The Laura Bow Mysteries: Colonel’s Bequest
and The Dagger of Amon Ra
Sierra
On-Line
Laura first graced us with her
presence in 1989, the product of the development stable that launched
the very concept of graphic adventures. Beginning life as On-Line
Systems, Ken and Roberta Williams delivered Mystery House in 1980, the
very first computer game with graphics. Nine years later, after a highly
successful period which spawned most of Sierra’s well known series,
Laura emerged, a somewhat re-imagined version of that very first game.
While we have become somewhat
immune to the extraordinary pace at which technology leaps ahead, it is
still rather remarkable to see how much things changed in such a short
time. Do some googling and see the graphic transformation for yourself,
keeping in mind that until Mystery House, graphics didn’t exist at all.
More than that, the Williams apparently had to manufacture their own
graphics “engine”. Then look at the difference between these two games,
only four years apart, and be somewhat impressed all over again.
Both games have inhabited my
boxed collection for some time, but I never played either of them. Now
thanks to GoG we get an opportunity to do so. I played them
simultaneously, and for a variety of reasons am reviewing them as a
package.
As is always the case when I
play these old games I get the boxes and all the content out and have
them ready at hand. I am a fan of downloadable games and what technology
has done for the genre, especially around indie developers, but there
remains a certain attraction for the boxed version with its feelies and
assorted paraphernalia.
And a good thing I did, as
Colonel’s Bequest starts with a bit of copy protection that requires you
to match a fingerprint to one of the characters, a task completed by
searching the back of your Misty Acres Plantation map with a red
cellophane magnifying glass. Fail to select the right one and the game
(then and now) dumps you back to the desktop, and it randomises each
time you play. Goodness knows what you did if you lost your magnifying
glass, but GoG has placed two variants of the necessary document in the
game folder, so make sure to have a look. There is no such requirement
with The Dagger of Amon Ra.
When we first meet Laura, a
southern Louisiana belle, she is a budding journalism student, invited
by a friend to spend a night or two at her uncle’s mansion in the middle
of a swamp. A dinner later, having heard the terms of Uncle Dijon’s
will, the bodies start to pile up. The game sees Laura poking about,
discovering more and more dead bodies, uncovering who done what, and
leading to a moment of truth showdown at the end.
The Dagger of Amon Ra sees Laura
arrive in New York for her first job as a real journalist. Her first job
is to cover an Egyptian exhibition at a local museum, from which the
main piece has gone missing. A ramble around town first, but once at the
museum the bodies again begin to accumulate, and Laura may or may not
see out the night in triumphant fashion.
There are many similarities in
these games, apart from the body count - an extensive part of both games
takes place inside a single albeit rabbit-warrened building, you can die
through a variety of actions, snooping and eavesdropping is your stock
in trade, and characterisation is ordinary to say the least. Many
characters are also dated stereotypes, occasionally verging on the
tacky. Time is a factor in both, neither are easy by any stretch of the
imagination, and both will take you a goodly amount of time to finish.
Both offer replay value in getting a better outcome to the mystery,
although each do the outcomes differently.
There are also differences,
apart from the advancement in technology. Most prominent among these is
that Dagger of Amon Ra can result in dead ends only overcome by
restoring an earlier save game, whereas Colonel’s Bequest allows you to
finish, albeit with a less than exemplary sleuth rating. Roberta
Williams also had far less to do with the latter, but that is by and
large a sidebar.
Both games are played in Acts,
with time advancing as the result of certain triggers. I thought this
was better handled in Colonel’s Bequest, despite the fact that I missed
a lot of what went on. Simplistically, everyone else dances to the tune
of their own drummer (I am listening to Linda Ronstadt as I write), and
therefore events happen around you. Perhaps you are there to witness,
perhaps you aren’t. It can lead to a disjointed narrative, but given
that you can finish regardless (unlike a number of other games) it adds
to the realism of the events. If two characters are talking about a key
piece of information, then you need to be there to hear it.
The downside is that there isn’t
a lot to indicate that you had better be there at that time. Nor that
you should be in the secret passage rather than in the room itself.
In Dagger of Amon Ra I wouldn’t
be surprised if not having heard a certain conversation or asking a
particular question was fatal to finishing, but I can’t confirm this. It
also felt a little haphazard. The maid and what she was doing was a case
in point. It may have been me, but I don’t believe she could have been
everywhere I found her if she was indeed responding to time. To some
extent though that also happens in Colonel’s Bequest. Leave a room and
walk straight back in and you can find the previously living person.
Death becomes Laura in all sorts
of ways you will never foresee. Sierra was known for this, and saving
regularly is a necessity. Despite the frustration, many are worth
experiencing for the death scene itself. The shower scene in Colonels’
Bequest is probably the high point, but the over the top mouse trap
death in Dagger of Amon Ra isn’t far behind. And being eaten by beetles
has its own charm. Some of the deaths of the other characters are also
rather creative.
As far as other aspects are
concerned, I could well have done without the chase scene in the latter
part of Dagger of Amon Ra. You either get away from the assailant by
doing a large number of things that will likely be the result of dying
regularly, assuming you have the items you need, or you fail. I confess
to resorting to a walkthrough to get through this part, and would still
be trying to work out the sequencing without it. I also found the way in
which you use the notebook in Dagger of Amon Ra to discuss topics way
too fussy – click the "question mark" icon on someone, this brings up
the notebook, pick a section, choose a topic, right click to change to
the "exit" cursor and left-click again to exit and ask. You do this each
and every time for every topic, of which there are many, magnified by
the number of characters. It was way too laborious, and made me almost
hanker for the text based input of Colonel’s Bequest.
Speaking of which, given its
vintage you need to type text commands in order to do things in
Colonel’s Bequest, although a series of shortcuts can assist (e.g.
“control L” will launch the text string “look at”). You can also point
and click Laura around the place, if a little cumbersomely, and you can
also right click to look at items. I thought it worked well, even if it
took me a little while to get the hang of the verbs (you don’t “take” a
shower, you “use” it). By the time we get to Dagger of Amon Ra, a ribbon
of icons enables you to choose the relevant cursor for the action you
want (look, walk, use etc), each with a nice Egyptian flavour.
You have spoken word in the
later game, although you can choose to play without it. You have to read
everything yourself in the earlier game. Both are in colour, and while
there is some sound in Colonel’s Bequest it is relatively and
comparatively silent. You can also tweak some settings in both games,
and I would recommend upping the speed at which Laura walks around the
place.
The plot in both games is rather
silly, if not generally then certainly in parts. There is though some
witty (and risqué) dialogue, a plethora of interesting pop up
information when looking at objects, and much to observe and do outside
the way forward in each game. The Colonel’s Bequest even has a
completely unnecessary treasure hunt in the gardens outside the mansion
should you be so inclined. A lack of things to do and see is not a
complaint you could make.
All in all, I preferred
Colonels’ Bequest, but I doubt I will play either again to try and
improve on my rather parlous results. Call me soft, but there are
reasons why some things aren’t features of games these days, and too
many aspects, in dagger of Amon Ra in particular, were more of a chore
than a pleasure. Nonetheless I am glad I got to see them, and will
continue to play these oldies for as long as GoG keeps bringing them
out.
I played on:
OS: Windows 10, 64 Bit
Processor: Intel i7-6700 4GHz
RAM: 32GB GDDR5
Video card: AMD
Radeon RX 470 8192MB
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
April 2017
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