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brianirwin
Reviews
Gabriel Knight 3: Blood of the Sacred, Blood of the Damned (1999)
Entertaining plot with great Tim Curry comments
The third in the Gabriel Knight series by Sierra, this one follows suit in creating a great game. All three games have used different gaming technology(2-d animation, video clips, 3-d rendering), but the results have been great for all three.
Jane Jensen's plot places Gabriel and Gracie in France to unravel a kidnapping. The story which unfolds keeps your attention, as does Tim Curry's great voice acting. It is obvious he was given a degree of artistic freedom in creating the comments that appear when you click on seemingly innocent items. Hilarious stuff will come out when you least suspect it.
Also features the return of Detective Mosely from GK1. The downside of the game is that it can get awfully slow if you don't have the most up-to-date machine.
Wing Commander: Prophecy (1997)
Wing Commander: Disappointment
Unfortunately, the most recent of the wing commander games was one of the weakest. The two previous games (III and IV) were a great combination of predefined plot (video sequences) and user choices (how you fared in battle, and plot choices).
Prophecy was a step backward from this. Plot choices were eliminated. In fact, almost all semblance of a plot was eliminated. The plot is weak and fails to draw in the gamer. About halfway through the game, all the clips of talking with characters abruptly stop.
The battle sequences were typical. The new types of ships were great, but nothing new or revolutionary was done with the battle engine, despite the increase in memory and processor requirements. I expected more from this game and was sadly disappointed. I couldn't wait until I was finished with the game, unlike the others in the series.
King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne (1985)
King's Quest II follows in footsteps of its predecessor.
King's Quest II can basically be seen as King's Quest I revisited. It uses the same game engine almost exactly. King's Quest I was a revolution in adventure games for the computer. Most earlier games, like Zork and Adventure, were solely text-based. Early CGA graphics and basic computer sound combined to bring these characters to 2-D. The play of King's Quest II is quite simple. You are the King Graham of Daventry, and you are looking for your bride-to-be. You move the King around the screen with the arrow keys and have to manually type in commands like "pick up book" and "throw knife at dog" to make things happen. A fun game, but it shows just how far Sierra has come when you look at King's Quest V and up.
Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger (1994)
Praise showered for revolutionary video game
At the time this game came out, it was pretty cutting-edge. It combined a filmed storyline with a space simulator. It was leaps above Wing Commander 1 and 2, old VGA games. Plus it was one of the first games to take advantage of the real life video technology offered by the CD-ROM's arrival. Now-a-days it wouldn't seem so great, but back then it was phenomenal, especially for die-hard Wing Commander (WC) fans. WC 4 and Prophecy both use the basic game play setup developed in WC 3, largely due to its success. Another popular feature is the ability to choose different paths through the game, along with different difficulty levels. All around a great game.