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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Zork Nemesis: my perspective.
Message-ID: <G2xJwG.FGw@world.std.com>
Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 10:31:28 GMT
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Matej Frece  <matej.frece@informatika.si> wrote:
>RTZ was quite a nice adventure game. Many of those evil
>reports come from the fact, that lots of people think that
>the game is unwinnable, if you do something wrong at the
>very beginning of the game. And at the beginning there is no
>suggestion whatsoever which would make you do this thing in
>a right way. However, RTZ is not so unforgiving as it may
>seem. Later in the game, when you realize you screwed up in
>the beginning, you don't have to start playing from the
>beginning - there is way of repairing things and the game
>even tells you how.

I got to the point where I needed the thing from the beginning
of the game. The game didn't at that point do anything to
indicate it was possible for me to solve it; perhaps it
depended on me having completed other puzzles I had not
yet solved?  It's hard to see how to distinguish the scenario
"the game makes it seem like you need to start over to solve
puzzle A when you really just need to solve puzzle B first"
from a guess-the-verb puzzle.

Between being irritated at "want some rye", the poorly
designed iconic interface (whose icons couldn't be counted
on to be in the same place from object to object, and which
animated, both of which simply slowed the process of
selecting a verb to worse than typing speed), the absolute
lack of concern about the townspeople about having been
transplanted, and the no-bones-about-it bug I encountered
with a witch who thought I was carrying something offensive when
I was not (it was back at the ranch), I was not in a mode of
thought to think "maybe this is a really clever puzzle
which is waiting for me to solve something else before I go on".

>Problem is, very few people noticed
>this, the majority  just started flaming the game over and
>over again and did it great unjustice.

Given the above context, it seemed and seems pretty just to me.
It may have been a different kind of poor game design than
I thought, but maybe not.

Admittedly, you have to be careful about the fact that one
reviewer might get stuck on something that 99% of people don't
get stuck on, so any one reviewer's complaint isn't necessarily
valid (e.g. maybe hardly anybody hit the bug I did).  On
the other hand, you've already suggested that it was widely
misperceived, so I tend to think my judgement is fair.

SeanB
