I never really played adventure games as a kid, but I've always enjoyed the idea of the genre. The only traditional style of adventure game I owned growing up was Last Half of Darkness, and my sister's and I never really knew what to do. It was mostly just an exercise in avoiding those horrifying vampire twins, which we always failed to do. Other than that the only other adventure game I played was one that was on a school mac along with Carmen Sandiego. You were like a fox that looked like Robin Hood kind of? And you start in like a medieval market. I haven't been able to find it since, which is a bummer but also not the point of this at all.

I just got a bunch of King's Quest games in the GOG winter sale, and I would like to experience them in someway, but I'm not sure if I really have the patience (or the time) to play through them in the way that they were intended. Would it still be a worthwhile experience to play through these games with a guide, or will it be robbing myself of too much of the experience?

So much of the enjoyment of these games is kind of poking around and asking "can I do this?", I guess, but I have no nostalgia for these games or even this genre as a whole and I feel like, over time, my patience for that kind of trial and error as steadily decreased.

What do you think? Is it worth it? Or would I just get the same experience from watching a Let's Play or reading a wiki or not even engaging with them at all?

I personally don't find watching videos of a game, even one you're using a walkthrough for, the same as playing it. Try what you can on your own and then, if you feel you need to, use a guide. Some of the enjoyment in the King's Quest games is dying and seeing what happens when you do things different ways.

Not if you're playing a Sierra adventure game - most of those are filled with nonsense and stupid deaths...

If you're getting things on Gog, you should probably pick up Sam and Max Hit the Road or Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

Also, is the game you're thinking of Inherit the Earth?

What? Nonono. They're so incredibly obtuse, you'd be months figuring shit out if you didn't use a guide. We cheated like crazy when we could back when these games came out. Don't follow a guide step-by-step or you'll ruin the experince, but using one when you're completely stuck - which will probably be every ten minutes anyway - is OK.

I don't think its a problem to use a guide - as long as you give it a good go first. My rule is that if I am stuck on something for longer than 20 minutes, it's time to use the guide.

My reasoning behind this? It's not because I like to ruin the solution for myself - its because like a lot of pc gamers I have a back catalog of probably 100+ games that I bought in steam sales and have yet to even open up.

I don't have time to devote myself to one game for several weeks as I get stuck on one puzzle and have to dwell on it. I work full time and am getting married soon meaning my game time is already limited enough.

So that's my 2 cents boss, hope that helped!

Depends on the game. If the puzzles are made for rational human beings, and can be solved logically, I'd avoid it.

If you have to stretch a piece of chicken skin across a manhole to trampoline your way into a window, go to town. That game deserves no better.

I tried to play through Shadowgate (NES) without a guide. I made decent progress but eventually ran into some puzzles that made absolutely no sense and had to hit a guide for a hint. I think the worst was in one room I could examine something on the floor, and the game describes it as a place to hook a chain. OK, sure. However, the game expected me to perform an action on the hook to reveal a secret chamber. WTF?!

So yeah, if you run into shit like that, I have no qualms about someone using a guide.

I used a great walkthrough (text) when playing The Dig about two years ago. Still had a great experience, I popped the guide up whenever I felt I was getting a bit stuck.

Well, it depends on the game you are playing. Some games could serve you a cruel punishment for mistakenly using an item on the object that the developers see is wrong while some are as @draugen mentioned they could make you stuck for hours because the solution doesn't make sense (i have rage deleted the fourth broken sword because of this and never looked back).

I think that the best approach is either picking a game and asking if it needs a walk-through or looking for a game that doesn't need a walk-through like Gilbert Goodmate

I know that some Sierra games can become unwinnable not only when the player fails to pick up an item or does something wrong, but also when a player solves a puzzle in a logical (but "wrong") way.

Here's a broad example from one of the King's Quest games: You come across a shop that is selling an item that you need for one gold coin. Shortly after, you solve some other puzzle to acquire a gold coin (or you find it under a rock or some other adventure game nonsense). The rational conclusion would be "Now I can go back to the shop and buy that item." And the game will absolutely let you do that. You give the guy your coin, he gives you the item, you move on with your adventure.

HOWEVER, at some point later on, perhaps even a significant chunk of the way through the game, you encounter a situation where you need to bribe somebody or buy something or distract a dumb monster with something shiny. A situation where a gold coin, just like the one you spent an hour or two or five ago, would be awfully useful.

It turns out that if you had held onto that coin a little while longer, you'd learn about some other problem that the shop owner had- a problem that you could solve for him to get that item you need, free of charge. And if you had done that, then you'd have that other item and still have a shiny gold coin to use for this other puzzle. But since you spent it, you're fucked.

*edit: That being said, I've sound that the guides at Universal Hint System (uhs-hints.com) are great for giving you just enough information to figure the rest out on your own (and if not, it'll eventually just tell you what to do).

There's no "wrong" way to play any game. Though whether or not that's the best way to get the most enjoyment out of a game is up to how you like playing games.

I know I had friend when I was a kid that played every Zelda game with the strategy guide open, reading every single step and playing the game exactly how the guide said. I couldn't fathom how that was any fun at all, but he liked playing that way.

If you enjoy playing games with a step by step walkthrough don't feel like you're doing it wrong. Play however you want.

If that's how you enjoy playing them, then don't let anybody stop you!

If you want to experience them the way they were meant to be played then you will bang your head against the puzzles until you give up, then come back the next day and figure it out in 5 minutes. Using guides kinda defeats the purpose; why not just watch a let's play instead?

That said, if you're not 12 years old you probably don't have the patience or free time to play those old Kings Quest games legit. They're not actually fun to play, especially by modern standards.

@tajasaurus Wrong? No, definitely not. Everybody is different in how they enjoy things

It would not be the way I'd recommend though as just blindly following a guide turns these games into busywork. The story of King's Quest isn't much to write home about. And these games are very short if you know all the right answers (45 minutes to an hour for 1&2).

What I'd suggest is to play it guide-less as much as you can and only consult a guide for when you get really stuck to where you are getting frustrated.

Also, and this important, when playing Sierra games save frequently. If you mess up you want to make sure you have a save point you can continue from without having to replay big chunks of the game.

@beachthunder: Holy shit that's it! Thank you so much, I honestly never thought I would find it!!

I think I'll play through the first King's Quest with a guide and see how it goes. I played some of Kings Quest III last night and I went upstairs to empty this wizard guy's chamber pot and went through his drawers, because that's what you do in video games. You search everything. I went downstairs and he turned me to dust because I should never do magic and I was like "ooohhhh right these games are kinda bullshit like that?"

Maybe playing through with a guide in one game can get me in the mindset of how these games work? If nothing else it will be a fun experiment in navigating these weird and obtuse quests.

As a rule I try not to use a guide for anything unless I'm really stumped. This is especially important for adventure games because the whole point is to find things out on your own. Using a guide kind of defeats the whole purpose of playing the game.

I would suggest going in blind and trying to figure it out first. If it's really tough or you just aren't having fun than use a guide.

I prefer to play adventure games with a guide, mostly because I don't like dealing with stupid bullshit. The most important part of most (not all, mind you) adventure games is the story, which you still get by just playing through that way.

Especially for Sierra games not necessarily at all. I find that in certain contexts I prefer a guide. One of those is games which rely heavily on crafting recipes like Terraria, or random items like Binding of Isaac. Spelunky was a case where I decided it was time to step it up and learn the precise number values behind certain mechanics to get that much better. Another is revisiting older games where they were more likely to reside in obfuscation as part of its design. Of course many games from eras gone by don't require this but for some I see it as extracting what is valuable about the game without taking the full brunt of what might make it frustrating after so many years of games. Similar to that is using a guide to find secrets or bonus stuff you might want but would never get due to time or obscurity.

I used some combination of these to play through Ocarina using a guide to see as much of that game as I can and do as much as I can in one playthrough. I didn't have the time luxury as I might have had otherwise as a child to sink many weeks into it and I still found that game to be astonishing. So if it's the difference between being fucked over by an old game's bullshit or flailing around for hours not knowing what to do and enjoying what there is to enjoy from a game, by all means.

I'd say try your best without a guide, and whenever you get ridiculously stumped, try a guide. Sure it's not the purest way to experience these games, but not all of us have months to devote to one adventure game. I know that I couldn't even begin to wrap my head around Zork 1 until I looked at a map, for example. Sure on paper it'd have been better to explore myself and map it out, but there's no way I'd ever play through that game that way these days, at least this way I might.

It's a single player game. You decide how you want to enjoy it. If you want to use guides, then it's okay to use guides. If you don't want to use guides, then don't.

Personally, I don't use them to play old games. But that's my choice and no-one else's.

It's the only way I enjoy most adventure games. I only come for the funny writing and interesting characters, not the esoteric puzzles. I try to find spoiler-free walkthroughs personally and I try to figure things out myself first, but it I keep repeating the same things and can't fathom how to get past a section, I'll just look at the guide. This applies to Telltale's Strong Bad game, Phoenix Wright, and many others where the gameplay isn't really the draw. When the gameplay is kind of the point, like in Ghost Trick...then I don't use guides.

There's no 'wrong' way to play a single-player game.

I dunno...I wouldn't say it's "wrong", but I played through all of the Sierra adventure games as a kid without a guide. They aren't that difficult.