Space Quest III: The Pirates of Pestulon (Real Review)

 

It has been an indeterminate amount of time since Roger Wilco rocketed away from Vohaul’s burning space fortress. Time stands still for our hero in suspended animation. Its engines long spent, the small escape pod drifts aimlessly through unfamiliar star fields, its course altered many times by small asteroids and space debris. Inside, Roger lies undisturbed in his sleep chamber…but not for long.

 

 

The lifeless pod’s picked up by a robot-staffed garbage freighter, and when it’s dropped on a trash heap, the shudder wakes Roger up. While exploring the detritus he finds enough bits to fix a reasonably intact ship among the wreckage. Then, when he's try trying to find some semblance of civilization and a bite to eat, Roger stumbles upon a sinister plot…

The first thing about Space Quest I ever saw.

Oh no, they got Luke!

In a few ways, The Pirates of Pestulon is my favorite game in the Space Quest series. First, because this is when the games’ sense of humor solidified for real. There were times earlier games had cracked jokes, but they could be really scary sometimes. Like in the caves of Kerona or the jungle of Labion with all the alien monsters who’d be happy to kill you, if you couldn’t read the designers’ minds on how to survive. Now, even the deaths are humorous and cartoony with the images they add in to the “restore/restart/quit” menu.

Instead of having death rays, the bad guys have jello guns. Instead of the dumb premise of an evil mastermind sending minions to kill a lowly janitor to keep him from spoiling their plan for universal domination, a robot’s sent to kill you for a bureaucratic slip-up where they think you owe money on a free toy whistle.

 

It also starts making joking references to other media in earnest now.

 

Second, because while the other games are pretty much all fiercely linear, this one gives you a feeling of freedom. Once you repair the Aluminum Mallard, you have your own ship and can go wherever you want. Granted, there aren’t a lot of places to go in the ass-end of space where Roger finds himself, but he isn’t stuck in one area until he solves enough puzzles to be given a way out to a new area. Where he has to solve enough puzzles to go to a new area.

 

Most of all, because that feeling of freedom comes with taking away Roger being thrust into some dangerous environment and having to escape or die. Story of most of the other games. In this one, he tries to figure out where he is and what to do next, and when he finds out bad guys are around being bad, he gets involved because that’s a brave thing to do.

Dare I ask if this picture might contain parodies of Sierra execs?

Tying back to the lighter theme of the game, the weird changes in gameplay that come along feel more natural now than in the earlier installments.

 

Although that does lead to me making a shameful admission: I’m still pretty good at the Astro Chicken minigame, even all these years later.

 

I’ll also say that because of the limited space the developers had to work with, while you can go anywhere you want in this game, most of where you can go’s taken up by empty space. Maybe that’s supposed to have made the chase from Arnoid feel more dynamic, but screen after screen of nothing but purple sand gets boring fast.

 

On the other hand, the relative lack of complexity makes this game great when I need a familiar game to just pick up and play to the end to settle myself.

 

So maybe not as flashy or intricate as other games in the series, but a big step forward after the last game.