Simon the Sorcerer II opens up with a young boy named Runt, who wants nothing more than to become an evil magician. During this learning process, he decides to resurrect Sordid, who is still none too pleased with being killed in the last game. Now with a robotic body, Sordid sends a wardrobe back into the real world, with the hope to capture Simon and take his revenge. Things get slightly screwed up when Simon ends up at Calypso's house instead of Sordid's fortress. Mostly unaware of what's going on, Simon begins searching for a can of Mucusade (a play off the Lucozade energy drink, something that's lost to non-Brits) to recharge the wardrobe and return home. Much of the game is spent searching for this drink, only to find that Sordid has kidnapped Calypso's daughter. Simon, not exactly thrilled with the prospect of doing any more work than he really has to, sets off to find her anyway.

The first half of the game takes place in the city of GET NAME. For those sick of all of the forest wandering in the first game, nearly all navigation is done through a map screen, alleviating on the bigger headaches of the original. The interface is a bit different, dropping a few verbs and implementing an icon-based command system, although it's a bit hard to understand at first. (The magnet grabbing the nail is "pick up", the hammer hitting the nail is "use" - they make sense but it's not as immediate as it should be.) The structure is much the same, as you wander around town searching for various items, and eventually stumbling upon puzzles where they're required. The formerly all fantasy/medival game world now has a number of anachronistic elements, most notably the fast food chain MucSwamplings, as well as some smaller details here and there. Eventually Simon gets kidnapped by pirates and ends up on a (not quite) deserted island, before taking off for Sordid's fortress,

Simon is a bit older in this installment, having grown a ponytail and wearing a slightly less purple wizard's robe. His voice is now provided by Brian Bowles, and while some fans aren't too happy with his delivery, it still keeps the spirit of the character. It's very similar to Chris Barrie's voice, just a bit deeper. Simon's snottier elements of his personality are played up a bit more, so those that found him abrasive in the first game will find his sarcasm even more unlikable here.

But like the previous game, even if you don't care for the main character, it's the support cast that really makes the game. Right at the start, you meet the Three Bears, who live in constant paranoia of Goldilocks, who is, in fact, a professional thief. One of the prisoners you meet on the pirate ship bears an explicit resemblance to Mr. T. Later on you'll meet the three witches from Hamlet, each of whom is disabled in some manner. All throughout the game you'll find a little boy wandering through the scenery, occasionally getting into mischief. His purpose is never even remotely explained - he seems to exist just to be weird. A handful of characters from the first game make an appearance too, including the guard demons (who are also quite displeased with Simon) and the woodworms.

SWAMPLING

But the most amusing characters are the roleplayers. Since they already live in a fantasy world filled with dungeons and dragons, they find their escape in GET NAME, which emulates the mundane minutae of British life. There's a remarkably amout of detail put into these guys - you can sit and listen to their ridiculous game for several minutes, and each of the players plays off some kind of nerd cliche, the most amusing one beind the computer geek who can't stop talking about computers. At one point you can join in, during which you need to defeat an interior decorator with a pair of loaded dice. 

Visually, Simon II is about on par with its predecessor. The backgrounds aren't quite as colorful, but the town - and later, Sordid's fortress - are still well detailed. For some reason, nearly all of the character sprites (outside of Simon) are drawn with large, somewhat deformed heads, which looks more nasty than funny. The voice acting is just as good, too.

For the most part, Simon II fixes nearly every complaint from its predecessor, and makes for a longer and slightly more interesting game. It still ends on yet another cliffhanger, but at least it's more involved than the last game. Many fans seem to prefer the first, mostly because it's a bit less snarky, but this is still an excellent game.

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Simon 3D

After Simon the Sorcerer 2, AdventureSoft took a break with The Feeble Files, another humorous adventure game, this time focusing on aliens, perhaps due to the X-Files craze at the time. After that more or less failed, they returned to Simon, and decided to take him into the third dimension.

The canon of video game history shows a number of 2D franchises which totally screwed up its transition to 3D. This evolution was particularly unkind to the adventure game genre, but while games like Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon and Escape from Monkey Island aren't exactly the best games in their respective series, they're at least still pretty good. The same can't be said of Simon the Sorcerer 3D. 

First, the graphics. They're beyond terrible. The character models are very boxy and extremely low quality. All of the enviroments are totally 3D too, but they're pasted with the same textures ad nauseum. This was typical of early 3D, but this is no excuse for Simon 3D, which was released in 2002. If it weren't for the higher resolution, it would look like a PSOne game - and not a particularly good one at that. It doesn't help that the 3D renders on the covers of the Puzzle Pack set some measure of expectations, which were missed entirely.
The world design suffers from the same problem as many early 3D games - it's just simply way too big and empty, and it takes forever to traverse, even when you're running. (Later in the game, you can transport around a map via Dr. Who-style telephone booth, but even that's limited.) It fells padded, tedious, and overly long, because it takes forever to go anywhere or do anything. The world is bright and colorful, but that's about the best thing to say about it.

The mouse controls have been ditched for direct keyboard control, which is far from great. Most of the time the camera is pointed directly behind Simon, but in indoor segments, it tends to change to a static angle. It rarely works well, especially when it erratically swings around when running down narrow corridors. The interface is cumbersome, requiring that you either cycle through all of your inventory, or access the submenu, which, thankfully, is at least controlled with the mouse. There's no gamepad support either, unless you use a third party program. And for some reason, the developers thought that the controls would allow for action sequences, which the game completely fails at. It's the first Simon game where you can actually get killed, although there are "respawn tiles" where Simon will resurrect (similar to those JRPG games, Simon remarks.) You also can no longer skip through any of the dialogue. And that's not including all of the glitches, crashes, and other technical issues. In short, this game is a total mess.

It's actually a huge shame, because at its core, it's still an amusing Simon game. The last title ended with Simon and Sordid switching bodies. Well, Sordid got sick of being a human and his plans to conquer the "real world" just didn't work out, so his apprentice Runt has created yet another new body for him. With the help of Calypso, Simon's soul is reunited with his body, and it's once again up to him to stop Sordid from ruling the whole universe. VERIFY THIS

The writing and sense of humor, as well as the voice acting, is generally on par with at least the second game. There are a number of returning characters, including the Swampling, who's now become an eco-terrorist after his homeland is threatened. The woodworm, the role players, Goldilocks and the demons also make appearances again, as well as Sordid's apprentice Runt, who only had a minor role in the second. The second half of the adventure involves assembling a group of four legendary warriors: Melissa Leg, NOTE THOSE. The unfortunate circumstance is that Simon had pissed off nearly all of these people earlier his journey, which is naturally a bit awkward for him. Simon also has his own fairy godmother, although she's not particularly funny and mostly acts as a tutorial guide.

At one point, Simon comes across a warehouse filled with unsold copies of The Feeble Files, which he amuses would make a good coaster. Given that Hasbro Interactive was originally going to be the publisher, there are also a few random, tongue-in-cheek endorsements of their board games. In a particularly trippy, fourth wall breaking bit, the final puzzle requires that you eject a CD-ROM for a computer. The problem is, there's no eject button in the game. Like Sega's X-Men game for the Genesis, which required that you push the Reset button on the console to get past a certain point, the solution is to actually eject the drive on your own computer. It's a vaguely clever idea, ruined by some level of technical limitations, because Windows needs to be set up properly for it to work at all.

But that really encapsulates all of the major problems with the game. It's still fairly clever, but it's mired beneath a game that borders on unplayability. Apparently AdventureSoft had originally planned the game for 2D, similar to The Feeble Files, but ditched all of their previous work when they realized that such a product would surely fail in the marketplace. But their hastily assembled substitute didn't do any favors, either, especially at the time of its release. (To be fair, the game was apparently finished in 2000, but due to various logistic issues, wasn't actually published until two years later.) If there's any modern adventure game that's clamoring for a demake - that is, a return to beautiful point n' click VGA - it's this one.