O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
Gobliiins hold important memories for me. Along with the Kyrandia titles from Westwood they were the very first adventure titles that I’ve played. They were the games that somewhat defined my humor, defined my understanding of the use of voices in games, defined my visual style preferences as I was a kid. While people with powerful PCs played Doom, I was playing Montezuma’s Revenge on my Поиск-1, my friend played these games on his system. And I helped. Then we switched to Space Quest, to Leisure Suit Larry and other titles, because we realized how fun the adventure games could be. A few years ago we saw a very quiet release of Gobliiins 4. I played it only for a bit and it made me question myself – what if the classic titles were as tedious, as uninspired, as illogical? Was it all nostalgia and the original games weren’t that good anymore?
Well, I’ve bought the Gobliiins Pack on GoG, and decided to check. First pleasant surprise of this release was the fact that floppy versions of the games were also included. You see, as it was the case with some titles back in the day, some games later received CD re-releases that could change some elements of the games. In case of this series, it meant new music and voice acting for the games and fully animated cutscenes for the third game. Issue with the CD releases is – the new voice acting was far worse than the “goblin language” of the original releases, while some of the music changes just sounded less nice. According to some forum posts, GoG originally only had CD versions, so I’m glad they added the floppy versions later on.
Gobliiins is the first part of the series and it has one unique and super oldschool feature of the genre – you can die. Unlike the later titles, performing incorrect actions makes your lifebar go down. Which seems like a really stupid idea, since when going through screens/levels you will need to be performing actions that are sometimes illogical. While dying only means restarting the level again from the start, until you run out of patience. There are no saves either, just passwords per level (which remember the amount of health too). Oh and you can’t perform the actions of the three playable characters at the same time as well. Which is all incredibly annoying, yet due to the style and the somewhat absurdist humour, the game is still enjoyable, as long as you’re patient.
Gobliins 2 was my favorite game in the series when I was a kid and it still is today. The lifebar is gone, you have two characters instead of two, but they can do more and at the same time and you can have levels that cover more than just one screen. Coktel Vision were on point with all of the ideas here. It’s funnier, it’s more enjoyable, there’s a more defined story to follow, it looks better, feels better and characters are far more interesting and cute. It still has some illogical elements to it, but since you can’t die and failure often leads to a funny animation instead, it’s not annoying. This is the game where playing the floppy version is key, since the CD versions change the voice acting into something far less funny. So, check this one out and play the floppy version.
Goblins Quest 3 was published by Sierra, as you might’ve guessed due to that “Quest” in the title. This game had more in-depth story, more detailed animations and really cool visuals, yet it’s the least enjoyable game to play. You mainly play as just one Goblin with very occasional help from other characters, some levels don’t fit in the screen and need to scroll and the game is now simply tedious. Animations when you perform an incorrect action are just painfully long and can’t be skipped as well. This game has some good tunes and good moments, but overall it’s more frustrating than fun.
So, 15 years later my opinion of Gobliiins is unchanged. I still like the original, love the second game and don’t particularly care about the third one. Should you get the games on GoG? Well, if you like adventure titles, then sure. I was definitely glad to enjoy these childhood treasures again, games from the time when people loved playing adventure games, and developers loved to develop them.