Game 50: B.A.T. - Gettin' Bizzy Wit It

By Aperama

Duke Garland's Journal, Vol. 2: “I have recovered the first of the Tears of Esmeranti! Despite a perilous journey through the cavern of Malicia, I have emerged victorious against the evil gigantic crab, Cangrejo. In spite of his many attempts to cover my head in.. well, it seemed to me that he was attempting to defecate on me, the powerful artifact that I purchased back in Muralla town, the Magia Stone, has seen me through danger. On arriving in the next town of Satono, the sage Yasmin has taught me the secret magick of sword throwing – Espana. If all works as quickly as I hope it will, Felicia will be turned back from stone and Jashiin will be dead at the hands of the Fairy Flame Sword in mere days!”

I especially like the part with the rainbow explosions. B.A.T. is managing to impress me now

So, I've done a deep amount of soul searching in an effort to work out why it was that I hated B.A.T. so much. In the end, the answer seemed a lot more obvious than I thought it would end up being. See, when B.A.T. was released, I would have been about 2 years old. (Yes, I'm a young'un.) Still, in spite of the rapid acceleration in hardware standards et al over the time that I would have actually been able to worry about these considerations, my family was not so rich that the latest and greatest could always be ours – we would have been more likely to play an older game on our (some years old) hardware, meaning this could just as easily have been the first game I ever played. I have clear memories of these games in my formative years of only 4 or 5 – among the first I really remember being the game in the video above. The game I reference here was traded with a family friend (for a 'value pack'-market copy of Space Quest 1: The Sarien Encounter) and is one of the games I have the clearest memories of. It was nasty at several points (in spite of the cheap way I've displayed it here), particularly with my reflexes at the time – but at no point was it ever unfair. There were several points at which one could scam the in-game systems, saves were free – but this little platformer stumped me until I was 15 or 16 and able to navigate the ludicrously difficult final dungeon in spite of the game coming with its own maps. I felt accomplished when I did – I never once felt like I was losing because of the game system being too random or what have you.

I'm fairly certain that if we had instead traded for B.A.T, I would have properly gotten into sports. Or trainspotting. Or anything other than computers. It's a cruel adventure indeed where you're told at every turn that you have a clear means to a puzzle's end, only for the puzzle to turn out to be solvable only if you perform a small satanic ritual first. Unfortunately, though, I signed on for this, so.. well, I'll conveniently forget the strikethrough text for all of this.

BigGuns McBizzy's Journal #IV: “So, I'm kinda making a mockery of this whole 'interstellar police' thing. I've spent the past three days of 'investigation' talking to people who don't know an awful lot, gambling because I really haven't been given enough money to do what I need to do, and buying guns. Oh, and hanging out with girls. In bars. Come to think of it, I may actually be a gigolo. I should probably double check the next time I fill out a tax form. But, uh, yeah. I can head out on the DRAG any time I want, but I found some Kradokid who turned in Merigo. May as well blast him before getting the heck out of Terrapolis. I might not even bother saving the place. Chances are, with my Bizzy skills, I'll own this town before the end of the week anyway.”

Where we last left off – a screenshot I didn't actually think was worth showing off.
Flipping marvellous.

If any of you have been reading the comments, you'll realise that I was planning for this post to be entirely about the cheese sector of Europe I would not have even possibly continued further on without assistance. As I'd sorta predicted, I only really needed a short set of clues to set me on the right path – but the game really doesn't do itself any favours. In order to find Merigo (properly, not just have him randomly drop in on you in an attempt to kill you) you need to speak to a lady in a bar (which I had done as of post #2) and then find a random alien (type of which she names) randomly (the screen gives no graphically intuitive idea of what you're doing) who in spite of looking and greeting in the same manner, and having the same responses to everything else, will ask for money when you speak about Merigo – 'lots of it'. There's only one way to get money – the 'Bizzy Game'. It's a simple game of Simon Says, which I have been heavily cheating in for quite a while up until this point. It could likely fund the entire game without any more than a few clicks of buttons, particularly as time stands still when you're – and I beg forgiveness for this – Bizzy-ing yourself with this.

Nope..

Not quite..

And that's a bingo! Congratulations!
You somehow avoided burning your game diskette in sheer frustration!
(These are six different individual Kradokids between the screenshots I've taken here, by the way)

So, this left me with one clue that I had not yet spoiled myself with – and it was honestly more or less the one I was more interested in. The Bizzy Game, to my mind, couldn't possibly be only there for bloating out gameplay by giving a 'money' source. It wasn't fun like, say, poker is for example – it's just rote memorisation which anyone with half of a brain would immediately turn to using a notepad or the like to get through. I have a computerised version of a notepad. It is called 'Notepad'. Noting down squares by two-letter combinations (I use 'FS' for 'full square', 'DI' for diamond and so on) it's child's play to get to level 14 or 15 without anything possibly going wrong – this left me with utter oodles of credits in my account. However, reading Ilmari's clue let me know that if I was in there at 1:00 – not 12:59, not 1:10 (as I was there in both of those timeframes on 'Monday') but 1:00 PM, a girl would be there to challenge me in Bizzy. I can only imagine how this game would actually work in reality. It has no timer, so it's sorta like playing blackjack where the house lets you count cards. Onto a sheet of paper in front of you. While wearing a hat that says 'I AM CHEATING'.

I had 996 Krells on hand when she challenged me to this. I had to reload, get money out and go back because she accused me of 'not having the money'...

I already have access to potentially unlimited money. For that matter, I already have 'Lydia' following me around from the club. Sloan, you're now the head of my harem?

It was clear to my adventure game logic (the one I have referenced in other posts that tells me that rope is quite possibly the most valuable substance created by either God or Man) that we're not out for her money, anyhow – even if we needed it, you always want a favour more than money. And as it turns out, this is exactly what she does for us – I was looking for something to do while waiting until 10 PM for my Kradokid friend to turn up at the museum and started clicking on things to see if they'd allow me through now that I have a bevy of beauties at my arms. As it turns out, Sloan knows someone in the DRAG pilot circuit, and she makes the guard step aside so that we can slip on in. Of course, she didn't think to mention this to us on agreeing to take her as a 'guide'.. come to think of it, why they wouldn't let a B.A.T. member through in the first place is beyond me, but hey. The hangar is somewhat less than appealing with very little in the way of interactivity. Going up some stairs leads to the 'DRAG Hirer'.. who is ready to charge us even more than I've already earned through Bizzy. Yoiks. Of course, our harem comes in handy once more..

My Nova, the best gun known to man, Kradokid, Robokiller or any of the other
made up names I care to mention, is in contrast worth 400 Krells..

Ah, so this must be where my B.O.B. comes into its own as a phone, my convenient plot device?

Nope. Phone booths. Welcome to the XXIIst century, pal!

This number puts us on a direct line to Crisa Kortakis' secretary. It would have been nice of Lydia to tell us that she knew the woman that I've been spending two posts trying to find while outside the door speaking to her evil 'hulktronic'. Crisa Kortakis is clearly just here because the creators of the game didn't feel that their space-age game reminded people enough of Jabba the Hutt – she's a human, incessantly obese lady sitting on a floating chair with wires connected to her. She has three options to her – ask to arrest Vrangor (she berates you), ask to give you some money for the DRAG (which she does, gives Lydia a small jewel for around her neck and kisses her) and ask to leave Selenia (which she grants by killing you. I sincerely hope she at least shoots your remains into space. Though I guess the bombs soon to explode will probably do that.)

Oh, god, she's not wearing anything

I sincerely worry for whoever thought drawing this was a good idea.
You could have made this thing an alien, France! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED OUR EYES!

Plus side? She's loaded

So, with nothing else obvious to do apart from hiring a DRAG (which seems a poor idea given I know that Merigo is still outside the area with the Bizzy game, kicking people's arses with ludicrously overpowered weaponry and doing it in such a quick fashion that nobody can actually react) with the money she's just poured into our account, there's nothing really left to do here apart from go down to the 'hibernation hotel' and wait until 10 PM. Of course, even this is more difficult than it has to be – instead of just giving a number to decide how long you'll sleep, there's an awkward slide bar that has markings of 2, 4, (big space), 8, (reasonable space), 16, (virtually none), 24. So I needed to wait nine hours – one click above '8' became 10. Instead, I waited just under eight and then clicked at random. I've heard of another infamous and similar puzzle involving time waiting and goats, so I presume this is an intended test of the gamers' skill. Right? Right. Anyhow, it's off to the museum we go to find a strange idol from Barnett College for Marcus Brody to bribe us a Kradokid. He gives us a time for 100 Krells, and sells us a pass to the Xifo club for 300. Of course, we couldn't just ask Crisa for this. Hell, we couldn't even just do any number of things that would logically lead to us being able to get into a successful nightclub owned by the clearly very close friend of the woman we've seduced – we had to find a random alien, get him to tell us that there was a criminal liable to blow up the entire city who often visited there for money, and then think that the 'kid' (there it is, in his NAME!) would have a pass. To a nightclub.

I'm stopping here just so I can wipe the fury off of my cheeks. With a metal scourer.

Session time: 1 hour
Total time: 5 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. But if anyone is about to tell me I've missed something, tell me. I'm not sure I have the mental endurance to have to reload significant portions of the game – heck, even minutes of it could be tough. Thanks!

Game 52: King's Quest V – An owl in need is an owl indeed

Written by TBD

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #5: "I've finally made it. Mordack's castle is just ahead and in it, my captured family. It was a long journey on water, sand and ice, and I nearly lost my friend, Cedric, along the way, but now we are here together and ready to face the dangers of the evil wizard's castle.

When I left off last time, I had just thrown my rope onto a branch but couldn't climb it.

My plan of rubbing beeswax on the rope didn't work. I spent 55 minutes backtracking and searching every screen for something I didn't find. Among other things, I decided there had to be more to the inn than a leg of lamb but despite my furious random clicking found nothing.

Perhaps a sign of my lack of trust in the game being fair to me, I also clicked on almost every pixel of the rope, thinking perhaps there's a small section of rope that is safe to climb. After attempting to use everything in my inventory, I found that the leg of lamb could be eaten and I got points for doing so. I thought maybe if I was stronger I could climb. One thing I also considered was that I was carrying too much weight. Cedric wouldn't take any of my items and I wondered if I needed to reload an even older saved game from before I bought the sled - maybe the sled was making me too heavy for the rope. I couldn't drop items, so couldn't solve my weight problem quickly.

It took me a while to realise it, but I was dead-ended. Like when I asked for assistance two posts ago, my problem was assuming background decoration where there was actually a clickable object.

While clicking on every part of the scene for the, let's say, 12th time, I found an outcropping to the right of the tree branch that had a different 'look' comment than the rest of the background. I reloaded an old game and tried throwing the rope at the outcropping instead of the branch.

While not totally unfair, this puzzle deliberately tried to trick me into wasting my time

This time I got warned about being hungry. I deliberately didn't eat because I wanted to see a death by starvation, which did happen a few screens later...

Come on Graham. A few more metres and you can slide the rest of the way

I reloaded and ate half of my lamb. Freshly satiated, I climbed the rope, Then I jumped over a few rocks, and, you guessed it, died many times by jumping on the wrong rocks.

I wonder if there's a way to tell which rocks are safe without dying

Then, and I'm sure some of you will be happy about this, Cedric got captured by wolves!

Caption contest!

Using my trusty sled, I slid down a toboggan slope which looked like fun. Then I checked out the cliff to see if I could add to my death tally.

I knew I shouldn't have turned the toymaker down when he offered the extended warranty

On the next screen I found an eagle. He was hungry and it was obvious what I should do. I gave him the rest of my lamb, which he thanked me for before flying off. I'm sure we'll meet again when he'll perform a trivial task for me. I also tried my pie to see if he had a sweet tooth (beak?) but I got less points for that so lamb seems to be the right choice.

This time it was my turn to be captured by wolves. The wolves worked for an ice queen, Queen Ice-abella. For some reason she'd captured us to kill us, rather than just having us killed before letting us into her throne room. Makes no sense to me, but perhaps that's why I've never gotten a job as an Ice Queen.

She told the wolves to kill me, and if I stand there and let them, they of course do what they were commanded to do.

The wolf on the left is called Sir Graywolf. The wolf on the right must be called Sir Alsograywolf

While the wolves were coming for me I tried using my harp. The Queen then realised that my ability to play a harp clearly meant that I also had the ability to kill a yeti, so sent me to kill a yeti for her.

I can't turn down the chance to help someone wearing a crown 

In one of the more ridiculous scenes in the game, I defeated the yeti by throwing a comedy custard pie at his face, which caused him to lose track of his location, and fall to his death.

About time someone apart from me fell off a cliff in this game

Of course, if I don't throw a pie at him, or try to throw it too late, the usual happens.

Help me, Yukon Cornelius. You're my only hope

I entered the Ice Queen's cave, and looked around. All crystals except one have the same narration when clicked on. Knowing that there had to be something useful in there, I quickly found the one crystal that I could touch, used my cobbler's hammer to break a piece off as a souvenir and went back to the Queen to give her the good news.

10 CAPs for anyone who hasn't played and correctly guesses which crystal is the useful one

After Isabella had Sir Greywolf show Cedric and I the way out of the mountains, I was captured by a two-headed Roc and put in a nest. Something was glinting in the nest as the egg slowly hatched. Clearly I was to be a baby roc's first meal. I grabbed the shiny object (a locket) before the egg hatched then my eagle friend picked me up and took me to a beach.

How about we save a lot of time and you just take me straight to Mordor, I mean Mordack

Later on, I reloaded to an earlier saved game to see what would have happened if I didn't give the hungry eagle some lamb earlier.

Can you smell what the Roc is cooking?

Back to the beach, I took an iron bar I found on the sand, then decided to go for a swim...

Where's David Hasselhoff when you need him

Okay, swimming was out, so I went to the boat I could see in the distance on the beach. That's a much safer way to travel on water...

There is absolutely no way to know the boat has a hole until it's too late

Simple enough. I use my beeswax on the boat (thanks Queen Beatrice) and now I'm sure there will be nothing to stop me safely crossing the ocean...

When will sea monsters learn that boats aren't digestible

I also found a third screen on the beach which contained a hermit's hut, but there was nothing to do there as the hermit was hard of hearing and couldn't hear what I was saying.

I quickly realised that the ocean was, much like the desert, a maze of sorts. Sea monsters eat you if you go too far in any direction. Fortunately it's a short and simple maze and I quickly found an island. Unfortunately, as soon as we arrived at the island, Cedric and I were captured by some harpies.

Is it a flock of harpies, or a murder of harpies? A gaggle of harpies perhaps?

The harpies discuss how delicious I'd be while I notice another shiny item in the grass. I take what turns out to be a fish hook, then play my harp, thinking that would soothe them. It didn't so much soothe them, but it brought out a competitive streak in them. One of them took my harp and the others followed her. Of course, if I didn't play the harp and just stood there, the usual happens...

Death by snoo-snoo

Leaving the screen, I came across the shattered body of a badly injured Cedric. I carried the poor owl back to the boat screen, where I found a conch shell, then got on the boat and returned to the beach.

Having Graham physically carry Cedric was a nice touch

Back at the beach, I tried talking to the hermit again, and this time gave him a conch shell as a hearing aid, which worked. He had a poultice that cured Cedric and also knew a friendly mermaid who led us to Mordack's island. I'm on the final stretch now and I can't go back so hopefully I haven't missed an item along the way.

Whoever holds the conch gets to speak

Just to see what would happen, I reloaded and ignored Cedric's body on the harpy screen, going to the hermit without him. I still got to Mordack's island, but I assume that would be another dead-end situation, as well as a cruel thing to do for an owl who's almost been helpful countless times already.

Mordack's Island

Session time: 2 hours 05 minutes

Total time: 11 hours 45 minutes

Session deaths: 10
Total deaths: 30

Pixels found so far: 5 (Silver coin, gold coin, locket, fish hook, conch shell)

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Save Cedric

As an excuse to zoom in on a screenshot of a sick Cedric, I thought I'd remind you that anyone who mentions that they'll donate to an owl-related charity during the King's Quest V playthrough will get some bonus CAPs.

Game 50: B.A.T. - Forced Into Submission (Request for Assistance)

By Aperama

Ageless, Faceless, Gender-Neutral, Human Adventure Person's Journal #3: “This city is not the place for me! It feels like every way I turn, I get shot at! Thankfully, I have a pretty good memory, so I haven't had any trouble making sure I'll be able to live out my ten days on this rock before it goes up in flames through the Bizzy game. I'm still nowhere closer to finding Crisa Kortakis, my leads are all running dry and the most notable thing is that I've gone from a weapon I can hide to a full-blown forcefield and the most powerful gun I can lay my hands on. Every time I set my way out into the city, I find a new path to get lost down – and a new angry Stickrob, Robokiller or Glockmup shooting at me. I haven't done anything wrong! Though I could have sworn one of them was actually Merigo.. Must have been a mirage, right? Well, back to pretending to be a beat cop..”

The good news is that through boredly keeping it in a window while I watch movies, currency is not going to be an issue

B.A.T. is proving itself to be ever so typically.. French. I think I managed to get through about a single line of dialogue that I hadn't received prior to now in my continued exploration of the town of Terrapolis.. in the two hours I spent trying to find something (anything!) to do in my time playing this game. It's just so bloody inconsistent. I had to restart DosBOX because it wouldn't let me out of the hibernation chamber (the most convenient way to test out different times to see if different people are around) around about four times, so I was convinced that the ONLY WAY OUT wasn't working for some reason. I am seriously not liking this! There are a few interesting things here and there – and I have managed to find a few extra new areas to go through, so that's something – but there's no real excuse to have exits and entrances be so incredibly difficult to spot. The navigation doesn't even make much of any sense! To find the police station, for instance, you go to the doctor's surgery, which can be found in the (northwestish quadrant) of the gunsmith's screen (which you return to via the east/northeast pointing arrow.) You then go south. And south again. When you reach this screen? North! So when you think you're doubling back? You're not..

You're at the police station! Coincidentally? First place I had a random encounter whilst starting this post. Really nice place, this town

So after getting the piece of tape covered in cat hair to pretend I have a moustache The revelation that completely random arrows could pop up out of nowhere a la Leisure Suit Larry 3's lawyers in a manner that I only discovered due to scanning over the entire screen with my cursor, I managed to find one more thing that the manual had alluded to that I knew would be of some assistance – a mirror to escape to Wonderland a forcefield generator for combats for the low, low price of 400 Krells. I'm kinda skipping ahead here, though, as I didn't get a screenshot of the real curio of this post – Merigo! He turned up in the Hot Quarter outside the Bizzy Game arcade in a combat that I had one second to prepare for – he killed me nigh-on instantly. I reloaded, came back through, and at 1:30 PM exactly, he showed up again - and I again died before I even got to select my weapon. This just means that I need to use B.O.B. to be 'accelerated' instead of 'normal', though. Quickly switching over in a third attempt, I've had no luck spotting him. (In preparation, I got enough through Bizzy to also afford the game's most powerful weapon, the Nova, because.. well, I value my wrists, and I've seen no real indication of an advantage to having weaker weapons aside from cheaper ammo. This is possibly going to be a fatal flaw, given I sold off my Hacker, my Moz and all of the ammo I had for either – if they stop me from walking around a club or whatever with a gigantic gun, there's not much I can do – the weight was too much to carry them both.)

The back of this place sorta reminds me of evidence lockers. Wonder if I'm buying this from a black market cop bunch?

So, here's the critical issue. I'm looking around for Merigo again – I figure I have the right idea given he turned up and shot me like a crazy person. Knowing roughly where to search for him, I'm trying to do so in the Hot Quarter – but all I seem to get attacked by now that I'm properly armed (in spite of making sure that it was both on the Monday that I arrived in-game and that it was the magical number of 1:30 PM) are Robokillers, which carry nothing on a use of the 'search' command on killing them (thanks again, Jan Larres) though in truth, most of the combats I've received items for have just been food. As much as I want to kill random Skunks for steak and chips? It just doesn't seem to make much sense to waste resources of any sort to fight, given that my last doctor's visit cost 180 Krells from one fight in spite of having the best weaponry and armour in the game, both of them equipped prior to the fight starting with a Robokiller. The fights may as well be identical to one another, though, given they all involve the same tactic of 'click like a crazy person after selecting weapons and armour'.

On the plus side, I've levelled up! And I have.. received absolutely nothing for it. Je ne comprends pas?

As far as the actual exploration side, I've found several areas that appear to be for random encounters (as in the picture from the police station, it all but says 'this is just here to make things seem more dangerous than they actually are'), I've wandered about in the hopes of finding different people at different times – but I have yet to find any permanently-placed people that change over time. (I hope I've explained what I mean here well enough to not need to go into this further. While you guys may have enjoyed yourselves throwing up dozens of bets in some other game – and it technically may have had the first Request for Assistance – I'm officially throwing out one here and now out of desperation. I'm obviously missing something either involving finding my way into Crisa Kortakis' club, finding Merigo as a permanent fixture to talk to and then take down or triggering his random fight (is that even supposed to be a thing?) I think I've fully scoured the town now, and have spent over an hour reloading in a desperate attempt to find something interactible.

At least I've found the 'old building'. Guess I need something to interact with it? Yeah, I'm stumped

As I feel I have been so overwhelmingly negative and distracted during this post I think I've paid my penance for Les Manley already I would like to at least show one glimmering light in the game's overwhelmingly lacklustre nature – B.O.B. has feelings, too! I have absolutely no idea why or when this happened, but when I was in the police station I found what seemed to be the desk clerk wasn't allowing me to speak to them – they were still in alien/gibberish/trying to tell Billy Blaze how to rebuild the parts to his rocket ship. It's not really a puzzle, though – I'd discovered what was going on back in the forcefield shop when I noticed an option that said 'computer test'. Expecting to have a short quiz on the history of the personal computer, I clicked it, being told that I was forced to spend 40 krells for an assessment – and the shopkeeper told me there was nothing wrong with it. I worked it out when I got the following screen:

'You're playing this horrible game! WARNING!'

The clue that made me realise anything was even wrong

So, I can at least say that I've solved one puzzle throughout this game (Two if I count 'go to the toilets to find my equipment'.) However, back to my request for assistance! I feel I've pretty much exhausted my ability to search through this town any longer. The random combats are enough to make the task completely monotonous, and the fact that almost every conversation is identical to the last is driving me thoroughly insane, making me want to do virtually anything else. However, I'm not giving up completely – I'm fairly confident that there's not an awful lot to this game in the first place, so all I really need is a start. It's up to you guys (well, up to Jan Larres) as to how much in the way of help I'll need. Obviously, if one of these will lead to the rest sequentially opening up, the first is all I'll probably need. Here's my list of issues:

• Crisa Kortakis' club – how to get in? (As a subplot how to get into her office building – but I figure they're related) 
• Merigo's random combat: glitch or important? Are my stats the main reason I'm struggling so hard there, or is it level-based, or will I moiderise him now that I have a bigger gun? 
• Is the Bizzy game the only way to make money? Is that its only purpose? 
• The map I bought turned out to be dancing lessons! How do I get my money back? 
• Do levels mean squat? Is it worth grinding between the Bizzy game, ammo, surgeons' and forcefield seller just to level up a bit more? 
• Is my Nova going to mean I can't get into Crisa's club as the manual sorta suggests? I figured it'd stop me from the nightclub back at the start, but I've really noticed no difference whatsoever

Remember to code your hints/spoilers in ROT13, and start with a vague hint then get gradually more detailed if it's possible. If the solution is something mindbogglingly simple, though, feel free to just spoil away. I can only imagine that the timing system will have something to do with it, so I'm expecting something that isn't entirely ROT13-able (e.g. 'go to the old building at 10:30 AM on Tuesday and they'll open up' – well, I'm probably going to be able to work out what '10:30 NA' is just from a glance).

Session time: 2 hours
Total time: 4 hours 30 minutes

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There's a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I have made a request for assistance. Thanks!

Game 52: King's Quest V - The things I'll go through for a leg of lamb

Written by TBD

King Graham of Daventry Journal Entry #4: “With the help of an elf I finally escaped the dread forest. I then helped a woman get her heart back, bartered with a gnome, a cobbler and a toymaker, defeated a gang of thugs, scared a poisonous snake and entered an icy mountain pass. A good day's work, if I say so myself. Now to find a way to continue through the icy mountain and find Mordack's castle.”

Thanks to apprentice_fu I found my way out of the forest.

After reading the first clue, which was “The solution is within the witch forest area” I did a little more searching. After a few minutes I thought the second clue wouldn't hurt so I read “There is an item you missed”

Aha. So something I thought was background decoration was actually a clickable item. I'd done plenty of clicking on anything I thought had even a slight chance of being useful but hadn't found a thing. This time, instead of using the 'eye' icon to look for things, I skipped a step and went straight for the 'hand' icon to take/activate something. I went around the screens furiously clicking everywhere with the hand, hearing the same comment over and over when finally, in the witch's house, Graham opened a drawer I hadn't previously noticed.

This drawer is responsible for me wasting many hours - there'd better be something good in there

I'd definitely clicked on the items on the table, but had received the same generic comment I get for clicking anywhere on the background of that scene. Somehow in all my previous semi-random clicking I'd not clicked on the table itself or I would have known. I was planning to blame the game for its pixel hunting, but once I knew what the relevant item was, I was surprised that I could click anywhere on the table apart from the top and find out about the drawer. So, pretty much my fault there.

Inside the drawer was a pouch containing three green gems. Gems could work as bait, so I went to the west and first tried giving a gem to the eyes, which resulted in me throwing it on the ground and a little elf taking it and running off. I tried putting the other two gems on the spilt honeycomb and the third one worked. I grabbed the elf and traded his life for an exit. The elf agreed, and asked 'Rocky' the rock to move aside. Rocky's voice acting isn't the best the game has to offer.

It felt a little unfair that until this point the game didn't even allow me to click on Rocky with the 'talk' icon selected

In a cutscene, the elf took me inside a cavern where other elves were working and offered me some fine leather footwear for my generous green gem donation (which the witch probably stole from the elves first anyway.)

In most fiction, it's the dwarves who mine and are obsessed with shiny gems. Way to break the stereotype, King's Quest V

Because I was unable to control Graham during the cutscene, I immediately went back down the hole to see if there was anything I could actually do myself in the elf cavern. There was only one thing I found that I could do - die.

Don't tell me when exploration is cut off by a chasm. I'm the King here. I'll go wherever I please.

I went straight back to town to see If the shoemaker wanted my new shoes – he did, and told me he had nothing to offer. Graham insisted that he wanted nothing in return, but still stood there impatiently until the shoemaker thought of something. He eventually offered a small hammer, which Graham quickly pocketed despite sounding so magnanimous when he refused anything in trade mere moments earlier.

Apparently the new shoes were so good that they'd be able to retire immediately, which they did. The husband, wife and dog all left, leaving me alone in their empty shop.

Shouldn't they have at least kept the shop open long enough to sell their new pair of shoes?

Because I thought it might result in an amusing or sad comment, I then offered the willow tree's heart to the toymaker, who gave me his sled for it. I then offered the sled to the willow tree but she said she didn't want any of my items, just her stolen heart. Not having the option to mention that I had found her heart, but traded it for a shiny red sled instead of returning it to her, I reloaded and gave the tree her heart back.

She turned back into a woman, threw away her now suddenly shrunken harp, and called to her fiancee, who dutifully ran into the screen so they could run off together. I took the harp because, in Graham's own words, “If she doesn't want it, I'll take it.” The unofficial motto of all adventure game characters.

The happy couple reunited at last. I'll just stand here in a pool of your tears and hope you leave without taking your harp

The next few puzzle solutions came to me quickly now that I had some new items. 

Graham refused to offer the spinning wheel to the tailor because the tailor had nothing he wanted. When he showed it to the gnome, the gnome recognised it as his own spinning wheel that had been stolen from him by the witch.

Graham greedily demanded his grandchild's favourite toy in exchange for finding his stolen properly. The gnome agreed, so Graham took the kid's favourite toy and traded it in for his very own red sled. Graham really takes the old schoolchild logic of 'finders keepers' to a new level.

I did the cat-rat scene from the previous post again and got myself captured by the inn thugs. This time, the cobbler's hammer worked on the door and I escaped. I found a leg of lamb in the inn's kitchen, then tried going towards the talking voices just to see if I would die. I did

If you're going to try to kill me, I'll just steal your dinner and walk out the front door

After reloading, I opened the back door and left with my new rope and a leg of lamb. After everything I went through and the amount of times I died in that inn, a leg of lamb seemed a bit anticlimactic, but I'm sure it will play a vital role in saving my family at some point.

I tried a few things on the snake in an attempt at making her leave. She doesn't like harp music and eats neither lamb nor beeswax. I thought maybe she'd like some cooked meat so I went back to the gypsy wagon where I'd seen a cooking fire. There was no fire and the gypsies had left, which I'm sure made Cedric happy because he doesn't trust gypsies (he probably thinks they'll steal your stuff and sell it back to you.) There was, however, a tambourine on the ground. According to the narrator, Graham 'rescued' the tambourine from the ground.

King Graham, rescuer of fair maidens and unattended personal property

I took my new instrument back to the snake to see if she preferred it to harp music.

Important hiking tip: If you ever come upon a poisonous snake, simply wave a tambourine at it and it will leave.

Finally the way to Mordack's castle was opened. I went east, and came upon a frosty trail. 'A few hours later....' popped up on top of the screen, depriving me of the joy of making a sarcastic comment about a scorching desert being so close to an icy path.

Graham started shivering, and I knew I had to wear the cloak but didn't because I wanted to see the freezing to death scene. But first, two cliff falling death scenes.

Ah, falling off cliffs - a proud Sierra tradition

One thing I mentioned earlier but is most evident here, is this game's pathfinding system. In previous Sierra games, you had to manually navigate around the world. Most of their games even had at least one section purely devoted to making sure the player used pixel-perfect navigation to avoid things – like the annoying vine scene in Space Quest II.

In this game, Graham will automatically take the correct route – an improvement which I loved. In a 2d rendition of a 3d world, I always found those sequences frustrating and unfair.

Watching Graham navigate this path without me having to do it myself made me a very happy player

On the second screen of the icy path, I saw a branch above me and the rope immediately came to mind. I used the rope on the branch, at which point I dutifully froze to death.

Deliberately not wearing the obviously required cloak just so I could see Graham die - does that make me a bad person?

Wearing my cloak, I tried again. This time I was surprised to die.

Oh well. This seems like a good place to finish for now. Next time, I'll try coating my rope with bees wax, or perhaps offering the wax to the bees themselves if I find myself still stuck under the rope. I still have access to all the other areas from before, including the forest so I may still have missed an important item somewhere – I certainly hope not - I don't want to ask for assistance twice in one game.

Session time: 1 hour 05 minutes
Total time: 9 hours 40 minutes

Session deaths: 6
Total deaths: 20

Note Regarding Spoilers and Companion Assist Points: There’s a set of rules regarding spoilers and companion assist points. Please read it here before making any comments that could be considered a spoiler in any way. The short of it is that no points will be given for hints or spoilers given in advance of me requiring one. Please...try not to spoil any part of the game for me...unless I really obviously need the help...or I specifically request assistance. In this instance, I've not made any requests for assistance. Thanks!

Some small changes to blog format

By the former admins of TAG

Salaam alaykum! We have great news!

For quite some time we have felt that taking care of the blog is far harder than we ever could have thought and consumes too much of our leisure time. Frankly, it has often been a real pain in nether regions to wake up some days and think of all the work, we have to do for blog maintenance. We found that we started spending hours just to make up excuses for avoiding blog editing shifts - Ilmari spent too much time washing his hair and TBD even signed up for a pottery class. Finally we admitted that we had to let the blog go. Still, we didn't want to leave our faithful readers completely without their weekly adventure game dose. We thus decided to find a new maintainer for our beloved blog – someone dedicated enough to do the work we had grew so tired of.

We had discrete discussions with some major gaming sites on the Web, and the amount of interest surprised us. IGN, Valve and Gamespot all made reasonable offers, but something was always lacking. We wanted our successor to continue the heritage of Trickster and this proved too much to many potential sponsors. Many offers would have meant selling the soul of the blog to faceless corporate game industry – running ads as fake reviews and praising new hit games for money just wasn't our way. We bravely decided to keep the integrity of the blog intact, rather than accept such terms.

Some suitors were really persistent. Adventure Gamers wanted to buy us off, just because our blog was taking away so much traffic from them. A guy called Bill bragged on and on about his multibillion corporation and kept telling us how the blog should concentrate on nothing but X-Box games. We were getting desperate, but then it clicked.

At first we thought that all the e-mails from Shaikh Haroun el Serenia from the small caliphate of Vrangor and a CEO of Trusted Arabian Gasoline Corp. (see, it rhymes with TAG!) were just very bad spam. After some actual transactions on our bank accounts we realised that the ridiculous name was just an alias of a benevolent and enlightened ruler of a Middle-Eastern country who wanted to remain anonymous, because adventure gaming is not really allowed in Quran.

No, it's not this guy.
This guy is dead, as far as we know.

We are not saying it's this guy.
We are also not denying it.

In retrospect, there was nothing amazing in all this, since TAG has a history of attracting wealthy sponsors from rich oil countries. Shaikh, as we are going to continue call him, is a dedicated fan of classic adventure games and has expressed his deepest wish to provide fully paid employees from his personal staff to keep the blog going on to distant future. The originator of the blog, Trickster, and the two co-admins, Ilmari and TBD, have been rewarded generously and will be shortly living in pleasant surroundings on a tropical island.

The admin will soon be spending their time here

What's the catch, you ask? There isn't any! The staff of Shaikh are eager to provide us with all sort of extra information on oil prizes and all new ways of using up gasoline, and especially interesting and reassuring tidbits about how the oil industry is not polluting the world.

We will have occasional articles of this sort on the blog

But rest assured, we haven't forgotten the games! A new exciting feature of TAG will be the ”Missed Arabics”, which will go through the history of the Arabic adventure game. Just think of all the oriental mystery! We will get to see such less-known gems like Al-Farabi: Mulla Sadra (translates roughly into Date Quest: The Mission for the Succulent Fruit), Ibn Gabirol (The Secret of the Camel Oasis) and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (Above a Sand Dune).

 

Just look at this picture from Date Quest!
Aren't you just dying to read more about it?

We will give 20 CAPs to the one getting best score on Secret of the Camel Oasis

Above a Sand Dune has plenty of cool minigames

Fans of Quest for the Glory -series will delight to find out that the blog will host a semiannual playthrough of the second game in the series. Also, you will see nothing else, but games with similar intriguing themes, like Prince of Persia (I know it's a bit stretch to call it adventure game, but we must obey the man who pays for the whole thing).

During the transition period, the Shaikh has hired a well-known commenter of the blog to deal with all the concerns and worries of regular readers.

The temporary assistant manager of the blog was rather enthusiastic to get the job

So, big changes are ahead of us! Oh yeah, you should probably all start to learn Arabic, because that will be the new language of the blog. But don't worry, I hear it's real easy!

Just start here!