Another game that came with a lot of hype.
I'm going to be short about this one. It's a decent first person slashers or fireball thrower game with a decent story. It's linear as hell. You have no real freedom what so ever. In that respects it’s a pure FPS like doom, half life 2 or quake 4. You go through the maps and you have limited freedom within each map. This is not as such a bad thing. But I would like to make it clear that this is in no way an RPG.
The game looks decent and despite all the hints in the readme file and on several forums it will run fine even on slightly older cards.( It worked like a charm on my Radeon 9600XT and the X700 mobility as well as the FX5600.)
Graphics are nice although It could have uses more variation in weapons and armor. Characters and the world look pretty. There are some really nice lighting effects and a good use of shadows in some levels. Most maps manage to feel the right size and you have room to do some exploring.
Possible snag could be the limited number of unique enemies. That is to say there is not a whole lot of variation between monsters in any level.
For example while making my way through the Necromancer city I had expected there to be more variations on the theme, some interesting summons, a few devious traps that sort of thing.
The sound is good and the voice acting is decent too. Although personally I think the good female character is a bit.. over the top. Nobody is such an airhead..really..no, right? Well ok perhaps there are a few people like that..
But it uses surround sounds quite nicely. You can between creature shadows and the noises they make figure out where enemies are hiding or if an ambush is about to be sprung.
What is key about this game is the interaction with your surroundings. This game lets you really use the terrain. You can kick goblins into fires, push orcs into racks of spikes killing them instantly. Or kick enemies off mountains or into lakes. It's all good fun. Especially when you make a bridge collapse under several monsters and watch them drop to their death. Or hit away a support and have a whole stack of crates drop onto them. All in all damn good sadistic fun! :-)
The downside is that near the end the effects of your choices are somewhat limited. And that is a shame because it reduces replay value. The same goes for the various classes you can play. That choice makes no impact on the levels or story and that is a shame.
It's no RPG, and the story is a bit lacking especially in terms of the ending But it will easily keep you amused for a few hours one rainy and boring day/night.
Labels: games
