Video Game Review: Quest for Glory

Take one stereotype Hero, you know, the hulking blonde-haired blue eyed douche, add a cocktail of Germanic lore with a shot of fairy tale, mix in a colourful cast of characters and you will have one of the most exciting games in Sierra Online History.

The game starts with you picking between a fighter, a magic user, and a thief. (Don’t worry, your hero looks just like Dolph Lundgren with a Jheri Curl no matter what class you pick) The type of character you choose changes everything from play style to jokes within the game. From there, you begin your journey through DOS gaming history. You are in the town of Speilburg, and you find out that shit has just landed in the form of a curse on the Royal Family. With not much information to start with, you begin plodding along in a forest of pixilated wonder. Within the mono-color trees, you meet several types of characters that are in need of help. There is a mushroom circle with some cracked out fairies that get all pissy when you walk within the ring. There is an “ermit” that looks like Captain Caveman dyed his hair a gross green colour. You get to meet wonderful villains who are there to spice up the life of your Universal Solider wannabe such as a cranky warlock with his maze and a chicken hut with an attitude problem.

As you go along in your adventure, you are also responsible for training your skills, feeding your character, and answering awesome riddles. Fighters must work on strength, mages work on magic spell skills, and the thief works on being that guy that is fun to hang out with, but you never let them out of your site when they come over because they just have that shady feel about them. Sucks having friends like that….. Where was I?!

In your continuous pursuit of questing and perfection, you will meet some important characters from future games, such as a wizard and his familiar. The two are so mixed up that sometimes it is hard to tell who is who’s familiar. You also come across a hoppin’ mad witch, a tomboy princess, some kats and their Persian, and you get the first taste of the one and only meadow musician. (The songs are some of the most memorable tracks in computer game history. I have “Erana’s Peace” downloaded to my I-Pod as I type this).

All in all, this is by far one of the best games I have ever played. It is an oldie but goodie, and to play it you may have to do a little digging. I say if you can gather up some change from the couch, you may be able to hop on e-bay, buy a Tandy 1000, perhaps find an original diskette toting box called Hero’s Quest (Sierra never had the title copy written, therefore Mattel jumped on the name with an equally as awesome board game, forcing Sierra to forever change the name to Quest for Glory) and make yourself squint through the graphics, then you will be well on your way of understanding why this game should be on the tongues of true gamers everywhere. Its at least better than Glory Hole Saturdays at your local Flying J Truck Stop, and that’s saying something.

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