It is virtually a film cliche nowadays: early on, one character tells another everything the audience might need to know, sometimes in circumstances justifying such a tale but sometimes not. It's a clumsy device, but it keeps the audience from having to work too hard, always a vital element. Graham Nelson's Meteor... preempts that approach by setting out the plot in menu format, distinct from gameplay, a wholly laudable move in this particular game--for the backstory that Nelson elects to give us is exhaustive enough that it would clutter gameplay considerably were it thrown in Hollywood-style. But it also catches the player somewhat off balance to find that the complicated setup is only minimally relevant to the game--at least, to puzzle-solving; no puzzles require knowledge found in the backstory. Rather, Meteor... reduces the "solve puzzles because they're there to solve" feel by embedding the motivations for the player's action in the story, so that the plot makes sense of your actions while not requiring you to consult the setup constantly as a guideline. The game gives you an initial plot and set of motivations--you are an ambassador from a small province sent to investigate strange doings while keeping relations amicable--that provides credible reasons for your required actions. This is not to say that there are no holes or improbabilities, but there are remarkably few, considering how complicated the story becomes. It may not seem like the most notable feature of the game, but it's an element rarely seen in IF nowadays: a reasonably involved storyline that, suitably understood, makes sense of the game, even though the game is quite playable by itself.

Well, mostly. Considering its authorship (*bow* *genuflect*), Meteor... is encumbered with a surprising number of gameplay problems, as in Stuff An Author Really Shouldn't Do. Among the less flagrant is a puzzle that involves waiting around, by my count, 23 turns before a solution is possible. Granted, there's nothing to do for those 23 turns anyway, and yes, a few things of some (but only some) interest happen while you're waiting around--but given that the relevant event is not a one-turn happening when it does come along (you notice something that is henceforth there for the examining until you figure out what to do with it), it seems like the author could have hurried things along a tad. Now, yes, the point of the scene in question is to establish boredom, and it's certainly effective in that respect--but mightn't effective writing have the same effect? In short, it's a questionable decision that risks annoying the player out of the game. More egregious are guess-the-verb moments--a few relatively mild, one absolutely horrendous. (When you get there--you'll know--the relevant verb is "give." You're welcome.) It isn't at all clear what happened, besides, perhaps, that the author was rushed in putting the game together. There are other puzzling glitches--some unlisted exits (one that made a puzzle's solution a complete surprise to me) and a description that I found wholly inadequate to convey the scene. (It relies on a better understanding of the term "scree"--a Britishism? perhaps--than I had, anyway.) One puzzle in particular toward the end of the game, involving the correct combination for a dial, is not blessed with huge whopping amounts of sense, and several other actions involve painfully exact wording that slows down the game. At one point, you lose some of your possessions unless you take steps to safeguard them--but while it doesn't seem so unreasonable to have them appear again beside you if you've taken the right steps, the game requires a long circuitous route to retrieve the stuff. None of this makes the game unplayable or less than enjoyable, but it's a bit disconcerting in an otherwise strong entry.

The puzzles are excellent; many involve a certain large-scale thinking, an awareness of how the game environment fits together as a whole, that feels genuinely fresh. A few, true, involve semi-suicidal actions, but they're so strongly hinted at by the game that they're more or less reasonable to try. (And what player really rejects actions on grounds that they're semi-suicidal anyway?) A few are a bit obscure, true, but not unguessable; the only one that seemed unfair was the result of a poor setup, as mentioned above, not the puzzle itself. The game is a tad inconsistent about what it rewards with points--I was initially convinced I was wasting a needed resource on the wrong puzzle because I wasn't given a point for solving it--but that's a minor blip on a set of very good puzzles. The reliance on physics and common sense recalls the appeal of the Zork series: the puzzles required understanding and using conventional objects to achieve your ends, even in fantastic settings, rather than mastering complicated systems or foreign concepts. In that way, the Zork games were always accessible--lack of a scientific bent was never a bar--and here, similarly, the puzzles reward logic and logical experimentation. (Particularly good is the problem requiring use of the stick, and the way you use the hornet is certainly intriguing.) The game manages to recapture the magic element of the Enchanter trilogy without making your puzzle-solving largely magic-based; a few of the puzzles involve magic, but few enough that trying all your spells in a given situation is not generally reliable. In short, the puzzles in Meteor... are generally good, and even memorable in a few cases. As for the format of magic itself, the "learn spell" routine--well, it never troubled me much, but apparently it makes many weep and gnash their teeth. It fits the feel here, wherein magic is only being rediscovered, but it isn't, strictly, necessary.

A game that purports to return to the Zork universe--given, that is not Meteor's express claim, and its plot is far more involved than that, but that is part of its premise--must understand and recapture its feel, and in that Meteor... succeeds admirably. The central location--an inverted cedar--is vivid and strikingly written: 

This is a slate-littered shelf high up at the northwest eaves of a dark, 
vaulted cave, from which a meadow-fresh breeze blows. The ledge broadens 
down a slab "staircase" to the east but wastes away into a tight squeeze 
southwest. Natural passages extend like tendrils into the rock all around 
this cavern, but only one is accessible from here, back north under the 
lintel.

Hanging down toward the dim, distant cave floor is a flourishing, inverted 
cedar, its roots grappling the roof, its nearest outflung branch a good 10 
feet across the abyss from here.
Moreover, it is fantastic in a way that suits the genre well, intriguingly unusual but not so bizarre that the player can't imagine it easily. As with the Carousel Room in Zork II (or, even, the living room and its various entries in Zork I), mastering the layout means getting the hang of traveling through that location, and the geography here makes sense once the player accepts the premise. Just as successful is the bridge between fantasy and reality, especially since that relationship is central to the game--the real-life element is thoroughly (if tediously) established before you, the ordinary fellow, are cast into the fantasy side, and the conclusion ties things back together nicely. As a result, the player need only suspend disbelief in a few elemental ways--the existence of magic, for instance--because the original "ordinary" persona is believable. It may not seem like much, but it's an element that the original Zork games certainly never tried to capture. And there is even a sense of perspective on Zork and its progeny, captured in an encounter with an adventurer's ghost that concludes thus: 

The Adventurer, having now acquired the whole nearby wealth of treasure, 
spreads his arms around the pile of loot. As he does so, he and they vanish 
like the dawn into the past where, perhaps, they belong.
It might be said, therefore, that Meteor... returns you to the Zork universe but does not send you there as an adventurer, as such, merely a chance visitor, and even with the variety of Infocom references--including the living room from Zork I and several of the original treasures--the plot given, not "exploring the Zork universe," drives the story and keeps things moving along.

As noted, the writing is strong, particularly in the way it conveys the hanging cedar and the surrounding scene; Nelson, as with the best game authors, paints each scene vividly in just a few sentences. Particlarly effective is the way the locations that are intermediate between ho-hum everyday life and the fantasy Underground Empire hint at the latter--they point to something unusual but avoid telegraphing it in overly obvious terms. To wit: 

Bubbling Pool
This is a red-brown earthy bole, a cavity in hardened soil with but a single 
crawl leading out to the southeast. The ground is covered with autumn leaves, 
russet and variegated.

In the centre is a bubbling pool of spring water, glinting with shades and 
flickers of green phosphoresence.
Intriguing enough on its face--and why are there autumn leaves underground? Why is the pool "bubbling"? Nelson draws the player in through a series of increasingly intriguing discoveries, rather than throwing the entire Zork universe into one momentous discovery. There are a few somewhat overwritten moments... 

...And suddenly, there is the Power! It crackles through your whole body, 
sparking at your fingernails and toenails, sending shivers along your limbs. 
You feel suddenly afraid to imagine, afraid that you can no longer tell 
imagination from reality.
...but only a few, and they don't distract much from the game. Moreover, the humor integral to Infocom's fantasy efforts is here in spades, with a wryness that avoids an "I'm being funny now" feel. For example: 

>examine elephant
The magnificent grey beast is wrinkled and has a wise look (but then, after 
an entire day of Amilia's conversation, your average potato would have a wise 
look). His two great ears flap a little up at the front sides of the basket, 
his trunk curls and pokes at the air.
Equally amusing are the dummy spells you can encounter late in the game, including "gloth," referred to in Spellbreaker (fold dough 83 times), and others to "paint picket fence orange" and "reduce herbs in over-spiced stew." As Infocom liked to do in its day, these bits help make magic amusing rather than fearful and awe- inspiring. And there are the usual Nelson touches--an Eliot reference here, references to obscure science fiction authors there--and there is a spell to "view the past" that allows perspective on every location in the game, givin the game a sense of completeness (though the spell is not necessary to win the game, nor is it even useful). As is in the case in the best games, there is much more going on here than the bare plot and puzzles; the wealth of extraneous details give Meteor considerable explorability and replayability, and allow the player to keep discovering more about the game on subsequent attempts. There are no alternate paths--in fact, no puzzles have alternate solutions--but there are many things to ponder along the way that the initial gameplay might not necessarily reveal. Just as importantly, though, even when the puzzles are simply there to solve rather than part of the story, the writing preserves the feel--ordinary fellow discovers extraordinary things--and reminds you now and again of who you are. (For example, upon reading a document: "Scratchy handwriting adorns this text, and the writing's in a dialect almost unrecognisable today. But, like any diplomat worth his salt, you've a way with language...") Touches like this diminish the sense of puzzles grafted into the game, and help merge plot and gameplay--not entirely successfully, but skillfully enough.

In sum, Meteor... is a worthy return to, and comment on, the Zork world, and an entertaining game in its own right. While not as polished as many of Nelson's works, it certainly stands among the better games out there (though it was rather long for a competition entry, with more than 300 turns required). Glitches aside, there is enough Graham Nelson here to make it well worth any player's while.