>Has anybody tried the recent Zork games? Grand Inquisitor and Nemesis I think is what they're called; there may have been another. I haven't tried either though I have heard decent things about them (personally they looked a bit too Myst-like for me).

In case anyone wants to know:

I own Return to Zork (Activision/Infocom, 1993) and Zork Grand Inquisitor (Activision, 1997; I guess Infocom got dissolved or something).

Return to Zork is very challenging; not so much because you couldn't figure out the puzzles as because it's very easy to die, and some areas (such as the boat rental shack) are hard to get to (I didn't even know it was there for an awfully long time). Also, some of the puzzles in Return to Zork are unsolveable if you mess up at the beginning (for example, if you kick the rock at the beginning of the game, then there's no way to pass the game but it doesn't tell you. That means that, after playing for hours trying to figure it out, you have to go back to the BEGINNING and start ALL OVER...)

Mostly because of the rock thing (and other puzzles like that), I think that Return to Zork is an example of a game that is too frustrating for most players.

Zork Grand Inquisitor, on the other hand, is way too easy. You can die, but you cannot do anything wrong without dying. That means, no matter what you do, if it doesn't kill you, then it's good. I went through the game basically clicking on everything I could until finally I won. --But I did it without getting any cheat hints ;)

In defense of ZGI, the game is REALLY FUNNY. I thoroughly enjoyed ZGI (unlike RTZ, which was simply frustrating); although I felt the game was shorter than it should have been (because it was so easy, I think I passed the game in something like 2 weekends. Later, I passed the game again in about 2 hours at a friend's house.)

So, I guess, in RTZ, you can do things to mess up your game without it telling you, and this makes the game too frustrating. On the other hand, if you make it so that you can't mess your game up, then this makes the game too easy. So I guess the right way to program a game would simply be to...

...I'll shut up now.

-Anony "I'm scared of message boards and anyway if I give you my name they'll come to my house and take my credit card" mous