Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz

Adventure Classic Gaming

Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz is very well designed from a gameplay standpoint, improving again upon all of the enhancements the previous games have innovated. Though you can use the keyboard to type in directions as normal, you can also move around by using the compass rose at the top of the screen or by clicking on locations on the online maps. The maps are very useful to have. The geography of Zork Zero is extensive, so keeping track of yourself as your travel between regions of the game can often be quite a chore. The parser, as is expected from Infocom, is extremely intuitive and mostly forgiving. There are practically no situations in the game when you are stuck because you cannot think of the word to move on. Being the pinnacle of Infocom's creative achievement, this game incorporates everything the designers have learned about parsers and game interaction to spectacular effect. Communicating with an Infocom game is never easier than it is here.
-- Matthew Murray
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SPAG
There isn't (...) enough payoff
There are entertaining moments in Zork Zero, to be sure. It's questionable whether there are enough to keep the average player interested throughout, though, and to whatever extent it succeeds, it does so in a very different way from any of the other Zork entries. Though it has its moments, I found Zork Zero the weakest of all Infocom's text Zork games.
-- Duncan Stevens
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>INVENTORY - Paul O'Brian writes about interactive fiction
So yes, the mirror location was a wonderful discovery. Less wonderful: hauling the game’s bazillion objects to the mirror in numerous trips to see if it could tell us something special. But then when we found something cool that helped us solve a puzzle: wonderful! This is quintessential Zork Zero design — an inelegant but good-natured mix of cleverness, brute force, and sheer volume.
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Interactive Fiction Reviews and Essays
Replies to 'Is Zork Zero a good game or is it not worth it?'
[From the most in-depth reply]
Such a binary choice! I’ve been of two minds about Zork Zero since I first played it in 1997, from Classic Text Adventure Masterpieces of Infocom. It was a huge, complete, fully-implemented, technological tour de force from the dying Infocom. It was also a blatant last grasp at those sweet Zork revenues. -- Nathan Simpson
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Orphaned Computers and Game Systems
In a separate category from its six predecessors: It sucks and they don't
In the Fall '88 issue of The Status Line, Infocom's online magazine about their own products (sort of like Nintendo Power with a wider vocabulary), Steve Meretzky, veteran text-adventure designer (but creator of only one Zork spin-off, Sorcerer), is touted as having given players "something even better" than a Zork sequel by "taking you back to before the beginning."

Something even better than that would've been to leave the Great Underground Empire the hell alone.

In 1983 I became fascinated with the atmosphere, effective puzzle-interpolation and eerie silence of the deserted lands in the Zork adventures. The second game was the first I played and the first I beat. Then followed the other two, followed by the three sequels -- Enchanter, Sorcerer and, by 1998, Spellbreaker. I utilized no hints and got no help, I'm proud to say (sure, it took me fifteen years, but still...). And now, in November of '99, I've beaten the final game (I don't count the RPG Beyond Zork), which was actually written as the prequel: Zork Zero. No hints. It's taken me over a year. And it wasn't worth it. This game is in a separate category from its six predecessors: It sucks and they don't.
-- Chris Federico
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