King's Quest VII


Title		King's Quest VII
Game Type	Adventure
Players		1
Compatibility	All
HD Installable	Yes
Submission	Marc Buhmann Courtesy of Sean Caszatt

Review
The company Sierra has been out of the Amiga industry since mid 1992.
Their last game was a game based on Robin Hood (the name escapes me at
this time). When that game was released, Sierra's last words to the Amiga
community was that the Amiga was a poor computer and that the games they
were going to release would not work on the Amiga. With that they left the
Amiga platform for the other "advanced" computers.

Though Sierra hasn't really entered the Amiga platform again, they have
given the rights to Revolution Software to do a port. In case you don't
know, Revolution Software was the company that released "Beneath A Steel
Sky", one of my personal favorites. I have no doubts that this game will
be a hit also.

One thing I dislike is Sierra takes all credit for the game "King's Quest
VI". No where on the box or in the manual is Revolution Software
mentioned. I just feel this is a bit unfair and that RS should receive
some credit.

Now on to the actual game. Installing to a hard disk is not a quick
procedure. So be ready to do something while the program installs. It
doesn't take as long as "BASS", but that's because it only has 10 disks
compared to "BASS"'s 15 disks. It takes an estimated 1 hour and 15 minutes
to install. Remember that this was installing with a 68000 processor, it
might be sped up if you have a faster processor.

Though the graphics are nice, they don't attract me to them like some
other games. RS did a good job at changing the graphics from 256 colors to
the ECS 32 colors. They are nice, but not real great. The animation is
choppy at some points, but MUCH faster than "King's Quest V" was. This,
I'm sure, is also due to the fact I only have a 68000 processor. My guess
would be 68020 would be good, but 68030 would be the best. I don't know
how fast the game will be with a 68040 and I can't even imagine what a
68060 will do.

The inventory pictures are another thing entirely. They are all in a
tannish color. Some of the pictures don't look anything like what they're
supposed to be. They could have spiced this up a bit.

The music is nice. But it seems that there is only one piece of music. No
matter where you go, the music is the same. To bad you can't shut it off
some how.

The puzzles are complex, but very logical. The usual Sierra game. You
can't pick up a weapon, like a sword, but you can pick up a tooth pick.
For the most part, the puzzles will take a little thinking to figure out.

LIKES AND DISLIKES

I like the fact that a game company like Sierra who said they'd never
produce a game for the Amiga again finally realized the Amiga IS capable
of playing their games. It's also a nice fact that Sierra realized that
they don't know how to program for the Amiga so they got a company who
DOES know to port "KQ6" for them. They may be becoming brighter. Any other
"likes"? No. Everything about the game is just plain average. Music isn't
special, graphics aren't special, game plot isn't special, etc...

Dislikes are another story completely. There is no way to exit the game
when you're done, so you have to reboot. I don't like how long the game
takes to install on a hard disk. When you die in the game, you to go
through the entire opening sequence from when you wash ashore. Not all the
bugs have been taken out of the game (e.g. once I walked into the library
to find the librarian was missing half his body. Another example is when I
wanted to talk to a book worm, I had to talk to him from a stack of books
behind him) A final thing I dislike is that the Amiga version has a few
things removed from the original IBM version. I called Sierra to find out
what they removed, but they didn't know (duh!).




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