oh yeah...

[arethinn]

...finished The Lurking Horror last night too. Extremely vaguely Lovecraftian, but nowhere near enough to actually amuse anyone who'd actually read Lovecraft. The geek references (the hacker in the story actually says things like "chomp" and "losing") were much more satisfying, even though the closest I get to actual hackerdom is having read The Jargon File. And once again, incomplete hints. I kept reading stuff about a mummified hand and going to myself, WHAT hand?? I haven't found one! It turned out it was buried in the earth of a potted peach tree in the weather observation dome thingy. The dome itself was mentioned because a flying creature is trying to attack you in it, but there wasn't a question like "Is the peach tree important?" which would have been what I needed. It also took me forever to figure out that I could open the elevator doors by hand (or by crowbar) when the elevator was not present, and thus drop down into the elevator shaft, into a location which was right on the map and even had an important object listed as visible - and none of how to get there was even hinted at in the hints. I was left, again, going "what chain??? I haven't seen any chain!!" It just assumed you had figured it out, even though problems that in my estimation were far simpler had their own questions and were explicitly explained (like the hacker doesn't seem to want the cold Chinese food, well, why not use the prominent microwave that was right next to the refrigerator?). I was very annoyed. And I got none of the sense of accomplishment I had with Zork Zero - just irritation at whoever wrote the hints.