5. X-Wing Vs. Tie Fighter - The original X-wing vs Tie was an amazing game. It was basically a fighter sim Star Wars style. It controlled amazingly and the shield/weapons/engine power triage was really fun to manage. Throw a next gen sequel on 360, live multiplayer with a top gun leader board, maybe the ability to form persistent squadrons with your friends; how could it be anything but awesome.


4. Full Throttle - Take the classic Lucasarts dystopian future biker adventure game, pretty up the graphics (retaining the awesome cartoonish artstyle), make it an action/adventure hybrid, maybe even make it open world if you want to get really crazy. Explore the highways and byways of the Full Throttle world, upgrading your bike, fighting biker scum on the backroads, but keep a strong story component. Now that's a sequel.


3. California Games - With the current popularity of sports compilation games, on all manner of motion controlly, remote jibby jabby systems, this one is a no brainer. A cool gen-x styling, with the more extreme, totally rad sports on offer. Kinect hang gliding. Wiimote hackey-sack. Tell me this wouldn't work.


2. Thief - I loved the original Thief games. The dripping atmosphere, the dark, mysterious setting, the excellent stealth gameplay, taking out guards with the good 'ol blackjack. These games need a sequel. Make Garret a little more mobile, ala Assasins Creed, give it a dark, gripping story, and make the stealth interplay with the surrounding world and it's inhabitants complex and challenging, maybe through in a Splinter Cell Conviction style co-op campaign. What is the sum of these parts? Total gaming gold.

1. Syndicate Wars - Syndicate Wars is a special game. Take a dark, futuristic cityscape, some cybernetic hatchet-men, a truckload of ultra cool weapons (pursaudertron anyone) and throw them into a complex, squad based strategy game and you have Syndicate Wars. This game had destructible buildings ( I mean every building on the map), a totally cool Blade Runner esqe setting and some really fun missions. I think a new Syndicate game would be kind of cool in the form of a Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter style tactical squad based shooter. I think I'm about to nerdgasm.

A gaming legend...

I recently did an interview with Quest for Glory creator Corey Cole. The man is a classic PC gaming legend. I geeked out when he replied to my e-mail. I was raised on Lori and Corey Cole games. You can find the interview here.

Solid gold suprise

Here's a surprise (as far as I'm concerned); Goldeneye 007 Wii is freaking awesome. When I first heard about this one I was, like many others, ready to dismiss it. The game takes the undisputed N64 classic, Goldeneye, and 'reinterprets' it with Danial Craig's version of Bond as the lead. This sounded absolutely stupid to me. Taking a game based on a movie starring Pierce Brosnan, 'modernizing' it and changing the player character to Craig? On paper it sounds like a wierd idea to say the least. But somehow Eurocom has pulled it off. It controls great (even with wiimote and nunchuck) and the 'reinterpretation' is done very well. The basic story structure is the same but the levels are a little longer and more complex and the story is tweaked to give it a tone more akin the the recent Daniel Craig Bond films. This is the best shooter on the Wii. I'm about two thirds of the way through the story and when I finish that off I think I might even give online multiplayer a go. Finally a serious Wii game that is seriously good.

A Quest for Glory

I enjoyed writing about Hero's Quest in my last post so much that I decided to Dosbox my old Quest for Glory games. Then I enjoyed playing them so much I decided to start a blog about it. I plan on playing through the whole series with the same character and writing down some thoughts about the whole experience along the way. It will hopefully be interesting if you're into retro adventure games like me. Once I work my way through QFG I might try some other classics and put my thoughts down about them. Whatever happens I can't wait to get stuck into these awesome old games.

Game (and name) changin'

Since the day dad first brought home our first personal computer - a two colour lump of metal, plastic and cutting edge silicone, with a CGA monitor and no hard drive (it need a boot up floppy), I have had a love for PC games. In particular PC adventure games. They are an artform almost lost to time, except for the few adventure games that have managed to endure today such as Telltales Sam 'n Max and Monkey Island series. The classic adventure game, which had their golden age in the late eighties and early nineties, were a magical mix with less emphasis on action and more on puzzle solving and story and characters. Many video game enthusiasts who grew up in that era of gaming have fond memories for the early Sega and Nintendo consoles and characters like Mario, Sonic and Chun Li, but what turns my nostalgia dial up to eleven are classic Sierra and Lucasarts adventure games and characters like King Graham, Roger Wilco and Guybrush Threpwood. The adventure game was more cinematic (for it's time) and told stories and developed characters. My childhood imagination may have been inferring more onto these old games than I now know, but back then these games were magical to me and I spent countless hours solving their puzzles and quests. I think this trend towards games that have strong storytelling has carried right into my modern gaming habits. Although I enjoy the odd Modern Warfare 2 match my favourite games of the current generation are all story strong such as Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age and Bioshock.


If I had to pick a single classic adventure game that solidified my life long love of video games I would have to choose the original Hero's Quest: So You Want to be a Hero. This game blended adventure gaming with roleplaying in a way that captured my imagination back in 1989 when it was first released. First you picked a character class from fighter, thief and magic user (thief was my favourite), and assign some stats to some D&D like attributes and skills such as strength, stamina, magic use, stealth etc. and then you were thrust into a fantasy adventure game world set in a forested valley filled with monsters, magic and interesting puzzles. 'Ahead of it's time' is definitely one way I would describe Hero's Quest. I'm not aware of an earlier game that blended RPG and adventure so well. This game had multiple ways to solve it's puzzles based on your characters abilities, had multiple endings and even a night and day cycle. Designed by adventure gaming legend Lori Anne Cole and developed and published by Sierra using their SCI scripting engine, Hero's quest is a classic genre hybrid. However after the games initial release Milton Bradley, the board gaming company, began legal action against Sierra on the grounds of naming infringement of their board game, also called Hero's Quest. Subsequently Sierra re-released their game under the new name of Quest for Glory. I owned the original 5 1/4 inch floppy boxed version of the game called the original Hero's Quest. The game world was light hearted and had a great sense of humor throughout with Monty Python references (to gain entry to the wizards house his gargoyle would make you answer three questions such as "What is your name? What is your quest? What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?") and some slapstick moments. Although the 16 colour EGA graphics are basic by modern standards they were injected with nice details and some charming art design. The plot boiled down to your character entering the game on his own personal quest for adventure and glory and with the ultimate goal of becoming a hero. Soon you were fighting goblins and brigands, rescuing the local land baron's children and defeating the evil witch, Baba Yaga. If you were so inclined you could enter the game's town at night and rob the residents blind in some hilarious (well, hilarious when you're 9) burglary scenes. I'm sure you could solve this game in two or three hours nowdays if you knew what you were doing but as a kid I played this thing to death. I knew this game inside out and finished it with all three classes. The game was filled with great characters like the shady misanthrope's down at the local thieves guild, an eccentric old wizard with a pet talking rat, a weird little guy that lived up near the waterfall and Yorik, a crazy court jester. The game had several sequels and one of the great features was that you could carry your character from the end of each game into the start of the next one, character stats and all. I managed to get my hero, Gunther, all the way to Quest for Glory IV. Each iteration of the series saw your hero travel to a new game world. Part 2 was an Arabian nights style desert setting, part 3 was a fantasy African savanna and jungle and 4 was a dark Eastern Europe themed world with werewolves and gypsy's. This game was such an influence on my gaming evolution. This type of adventure/RPG hybrid led me on to play games like Baldur's Gate, Knights of the Old Republic and even World of Warcraft to some degree. The elements of character building, exploration and adventure were formulated with golden age games like Hero's quest and it's a shame to me that although characters like Mario and Link have their place in modern gaming Hero's Quest and games like it from that primal era are almost forgotten by all but the faithful few classic adventure gamers. I wish I could be carrying my original hero back from '89 into a new Quest for Glory adventure on current generation systems but I think the old Sierra adventure franchises are lost to time. They are not hard to find online, however, and there is talk of iphone ports for some of these old games so maybe they will never be entirely forgotten. If you are so inclined you should grab an old adventure game of yesteryear from the interweb and get stuck into some classic gaming goodness.