Space Quest IV: Part 2: Babes, Burger Time and Back to the Future

Last time, on Space Quest IV...

So we've arrived in the past. Well, it's the future to Roger, but the past compared to where we were and oh no I've gone cross-eyed. Best not to worry about that too much and instead lets just get on with the game. We've arrived on a desolate looking planet, but thankfully it seems free of both cyborgs and other futuristic dangers so lets go and take a look around.

A brief wander leads to us meeting some local wildlife, and this avian fellow has brought us home, presumably to meet the family. How nice. The other guest, a Sequel Policeman (officer?), fared less well and has been impaled on a stray branch. A quick search of the dead (?) police officer gets us a piece of paper with some gum in it. These cyborgs don't seem to have the capacity to chew gum, so where did he get this from? Either way, it contains half a time code so we'll keep it next to that dangerous ooze for later.

Space Quest IV: Roger Wilco and the Time Rippers (1991)

Here is a game for which I have a lot of fondness for, a classic Sierra adventure game and one of my all-time favourites. It's a wonderful blend of comedy and science-fiction, as well as being a tale of an otherwise unremarkable person achieving great things against all the odds. Having an ordinary working slob as a hero is continued in space-comedies such as Red Dwarf and Futurama, of which I'm also a big fan!

Roger Wilco is a hero that is very easy to relate to, he's just an ordinary man who finds himself in extraordinary situations. He begins the first game as a janitor, but at the start of this game he has managed to foil Sludge Vohauls plan to destroy Xenon, escape the clutches of Sludge Vohaul's revenge, help the Two Guys from Andromeda and salvage a half-decent space-worthy ship. Now he finds himself at a seedy bar, taking a rest on his way back home, and regaling the locals with tales of his impressive feats.

Xenonauts: I Want To Believe

Previously on this blog, I've written at length about my feelings towards UFO: Enemy Unknown (also known as X-COM: UFO Defense). It's a great game, that should have spawned more sequels and imitators than it did. Of those that have been made, Xenonauts is perhaps the purest of those successors.

It's entire reason for existing is due to the love for that original game, truly a game made by fans for the fans, and it certainly shows. It doesn't blindly recreate, nor wildly re-imagine it's ancestor, but rather seeks to create something very similar and yet with a myriad of improvements and refinements.

Cyberpunk: Shadowrun Returns

This past weekend I finally got around to playing one of my oldest Kickstarter-backed games, the cyberpunk RPG Shadowrun Returns. Based on the pen-and-paper RPG series Shadowrun, the game was full of promise from the start and definitely delivered on that. It presents you with a futuristic RPG setting, which also contains a plethora of fantasy elements. I'll let the game's website describe it in more detail:

The year is 2054. Magic has returned to the world, awakening powerful creatures of myth and legend. Technology merges with flesh and consciousness. Elves, trolls, orks and dwarves walk among us, while ruthless corporations bleed the world dry. You are a shadowrunner – a mercenary living on the fringes of society, in the shadows of massive corporate arcologies, surviving day-by-day on skill and instinct alone. When the powerful or the desperate need a job done, you get it done… by any means necessary.

Adventure Gaming: King's Quest V

King's Quest V was a landmark game, a big step forward for the series. While the previous game had been 16-colours and a text parser interface, Sierra really pushed the boat out with this one. The new 256-colour VGA graphics allowed them to create wonderfully detailed scenes, and the CD-ROM version gave them the space to use full voice-acting.

Your lovely home, soon to be miniaturised and put in a glass bottle by an evil wizard. Typical day in the life of a King!

Indie Gaming: Torchlight 2

Starting Torchlight 2 was a strange experience for me. I had tried the first game in the series some time ago, but had bounced right off it almost immediately. The style and tone of the game seemed to lean towards light-hearted humour rather than the diablo-like grimdark I was expecting.

The second game was not that much different, only this time the plot assumed some amount of previous experience with the series. Even now, I don't really have much appreciation for the world or it's oddly named residents, as it is a little light on in-game explanations.

Civilization V: A Few More Turns...

So I recently bought a lovely new laptop, one that can play most relatively modern games (nothing too fancy, but so long as I don't push the detail levels too high everything is fine!). The first thing to do when playing around on a new computer is to install a few games and check out how well everything runs on the new hardware, so I installed and played a few games that are part of my backlog.

Then I hit Civilization V.

I'd bought the game a long while ago, in some steam sale or other, and had been buying the DLC when it got really cheap. I knew my old laptop would struggle with it, but this new one should easily cope. Over 1000 turns later, I think the testing phase has long finished!