Zork Nemesis: the ending that pistol whipped my soul

If you’ve read any of the other blogs on this particular blog, you’ll know that my sisters and I are huge dorks. We’ve already confessed to a love of all that is Nintendo. But did we mention computer games were also impaled deep inside our lazy hearts? We played a few: 7th Guest, Doom, Rollercoaster Tycoon, SimAnt, Carmen Sandiego, but the most frustrating and epic of them all? Zork: Nemesis.

When you’re a 12 year old, there are a lot of things you don’t understand. After reading the plot summary of this game on Wikipedia, I now realize I didn’t understand most of what was going on in Zork:Nemesis. Parts of it didn’t even sound remotely familiar to me, and this is a game Natalie and I devoted weeks if not months of our lives to. But luckily the middle part rang some bells, so I can still blog with the force of ten men.

So, the world is all messed up and out of balance because an ambiguous “Nemesis” murdered  4 alchemists. You—the unnamed hero-- are expected to restore order to the creepy stark world of the Forbidden Lands. Basically, as soon as the game starts you are listening to your footsteps echo through the halls of this abandoned temple(see above), and you find 4 coffins occupied with 4 fresh corpses. WTF? As if that’s not disturbing enough, the corpses start hologramming Obe Wan style at you and telling you how they were murdered, their children were murdered, and how now they’re being held captive in ETERNAL TORTURE! Again, when you’re 12—this is the kind of stuff that has you clammy and still under your sheets at night attempting to breathe through the material and hoping that your lack of movement will convince the shadow monsters not to chew your face off. Anyway-your job now is to scamper about this scary temple and purify elements so that each corpse will tell you how they got fucked over and eventually killed. It looks a little something like this:

Am I wrong, or is that disquieting in every way possible?

So as a treat for solving the first puzzle and enduring a bunch of troubling exposition, you get to magically fly to each alchemist’s respective home to be bombarded with more upsetting images.

Luckily for you each of these fine citizens live in the MOST HORRIFYING PLACES POSSIBLE. Traveling in this game was reminiscent of port keys in Harry Potter. You look through a telescope, and suddenly you’re zooming from the terrifying temple to an equally terrifying conservatory, the home of Madame Sophia Hamilton. She represents the water element in this game, which means basically nothing besides there are cool water signs all over the Frigid Branch Conservatory and some of the puzzles involve fountains. After that you are catapulted to a Monastery, which is pretty boring. I remember it being slightly similar to the Great Wall of China as far as aesthetics went. You feel like a little spy/warrior rifling through the scientists things and discovering how hardcore they all were. The creepiest part about the game is the fact that you appear to be the only person on earth, and you’re roaming through spacious industrialized architecture the whole time. Also you are subject to random cut scenes, instigated by you touching certain objects and entering certain rooms. It’s not really clear whether these are flashbacks, or if the corpses are just hologramming again.

Remember when I said the creepiest part of the game was the isolation and mechanized environment? I was totally forgetting the next destination on the Zork tour. After the Monastery you fly to the Asylum. Now, I’ve never been to an actual asylum, but I'm pretty sure real asylums aren't covered in blood. It looks as if a gang of preteen boys had water gun fight but instead of filling their supersoakers with water, they went with blood instead. Blood on the walls, the floors, the elevator buttons. I don’t know how this asylum was getting past health regulations. There’s even a room with 3 heads on stakes hooked up to little shock machines. They literally force you to shock these severed heads, which speak, order to get a combination to unlock a door. Also, the ambient noise in this place is Gregorian chant sprinkled with tortured screams. It goes well with the several instruments of pain strewn about for effect. They look a little like this:

Nothing says sanitary like a decayed skeleton in a cage, you know?

You could go through the patient files at this place and look at what the crazy people drew. There was a particular drawing done by"Patient X" that throttled my sense of inner joy and peace.

This is when we find out that Madam water sign’s daughter was in the asylum drawing fucked up crayon pictures herself (LACES OUT) and being electroshocked and lobotomized into sanity. Though whether she was actually insane to begin with is up for debate.

So after you manage to puzzle solve your way out of the asylum, (hopefully without throwing up on yourself) you get to go to a Castle!! Weee!! This is when the game went from super rad and scary to super lame and disappointing. When you get there it’s actually kind of nice—there’s a huge theatre, your clues are violins and ticket stubs rather than rusty scalpels and detached body parts. Plus the music is significantly less unnerving. So there you are, ready to wrap up the game that had you switching discs all over the place (I believe there were 3, and our computer tried to eat one a few times) when all of a sudden BLAM!

Love story.

Suddenly you find out that Earth Dude’s slightly flamboyant son was apparently in love with Madam Water’s crazy ass daughter. It’s a little late in the game to be introducing a love story, don’t you think? I’ve been ninja-ing my ass all over the Forbidden Fucking Lands only to find out I’m doing it in order to set right the burgeoning love of two angst ridden adolescents?

Way to blow it, Activision.


As if that wasn’t enough, after solving a series of ridiculously difficult puzzles that make you want to poke your sister's eyes out, you finally get the entire alchemist crew that you’ve been working to save around a table. They are giving you a toast and thanking you for all your hard work. You're feeling accomplished, at ease. They hand you a glass of wine, and because you are happy to have helped your new friends, you drink it. Of course you do. It would be rude not to.

Poison.

Those assholes POISON you! Thanks for saving our souls from damnation, NOW GO TAKE OUR PLACE IN HELL. Turns out the alchemists were playing you from the start. They only wanted to use you to help them do something evil! I forget exactly what it is you helped them do, but it wasn't good, and I didn't like it. Plus in a super weak plot twist it would seem the evil alchemists were actually the douchebags keeping their lovesick kids apart from eachother! Something really lame and topped with a big lame cherry melting really lame shit all over the table. So disappointing in fact, the rest of the game seems like a lie. I felt like I got dumped by the game and it told me it had in fact been a homosexual the entire time we were dating. Betrayed in a way.

The fact that I can't remember the ending speaks for itself, don't you think? Besides the vomit rising up in the back of my throat....

We should totally find it and play it again.