Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)

[Unknown,Unknown]

I think there are a few instances in which I almost pulled out my hair trying to “Guess the parser command” while playing sierra games. Here are some:
Police Quest 1: Trying to get Sweet Cheeks Marie out of jail is horrible….if you don’t get the exact grammatically challenged phrase then she won’t come with you.
Leisure Suit Larry 2: This one I forgot about till I played it again recently. Once you change into the woman’s bikini….trying to get those soap bars into you top is agonizing. You must type the phrase will full proper grammer in the correct order “Put the soap into the bikini top” nothing short of that will do it….
Police Quest 2: Trying to show my diving certificate…..ugg
What are your worst experiences?

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) Hheheheh,
I can’t remember which game it was or what made me so mad, but I couldn’t get past this one part, and started cussing (typing it in) the game, when I typed in one phrase, it responded “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
I laughed away my rage and continued playing…! 🙂

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) Then there were always the magic words you had to recite oh-so-perfectly in King’s Quest III . . .

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) > Then there were always the magic words you had to recite oh-so-perfectly in King’s Quest III . . . right… except the wording in the documentation was wrong! i can’t remember any specifics… although i was replaying PQ2 recently and ran into that problem with the diving license. 🙂 emily

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: re: re: re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) In PQ1 you’d been told “Ask her to help you with the hotel operation” and the required input has a similar grammatical structure (“help me with the operation” does the trick and that’s just dumb repeating). There were some lines, however, that had to be guessed. Like whatever you had to type in to finish Leisure Suit Larry 2 making a molotov cocktail out of some hair spray and the sick bag from the airplane.
I thing it’s a tightrope walk for a game designer working with a parser to just define which phrases work and which don’t and how many clues to give to the players. You’re either frustrating the players if you allow too little or worse, making it too easy for them if you allow too much.
What I’m trying to say is that the “impossible command lines” were probably not the result of too little, but too much consideration by the game designers (though in some cases limited vocabulary could just as well have been the result of a menacing release date hovering near… :o)

[Unknown,Unknown]

(re: Worst Parser Experiences (may be spoliers…)) “SAY THE WORD”

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