Why did I ever like this game as a kid? Was I fascinated by the cartoony hand drawn graphics? Maybe it was that the game had fooled me into thinking it was more than just a series of poorly thrown together cliched plot devices and annoying, obscure puzzle solutions that extend the gameplay 10 years longer than it should have gone on.
Smell that, Roger? No, it's not your shit-stained underpants, it's this awful game.
One of the main puzzles of the game that I got stuck on as a kid was this Datacorder shit. You had to alter the circuitboard of some handheld device to turn it into a homing beacon so your friends could save you. The entire "puzzle" was just a copy protection mechanism, and since I was playing a borrowed copy from a stupid neighbor who had lost his game manual, I was shit out of luck until years later when I got the internet.
I get FAT crits in World of Warcraft.
A couple of years after I originally had played the game, I got the internet at my house. I downloaded the copy protection codes for the homing beacon puzzle and played through the remainder. The rest of the game was still somehow enthralling to me, despite it being both short and poorly done. See, as a kid I had never played any of the other Space Quest games, just 6. I had no clue about all the backstory, or what roger had done in the last game to get in such deep trouble at the start of this one (See: naked Wilco being stripped of rank at the top). I guess that not having played the other games was actually a benefit when I was younger, because I had assumed there was this huge, cohesive plot that I was jumping into the middle of (or end of, rather, as this was thankfully the last game in this series).
Crackdown: Good graphics dude.
The plot in Space Quest 6 is its own complete microcosm of garbage. You don't need to have played any of the previous games to accomplish anything, and having played them adds nothing to the experience, as no regard whatsoever is given to your exploits in the previous games save for the intro, one cameo, and some ham-fisted attempts at nostalgia throughout (mainly in the form of clickable objects that offer up a sentence or two of unfunny dialogue).
Doug is embarassed that he played Space Quest 6, and you should be too, idiot.
The entire premise of the plot is pretty much bogus as all hell. The story is after Wilco gets back from saving the universe in Space Quest 5 (and doing a damn good job of it, too. I'd know, I beat that piece of shit as well) he gets chewed out by his superiors and stripped of all his ranks in a formal ceremony where homosexual men talk to him and take his clothes off. Wilco is re-instated as the ship's Janitor Second Class, but as soon as the game starts you're sent on leave to some planet you've never heard of with an unfunny name (Polysorbate XL). It ends up being this really bad plot about a generic villain taking over some woman's body to extend her life. I think the game would have been more fun if you were actually allowed to do janitorial things instead of the bullshit puzzles they throw at you. There's nothing horribly unfair in terms of pixel-hunting for the puzzles, but the solutions are so goddamn obscure that nobody in their right mind would ever be able to rationally or logically solve the shit they throw at you. Then for every part that's way too hard, there's a huge bulk of puzzles that are instantly solved. Basically anyone with a functioning brain can play the last two thirds of the game on a speed walkthrough, because none of the puzzles are even a challenge. The hardest part was finding the copy protection for the fucking Datacorder.
Howie Long should play Duke Nukem if they ever decide to make a movie for Space Quest. Then Duke Nukem could come out and shoot Roger Wilco in the face with a shotgun and say, "DAMN, YOU'RE UGLY." Then it could be about Duke Nukem.
I don't know what it is about the Space Quest series, but the narrator is always treating you like a complete fuck-up. If I wanted to be treated like a fuck-up, I'd have become a computer programmer and worked for Sierra. Every move you make is constantly getting you cracker-jack dialogue and criticism slung your way from that overbearing asshole. I play games to feel like a cool hero, not a fucking loser who can't accomplish a damn thing. Another thing that bothers me in the Space Quest series is how many ways you can die. I swear they make these games for sadomasochists.
This is not from Space Quest, it's from Clash at Demonhead.
The worst part about the entire game is the ending. After literal years of struggle with it, the game rewards me with the ultimate punch in the dick: a completely unconclusive ending that quits you to the cold, harsh reality of the Dos prompt after the credits roll. I honestly felt raped. As I sat there looking at the exit message ("Roger Wilco has left the computer!" The same fucking one when you quit normally, might I add) it really started to sink in how much of my life this game had robbed from me. I felt violated and cheated.
I wish Space Quest at least had a sex scene at the end, even if it was about eating poop.
I never really had realized what a thrown-together, low budget piece of trash the game was back when I was a youngster. All those hi-fi cartoon graphicals and real CD audio voice acting must have won me over somehow. My advice is to avoid this game at all costs and only play Quest for Glory. Quest for Glory is awesome, and it's the only good adventure game series to come out of Sierra. Anyone who tells you otherwise likes to prance around as mincing losers who are too worthless to attack anything, or are sadomasochists who enjoy being berated and killed in stupid and numerous ways.
GOOD graphics. Not bad ones, like Space Quest 6 has.
This is Roger Wilco, signing off! Roger Wilco has left the computer!
