Myst came out almost exactly a month after Return to Zork, and it completely embarrassed it. How warranted that embarrassment is can be for someone else to debate, but the reaction is clear. Myst obliterated the sales charts and was accepted by most as the future of first-person graphical adventure games. A few years later, along comes Zork Nemesis, a game that is JARRINGLY distant from the series traditional parodical tone and is entirely transparent in its inspirations... though I suppose Zork always was. This is not at all to say that Zork Nemesis is some meritless sellout. Zork Nemesis is by no means an uninspired Myst clone. It comes to the table with its own lovely aesthetic, its own technical offerings, and of course, its own puzzles.

Zork Nemesis is not bound by a sequence of static images like Myst is. Environments can be free-looked upon in a full 360 degrees, and occasionally even with a Z-axis. Well-acted FMVs are frequent, and the game drips with its own beautiful style. The game also has far more plot and characterization to chew on, leading to a better sense of pace than one sees in Myst.

If I didn't know better than to even ask this of Activision, I would beg for a remaster. Not some nonsense like the recent Myst remake in Unreal 4 with all of the FMV ripped out, but something that I don't have to play in a pathetically resolutioned DOSbox window, where the slightest flick of my mouse makes the world whirl around me and I don't have to fumble desperately with the dragging hand cursor to get a lever to respond.