I remember being 10 years old in the 1980’s watching my father on his Apple IIc frantically scribing notes as he maneuvered his way through gazebos, talked to unicorns, operated dams, and forded rivers all the time fleeing from Wizards and Gruels. Now I could imagine him scratching his body looking for another fix. I bet he drove through town looking for mythical creatures. This fictional labyrinth has the capacity to easily ensnare you in your non-fictional life. It’s like heroine for even the most computer illiterate individual.
And now, 20 years later I've got the itch.
So here you again are at the beginning of some great Underground Empire but instead of “standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door" you are now inside an ancient barrow hidden deep within a dark forest. And at the end of the forest what can you see? Possibly you can't see the forest through the tree.
Like the first episode the start of this adventure sure doesn't seem to be all that exceptional but once again, that's the beauty of it? It begins to peak your interest with the next sentence. "You see a familiar brass lantern here."
Suddenly your mind begins to jump right
back into that insane world that you immersed yourself into for all that time a year or so ago. What is that light at the end of the forest path? Well, to quote Mr. Shakespeare, "Aye, therein lays the rub." Which when translated roughly means “Ah, so there in front of me is the obstacle.”
All that waits for you in the Zork 2 underworld is as big as your imagination. Since the Zork adventures are all text based your mind is the catalyst for the games magic. The more into the game you are the more the game is into you. But do not think that this is something that you can just breeze through. On the contrary, this adventure, like the first, requires amazing attention to detail and one would be foolish to try to tackle the sheer awesomeness of this place without pen, paper and some map drawing skills. Try it without drawing a map and you’ll find yourself running in circles, as though you were trying to navigate from a “carrousel”.
One thing that separates this from the first is the difficulty of the puzzles. This adventure steps up the already challenging game play but retains the same wide vocabulary and dry whit and humor as you try to conquer the aging and semi-senile Wizard of Frobozz.
