<!--
	Title: (REVIEW) Four Funerals And A Wedding
	Subtitle: Activision Takes Venerable Text Adventure Franchise into Mysty Waters
	Author: Charles Ardai
	Source: Computer Gaming World, v16(8)
	Date: August 1996
	Transcription by Steve Derby
-->

<div class="float-left-narrow article-sidebar-dark">
<img src="/public/img/articles/cgw-zork-nemesis-review/easy-difficulty.png" alt="Difficulty Level Easy">
<img src="/public/img/articles/cgw-zork-nemesis-review/zork-nemesis-box.png" alt="Zork Nemesis box">
<p style="text-align: right;">
<strong>Price:</strong> $54.95<br>
<strong>System Requirements:</strong> IBM compatible 486-DX2 or better, 8 MB RAM, 35 MB hard disk space, 2x CD-ROM drive, 16-bit SVGA graphics, mouse; supports Sound Blaster 16-compatible sound cards<br>
<strong>Protection:</strong> None (CD must be in drive)<br>
<strong>Designers:</strong> Cecilia Barajas, Laird Mlalmed, Mauro Borrelli<br>
<strong>Publisher:</strong> Activision<br>Los Angeles, CA<br>(310) 473-9200<br>
<strong>Reader Service #:</strong> 320</strong>
</p>
</div>

First things first: I promise that for the remainder of this
review I won't bitch about how remote the connection is
between *Zork Nemesis* and any of the classic text adventures
that proudly bore the *Zork* name many years ago.
What's the point? It's like complaining that they don't write
novels any more the way Trollope used to, or that roadways sure were safer before
you had all these horseless carriages zooming across them. Time moves on,
and so must we.

Modern gamers want (or at least game companies think they want) to
play *Myst* over and over again. Give 'em a gorgeous
photorealistic environment full of fantastic landscapes, some
quasi-liturgical groaning on the soundtrack, and a simple puzzle every
so often to keep their brains engaged, and you'll be off to the bank to count your riches.
Throw in some ghostly visions and a hint of the horrific and you can snall the *7th
Guest* crowd, too.

Anyway, that's how I explain *Zork Nemesis*. The story here -- part fantasy,
part horror -- is that a quartet of alchemists has been murdered and is now
in some sort of magical suspended animation, being tormented by a demon called
"the Nemesis." The alchemists ask you to go on a series of quests to free them.
Along the way, you get to chop the head off a corpse, handle a severed hand,
receive shock therapy and watch some acts of really awful violence. You get to
soar over a waterfall, race through a rocky trench, drive a tank and ride a mine car.
You get to explore catacombs and corridors, conservatories and caves. And you
get to face off against four or five dozen of the tamest puzzles it's ever been my pleasure
to encounter. Mostly what you do is unlock doors. This is usually a matter of
lining up a pair of astrological symbols, or something similarly uninspired. You've
also got the usual sorts of adventure game effluvia: pull the levers in the right order,
push the buttons in the right order, turn the knobs in the right order and so on.

<figure class="float-right">
<img src="/public/img/articles/cgw-zork-nemesis-review/zork-nemesis-screen-shot-1.jpg" alt="A screen shot of a spirit from Zork Nemesis">
<figcaption><strong>DIE YOUNG, STAY PRETTY</strong> This fetching spirit is one of the
characters -- mostly dead -- who urge you on in the game.
you can't talk back, though, and spend most of your time alone.</figcaption>
</figure>

What I want to know is, when did adventure games become so beautiful
and so dull? Over the past 10 years we've gone from Dorothy Parker to Pamela
Anderson. Do we really have to abandon the cleverness, style and wit of the former
in order to get the voluptuous visual appeal of the latter?

## RETURN TO ZORK

The last time we saw the Great Underground Empire, it was in the
clutches of a fiend called Morphius. The game was Activision's <code>Return to Zork</code>,
their first revival of the then-moribund Zork franchise. That game had some pronounced
design weaknesses -- navigation was choppy and disorienting, the scheme
for communicating with other characters by clicking on "emotion icons" was indecipherable --
but it was visually stunning and developed quite a following. So what
if no one could make sense of the story? This may be the picture-postcard way of
looking at things, more graphic design than game design, but heck, millions of
postcards are sold every year, so it can't be a bad business to be in.

For *Zork Nemesis*, Activision has kept their "pretty pictures *uber alles*" philosophy,
but they've eliminated or smoothed over all the problem areas that made the
earlier game such a chore. For instance, movement is now more fluid than before:
each location allows the player to view the surroundings in a fluid, 360-degree
pan. Forward movement, from one location to another, still occurs in discrete
leaps, so this is not a *Doom*-style (or *Under a Killing Moon*-style) environment
that you can explore freely, but it's still a great improvement over *Return to
Zork*.

As for character interaction, there isn't any. There are barely any characters other
than the four alchemists, and they're dead. While they still talk to you from
time to time, it's only in non-interactive video segments that play when you click
on their carcophagi. You do meet a few other stray characters -- such as a monk in
a monestary who goes made before your eyes -- but they aren't characters so much
as set decoration.

What *Zork Nemesis* does have is graphic excellence. The five main areas
for you to explore -- the lair of the Nemesis and each alchemist's
demense -- are beautifully rendered. Every room in every location, including
the secret passageways and laboratories they all seem to conceal, is like a miniature
painting. It's all rendered with great care and skill, down to the smallest architectural
details. And when the occasional animations kick in -- for instance, when
you soar from one of the major locations to another -- your heart races.

<figure class="float-right">
<img src="/public/img/articles/cgw-zork-nemesis-review/zork-nemesis-screen-shot-2.jpg" alt="A screen shot of an orrery from Zork Nemesis">
<figcaption><strong>WHAT'S YOUR ORRERY?</strong> Virtually every frame of <em>Zork Nemesis</em>
	is a highly detailed, beautifully rendered work of art, such as this
	colorful orrery.</figcaption>
</figure>

The only downside to the abundance of graphic detail is that it's sometimes hard
to notice everything in a scene that you can interact with. Some important objects
blend into the background and go unnoticed. As in most games, the cursor
changes shape when it passes over a "hot" spot on the screen, and this does help a little;
but some of the critical hot spots are still too easy to miss.

A bigger problem is that, when you do find the hot spots, the interactions are very
limited. Almost all the objects you pick up (and there aren't a whole lot) are used on
the same screen or one of the very next screens you come to. So, when
you find a coin on the ground outside the monastery, you can be
pretty sure you'll find a coin slot just inside the front door. If you find a
key, you can be confident the keyhole is somewhere nearby.
While a little of this is good, the extent to which *Zork Nemesis* uses this simplifying
tactic is disappointing.

<figure class="float-left">
<img src="/public/img/articles/cgw-zork-nemesis-review/zork-nemesis-screen-shot-3.jpg" alt="A screen shot of a scroll from Zork Nemesis">
<figcaption><strong>TEXT ADVENTURE</strong> Despite all the hi-falutin' graphics,
	you'll actually spend a lot of your time reading text to figure out the
	story. Who says text adventures are dead?</figcaption>
</figure>

When a puzzle doesn't require the use of an object, it is almost invariably a purely
mechanical exercise. The game is full of very simple codes that aren't much fun to
decipher and very simple processes that aren't much fun to step through. There
are occasional moments of cleverness, but too few. You find a long-lost treasure
by opening a coffin, lying down inside it and pulling it shut over you. (The treasure
is on the underside of the coffin lid.) In the Nemesis' temple, a time travel room
allows you to collect an icicle in the Ice Age and melt it in a volcanic era to get the
pure water you need for a ritual. This is good stuff. But the bad puzzles outnumber
the good by at least five to one.

The final element of the game is the story, which unfolds in video vignettes
triggered by clicking on various objects and documents. Aside from the bad acting
and the fact that they are not interactive, the video segments are fine. But the
documents -- mostly personal letters from one alchemist to another, plus some
diaries and books -- are far too numerous and mind-numbing. You sometimes find a
half-dozen letters in a single room, and pretty much have to read all of them.

A family saga of sorts unfolds, something about how one alchemist's daughter
wanted to marry another's son, but the intricate family politics the designers try to
craft misfires -- you end up merely confused. Whose son is Lucien? What is
Sophia's relationship to Kaine? It's all like a particularly ornate soap opera of which
you have missed the first few episodes. You're continually racing to catch up and,
worse still, the nice rhythm of the gameplay stops dead whenever you run across
large chunks of text to read.

## ZORK ETHIC

<img class="float-right" src="/public/img/articles/cgw-zork-nemesis-review/zork-nemesis-summary.jpg" alt="Reviewer's summary: 3 stars out of 5">

It's ironic that a perennial defender of text adventures would complain about
having to wade through text. But there is a difference between text that paints a
scene or tells a story and text that merely lards on extra layers of exposition, just as
there is a difference between a puzzle that challenges a player's resourcefulness or
imagination and one that merely challenges his patience.

*Zork Nemesis* is a pleasure to watch and has glimmering moments of promise,
but a well-told story and a consistently inspired caliber of gameplay are two
things that it hasn't got. You'll probably show off your favorite scenes to your friends --
I did -- but I doubt you'll tell them about your favorite puzzle, the way we used to
talk, in the old days, about catching the Babel Fish or the death of Floyd.
