Zork: Grand Inquisitor

That's one of the problem with old games. Some are very enjoyabe for people who played it back then. Nostalgia effect, nobody's immune. I just played Zork GI for the first time, and it's the only Zork I ever played. And I had a great time ! It's an adventure game, with many inventory puzzles, funny characters and dialogues, creative puzzles. It doesn't take itself seriously, with a lot of witty, funny, unexpected situations. A few references are for people who played the original text-based games, but it's rather transparent. The graphism, well. The rendered 3D parts aren't always "pretty". It's from 1997, and that same year Riven was realy beautiful. But it's full of details, a lot of attention was put in the creation of each area. And it's one of the very few games where the FMV works very well. Cheesy, yes, but it's the spirit ! And the acting is not awful. You have a 360° view of each "spot", so it doesn't feel like a maze (more smooth than the fixed veiws of Myst/Riven/etc). There is not too much pixel hunting - almost everything is in pain sight. The difficulty can be high, with a big environement, large inventory, a lot of backtracking. The UI is simple and easy to use - not always obvious with games from this era. The game used to be broken on modern PC, but it's now fully playable thanks to a community patch. If you like adventure games, there is no reason to skip this one !

Remember those FMV adventures from the 90's? So do I. Most of the ones I tried were badly acted and written, some in hilarious fashion. I may have been too young and uneducated to find the really good ones (the ones that were intentionally funny or in some other way engaging and interesting), which is probably why I managed to overlook this gem of a game. Or maybe the Zork franchise was just not well-known enough in the mainstream. But that, to me, would seem unfair, because Zork: Grand Inquisitor sits right alongside classics such as the Monkey Island games as one of the most hilarious adventure games I've played, and one that stands the test of time perfectly well. I say this having played it for the first time in 2011 as the first Zork game I ever tried. So why does Grand Inquisitor succeed as well as it does? It is in large part thanks to the great writing and also, to a lesser extent, the great acting. It is not a game littered with FMV, though. It is used sparingly, and most of the time you'll only be hearing the voice of the talking lamp who accompanies and guides you on your adventure into the underground beneath Port Foozle. This is a good thing for me, personally, as I don't always like being interrupted by endless dialogues while exploring and solving puzzles (hellooo The Longest Journey). Instead, Talking Lamp Guy (who is also a Dungeon Master) talks as you move around, cracking jokes and providing advice, making this seem like more of an actual game and less of a collection of interactive dialogues (there are no branching dialogue trees in the game) than many other adventure games. As a first-time player of the Zork series, some of the in-jokes are of course lost on me, but I must say that the game was just a riot from beginning till end. Well, the ending area may have been slightly disappointing: There was a certain place I expected I would get to explore, but instead the game ended right when I thought I was going there. With that said, it cannot be denied that the humour carries the game all the way through with some hilarious characters and consistently great puzzle design. The game may be hard in places, but the solutions often made me laugh, for example when you get to use some of the spells you learn along the way, such as the one that simplifies obscenely complicated instructions or the one that turns purple things invisible (INFINITELY useful, as it turns out). These spells are often designed specifically for certain situations, which is blatantly obvious from their descriptions, making the job a little easier for you when having to figure stuff out. That said, if you, like me, are not a die-hard veteran of the genre, you may find yourself looking for a walkthrough from time to time (or better yet, to avoid too many spoilers, uhs-hints.com). Also forget to save often, as the Grand Inquisitor himself says, because it is possible to die from time to time (hint: don't swing your sword at a beehive without taking precautions). Finally I would like to point out that there are some speed issues with the game on modern systems. The game is played from a first-person perspective, allowing you to sometimes pan your viewpoint left and right, and this is either way too fast or a little slow. Slower is better, though, and if you find that it is suddenly too fast, just hit Scr LK and it should go back to normal (the GOG version uses zspeed to make it slower). Now with all that in mind, stock up on zorkmids and take a trip to the Underground. And when you get there, don't forget to break the glass in case of adventure!

I was so sad when I read that this was the first of a planned 3-part series that then didn't fly because Inquisitor didn't sell well enough. This one is a true successor to the text adventures of Infocom. It has all the wacky humor, and the modern elements it plays with are integrated brilliantly. For instance, there's a medication labeled "ProZork" (mood stabilizer) and a "spell checker" which---yes---is used when you're attempting to create a magic spell from scratch. Please, somebody try to get the rest of the planned series crowd-funded!

Zork Grand Inquisitor was one of those games I never saw coming. Back when it first came out, I had begun to lose faith that another good adventure game would be released. A slew of games with terrible moon logic, and the decline of the genre in general made it so I started to believe that the genre was dead. Then I played this game over my neighbor's. I instantly fell in love, the strong emphasis on humor being one of those things that stood out over everything else. True, there were still a few moon logic puzzles, but they were manageable. It saddens me that ZGI was the last game in the Zork series (not counting browser games), but it was one of those pleasant types of sad, the kind where you're saying goodbye to a friend, but you know they're going to be better off where they're going, and they can do nothing more here. A must buy for anyone who is a fan of Monty Python comedy, as well as solid adventure gaming with a comprehendable story.

Rarely does a point and click FMV game combine the truest sense of adventure gaming with a whimsical styling that has been memorable even 30 years later. The world of Zork is fully imagined giving a Terri Pratchett/Douglas Adams feel to a world already full of well balanced nonsense. The gameplay and puzzles may not be the most challenging of the era, but at no point does that take away from the well built world you find yourself thrown into. Add to it an absolute allstar Voice/FMV cast (Michael McKean, Donald Gibb, Erick Avari, Dirk Benedict, RIP FRIGGIN TAYLOR!) brings to life the first ever text base rpg world to life. My suggestion is play this game. It's a great 6-8 hour romp in a game that has a fun an unique story. If for any reason you have played previous Zorks and not played this on; do your soul a favor and finish off the series.