Space Quest II: Chapter II - Vohaul's Revenge

"Space Quest Stumbles"

The second installments in a couple adventure game series tended to be the lame duck of the family. King's Quest 2 felt kind of half-a**ed compared to its predecessor, and I seem to be the only person in the universe who doesn't see what the big deal is about LeChuck's revenge. Nor, as I'm about to talk about, was I amazed by Space Quest 2.

As we resume our story, our hero Roger Wilco has been forced to stop livin' large what with the loss of his fame for thwarting the Sarien plot to conquer the universe. Sent to sweep out a space shuttle, Roger is jumped by thugs and taken to Sludge Vohaul, the evil mastermind behind the theft of the Star Generator. He sends Roger off to some slave mines while he works on his army of killer insurance salesmen (oh, that is soooo clever...).

Anyway, it's up to you to control Roger to find some way off the primitive planet of Labion, get to Sludge's hideout and stop his mad scheme in time. Unfortunately, he'll have to survive a very unforgiving and not all that intuitive game in order to do it. I'd like to blame that last part on the general lack of space-themed adventure games, especially around the time Space Quest II was released, but there's no getting around it: Space Quest II is a hard game to figure out.

In typical early Sierra adventure game style, if you miss one single item or critical point while exploring, you're out of luck. Going backward is rarely an option in this game, leading to a lot of starting over because you don't have the plunger or didn't realize you needed to find the deep part of the swamp because you happened to cross the screen lower than where it was.

The graphics and the sound aren't overwhelming either, but given what the technology was like when this game came out I'm willing to excuse those. Still, it's the harsh and unforgiving gameplay that drags down the fun factor and kicks up the frustration factor for Space Quest II. You could just use a walkthrough, but where's the fun in that? The fun in an adventure game is looking around for items, figuring out puzzles, but the ones in Space Quest II are just too vague for me. Maybe I need to think more like I'm in space on some strange jungle world, maybe I need to watch Star Trek, maybe Sierra should've made it more intuitive and less dumb-luck-oriented for the gamer to figure out.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 05/11/04, Updated 05/03/06