Police Quest: Open Season - Final Rating

 by Alex

Is this really “THE MOST INTENSE MULTIMEDIA CD EVER!”? Remember when “multimedia” was an adjective that seemingly everything had slapped onto it? My friend Merriam-Webster.com (NO AI FOR ME!) defines “multimedia” as “using, involving, or encompassing several media” in its adjectival form. As a noun, M-W states that “multimedia” is “a technique (such as the combining of sound, video, and text) for expressing ideas (as in communication, entertainment, or art) in which several media are employed,” and also “something (such as software) using or facilitating such a technique.”

So, by this definition, isn’t a movie multimedia? Isn’t a Broadway musical? Weren’t radio plays? Weren’t plays by Euripides and Aristophanes? You’re telling me Oedipus Rex wasn’t a more INTENSE MULTIMEDIA experience than Police Quest: Open Season?

Ah, but by the box’s own definition, I am comparing apples to oranges, or what Aristotle might call in Posterior Analytics (which is NOT the analysis of the human butt; get your minds out of the gutter) a false syllogism. If all A is C, and there is no B in A, and we suppose that A is “a Greek tragedy” and C is “an intense multimedia experience” while B is “a compact disc,” we can see that calling, I don’t know, Lysistrata or The Frogs a more intense multimedia experience than Police Quest: Open Season is logically unsound. But the real Greek tragedy is me, a Greek, bastardizing the great Philosopher’s Posterior Analytics to make a butt joke about a thirty-year-old adventure game.

«Ντρέπομαι που είμαι πρόγονός σου, βρε μαλάκα.»

I mean, there are better ways to make butt jokes about or in adventure games:

So if the horse fart is A, the horse’s ass is C, I guess the bag is B, so we can say “All A is C . . .” Talk about Posterior ANALytics . . .

The amount of mileage I’ve gotten out of that screenshot is truly stunning.

Police Quest: Open Season - Won!

By Alex

This is it, my friends, the last Police Quest: Open Season gameplay post. I am going to write a separate Final Rating because this one is long.

We left off the last post with Carey learning about a body found in Griffith Park, giving a bone he found at the crime scene to the coroner Sam Nobles after scaring off a dog using the mirror that a male prostitute broke off of Carey’s car . . .

Police Quest: Open Season - What’s a Guy Like Me Doing In a Place Like This?

By Alex

It’s been a while since our last post. I can only blame real life for getting in the way. I haven’t played since the session that this post covers, but this is a long one with a lot of good stuff I’m sure you’ll enjoy, so thank you for your patience.

Before we begin, playing a game set in L.A., it’s hard not to think about the fires engulfing that city and metropolitan area as we speak. Heck, being an American, it’s hard not to think about this. Or being a human. I’m sure all of your prayers are with those affected as are mine. If you’d like to donate, here are a few links to pages with additional links to a whole bunch of charities right there on the ground here (more local) and here (some more big-ticket charities but also a bunch of local ones.

It’s going to feel weird trying to crack wise in light of this, but I shall do my best.

Police Quest: Open Season - Looks Like We’ve Got a Cop Killer On Our Hands

By Alex

Oh, baby, this game is throwing the kitchen sink at us. We’ve got rappers! Nazis! Murderous backstabbing women! Shoes! A shoot-out! Pixel hunts! Another dead cop! Things are total chaos in L.A.! What’s a cop to do?

I’ll tell you: stay alive and solve puzzles!

Police Quest: Open Season: Welcome to the Jungle

By Alex

Exciting police action! I spent three hours playing, and did a lot of questioning witnesses and gathering evidence and taking notes. I mean, legitimate, real-world by hand notes. I really feel like a cop! I even got to shove a reporter!

No, not in real life, sadly. That was in the game.

Game 149: Police Quest: Open Season (1993/1996) - Introduction

by Alex

Here I go again on my own . . .

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! – Final Rating

By Alex

There is a business axiom I heard somewhere (please don’t ask me for a cite; I’m lazy) that goes something like this: when deciding what product you to give people, you can either give them a gourmet meal (i.e., something they have never seen before and, perhaps, didn’t even know they wanted), or you can give them the best damn hamburger they’ve ever had (i.e., something familiar, but done really, really well (no, that’s not a reference to how long it is cooked for)). Here in Burgerland, aka America, we use hamburger metaphors because that’s our language, bro.

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! is a hamburger. It’s not the best damn hamburger on God’s green earth, but it’s certainly a cut above many offerings out there. It’s also an exceedingly stupid game, but that goes with the territory. Nobody plays a Leisure Suit Larry game for erudite conversation, thought-provoking dialogue, or weighty, meaningful themes.

For that, you play Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist.

What Leisure Suit Larry 6 is, is very well-designed. It’s a mite easy for veteran adventure gamers, but the puzzles are mostly logical and make sense. The areas I got frustrated with—the exercise machine belt used to fix the Cellulite Drainage machine and the stupid bottle of water puzzle—are not my fault because I’m borderline psychopathic and cannot accept personal responsibility for anything they are not particularly great puzzles for reasons we’ll get into later.

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out!: Ultimate Wisdom

by Alex

The Preamble

And so, all good things come to an end. All stupid things, too. Things like Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! I was stuck after my last post, unable to figure out how to fix the hose on the cellulite drainage machine, so I put out a call to the community and commentor arcanetrivia, nee Lisa H., helped me out with a great clue:

“You have missed a takeable item that might have looked like just an amusing detail the first time you saw it.”

She also clued me in that the game’s various women are all named for wines: Burgundy and Charlotte Donnay (Char Donnay 🡪 chardonnay, get it?) were the only ones I got, but others should’ve been obvious: Shamara Payne/Sham Payne 🡪 champagne, Gammie Boysulay 🡪 gamay Beaujolais, Merrily Lowe/Merr Lowe 🡪 merlot, Rose 🡪 rosé, Shablee 🡪 Chablis, and Thunderbird 🡪 a cheap kind of wine. Only Cavaricchi Vuarnet doesn’t follow this theme, being named for a totally rad line of sunglasses that were really big in the 1980s. I remember all of the older, and therefore totally hot, teenage girls back in the day wearing t-shirts and whatnot with the Vuarnet logo plastered all over them. Whether their sunglasses were actually Vuarnet was beyond me, since I was like seven at the time.

It literally doesn’t get any cooler.

But enough about fashion, let’s get back to arcanetrivia. Such wisdom, such insight, such foresight, such . . . such . . . wis-sight? Anyway, much like Shamara Payne in the game itself, arcanetrivia is also on a quest for inner wisdom, the path of ascension, the ability to transcend this material world and do more than just sit and stare at the ocean all day. Or maybe I am Shamara and she is Larry, providing me with wisdom. As another brilliant sage/juvenile pervert once said, through the voice of Mary in his 1979 rock opera Joe’s Garage:

[I]information is not knowledge
knowledge is not wisdom
wisdom is not truth
truth is not beauty
beauty is not love
love is not music
music is the best!
Wisdom is the domain of the Wizz (which is extinct).
Beauty is a French phonetic corruption of a short cloth neck ornament currently in resurgence.

What this means is: beats the hell out of me. I will just use any excuse to toss a Frank Zappa reference into one of my posts. This preamble has gone on long enough. On with the game!

Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Cracking the Code

by Alex

I’ve done it. After this play session, which had me thinking about ways to inadvertently upset The Adventurers Guild’s moderators and readership how to solve an adventure game’s puzzles long after my sessions ended, I finally understood what Leisure Suit Larry 6 is all about—this:

Leisure Suit Larry 6 - Risqué Business, or (Forced) Sex on the Beach

by Alex

As you can likely tell from the opening image, this post is going to get decidedly non-family friendly. You’ve been warned.

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Marking My Territory

by Alex

I just can’t get away from Jim Walls, no matter how I try.

For some reason, while playing through Leisure Suit Larry 6, I decided to read up on Trickster’s old entries on Sierra’s Jim Walls-designed 1989 classic, Codename: ICEMAN.

Ha ha, “classic.” Calling a frustrating, hateful mess of a game “classic” is just my special brand of sarcastic humor designed to make you laugh by calling something the clear opposite of what it is. Classic me!

Ha ha! Dropping in a new game mechanic that punishes the player for using the game’s save and restore function without any sort of warning, thereby preventing them from getting a key item that will help later on. Classic Jim Walls!

Leisure Suit Larry 6: Shape Up or Slip Out! (1993): Introduction

by Alex

Al Lowe.

Jim Walls.

Jim Walls.

Al Lowe.

Al Lowe

Jim Walls

Al Walls.

Jim . . . Lowe?

These two men and their games loom large in my time here as a blogger for The Adventurers Guild. Of the 11 titles I’ve reviewed since 2015— Leisure Suit Larry 1: Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards (VGA Remake), Leisure Suit Larry 5: Passionate Patty Does A Little Undercover Work, Police Quest III: The Kindred, Conquests of the Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood, Robin of Sherwood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon, Police Quest: In Pursuit of the Death Angel (VGA Remake), Lure of the Temptress, L.A. Law: The Computer Game, Quest for Glory III: Wages of War, Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, and Blue Force—a whopping six, or 55 percent, have been designed by either Al Lowe (Larry 1, Larry 5, Freddy Pharkas) or Jim Walls (Police Quest 1, Police Quest 3, Blue Force). If my math is correct (dubious), that’s over half. Of the remaining five, two have been about Robin Hood, one has been a Quest for Glory game, and two have been garbage. Ah well. They can’t all be winners.

(I did get to interview Conquests of the Longbow designer and all-around legend Christy Marx, which was really cool, but interviews don’t count as reviews.)

The point is, with Larry 6, my total of Al Lowe or Jim Walls games reviewed for this site is up to 7 out of 12, bringing that total up to 58 percent. I swear, when I signed up for this blog, I did not expect to play cop games or immature sex games. It just . . . sort of happened.

Blue Force – Final Rating

by Alex

I am a slow writer. S-l-o-w. For a playthrough that began on October 25, 2022, I’m just getting to the Final Rating. I am as slow as Jake Ryan walking across Carter’s Marina for the 9,473rd time and there’s no way to adjust the speed, both in-game and in real-life. Yes, I’m that slow.

Now that you’ve accepted my apology, let’s get to the PISSED rating for Blue Force.

Blue Force – WON!

by Alex

Adventure games, as with any sort of storytelling, consist of a series of promises. In a narrative that at least attempts to be coherent, you have a setup, whereby you promise your readers/viewers/players that something will happen, and then you have a payoff, where you keep that promise. This is a reduction of storytelling into two broad parts, but the setup/payoff combination comes into play many times during the course of a given narrative.

Generally speaking, audiences are forgiving up to a point. Fool them once, okay that can slide. But anything more than that and you’re in dangerous territory where you will leave the player, as the case may be with Blue Force, with a serious case of blue balls expectations.

In the first comment to my last Blue Force post, which was published last year, esteemed adventure game designer and all-around cool guy Corey Cole began by stating “This is actually starting to sound like a complex, multi-layered story . . .”

Blue Force – Some Days Are Just Like That

by Alex

Jake Ryan is about to have the worst day of his life on the force. That’s a pretty mean feat considering it’s only his second day on the force, but that’s how things roll on the mean streets of Jackson Beach. You saw what went down in the Tower District with our pals Frank and Tyrone, and the search for young Skip Dixon’s missing baseball card. White guys named Tyrone—what is this world coming to?

We’ll get to all of that, but first, I have a confession to make:

“I like Blue Force.”

Blue Force – Not All There

by Alex

Here are some synonyms for “crazy” I looked up and found on Thesaurus.com:

• balmy
• bananas
• batty
• bonkers
• brainsick
• cracked
• cuckoo
• daffy
• daft
• demented
• deranged
• dippy
• disturbed
• flaky
• foolish
• freaky
• gaga
• goofy
• harebrained
• idiotic
• illogical
• inane
• irrational
• kooky
• laughable
• loco
• loony
• ludicrous
• mad
• maniacal
• mental
• mentally ill
• mentally incompetent
• moonstruck
• moronic
• nonsensical
• not all there
• nuts
• nutty
• nutty as a fruitcake
• odd
• off one’s rocker
• off the wall
• out of one’s mind
• out to lunch
• potty
• preposterous
• psycho
• screwy
• sick
• silly
• stark raving mad
• stupid
• touched
• unbalanced
• unhinged
• unreasonable
• unsound
• wacky

I’m listing these for your reference so you know what to call me when you learn that I, after another play session of Blue Force, still not only do not hate this game, but actively enjoy it.

Blue Force – Violenza Domestica

by Alex

I have a confession to make. Are you sitting down? Good.

I . . . don’t hate Blue Force. In fact, so far, I am actually enjoying it.

Blue Force (1993) – Introduction

by Alex

The email was innocent enough. Subject: “Blue Force and Larry 6.” Sender: The Adventure Gamer The Adventurers Guild’s very own Ilmari Jauhiainen. The message: “Hi Alex! I hope you are doing well. I just noticed that Blue Force - the last Jim Walls made adventure game - is coming up and there’s your name written on it. Do you think you can take up the challenge? Also, Larry 6, another game with your name on it, is coming up pretty soon after Blue Force. Do you think you can do two games so close to one another? All the best, Ilmari.”

My mind raced. Here I was, two years older and wiser . . . well, older, than the last time I played a game for this illustrious blog. Of course I wanted to do another one. Another two, in fact, but little did I know/remember I had already agreed to play these two. Apparently, I am a leading expert on games made by Jim Walls and Al Lowe.

Sweat began to coat my fevered brow. My heart skipped a beat, and then another! I debated calling a doctor, but then remembered that this is just a dramatic retelling and not real life. So gamely, I screwed my courage to the sticking place and sent a terse, very ominous, and very age-appropriate (I’m 41) reply:

“What’s up man?”

Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist: WON with Final Rating

By Alex

There I was, ready for Freddy to start dispensing some justice in Coarsegold . . . justice in the form of hot lead . . .

. . . when my laptop died.

Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist: How Freddy Got His Groove (and Ear) Back

By Alex

This was a tough session, I’m not going to lie. It was hindered by the fact that play time is severely limited lately, and while I’m having fun with this game, I think this is a good time to discuss its puzzle design, and puzzle design in adventure games generally.

There are a few broad categories I thought about that I can put adventure games that I have played into, give their general characteristics, and cite examples of games that fall into each category. I fully expect many of you to disagree with my taxonomy, but that’s what makes the Internet interesting, right?

That, and the personal insults over any difference of opinion.

Anyway, here is Alex’s Adventure Game Puzzle Style Breakdown:

• Player-Driven: These are games where several puzzles are presented to the player for them to solve right out of the gate, and the solutions to these puzzles are by-and-large there from the outset. While there may be some event-driven (to be discussed later on in this list), for the most part the player is given a fairly expansive world to explore, characters to interact with, inventory items to gather, and carte blanche to solve most of the puzzles in any order, at any time, barring any event-driven instances, in order to solve an over-arching goal (usually made relatively clear near the game’s beginning). In a player-driven adventure game, most of the events occur after the player solves certain other puzzles. This may open up other items to use as solutions, but not always—sometimes, the player uses things they’ve already picked up to solve these new puzzles, or combines a new item with an old one in different ways. Examples of this style include Quest for Glory I and IV, The Secret of Monkey Island, Leisure Suit Larry I, Leisure Suit Larry III, and, to a degree, most King’s Quest games, and Lure of the Temptress (though the less said about that game, the better).
• Event-Driven: These are games where, while the player may have a fairly expansive world to explore and inventory items to collect, but a more limited set of puzzles. There may or may not be an overarching goal that is clear to the player from the moment the fire up the game, but on the whole event-driven games manage to avoid that “on-rails” feeling by giving the player a lot of time to do stuff before being moved to the next part of the game. Examples of this style include Gabriel Knight: Sins of the Father, Leisure Suit Larry II, Quest for Glory II, III, and V, Police Quest II and III, and pretty much all of the Space Quest series.
• Plot-Driven: I debated calling this category “designer-driven,” but I like “plot-driven” better. In games like this, the player performs little vignettes that form a part of a broad story. In games like this, each vignette—if well-designed—avoids any of the dreaded “walking dead” scenarios. All of the inventory items the player needs will be in each vignette, and while the player may be able to acquire some early, it is typically not necessary to do so. Examples of this style include King’s Quest VII and Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist, Leisure Suit Larry V, Conquests of the Long Bow: The Legend of Robin Hood, and L.A. Law.

Wait, just kidding about that last one. L.A. Law is in a separate category called “pure garbage.”

Now, obviously there are hybrids here, and plot-driven games can work, but I find that FPFP doesn’t do the best job of this, at least not to my tastes. I don’t feel all that great a sense of accomplishment or discovery when the way to solve puzzles is just revisiting each screen of the relatively small game world upon the start of each chapter, talking to everyone and clicking every inventory item on everyone and everything, and picking up the items that I just so happen to need when they magically appear for the sake of pure expediency. There is limited creativity needed on the part of the player, and most solutions can be brute-forced.

Yes, “clicking every object on everything” is a cliché about adventure games, and a cliché for a reason, but I never felt like this, say, playing Space Quest V or The Curse of Monkey Island or any of the Quest for Glory games. I feel it all the time in Freddy Pharkas.

With that background, let’s go through Chapter Three.