Review — King’s Quest: Rubble Without A Cause

King's Quest

We Sit Down And Review King’s Quest: Rubble Without A Cause. This Is The Second Episode Of The Odd Gentlemen’s reboot to the Famed Franchise From Sierra Entertainment. Here’s Our Review On How They’ve Done So Far

Slow and steady seems to be the pace that the new King’s Quest is going in terms of releasing new episodes for the game. Only six months since The Odd Gentlemen game us the first taste to hook us in and now here comes the second one. All in a storytelling experience that claims that each episode of King’s Quest can be completely isolated and playing the others just helps with the overall narrative of the game. Sierra Entertainment did put a lot into this basket so let’s see how the latest episode fared. Here’s our review of King’s Quest: Rubble Without A Cause.

Story

Last we left Graham he had just won the throne to be king. Heavy is the head though as it looks like all of the paperwork that goes into running a kingdom isn’t what it was made out to be. Not many adventures and this is what he wanted to do. He does need to keep his story interesting for his grandchildren after all. Thankfully during the early part of his term those pesky goblins decided to take the whole city captive and it is up to King Graham to save the day. It’s not good to be the king here?

Hated

Part of the delay in getting this review out came to wanting to replay the first episode of King’s Quest again to keep the story flowing. The weird thing is that while it does fit the “each episode is contained” idea it also feels like The Odd Gentlemen forgot where they left the overarching story. I remember having a bit of a cliffhanger at the end of the first episode with Old Graham. The story there being that he is passing on his stories before he passes on. It looks like we are completely skipping the late night alarm that something went wrong with him and pressing right into him telling more.

You can’t tell us that there will be an overarching narrative to bind the episodes of King’s Quest together and then ignore the story that is acting as the glue for those who want to play each and every episode. It just feels like someone over there forgot and just wanted us to get back into the mix of things with the action; just like Graham. It just felt like the background story was only present here in terms to say “hey, we still have one” and nothing more. That doesn’t go well for a STORY BASED TITLE at all.

If you are questioning the reason for story, then it is worth noting that it would have made this episode of King’s Quest feels like it was a full length episode as well as it was really short. Almost a quarter of the length of the first episode as I was able to play through from beginning to end four times in just a bit more than it took me to play the first episode. Maybe I was too good at the puzzles that were laid out as that seemed to be what was being used to stretch out the game here but for the price and based on the opening act this episode of King’s Quest just didn’t fill the space well.

Loved

Just as in the first episode there were some great puzzles that need to be solved by finding various items and using them in different ways here. In this instance you only had a few tries before members of your kingdom began to “die off” and you would become the worst king ever. This added all kinds of pressure to trying to figure things out in short order. This made the brain and everything else need to work at a higher level and made even the little puzzles feel like a huge deal. They were well placed and paced through the episode and made me want to come back and master them.

While the story was light in this episode of King’s Quest there were a few great flashback scenes that were mixed in so well it made me question if the game glitched or not. Obviously it did not or this would be in the above section but it was a great telling of how Graham was taking this whole ordeal and if it was leading to something mind shattering. I’m not going to spoil the scenes specifically but they were the best parts of the narrative mixed in as Graham fought exhaustion to save his kingdom and then fought with his reality.

In the most recent “choose your own adventure” games recently one of my biggest gripes has been with the choices not truly having any consequence in the game. During this episode of King’s Quest there are many that do matter and completely change how the whole game plays out. You have to choose who gets what food to stay alive and you don’t have enough for everyone including yourself so you need to make all your choices and actions count. It was done in such an amazing way here that I hope other developers pick up on it and try to replicate something similar.

Overall

As a standalone episode for King’s Quest I would say that Rubble Without A Cause doesn’t do well to stand alone. It is too short and lacking in much of a story to make your average gamer willing or happy to spend the money on it. That said, when you place it into the mix of King’s Quest it does add to the overall game enough to make the season pass still a worthwhile venture. It is short and kind of ignores some of the grander scale things for now but continuing off from before and then melding into future episodes is where this is going to bring the best experience. Who does get the full season of an episodic game when they loved the first one anyways?

I give King’s Quest: Rubble Without A Cause 16 fly eyes on the potion ingredient scale.

King’s Quest: Rubble Without A Cause was developed by The Odd Gentlemen and published by Sierra Entertainment for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and PC on December 15^th 2015. A PS4 copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.