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Reviews First Person Games Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic
Reviews First Person Games Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic
| Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic |
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| Written by Starfox | |||||||||||||||
| Thursday, 04 January 2007 18:00 | |||||||||||||||
Page 3 of 4 Trap happy Beside weapons, spells and adrenaline, there are also traps. An awful lot of traps in various flavors. Dark Messiah is possibly the most trapped game in existence. You thought that Oblivion made a nice use of traps? You might reconsider it with DMoMM. You can nail your enemies to walls, make them fall from high places, crush them with huge wooden beams, chandelier, a well placed crane or piles of sarcophagus or even set them on fire if fire there is nearby. In most cases the real challenge of using traps is to make sure that your enemies will be indeed trapped and that you won't get trapped yourself (realizing that arrows can trigger some of the traps from a safe distance is a step toward success). Using traps or not is a matter of how you like your gameplay. Thievy characters will probably make use of the traps a lot more than others considering their devious nature. Warriors might want to ignore the traps altogether and to rush forward. No matter the course you choose, raps remains there at your disposal.
My enemies are... You'll encounter a number of guys and things in the game that will obviously want to put an end to your journey on Earth. This includes humans (the necromancers troopers and the necromancers themselves) and quite a few things like spiders, orcs, gobelins, zombies, ghouls... all wanting to turn you into a bedding. You'll also find occasionally big baddies like degenerescent dragons, uber cyclops and even a spider queen which will prove much more difficult though not impossible to kill. You will be able to avoid rather than confront some of these threats but you may loose some special bonus doing so (some of the big monsters are part of the path choice you have to make). On all those enemies zombies and ghouls are certainly those I've found a real pain in the ass. Dark Messiah zombies are quite like your common Thief 1/2 undeads (though graphically prettier in a sort of "Oh my God!"... *puking*... way). They are not very clever, they are pretty slow but unlike Thief zombies they frequently get out of the ground just behind you or even under your feet and they possess a ranged poisonous attack that they frequently use as soon as they are close enough. This ranged attack can be quite lethal if not taken care of rapidly with an antidote and antidotes are limited in the game world. Dark Messiah zombies are also very hard to kill and the best way to deal with them as quickly as possible is to find a way to make them fall on the ground and to finish them with a sword. Any other weapon or magic spell will work but you're in for a long fight. Ghouls do not possess any ranged attack but they are damn quick and can dodge most of your attacks easily. They are also steady on their feet and to kick them off require a lot of patience.
Patch away One thing of importance when it comes to gameplay is that the 1.02 patch tweaks the difficulty of the game somewhat so that the fights near the end are more difficult than in the first version, these changes occurring after some complaints of some players who didn't find the game challenging since once you progressed enough the enemies seemed to become particularly weak. Sure Dark Messiah is not Oblivion with NPCs always kicking your ass no matter the level you're at (hence denying the whole point of leveling up). The fact is that the original approach of Dark Messiah seemed more RPGish to me than Oblivion one. What is the point in having a progression of your character when finally you don't really gain any advantage out of it? It's normal when you get your ass kicked by a NPC at the beginning of the game but it's not normal anymore if the same class of character kicks your ass the same way at the end after you went through all the learning. Whether you're pleased or not ith this changes depends on how you perceive the whole RPG stuff, I guess. The important thing is that even with those changes Dark Messiah remains balanced enough. Since we are on the subject of these little things changed by the patch be aware that the bosses are incredibly tougher in 1.02 than in previous releases. That is certainly the biggest gameplay change introduced by this patch with the nasty side effect of giving to boss fights so great length that they becomes rather boring. But well, some gamers are getting what they asked since these changes are part of the whole "we listen to you gamers -- at least the ones who complain". Also the patch place a limit on the number of items ( like health and mana potions) you may have in your inventory. In the original version there was no limit which seemed a bit strange but was nice (whether this was intentional or a bug is unclear). With 1.02 the limit is 20 items of each kind. That still gives you enough room to work. Architecture.. The Wow effect The maps design and particularly the interiors are simply stunning. Considering some of the names involved in the development that should come with no surprise. Those who are used to haunt the Thief community will probably notice in the end credits the name of Anthony Huso, a French designer who before doing level design for a living went under the nick of "Purah" for some of the best atmospheric Fan Missions available for Thief 1 and 2 (Calendra's Cistern, Calendra's Legacy, Autumn In Lampfire Hills -- reviewed by Silver Sorrow here -- to quote some). Knowing what the guy could do with the now obsolete Dark engine, it was easy to imagine what he could get out of the Source engine. Dark Messiah is his first commercial game and it surely makes a great addition to his resume. And apparently considering that just about any map in the game is gorgeous, Anthony was not the only brilliant level designer embarked in the team.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 22 February 2008 00:38 |
