Return to Zork

The Good
There's a lot to like about Return to Zork. It has good graphics (for the time) and a pretty solid design that for the most part eliminates actions that render the game unsolvable, while still maintaining a feel of complexity. In this way it combines the best of both the worlds of graphical and text-based adventuring. It's large, with a wide variety of places to travel too, and sort of a slapdash feel to the whole thing (which is a compliment considering the original text games were put together in much the same way). A few of the puzzles have multiple solutions, and there are plenty of "fun things to try", very much in the spirit of Infocom.

The interface for RTZ is particularly good, with different icons offering different, specific ways to employ an item rather than just "click this on that". For example, you can use your knife by cutting with it, throwing it at something, or even digging. And the ability to take photos and recordings of people and places, and then ask the other characters about them, was brilliant.

And, of course, the best thing about this game: A.J. Langer is in it! (Yes, I'm a fan.)

The Bad
While RTZ is a decent adventure, it's not all that Zorkish. Most of the names and places were newly invented, and only Flood Control Dam #3 stands out as being distinctively from the original Zork universe. It's almost like the designers took an existing adventure game and just stuck some Zork stuff onto it for brand-name familiarity.

There were a couple of pure (i.e. non-plot related, 7th Guest-ish) puzzles, one really horrible puzzle at the very end requiring you to collect EVERY item in the game and throw them over a bridge, and quite a few things that didn't make a whole lot of sense because of poor clues or muddled design. For instance: You learn that carrots are good for your eyes. But eating the carrots yourself doesn't work, you have to feed the carrots to the cow and then milk the cow and drink the milk... huh?! And while there aren't many, a few design problems make it possible to get permanently stuck.

The voice acting is about par for the time, which is to say, not very good... Jason Hervey gave a horrid performance as the cowardly troll, and the singing tree was hideous. Trembyle the wizard and the lighthouse keeper are amusing, though, and Morpheus has a great evil laugh. Most of the characters just reinforce the non-Zorkish feel: It's hard to feel like you're in a different world when you run into people with English, Canadian, and Scottish accents.

The Bottom Line
It took Activision three tries to really get the feel of the Zork universe across graphically. Grand Inquisitor got it right. Nemesis was too dark and humorless. RTZ is middle-of-the-road, lighthearted enough to make the atmosphere work, but fundamentally different enough to detract from it.