From: Sierra
Distributor: Wolf Interactive (02) 9417 9600
List price: TBA

Whenever I talk about the King's Quest series I can't help but get slightly sentimental. In fact King's Quest III was one of the first PC games I ever played: ah those fancy EGA graphics… But it's no secret that like role-playing titles, the adventure genre has been suffering in recent years – largely due to the proliferation of 3D action and real-time strategy games. So how do Sierra reinject life into their crown jewel – the King's Quest series? By moving out of the detached, somewhat limited 2D perspective into vibrant real-time 3D. I know many old adventure game aficionados will be shaking their heads at this point and mumbling something about "selling out", but believe me when I say: Sierra made exactly the right decision!

After playing around with a beta version of King's Quest: Mask of Eternity (KQ8), I can happily report that the magic which made this series so great in years gone by, has been recaptured threefold. The game begins with a high quality animated introductory sequence, and thankfully there is no FMV – just lovely rendered graphics. It would seem that an evil magical spell has shattered the "Mask of Eternity" into five pieces, and because this artefact brought balance to the natural elements: its destruction brings chaos and death. Naturally it's up to the player to go in search of the missing mask pieces, with the ultimate goal of reuniting them and returning order and goodness to the land. I know this all sounds a little syrupy, but hey – this is a King's Quest game!

Rather than controlling a member of Daventry's royal family (like in past games of the series), you play a simple townsman named Connor. When the disaster occurred, you were lucky enough to catch hold of a piece of the mask, which prevented you from being turned to stone like everyone else. The game begins in Daventry just after the disaster has taken place. Initially the landscape is bathed in an ominous cloak of darkness, and as you wander about town you catch glimpses of evil looking creatures lurching about the countryside. Sierra have certainly made great use of sound-effects, music and visuals to create a foreboding atmosphere. Of particular note is the incredibly eerie dynamic musical score which warns you of approaching danger.

The 3D graphics of KQ8 are excellent, easily as good as any Quake II based offering. The game gives you two options for viewing the action – a standard first-person view or a Tomb Raider like third-person view. The latter is very flexible and the player can move the camera up or down, and from side to side using the mouse and shift keys. This avoids the annoying "I can't see what the hell I'm fighting" problems often associated with Tomb Raider. Many of the dramatic cut-scenes in KQ8 use the actual game-engine itself, greatly adding to the overall sense of narrative continuity. The lip-syncing in these sequences is extremely well done!

Unlike previous King's Quest games, KQ8 does feature a lot of combat. However it's a pretty simplistic "point and click" system which most people won't have any trouble getting the hang of, and there are three adjustable combat difficulty levels to cater for different tastes. As the game progresses Connor gains experience levels, increasing his health points and the amount of damage he can inflict during combat. KQ8 features a huge array of highly detailed, smoothly animated monsters to fight ranging from traditional skeletal warriors to zombies which have a disconcerting tendency to pop up out of the ground when you least expect it. In a stark departure from the silky-sweet nature of other King's Quest games, limbs and heads fly aplenty in KQ8!

While there is plenty of fighting, KQ8 is first and foremost an adventure game. To this end there are lots of puzzles to solve, and many interesting characters and objects to interact with. The inventory system is a revelation, and automatically places items of similar type in specially reserved positions. Sierra recognise that the gameworld of KQ8 is a little more dangerous than that of past incarnations: to this end things like weapons, healing potions and protective spells automatically go into an easily accessible menu bar at the bottom of the screen. Other, less frequently used objects are placed in the pop-down bar on the top. Once you visit a certain character towards the beginning of the game, you gain access to an automap – this makes the task of navigating the massive gameworld a tad easier.

Because the game has a traditional fairytale feel (all King's Quest games do), the dialogue is best suited to a classical English accent. It seems that Sierra have finally woken up to this fact, and KQ8 features some great voice-acting. While we couldn't be sure (because we didn't have a written manual with acting credits to consult), the voice of Connor sounded a lot like Michael York. After all, it would be hard to suspend disbelief when lines like "Thou hadst best move out of my way foul beast, or I will smite thoust with my blade" are spoken with a thick Texan drawl…

Based on what we saw in the beta build, King's Quest: Mask of Eternity is shaping up to be one of the year's best adventure games.