The Right to Drool - King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow
King’s Quest! A series that lasted thirty years, inspired
countless adventure games and is still quoted today! It’s time to look
back through history, right up until the present, and see just why this
series deserves its place in history. This week: it’s off to The Land of the Green Isles to make friends with a talking tomato in King’s Quest VI: Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow!
Can we take a moment to talk about the titles of the King’s Quest games? This one is called Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow. King’s Quest V was Absence Makes The Heart Go Yonder. It’s a giant train ride of puns, this series. You only have to read the title to know exactly what you’re in for. A bunch of in-your-face wordplay that you have to laugh at, almost in spite of yourself. It’s just kind of… happy. There’s dark humour in the deaths, of course, but it’s packed with so much silly humour that the deaths take a back seat in the end. Apart from that scream in King’s Quest V.
King’s Quest VI has pushed the silliness to maximum levels. If Sierra had a knob labelled ‘Silly’, it would’ve snapped off by this point. Don’t get me wrong, King’s Quest V was silly, I mean it had a talking owl in a vest for crying out loud, but King’s Quest VI completely detaches itself from reality. It’s a world of drunken genies, sentient chess pieces, angry pieces of wood and, lest we forget, the underworld. Its magic is in seeing where it can take you next. The world feels bigger than before but with far fewer useless screens, so the adventure is kept nice and tight. The downsides? Well the twin annoyances of copy protection and climbing sections make a reappearance and some new irritations have begun to creep in due to limitations.
deepintheshadyglen