Return to Zork

Keep in mind that this game was one of the early games which used CD-ROMs, and as such one much judge it according to the standards at the time. In my experience, this was a lot of fun to play. I completed this game back in the 1990s when it first came out without any walkthroughs, without any cheats. Just good old fashioned saved games. I don't recall reaching any dead ends in this. I loved the puzzles. It had some fun and comical characters, some interesting locations (the ship in the bottle) and an overall good story. The intro alone was worth getting this for, at least when it first came out. I always thought it was brilliant how it transitioned from the text adventure into the graphical. This is not a difficult game, at least I didn't find it difficult. Just a lot of fun and well worth grabbing. I feel that criticizing graphics from a 1993 game decades later is unfair,especially considering these graphics were fairly new and modern at the time, CD-ROMs being new. This game, The 7th Guest and Myst were three of the first games to come out on CD-ROM. It was all new territory, and these games pulled it off quite well at the time.

I bought the GOG version for nostalgia value when it went on sale for $1.97. It installed and ran, but was pretty much unplayable. The problem was with the transition scenes between locations. The game is packaged with DOSBox , and for whatever reason, the transitions played at a crawl with the preconfigured settings. I'd be sitting there watching each frame load line-by-line. For some transitions, it was to the point where you might as well go take a nap, and you'll hopefully be in the next area by the time you get up. Tried following several different recommended modifications to the DOSBox config files with no improvement. Was about to give up on it altogether when I decided to give it a shot under ScummVM. It took some preparation to get it into a state where ScummVM knew what to do with it, but it now works about as flawlessly as you could expect for a DOS game from the 90s. To get it to that point, I followed the instructions in the included link: https://www.gog.com/forum/zork_series/return_to_zork_in_scummvm As for the game itself, well... Like I mentioned, it's a DOS game from the 90s. Nostalgia value is really about the only thing that makes it worthwhile, for me. IMHO, that's worth the 3-star rating even after the hassle of getting it to play. YMMV.

Two stars, simply for the story. The Zork games are always chock full of story and irreverent humor, which I personally enjoy. However, this one falls short more than any other title in the franchise. The puzzles don't make sense in many cases, and are downright impossible in most other cases. You can easily get to the end of the game and be stranded simply because you burned an item you needed. You die all the time for the stupidest reasons. The inventory system is clunky, and you'll basically have to click on every new item in combination with all other items just to try and see if you can make something happen. It's just not worth the slog, IMO. If you a fan of Myst, you're gonna hate this game. The only saving grace is the story.

This is fun game, with good graphics. I love the style of "real people animations in 2D/3D gaming environments" Though the game is quite a challenge, and you can easily goof up and be unable to progress any further in-game. I was doing pretty good for a while, I like how they force you to think out ways to solve problems. But you really can't get too far without a step by step walkthrough.

As far as point and click adventures, I think it has the best game mechanics Ive seen. When you click, you get several, sometimes a dozen + options that are object specific. The game is charming as heck, and the world is a strange fusion of modern and old fantasy but somehow works. The humor is very cheesy, but adds to the novelty to it. Its hard to recommend as the puzzles can get very confusing. The worst of all is a tile puzzle that you need to unscramble to reveal a message. Tile puzzles are hard on their own, but since you dont know the message (and cant really figure it out by looking at it,) it makes it virtually impossible without a walkthrough. Navigating through the woods in one puzzle was aweful. I spent way too long trying to figure out where I was going. Also, its one of those games that you can screw up without knowing it. Sort of a 'soft lock' but intentional. Heres a example ***small spoiler*** The plant in the very beginning can be pulled out of the ground. Makes sense. But it kills the plant. You need to dig it out instead by taking out the dagger (weird choice of tools.) You need the LIVE plant to get into a comedy club. That sounds wierd, and no it makes no sense in context either. **spoiler end*** So you can lose the game on the second screen and go through about 95% of the game without knowing you screwed yourself, like I did my first run. I did beat the game. Glad I beat one of my childhood favorites. But I'm not going back to it.