ZZT Crime V5
What a pile of bullshit Nadir. ZZT crimes covers a lot more then syndromes ever did. And don't give me any crap about reviewing my own games, i just added a lil content myself at the end.
Okay okay, I'm going to try very, very hard not to make this review an ad hominem attack. It hurts you, and it hurts me too. But... it will be difficult.
I hate ZZT Crime, and I hate most of Wong Chung Bang's games too. You know that bit near the end of the newest ChickenWire where I go off on one about how his "retro-style" ZZT games are actually just derivative rip-offs of someone else's creativity? Well, ZZT Crime isn't quite as retro, but the point remains that he's basically let someone else do the hard work, taken the best bits and used them for his own output. In fact, it's worse here than in those games, where he at least tried to put an original spin on Tim Sweeney's zillion-year-old puzzles.
ZZT Crime touts itself as an unofficial "sequel" to Barjesse's seminal ZZT Syndrome. This would be fine, if he were then to tackle problems not covered in the original file... but then the first seven boards repeat, almost word-for-word, EXACTLY what ZZT Syndrome advised; don't use yellow borders, don't use lots of monsters, don't use stars, etc, etc. Aside from being an obvious ripoff, it's also superfluous; yes, I realise that the game is geared towards amateur game designers, but even so it's not hard to tell them to just go download the original file, which is credited as "inspiration" on the title screen! Or maybe it's just a way to disguise your own dearth of ideas for the file? Surely not! I count that 18 of the game's 38 playable boards are dedicated to regurgitating Barjesse's advice. If it was just a little here and a little there I wouldn't mind, but good god man that's almost half the board total.
This continues throughout; the game tells you to give the player enough health and ammo, not to lock your games (albeit with a semi-nifty "runtime error" animation and a better explanation of why not to use Super Locks), not to use ping-pong paths, not to beg for money, blah blah blah. All been done before, far more eloquently.
Anyway, enough bitching about unoriginal content. The game does have some original advice, such as the evils of item fields, how to #lock and #unlock objects properly, and an intensely irritating board where you are told by the author himself how stupid and terrible swearing is, that makes me want to fuckin' smack him. These points are sound, I guess (apart from the latter, of course). Of course, these original points are interspersed with Barjesse's stuff, which as a veteran ZZTer I just find distracting, although if you're a newbie who doesn't know any better you won't mind. Saying that's okay, however, is like saying it's okay for children to watch terrible low-quality cartoons; while it won't actually harm them, they won't thank you later.
Ironically, the game suffers from a crime itself which is not mentioned throughout; linking the wrong board through a passage! It also veers dangerously close to another crime not mentioned; PLAGIARISM. Yes, I'm really hung up on this. "You vs. Stupidity 2" is a far better guide on this matter, and that's not even a tutorial, it's a game where you kill Blue's Clues.
On the plus side, it's cool to be able to type "zzt crime" in the DOS prompt to load the game up, and the graphics are okay (he actually uses STK this time around, thank god). Other than that, don't bother with this; get ZZT Syndrome and ZZT Pro (by Kjorteo, it's good even though I vehemently disagree with his stance on dark rooms) instead. You deserve better ZZT tutorials than this derivative rehash of someone else's ideas.
Harsh, aren't I?
This game is like ZZT Syndromes and tells you things you can do wrong when you make a game, and how to avoid them. Beside the mistakes mentioned in ZZT Syndromes, there are a few extra blunders someone can make when editing a world. It's a good game for newbies to try out. But if you already tried ZZT Syndromes, this will mostly be more of the same.
