Zork, Half-life, and Deus Ex

So I mentioned on Tuesday that I’d finished Elite Force and was looking for something new to play.

That night (or the next; the days blur), I installed Zork: Grand Inquisitor and Half-Life on my machine.

Zork is a standard adventure game, in my mind, and it took me two tries to enjoy it enough to play more. I beat it on Saturday, and was impressed–much like I was with Elite Force–with how short the game was. There were a few places where the “trick” seemed to be something kind of arbitrary, but overall, the game was pretty fun and made me lust a little for some interactive fiction. Anyone got any recommendations on that front?

WO and I wanted to play Zork in the special “Linked Play” mode, in which I would control the character’s actions and he would be able to point at crap and say, “Look over here!” (Undoubtedly in an annoying manner, like that green guy from the GameCube version of Zelda.) Alas, despite the installation of IPX on both of our machines, attempts to start with Linked Play simply crashed the game. Oh, well.

Half-Life… Yeah. I rapidly discovered that I can’t handle shit jumping out at me any better for having pwned Elite Force. Too much adrenaline. WO, however, was more than willing to let me play video game voyeur and watch him play for many an hour over the next several days (until even he was burnt out). Pretty game, seems awesome, not my style.

Later in the week, I installed Deus Ex, but by then I’d watched too many hours of Half-Life and just sort of putzed around in the training level before moving on to other activities.

Best thing about the training level? Movable houseplants, free to be arranged, thrown, and shot. WO muttered something about women liking construction in games, at which point I ordered him to “construct” me a cup of tea.

No, actually I didn’t. I just threw another houseplant into a corner.

I didn’t have much interest in the game itself, but then again, break was drawing to a close and I was restless as hell. I might play a little more as time permits; I haven’t uninstalled it yet.