Tag Archive for 'Legends of Zork'

Updates to LoZ

The challenge of calculating probable victory died when I bought the Aimfiz Amulet, which removes the action point cost for returning to base.  Don’t get me wrong, I want the most out of the money I’m not spending (or, as noted here, the money I’ve already spent), but life before Aimfix involved my predicting the level I should explore and when I should return home so that my weapon/armor/magic/skill habit retains maximum funding.

With the charm I can, effectively, return to base after each victory, auto-sell what I’ve found, and bank all monies — although for ease of play, who’d want to do such?  Since Jolt now allows free roam of the map (in terms of AP-expense, not character level), sliding around to different locations is no longer a tactical concern.  I may now feasibly explore dungeons or over-world areas at higher levels because they no longer carry an AP-cost premium.  It’s a fair change and one that the public argued for greatly, although it removes some of the risk I enjoyed and now makes me see LoZ as a daily, electronic keeping-up-with-the-Joneses.
Kurt TommyGun still adventures, though it seems a more social environment would better ensure his longevity.  Jolt is positioning LoZ toward this, I think.  They’ve improved the interface for friends and enemies, they’ve added the ability to manually accept parties, they’ve added a GPS-like interface on the title screen (allowing me an immediate social perspective of the game world), and they’re integrating clan support.  Without this, LoZ becomes less of a low-overhead adventure game and more of one-way street to boredom.

Legends of Zork

Legends of Zork comes with much debate.  Some find it all right, though passive.  Others find it superficial, a Zork veneer over an otherwise shallow and rather androgynous game mechanic.  I agree with those questioning its marketing paradigm.  Even if Jolt is on the up-and-up, things as such appear shady.  Isn’t image 90% of the truth?

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