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Every adventure games fan has heard of the
Space Quest series by Sierra On-Line. Every self-respecting gamer
has played at least one of its six parts. And every hardcore
adventurer has not only finished all Space Quest titles, but was
also monitoring the Space Quest community, played a fan-based game
called Space Quest: The Lost
Chapter and was intrigued when Space Quest 0: Replicated
was released.
Revind back to 1984. Sierra On-Line published a game called
King's Quest. It was a revolutionary adventure game, in several
aspects. First of all, it offered an interactive 3D environment. You
could walk not only to the left and right, but also up and down,
hide behind items or be blocked by them. Second, it was one of the
first graphic adventures. Ever since the original Zork games,
Infocom was ruling adventure gaming. In order to make their titles
unique, other developers, most notably Telarium, introduced
graphics, even though they kept Infocom's text-based interface.
These games offered a static picture, and you had to move around by
typing in commands. Sierra has pushed the envelope a little further.
It created the AGI (Adventure Game Interpreter) engine, which
allowed the gamer to move his character across the screen by using
the cursor keys. There was still place for text commands, though.
The gamer needed to type in all actions, such as "take stick" or
"use bomb".
In 1987, Sierra released an onslaught of games based on this engine.
In addition to the King's Quest series, three new ones were
introduced: Police Quest, Space Quest and Leisure
Suit Larry. The engine was retired in 1989, after Manhunter:
San Francisco was published. Altogether, AGI spawned sixteen
games. It was replaced by the SCI engine, which still used word
commands, but also featured mouse support. The first published SCI
game was Leisure Suit Larry 2 in 1988.
The AGI engine didn't die,
though. Fan-based hack utilities, and later whole compilers were
released for numerous platforms, and the AGI development community
has been thriving ever since. Various teams started new projects,
and a few undertook the task of creating unofficial sequels and
prequels to existing games. However, the old series contained some
of the best-written games ever, and matching them would be an almost
impossible task. Especially Space Quest was full of gentle
humor and parody, which made it the most popular of all the quest
series (with the exception of Quest for Glory, thanks to
strong role-playing features, such as character development and
fighting). I am pleased to announce that my worries proved
unfounded. A small team of fans led by Jeff Stewart has created a
Space Quest game that easily matches the official titles in
gameplay, sound and graphics. While a little shorter than the
official games, Space Quest 0: Replicated is a must-play for
every serious adventure gamer.
Gameplay
The game thrusts you into the role of Roger Wilco, a janitor on a
space station. When you wake up from a nap, you find that someone
has killed everybody on the station and destroyed the laboratory
where scientists were growing clones. As the story progresses,
you'll find out about an immense clone army that a mad scientist,
Vohaul, is preparing to unleash on the unsuspecting people. It's up
to you to save yourself and the universe as we know it.
The game takes full advantage of the AGI engine. This means that a
text parser is used for your commands, and there is no mouse
support. Unlike The Lost Chapter, however, this game does a
much better job with the parser. While there are a few instances
when you need to use a specific word, the parser recognizes a number
of synonyms, making it even less frustrating to use than the one in
the first official Space Quest game. To make life easier for
the gamer, every room also offers a detailed description of all
important items, so that you have no problems naming them. I still
remember a number of puzzles in the official games that I found
impossibly hard, because they involved various objects that I could
not recognize due to the low graphic resolution. This was not the
case here, though.
The puzzles are of a much better grade than those found in the first
two Space Quest games. Most of them are logical, and you'll
have enough information to solve all of them when the time comes.
Unlike early Sierra games, you'll be even required to combine items
in your inventory, which allowed the designer to use a larger
variety of puzzles. The game is also much more tightly written than
Sierra's games, and it is nearly impossible to get into a dead end
because you didn't pick up a certain item twelve screens ago.
However, Replicated also suffers from the one thing I hated
in the official games - instant death. I lost the count of how many
times I fell into holes, got impaled by spikes, poisoned by plants
or simply shot in this game. Usually, you don't get any warning
until it's too late. This got very frustrating, as I was forced save
the game every minute, and in the case of an untimely demise of my
main character, I had to wait for the final death screen, then type
in "Restore game" and then select the proper saved file.
The other problem with gameplay is its length. It is considerably
shorter than the official games. Where I spent over a week of gaming
to solve Space Quest I, it took me only two long afternoons
to finish this title. To make matters a little worse, the humor is
not up to par with the official series. The writer of this game was
trying very hard, and managed to make it very funny at the
beginning, but over time the jokes became simple easter eggs, and
after a dozen of instances of seeing an item from the Star Trek or
Star Wars series, even those got tiresome.
Gameplay - 7
The game makes a great job of evoking the feel of the old series. In
some cases, it improves on its original. The puzzles are much more
logical, and you get just enough hints to solve them. The interface
is as good as it gets. The story is almost flawless, and is
perfectly integrated into the Space Quest continuum. However, the
game is little on the short side, and replicates my main complaint
about early Sierra games: dying here is far too easy. On a personal
note, I was not fully satisfied with the main character, either. I
remember Roger Wilco to be the biggest coward in the universe who
solved all problems only by accident, while trying to run away from
danger. Here, he is not only pro-active; he even has a few heroic
moments. He is not the guy I would identify with.
Graphics - n/a
While the game is a graphical adventure, I can't use the same rating
system I use for modern games. Replicated offers 16-color
graphics and a 320x200 resolution. The graphics are perfect at what
they are supposed to do - portraying a prequel to the Space Quest
series. To do so, the designers were forced to use rather primitive
graphics, which are no match for later Sierra AGI games, such as the
Manhunter series. For the sake of consistency and nostalgia,
however, I am glad these old-fashioned graphics were used.
Sound - n/a
As with the graphics, I cannot rate the sound, either. There are a
few catchy tunes and extra sounds, but they all emulate the original
PC speaker quality. They are consistent with the early official
titles. I enjoyed the sound very much, but it can't be compared with
new games.
Replay value - 8
Let me start by saying that the game is free. As such, the initial
value is very high. If you are an experienced adventure gamer, you
get around 10 hours of entertainment; if you are relatively new to
adventures, you get even more out of it. In the tradition of Sierra
adventures, the game also offers points for various actions. While
the maximum count appears to be 101 points, some players have
reported scoring up to 106 points. I finished the first game with 86
points, and went right back to try to get the full count. This is a
great incentive for replaying the game, so be prepared to spend up
to a week with a title.
Overall - 7.5
Space Quest 0: Replicated is one of the most pleasant game
surprises of the summer. While many big-name games fail miserably,
this small (less than 800kB) title does a great job copying the
gameplay, graphics and sound of old Sierra adventures. It is very
well written, and tighter controlled than many retail games. You
can't beat its price, either. Every adventure gamer should go and
download it right now, not only for nostalgic reasons. The game can
be found here.
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