Kings Quest VII
            (Animated graphic adventure for PC)

                    Review by Phil Darke

I have long been a fan of Sierra's Kings Quest series ever since I
played the original Kings Quest on my ST. All the games in the
series have had good graphics, sound, an excellent story line and
generally speaking have been extremely user friendly.  KQ7 is no
exception. The graphics, animation and sound, I found to be
flawless and although I only played it for about an hour I
thoroughly enjoyed playing it. One rather novel idea which I liked
was that inventory items when examined by clicking them on the eye
icon appear in 3D and can be manipulated or by clicking on them
with the right mouse button can be rotated and for certain items
it is essential to the game that you do this.

Having said this there are a number of things which I did not like
about the game, although to be fair some of this is probably more
due to my unfamiliarity with the interface. First this is a
Windows only game and can not be played from DOS. Second, when you
choose to play you are asked to name your game. This name is the
name which will be given to your saved game. When you quit your
game is automatically saved using the name you have given. You can
not quit without saving and since there is no save game option, or
none that I could find, it is not possible to save before a
potentially dangerous situation nor to backtrack to an earlier
position if you make a mistake. If you do get killed you are given
the opportunity to retry as many times as you wish.

Also the only way, as far as I could tell, to restore a saved game
is by re-starting the game and selecting the "Continue Old Game"
option.  I later discovered that it is possible to exit without
saving by selecting CLOSE from the pull down menu which appears
when you click the button in the top left hand corner of the
screen.  However this is a function of Windows rather than a game
option and in my opinion a rather clumsy way of doing it.  Thirdly
the game uses a single cursor which selects the appropriate
function for you, which is fine as long as you know what you are
expecting, but does not allow you, as with earlier Sierra games,
to try actions which are not necessarily logical but which you
could try anyway, such as talking to inanimate objects or handling
objects which do not respond.

Fourthly all of the other games in the series came with a well
written and quite comprehensive game manual, which, in addition to
the usual installation instructions, explanation of the controls
and troubleshooting guide, contained a background story to the
game and generally gave a fair idea of the game objectives. Some
even contained a walkthrough of the first few screens just to get
you started. Kings Quest 7, however arrived in a normal size game
box which contained the CD in a plastic sleeve, a Sierra catalogue
and registration card and a small booklet of the kind that fits
into the lid of a normal CD case (although no case was supplied)
of which only the first 5 pages were written in English and gave
installation instructions, an explanation of the cursor and
controls, customer service information and one paragraph entitled
"Game Strategy" which contained nothing which even the most
inexperienced adventurer could not have figured out for
themselves.

The only clues as to the story were given in the intro. This being
in a nutshell; Rosella and her mother Vallanice standing by a pool
and discussing possible suitors for Rosella who falls into the
pool and gets dragged away. Vallanice in an attempt to rescue her
also gets dragged under and ends up in the desert.  The game takes
place over six chapters and it seems that you can play them in any
order although I would think that they should be played in a
logical order since, for example, the solution to a problem at the
start of chapter three requires an item obtained in chapter one.

Despite all the things I did not like I feel sure that I shall
enjoy playing KQ7 and no doubt when I get used to the new
interface will probably wonder how I ever managed with the old
one.

Watch this space for a solution, soon hopefully.


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