Space Quest V: The Last Mutation

(Sierra On-Line, 1993)

Of all the Space Quests, this was my favorite. The problem : it was sandwiched between the two worst Space Quests. In addition, one of the two game designers of the series, Scott Murphy, had left for other projects, making people wonder if Mark Crowe could pull off a satisfactory sequel all by himself (he did). This worry, along with disappointment in Space Quest IV, kept many former fans from buying this sequel at all. This is a shame because it's amusing story made up for most of SQ4's mistakes. Wilco's future wife is introduced, his janitorhood is promoted to Space Captain (after cheating in a test a la Captain Kirk) and he even finds a soon-loyal crew. Several parodies of classic sci-fi are performed very effectively, including the face-hugging Alien from that classic horror movie (Wilco decides to keep it as a pet!). The finale even leaves Wilco with a larger ship to command. The only flaw in the game was in Sierra's decision to make multimedia CD versions of both SQ4 and even SQ6, yet released this game merely on floppy disks(!). It's marketing snafus like this that make Sierra's eventual buyout even less of a surprise...

Rating : Large Crater.

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