Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
On first impressions it’s easy to confuse Dark Messiah with another swords and shields game, Oblivion. The similarities however between the two games go beyond this simple perspective as Dark Messiah features one of most stunning graphical engines seen in any game to date. Its developers Arkane Studios have taken Valves source engine (which was last seen in Half Life 2 Ep1) and have tweaked it to get it running as good as it can get and this reviewer has to say he is impressed. It takes full advantage of HDR which makes for some spectacular outdoor scenes, the models are detailed and the maps are well textured, as a piece of eye candy Dark Messiah will not disappoint even those who have played Oblivion on maximum detail. At this point I should point out if you do want tot play this game with all the bells and whistles I wouldn’t play it on anything much less then the system I was using as big out door environment means lots of polygons and textures to render so it’s going to need everything you can throw at it.
You play the character of Sareth who can best be described as a battle mage, he can swing a sword and fire lighting bolts out of hands Palpatine style as well as a host of other moves which I’ll cover latter. After you complete the first level (more of a training level to get you use to the controls) you are charged with the quest of obtaining a magical artefact called the skull of shadows (quite how a skull can cast multiple shadows is beyond the capabilities of this reviewer). Before you are sent on your way you are ‘joined’ with a witch called Xana who throughout the game will guide you and offer you advice, she also patronises your other love interest in the game, a girl called Leanna. Leanna accompanies you on several of your missions, but somewhat annoyingly you will need to baby-sit her because if she dies you fail and you have to start all over again. As characters and love interests go Leanna plays the non offensive girl next door type but who can also hold her own in politically correct sort way. Xana however I found annoying as hell, I guess the developers thought they would play Leanna and Xana off each off Leanna playing the good girl and the Xana playing the seductress. Unfortunately the voice actress who done Xana made her as appealing as cocktail of Margaret Thatcher and some women who has smoked 60 a day for 30 years.
Controls are not limited to just basic sword swing and blocking, you can also kick your enemies, pick up boxes, throw boxes, cut ropes, and destroy ledges. I have yet to see another game feature this level of interaction before, not only does it make things more interesting it also adds more tactical options, for example rather then run up to an Orc and bash the mouse button to throw your sword you can instead throw a box at him and whilst he’s down impale him or kick him of a ledge and send him plummeting to his death. Fighting is actually quite simple, tapping and hold the mouse button will give you basic power attacks and slashing attacks. To keeps things from getting boring you can also hold down the mouse button and one the direction keys which will produce a different attack, for example LMB + D will give you a upwards lunging attack where as LMB + S gives you a stabbing attack. You also have the usual bow and arrow for long range cowardly snipe attacks and although as I described your character as battle mage you can as you progress through the game specialise in a specialist classes. The game will reward you with skill points as you complete your tasks (traditional RPG’S give you XP points when you defeat an enemy), these skill points can be spent on improving your combat skills, learning new magic skills, stealth. This means if you want to play as a wizard/spell caster you can, or if you want and you’re a fan of Thief or Metal Gear Solid, you can sneak up on people using stealth before stabbing them in neck.
Now for the game has a whole host of technical problems, players and reviewers alike have complained about the games host of bugs and crashes. The main problems are when the game is loading the game will crash as well as various other bugs and glitches, one of the most annoying was when the game starts to stutter which to be fair is a problem with the source engine not just this game. A lot of these problems have been ironed out with the patches that been released but frankly this just isn’t good enough, if a game isn’t ready to be released it should be held back until the game is at least playable.
All in all this game looks good and is fantastic action packed game, don’t expect much in the way of a storyline as I found it rather bland and unsurprising and it wasn’t helped by the fact that the voice acting was sub par (the guy who does your voice is dreadful, no effort, no emotion he even makes Kris Marshall from My Family look plausible). The bottom line is your going to play this game for the action not the story telling, its apparent that the developers have made a big effort to stop the action from getting boring from repetitive sword swipes by adding in all the extra functionality mentioned above, however I would have liked to have seen a few more enemies in the game to keep things fresh. You can now pick this game on E-Bay for about a fiver which is worth the money for this action packed romp.
Score 82%
System: Core 2 Duo E6400 @ 3.04Ghz, 2Gb DDR2 PC800, X1900 XT 512MB, 320gig HD.
Notes
I should also mention there is also a multiplayer game included in this game but I haven’t really played that much for me to draw any conclusions about how good or bad it is.
Originally Posted by Edelward
