Zork Grand Inquisitor

                      Reviewed by MerC

(On a Pentium 150, 48Mb RAM, 24 speed CD, Matrox Mystique GC, SB
Compatible SC)

Min Req:  Pentium 90; 16Mb RAM; Quad CD ROM; 50Mb hard disk space;
16bit graphics card; SB Compatible Sound Card; Windows 95 or
later. i.e. a not-too- high-end machine.

Activision, RRP : œ34.99

Graphics Adventure 11-18+

You'll like this one. You will like this one. Who says? I say. And
who's the boss of you?  I am!  Which, I hasten to add, is how the
Grand Inquisitor might have put it.  Not me. No, never me. I'm
just a totemized creature undeserving of notice, not worth the
candle, or the lantern for that matter. But you're gonna want to
get it in the end - which is not as painful as it sounds - so
accept the inevitable, get the Switch card out, grab disc 1, slam
it in the CD, sit back and enjoy.

ZGI being a family game, there's not a great deal of s*x and/or
violence, so you don't get to kill much - but you don't really
notice the omission, as you're too busy doing other things, such
as admiring the scenery. Needless to say the graphics are stunning
(and not only when you walk into the wall) and the digital sound
effects have real oomph (and blam! and kaboom! and - you get
the idea.) There are no stats and no points, though you do get to
achieve higher status as you solve each puzzle, usually discovered
when you've died.

Your task is to restore magic to the Great Underground Empire,
which the far-from-benevolent dictator known as the Grand
Inquisitor has declared anathema (well, he's banned it). Now to
say magic has been prohibited, you have, on your travels, an awful
lot to do with spells. Not only finding them, but also repairing,
combining, growing and even writing them. You'll need the odd
quirky turn of mind or clue-in-a-book to be able to accomplish
this, but, after all, it is a Zork game, albeit with Orwellian
overtones. (Memo: must stop watching BBC 2)

The whole production is a delight from start to finish. Even the
installation routines shout quality, (metaphorically) with
marvellously complicated machinery repeated in all the gadgetry
you come across. A sort of updated, animated Heath-Robinson-esque
artwork, which is brilliant in both appearance and execution.
Multicoloured flashing lights, knobs that tweak, wheels that turn,
levers that pull, buttons that push, teeth that bite, conveyor
belts that convey, dials that, er, dial, and cogs that do whatever
cogs are supposed to do.  Vegetables vegetate and get in your way,
as do miscellaneous fauna (but you're cleverer than they are,
aren't you?) and you don't even need to wait for the train to
stop, which gives a whole new dimension to the idea of a hand-out.

You can choose to install small, or large, depending on your
available disk space. (which if limited, you can always buy a copy
of SynTax 50 on CD, and remove the SynTax files from your HD?).
However, with the small installation, there may be problems. At
least one player, (well known and loved by us all) couldn't get
the scratch card puzzle to animate under it.  At times there seems
to be quite a bit of disk changing, especially if you have to go
back over a section.  Sometimes the sound played over twice, which
added to the surreal atmosphere, but which I felt was
unintentional. A small price to pay, I reckon, for the extensive
video cuts, some of which are interactive - and a great
improvement over the last Zork I played (Return to).  These actors
are much, much better and the sequences they appear in are very
slick productions.

Solving the many and varied puzzles is not particularly easy, but
you do not have the problem of slaying sundry obstructionist
heaving beasts along the way. You have, of course, to collect
everything you find that is not screwed down, so careful looking
is essential, especially as the 'clue' to a collectible object is
the movement cursor, telling you you can move up to it. As usual,
there are more ways to snuff it than currants in an Eccles cake,
so save often.

If you can't get on with this one, then might I suggest a car-boot
sale? They do say line dancing is very relaxing, and so much less
wet than synchronised swimming.















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