Started and finished Police Quest II: Vengeance this evening. This amuses me, because I vividly remember back in the day when Sierra adventures would take us weeks or even months to complete — in some cases we never even beat them at all!

On top of that, I remember vividly buying a copy of Full Throttle, playing it through with my brother over the course of a weekend and being a little peeved that we beat it in about a day and a half. For some reason, that game felt "shorter" than those classic Sierra games — even though practically speaking it wasn't; I think it was just easier.

Anyway, I'm not someone to whinge about game length — I actually quite like having short-form palate-cleansers now and then, particularly when I have other, substantial things on the go — so I'm not annoyed or anything, but I am glad I finally took the time to play through Police Quest II, which a lot of people seem to think is the best installment in the series.

I certainly enjoyed it a lot and I can see where that opinion comes from, but I'm undecided as yet. I enjoyed the expanded dialogue and narration of the Police Quest 1 VGA remake a great deal — though I understand even that is a bit divisive to some fans — and felt like Police Quest II was missing a certain amount of characterisation for Sonny in comparison, but such was the nature of games from that era; every little bit of text counted!

Obviously the VGA graphics of PQ1 Remake are "nicer", but I was actually impressed how well Police Quest II's EGA visuals hold up. Police Quest II was among the first of Sierra's games to use their newer SCI engine, so it has much less "chunky" visuals than early Sierra titles. And even with the radioactive skin tones of the EGA colour palette, Police Quest II still looks pretty good, with an impressive amount of detail packed into each scene, and some nice sprite animation.

Anyway, I have more to say, but I'll likely save it for a Retrounite post next week, since I wrote about PQ1VGA today. For now, I'm going to go sit in bed, watch VTubers and play Mega-Lo-Mania. Have a pleasant weekend!

Finished Police Quest this evening. Really enjoyed that! Can't believe I'd been too intimidated to play it for more than 30 years; the "police procedure" stuff wasn't as much of a big deal as I'd made it out to be in my mind. In fact, I suspect it was primarily in there as a means of copy protection, in the same way that King's Quest III required you to exhaustively type out steps in a recipe when casting spells.

As an adventure game, it was actually rather straightforward; rather than having obtuse "adventure game puzzles", everything made perfect sense, and if you do find yourself confused on procedure at any point, there are plenty of opportunities for the game to remind you of what you should do. Even when you encounter the typical Sierra frequent death scenes, they provide sufficient clues to help you avoid further mistakes; in many ways, it's actually one of the friendliest Sierra games I think I've ever played.

I was playing the VGA remake, by the way; I am curious to give the EGA version a go sometime and see if it has the same level of charm, wit and characterisation of the VGA version, but I suspect the parser-driven interface may make some of the procedural elements a little trickier. I understand the driving sequences in the EGA original kind of suck, too.

Anyway, I'm definitely going to explore the other games in the series. I remember reading a review of the Atari ST version of Police Quest II back in the day and thinking it looked thoroughly intriguing, so I'm looking forward to giving that a shot; I suspect it will be a bit of an adjustment to go back to a parser-driven interface, but it does at least make use of the later-era "nice" EGA graphics rather than the weird double-width pixels Sierra games used in the early days.

It's strange what happened to Police Quest in the long term. After three games with a coherent, ongoing narrative, the fourth game completely ditched everything it had built up in favour of a realistic LA setting — and from there it ceased to be an adventure game altogether, gradually turning into a strategy game and then a tactical shooter. Original series creative lead (and ex-cop) Jim Walls has supposedly attempted to create a "spiritual successor" on a few occasions, but we're yet to see this realised.

Anyway. I'm definitely intrigued by what I've played so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing if the fourth one feels like it has any connection whatsoever to the first three — I suspect not. For now, though, I definitely don't regret my time with the VGA remake of the first one!

After my frustrations over adventure game classification yesterday — which, as promised, culminated in a full article today — I decided to boot up on that it occurred to me I'd never actually tried before: Police Quest from Sierra.

To be perfectly honest, I'd always been a bit daunted by horror stories of this one: the need to follow strict police procedure, its unforgiving nature, its terrible driving sequences. But I noticed that the GOG.com version incorporated its VGA remake as well as the chunky EGA original; the newer version makes a significant amount of the game a lot more palatable, stripping out some of the more obnoxious elements and making it significantly more intuitive to play. Even the driving doesn't suck… as much.

Anyway, I'm now here wishing I'd given this one a go sooner, because I've always had a soft spot for police procedurals, investigative stories and thrillers, and Police Quest is packed with a whole lot more personality and humour than I'd been led to believe over the years. I guess this is just another example of a lesson I've re-learned many times in recent years: if something sounds interesting, then you may as well give it a go rather than relying on hearsay.

Anyway. I estimate I'm probably about halfway through Police Quest so far and have solved the majority of it by myself so far. I did check a walkthrough at one point just to see if I was missing something important, but other than that I have successfully seen Officer Sonny Bonds through a couple of shifts on the traffic beat, and he's now temporarily been reassigned to the Narcotics division to help chase down "The Death Angel".

Looking forward to seeing what comes next, but DOSBOX crashed not long after I saved (thankfully) and then I needed a poo, so I took that a sign I should probably leave it for tonight. I'm definitely into it, though, so I'll likely try and see it through over the next few days!

And yeah; if you've been putting off trying Police Quest for yourself for whatever, reason, give the VGA version a go. You'll be pleasantly surprised, I feel. Just don't forget to read 'em their Miranda rights.

Foot not doing too well today — I know you're all here for the feet content, that's what all the cool girls on the Internet seem to be doing these days anyway — but I'm hanging in there. It's getting a bit frustrating now; there's an annoying sort of "tight" feeling in it that makes it difficult to move, but as with the last time I went through an injury like this, popping regular Ibuprofens is helping a bit.

With that in mind, not a ton of exciting things to report right now, I'm afraid. Andie pointed out that I haven't left the house for over a week and I'm kind of fine with that. No point going outside if I can't walk up or down stairs without a lot of pain, after all; here's hoping I mend within the next week or so. I forget how long it took me to recover last time, but I was also 20 years younger, so… well, there's that.

I did finish the first "half" of Atelier Firis earlier, though, which is something! That means no more time limit for the rest of the game, which is exciting. It turns out that the time limit wasn't really an issue anyway — I had about 150 days to spare — but it's nice to feel that I  can now fully explore the game world, mechanics and quests with no pressure at all. Quite a good reward for proving myself in that first bit, I'd say — though I'm sure some would disagree.

I'm in the mood for a new (to me) point and click adventure, but am finding myself frustrated by how today's digital storefronts have no idea what "adventure game" means. I think there's a fun article in this, so I might post something along those lines over on Retrounite tomorrow.

For now I'm going to watch Hololive and play Lynx games in bed. Have a lovely evening!

Well, yes, today was a bank holiday and I got a few things done. Was hoping to record some more stuff to get ahead of schedule on things, but absolutely did not have the energy after the other stuff I decided to get done today, so I'll take care of all that another time.

Of particular note today is something some of you may find helpful: my How to Play Mega-Lo-Mania guide over on Retrounite. If you find this game a bit tricky to get your head round, take a look at this and you might find things a little bit clearer — it can be daunting at first but it's really not as scary as it seems!

I must actually spend some proper time with Mega-Lo-Mania, actually; I do love it as a game but inevitably spend all my time replaying the first couple of levels rather than actually making any progress! The fact that the Evercade version has the ability to save will make progressing a bit more practical than relying on passwords.

Tomorrow it's pack to the usual grindstone. Retrounite will have a feature on 10 of the best retro combat flight sims, so please look forward to that, and Rice… I'm not sure yet. We take things a day at a time! Probably time we looked at another Chilla's Art game, especially now Tormented Souls is out; people should be in the mood for some more horror!

Anyway, I'm off to pop some painkillers and hit the sack. Hope you all had a good weekend (long or otherwise) and that Monday was bearable if you had to do the work thing.

Apparently it's a bank holiday tomorrow — likely still going to get some stuff done for both Rice and Retrounite as it's nice to put stuff up for people to read even on a holiday, but will be taking the opportunity to get caught up on a few things, too. Might record some more stuff and will definitely play some Atelier Firis — made some substantial progress on that over the weekend.

Got some fun videos coming up, including a few requests I've had in the comments. People seem to be "engaging" (ugh) a lot more with my videos of late, which is nice, particularly when they have meaningful things to say. I have a couple of crypto weirdoes sniffing around trying to find out about Atari Token, but I've just ignored them for the moment. Anything crypto-related can choke on a fat one so far as I'm concerned.

This coming week's Retro Select will be the Quake remaster, but rather than playing Vanilla Quake I took some time to delve into Scourge of Armagon, the first official expansion pack. It's hard! But it's really, really good. I owned a copy of this back in the day, but never really played it all that much. Now I've blasted through all of base Quake (which I'm not 100% convinced I ever did back in the day, either) I'm enjoying investigating these new expansions. Particularly intrigued by the two which have been developed by MachineGames, so may well return to Quake for another video at some point.

Aside from that, not much to note today, really. Foot still hurts. Cats still cute. Living room still needs hoovering. Time for bed, said Zebedee. Boing!

Been struggling a bit for a few days. The pain from my foot has been getting to me a bit, and it's either been triggering some fairly monstrous anxiety, or some monstrous anxiety just happens to have struck at the same time my body is suffering. Either way, it's been a pretty bad time.

I have spent the majority of today distracting myself with Atelier Firis, which I've made some good progress on today. As I noted the other day, I won't be writing about it this weekend, but I'll definitely have some more things to say come next weekend.

Played through Tormented Souls in the week to write about over on Rice — that's a fabulous classic-style survival horror that everyone who enjoys old-school Resident Evil and Silent Hill should absolutely, definitely play. Here's my writeup: https://ricedigital.co.uk/tormented-souls-classic-ps2-era-horror/

And a walkthrough for those who aren't used to actual puzzles! https://ricedigital.co.uk/tormented-souls-walkthrough-and-faq/

Having fun with the Secret Thing I'm Not Allowed To Talk About At the Moment. Got some projects relating to that coming up soon, too, so looking forward to those. You'll be seeing the first fruits of those labours around November time. What could they be?!

It's been nice to have a day that is mostly relaxation (random stress attacks aside) so tomorrow I'm going to be productive and get some videos done. For now, I think it's a good time to hit the sack and enjoy Calli teaching Haachama a selection of "bad words".

Hello! Quick update: there probably won't be an Atelier MegaFeature entry this week, as I've had my hands full with Tormented Souls for review and walkthrough writing, along with a bunch of other stuff. As such, I've had pretty much zero time to spend with Atelier, and I don't want to just waffle something out for the sake of it, so better to delay the next installment by a week or so.

Apologies that this is taking a bit longer than anticipated, but I'm determined to get it done and do it right — it's just proving quite challenging to do so alongside work commitments. I like my job, y'see, so it makes me want to do well at it — unfortunately that sometimes doesn't leave so much time for personal projects, however passionately we feel about them!

It will be completed, though. I've come too far to stop now — plus I'm enjoying Atelier Firis a lot. I just need a bit more time to actually get a bit further — so I'll be making sure I prioritise it in my free time for the next week (and onwards!)

Also my ankle has turned purple. Guess I did sprain it after all. Dammit. Oh well. Here's hoping it heals soon.

Feeling a little better today. Still not great — I'm in an annoying situation where putting any weight on my right leg causes my ankle to hurt, and bending my left leg at all causes the graze on my knee to be quite painful — but I think I'm mending. Hopefully it won't be too long before I'm properly back on my feet again; I do not like it being painful to do things like get out of bed or walk down stairs.

Still, as I've said, at least I don't need to be up and about too much right now. Writing by day, gaming by night. (Technically, the game playing this evening was "work", but I was going to play it anyway, so I don't mind.) With any luck I'll be back in the gym by the time next week rolls around, but we'll see — I don't want to get better only to fuck myself up again.

Getting into the new Hololive gals. Kronii is probably my favourite so far, but I watched Mumei play Journey for a couple of hours last night, and she is absolutely charming. Softly spoken, gentle, says things like "shoot" and "oh dear" instead of "shit" and "fuck", has a cute little whistle between her teeth that she makes any time she says an "s" syllable and is obviously quite intelligent. And forgetful. That aspect of her "character" doesn't appear to be something written for her; it wasn't at all uncommon for her to start talking about something, forget what she was saying halfway through and then return to it like an hour later.

Sana has some nicely infectious energy, Fauna is gentle in a different way to Mumei, and Baelz… well, I can see her being another Gura if she plays her cards right. She's a natural performer and entertainer, and I can't wait to see what she gets up to.

Exciting times for sure! But for now, I must a-bed, because it is 1:50am and I was going to get an early night tonight. Whoops. Oh well.

Still in a fair amount of pain, but on the mend. Foot has swollen up a bit but hasn't gone purple, so I don't think I've sprained it, at least I hope I haven't. I've only sprained my ankle once — back in my early days at university — but it was an exceedingly unpleasant experience I'm not particularly keen to repeat.

Thankfully, I haven't needed to move around too much today to get some work done. Presently playing through Tormented Souls to review on Friday, all being well — it's very good, you know. If you enjoy classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill, you'll definitely get a big kick out of this one. More details on Friday.

Other than that, not a ton to report other than the fact I just remembered I forgot to post Atari A to Z today, so I better do that now. There's 25 minutes until midnight before it's officially "late" 🙂