| #30 | Return to Zork |
|---|---|
| guessed by | The_Liquid_Laser |
| platform | DOS |
| release year | 1993 |
| developer/publisher | Infocom/Activision |
| genre | point-and-click adventure |
| links | Wikipedia |
| last year | #48 |
As I already mentioned some times here (and will continue to with the upcoming games), I do love point-and-click adventures. Return to Zork is one of them, and it is a great one.
The Zork series actually is one of the oldest adventure series around, and one of the oldest game series at all. The first Zork released in 1980. And the series is known for it's story, dialogue and riddles. Naturally, the old Zork-games were all text-adventures. No graphic at all.
Return to Zork happened a decade later, as graphic adventures were all around. But Return to Zork did some innovations. It had an interesting interface, which adapted on the situation. This allowed for the point-and-click interface of graphical adventures, but brought also some complexity, as the menu could depending on the situation be filled with many options.
Return to Zork also has real actors playing the characters. This was at the time somethign that was done sometimes, but usually it turned out terrible, as integration of the video and the rendered game was bad and the pre-recorded videos lacked interactivity. Return to Zork solved that decently. The videos are often short clips and record possible reactions of the characters and the graphic was adjusted to fit with the rendered surroundings. In the pic above you see the wizard in the globe talking, and that was an actor, but the globe was computer graphics. But the devs were putting work into it, so it actually fits graphically.
Overall this was a great game. Very worthy of my TOP 50.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9afP1pRo2RI
