Ratings and Reviews by tggdan3

Guess What I'm Thinking- this is what the author was saying to me when I played the Devil Made Me Do It.

First of all, it's such a brilliant concept: you are the devil, trying to tempt two good kids into entering the neighbor's yard, despite mom telling them not to.

There are 2 rooms- the top of the fence, from which you can drop things in the neighbor's yard, and the kid's yard, from which you can drop things in their yard.

After an hour of trying to manipulate things, I learned the following: many objects can't be referred to by their name (such as the pez dispensor not being able to be called a dispensor, or the gnome statue not being able to be called a statue). You can't take things out of the neighbor's yard once put there, and nothing can be meaningfully manipulated.

Finally, I go to the walkthrough. It was after reading the solution that I still said: &quotWhat the hell?" Even playing through, there was no reason why I could have possibly come to this conclusion. (Spoiler - click to show) The children move in a cycle, and dropping certain items- which decrease your score if done at the wrong time, will INCREASE your score if done at a certain point in the cycle. .

Out of world knowledge is KEY to this, because you'll find out that only if things were set up in the right order will anything work, like a Rube Goldberg IF, except that the only do-over is typing RESTART. The game doesn't warn you if it's become unwinnable.

The game boils down to the one puzzle. The &quotclue" as to what to do is redicluously subtle, even after knowing what it is, it doesn't seem fair. And keep in mind, I thought the Bank of Zork puzzle from Zork II was ingenious.

The concept was great, but the decriptions of things are short, the world can barely be interacted with, and the most common command you'll use if you follow the walkthrough exactly is &quotWAIT". I would really like to see a similar game with more to do and more clues, rather than what ended up being a big cut scene once you did the 4 things you have to do.

The game has a timer. 30 seconds. You have to go to the bathroom.

30 seconds- yes seconds. You need to type fast.

There are some meager graphics- think original kings quest series.

The game is very easy. Solved it on the first try. Apparantly it awards trophies for doing things in alternate ways or something. Honestly, I didn't want to play it again.

You probably won't either.

So Infocom (oops, Activision!) has returned to its roots with Zork: The Undiscovered Underground. But the game is more parody of Zork games than a Zork game itself, but therein lies some of its appeal.

For one, you start out with a plastic sword of no antiquity, and a battery powered plastic lantern which totally sucks. Finding a way to get it to stay alight long enough to complete the game is a puzzle in itself.

Basically, you're exploring a new cave on assignment from the Grand Inquisitor himself, because all the other (better) adventurers are busy for one reason or another.

Despite some obvious continuity errors (Spoiler - click to show) Such as a grue with glowing fur! The game is a fun mini-zork, complete with 2 different endings. Expect appearances from the implementors and the grues (which appear much smarter in this one than in any previous installment).

The puzzles aren't extremely difficult, and many of them are at least logical, which is a nice change of pace from the ECHO room of Zork I. (Yes, there was a more practical solution- added well AFTER the fact as the "real" solution did not appear in Dungeon).

Overall, it seemed like the game was made as a commercial for Zork: Grand Inquisitor, but it is nice to see another offical Zork after all these years, even if the years have not been friendly to the GUE.

Remember the days when you might worry if your computer was big enough to play Zork I?

Enter Mini-Zork, the smaller version of Zork I, which itself was the smaller version of Zork (Dungeon).

If you have never played Zork before, maybe you should play this game first. The mazes are simpler, the game is smaller, some of the puzzles have been removed.

If you have played Zork I before, forget it. The maze is smaller- but it's also been completely re-written, prepare to map it all over again. And some of the things you might expect are gone, though descriptions might imply otherwise (Spoiler - click to show)The egg still has a description that implies that it can be opened. If you try to open it by hand, the game tells you that this is removed and is only in full Zork, however, people who played before might go to all the trouble of giving it to the thief before realizing that this is useless.

I get it, Infocom was trying to get Zork to a bigger market by making it more accessable, but this realistically should be listed as a seperate version of the Zork I game, rather than it's own unique entry, and people thinking of playing it should treat it as such.

Another Lifeless Planet and Me with No Beer.

First of all, the planet is hardly lifeless, as one of the first things you'll see is an alien that kills you. But I digress.

The writing here is pretty funny, such as the description when you fall down the seemingly bottomless hole, thinking about how far it can possibly go before you hit the bo-!

The game has a two word parser, and being an old game that's understandable. The problem is that so many things in the game are poorly described or illogical.

For example, opening a small door (and having a creature come out of it) suggests a way you can go. However, trying to enter the door is met with failure, until you finally discover that the door is really a panel, not an entry way, which houses 2 buttons. Since there is a two word parser, "look in small-door" "reach in small-door" etc does not work. On top of that, many puzzles are illogical. (Apparantly, for some reason, an alien won't attack you if you're carrying a specific item, which makes no sense).

There are some combat scenes, and the style of combat changes as you enter different zones. Sometimes you actually have what appears to be a D&D style combat with damage based on HP damage, but in another zone, guns do a one hit kill with no combat mechanic at all.

The biggest complaint is that apparantly the game never came with an instruction book, as an avertisement in the beginning declares it as shareware, and suggests you mail $10 to the author for an instruction book, making it seem not only cheap, but rediculous, since the whole game is available. It becomes easy to SAVE your game, but figuring out how to restore your saved game has been impossible, leaving you to start over every time you die (which will be often).

The game does have a few nice bits, however- obvious exits are listed, as are obvious items to interact with, which is good, since many objects have two word names seperated by a hyphen to make them one word (such as small-stone) and the game would not recognise stone instead of small-stone. These do not auto-refresh, so you'll have to LOOK again if you want an update on the room. There are also some small graphics (ASCII of course) which add a bit to the gameplay.

The success comes from the conversational and joking writing style (such as the frog princess, who kisses you to return to being a princess, then looks at you, screams, and turns back into a frog). Lots of jokes, but outside of that, it's little surprise that the game doesn't have a huge following. The puzzles (such as they are) are not too inventive- there's literally a hangman game puzzle (timed of course), and a lot of (get the item to pass the barrier).

I like this game- though it's more nastolgic for me- I first played it back in middle school when it first came out. For someone used to the works of Emily Short, or even big Infocom fans- this game will probably get on your nerves pretty quickly.

First and foremost, if you don't have a copy of the instructions, you won't get far. The copy protection will see to that. That aside, this was a very funny game. Whether you're trying to rescue a pig from the bottom of an outhouse, or watching the evil knight laugh himself to death, or trying to use a magic ring- the semi-precious, which makes you semi-invisible, or trying to save the sex starved virgins from being sacrificed to the god of impacted wisdom teeth, or hearing Bones say "Dammit I'm a doctor, not a... well.. nevermind" when you tell him your arm hurts.

The game is full of puns on the scale of a Piers Anthony adventure, but it's all good hearted fun. Very forgiving and fun.

The game allows you to click on a list of nouns in the area, and has a compass with directions to travel, and each area has some graphics, actual graphics, not an ASCII representation.