Tag Archives: Dungeon Crawler

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Dungeon Siege: Legends or Aranna

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Now, I have to admit right off the bat I didn’t play much of Dungeon Siege when it first cam out. It never worked on my old PC that was pretty old anyway, and since upgrading I lost interest in hack and slash style games. But people always raved about Dungeon Siege, and I felt out of the loop, as it were. So, luckily for me, and anyone else who missed out on the original, Dungeon Siege: Legends or Aranna comes with the complete version of the first game.

I played through the original for a while, and thought, OK, so this is a traditional dungeon hack. The difference in this to other games was the lush graphics, and the intensity of the action, and the expansive locations, and these are added to by the expansion.

The graphics in this game are really good. The levels are very well designed, with trees that obscure the view, and have different elevations that allow you to have a strategic advantage over the masses of enemies. And there are plenty of enemies to deal with, and I was amazed that the game never seems to load the maps, and can have so many enemies on screen at one time.

The camera allows you to zoom right in, and while a little blocky on my machine (which is getting long in the tooth), the models look well made and quite detailed. They change appropriately when changing armour and weapons and so on. The spell effects, especially the larger area ones, look amazing. The sounds also add a lot to the game, and on occasion I’ve jumped as a monster bursts growling from the ground underneath my party’s feet. The ambient sounds are also great, form the jungle noises of the, err, jungle, to the haunted screams from the deep dungeons.

However, after playing both the original and expansion pack, I noticed that I was hardly playing the game, but rather just sitting there and watching as my men and ladies ran about killing things rather intelligently in the general area of where I clicked my mouse. It kind of felt like I was playing a version of the Sims, but with Swords and magic.

On the one hand this is a good thing, as it means there is no scouring the screen to find members of your team who may have got stuck trying to navigate their way through the maps, only to find them standing still whilst being attacked. But on the other hand, it kind of feels mindless. The story, or lack thereof, also adds to the mindless feel, as you never really become engaged in neither the original story, nor the new one.

While Dungeon Siege: Legends or Aranna is a good expansion pack to the game, it, like the original, doesn’t really add anything to the genre as a whole. It’s a good hack and slash, but there’s been countless of these style of games, right back to Gauntlet. The brief foray into the Multiplayer aspect of the game led me to the same conclusion – it’s good, it looks great and is easy to get into, but and without the fancy graphics and so on, it’s nothing but a clone of so many other games. If you’re after a few hours of mindless fun, then this game is for you, but if you’re after a little more depth, the expansion pack is not where you will find it.

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Dungeon & Dragons Heroes

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A hundred and fifty years ago in the land of Baele, a great evil arose in the form of the wizard, Kaedin. Mastering the powers of the plains of existence, this malevolent wizard channelled the power into 4 gems, and created a fifth one to harness that power. He then cut a swath of destruction across the Kingdom of Baele. Four Heroes took up the call to stop Kaedin, and they succeeded against all odds. However, with his dying breath the Wizard smote the four heroes, and although the world was at peace again, it was at a terrible loss.

Now, a group of evil clerics, who have obviously never read a fantasy book or played a RPG in their lives, have attempted to raise the evil wizard from the dead for their own nefarious needs. Had they been exposed to popular science fiction, they would have known that raising someone so evil would surely get out of their control and end up with them meeting their makers, and unleash an uncontrollable evil on the world. So, faced with such a terrible evil, the Kingdom decides that the four Heroes must be resurrected to fight once again.

Here’s where you step in as one of the four heroes. On offer is the choice between Elf Wizard, Human Fighter, Dwarven Cleric and Halfling Rogue, the four classic classes of the D&D world. Each has their positives and minuses – the Wizard has powerful spells but can’t hold herself well in a fight; the Fighter is strong in melee, but weak against magic; the Cleric is reasonable at magic and fighting, but great at neither, and the rogue is good at hiding and ranged attacks, but weak against magic and melee. The joy of this game is you can play single player, or with all four characters at once, gauntlet style.

Awakened from your tomb, the first task is to fight through the burial grounds and get to Castle Baele. Not really quite what you would want or expect after spending 150 years dancing with angels and jamming with Hendrix. And, unlike Buffy, there’s no time to get all moody and sleep with vampires in order to get back at your friends, you have a job to do. The game moves at quite a brisk pace, and you’ll find yourself fighting nearly continuously. When not fighting you’ll find yourself avoiding traps and looking for levers on one side of a castle that open a door on the other side. These fantasy types must of really enjoyed walking around!

The gameplay is very similar to Baldurs Gate : Dark Alliance. It’s a top down view, although you can zoom in using the right joystick for a 3rd person perspective, although this severely limits your field of vision, and is basically good for nothing except looking at the detailed environments, more on which later. The controls are basically the same too: Move with the left stick, attack with the A button and block with the Left Trigger. Black and White are Magic and Health Potions respectively. A good addition to the gameplay is assignable buttons. Holding down the right trigger slows down the action, and allows the Y, X & B buttons to be assigned spells, traits and abilities, and items. This is great, as you can allocate each button to prepare for each of the 7 distinct levels with different monsters that require different tactics to kill, as well as slow down the action and do it on the fly as the situation requires.

As with any game based on D&D, there are tons of items to be found, bought and sold, ranging from standard weapons to magically enhanced armour to rings and potions that add bonuses to your attributes. However, each of the main characters has their own Ancestral Weapon, unique to them and quite powerful. Making them even more powerful are the Soul Shards, 20 items scattered across each level, and gaining 5 of these shards essentially levels up the weapon. While a very nice addition, and while the animation and graphics of the upgraded weapons look very good, I found this made the other weapons pointless, especially in single player. Whilst other weapons may offer different types of damage and bonuses, I found the Ancestral Weapon to be the best overall for all situations. Sure a flaming sword might be good against a Frost Giant, but you’ve got a greater chance to hit and higher damage with your Ancestral Weapon, especially when it’s upgraded. I also found that I’d get weapons and item suitable for one type of level after completing that level. For example, I found a protection from fire item type in the snow level, which is past the fire level.

Speaking of levels, they are very linear and quite easy. I played through the game on “normal” and it was a breeze. I tried multiplayer on “hard”, and it was also a breeze, perhaps even easier than single player. Sure, I died a few times, but had so much money from selling weapons I could buy plenty of Raise Dead Amulets. Furthermore, the quests don’t seem to flow as well as in BGDA, it’s more of an “accidentally run into this person who asks you to get that” rather than connected stories like in BGDA. The various puzzles and quests are quite simplistic and require very little thought to complete. Sure, the game is more of a hack and slash game than a traditional RPG like Morrowind or KOTOR, but the story really doesn’t hold any surprises, period. Even the big surprise with the Shopkeeper, is about as surprising as waking up in the morning and discovering you’re still alive.

While the gameplay may be lacking, the visuals are truly wonderful. The cut scenes are amazing, and look like they’re straight from a Hollywood movie. They are very detailed, and this detail is transferred to the ingame graphics. There’s heat haze from torches, reflections in the ice, waves are made in water, and each level has cool things to look at, like candles and fountains and such. The monsters all look quite monsterish, and blood and ooze squirts out as you hit them. Blood also stains you on occasion! The spell effects look great too, and it’s truly a sight when the Wizard and Cleric unleash their most powerful spells together.

Sound is also done well, with a good rustic medieval score that suits the action very well. The voice acting is pretty good, although the shop keepers do tend to get repetitive and the spell utterances are a little on the annoying side. Battle sounds sound as authentic as they can, with the clang of claws on steel sounding as one might expect. Ambient sounds aren’t really noticeable, because there’s nearly always fighting going on, but in lulls in battles, your armour clings and clangs as you run about as is appropriate, fountains bubble blackishly and rodents squeak and birds squawk.

Final Thoughts:

D&D Heroes is a decent game especially in terms of multiplayer hack and slash, but lacks in certain areas of gameplay that stop it from being truly great. It is very linear and quite easy, and while the additions of assignable buttons for spells and so on are great, there’s just not enough depth to the story or gameplay. It may look nice, but it leaves a feeling of being unsatisfied, and wanting more of a role-playing experience akin to Baldurs Gate : Dark Alliance, or Baldurs Gate II on the PC.

Pros:

+ Great audio-visual
+ Awesome 4 way multiplayer
+ Nice additions to the control method such as assignable spell buttons
+ Upgradeable Ancestral Weapons

Cons:

– Way too easy
– Story is much too linear and not very engaging
– Ancestral Weapons make other weapons obsolete

Score: 79%

Review, Video Games, Writing, XboxWorld

Black Stone Magic & Steel

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Black Stone Magic & Steel Xbox Game Cover

Are you old enough to remember Gauntlet? I remember going down to Timezone, pilling coin after coin into the slot and simply playing for hours. Even if you were playing by yourself, you could safely bet that someone would join you eventually. You’d laugh, you’d cry, and most importantly, you’d have fun playing an excellent example of what co-operative multiplayer is all about. Black Stone by Xicat tries to capture this sense of fun and co-operation, and succeeds in doing so to a point. That point is that it is now 2003, no longer the mid 1980s, and we’ve been spoilt with intelligent storylines, robust gameplay, superb graphics and excellent audio in other games that Gauntlet simply can’t hope to live up to, and, unfortunately, neither does Black Stone.

The intro of this game is AMAZING, and after watching I just thought, “wow, this game is going to be good!” I guess that’s what intros are for. This wonderful piece of CGI looks like something out of Final Fantasy, as beautifully rendered hoards of orcs run towards their death at the hand of a fighter, a wizard, and thief as a hard electric rock theme plays over the top of it. Now, if the game looked like this, it would be one of the best hack and slash games available today. Unfortunately this is horribly spoilt by the start screen, which looks like something from an Amiga game, and it doesn’t get much better after that.

The story, told through static yet colourful storyboards, is that a thousand years after their defeat at Zedan, the dark mages hiding within the Tower of Babylon have grown very powerful. They start stealing the inhabitants of Zedan’s souls through weakening the Holy Light. They did this by waking the ancient volcano, Moon-eye. The leader of the dark mages Xylon has collected pieces of the Black Stone, and threatens the lands’ very existence. You and your friends have to save it. Or something like that.

Jumping straight into the game, you choose your character from 5 different classes – Warlock, Fighter, Thief, Archer and Pirate. Each class has different strengths and weaknesses, and its up to you to chose how you want to play. The Warlock and Archer are missile weapon fighters, whilst Thief, Fighter and Pirate are melee specialists. You can chose from two different characters out of each class, and there are 2 unlockables for each class, but there is no difference between the characters within a class in terms of strengths and so forth. However, each character does have different special moves, which are all of relatively the same power, but each look different.

The first level adjusts you to the gameplay. You move using the left joystick, and melee attack with the A button, missile attack with the X button, use magic scrolls with the B button. The left trigger is an avoid/dodge move, while the right trigger charges up your magic, which decreases every time you shoot a missile weapon. Holding the right trigger and pushing melee attack does one special move, and pressing the melee attack button whilst running (holding the joystick down) does another special move. The object of this level, and all subsequent levels, is to progress through, killing all the monsters and their generators; smashing open all the crates; and unlocking all the chests. Magic Scrolls, gold and food (health) are hidden in the chests, as well as temporary power ups, such as Multi Shot and Invincibility, but beware, there are also curses such as the Pig Curse, which disables your fighting ability, and poisoned foods. There are also animals you can ride on, much like in the old favourite “Golden Axe”, and these pack one hell of a punch, but disappear after too short a while.

At the end of every 3 or so levels is a Bad Boss. This is a creature that is a little harder to kill than your run-off-the-mill goblin, as it has more powerful and ranged attacks that it shoots off at you rapidly. After that, you have a Big Bad Boss, who generally takes up half the screen, shoots all manner of mayhem at you, as well as sends monsters for you to be attacked by, and can only bit hit when it’s in a certain position. There are certain items collected during previous levels which reduce these creatures hit points but it’s still a tough fight.

In between each level, a summary of all that you’ve killed and found is displayed, and either gain a credit, used to continue if you die, or unlock a character. Here you will also get to spend your gold on Magic Scrolls, keys, greater sword attacks, more overall hit points, and Elementals, which float around you shooting off bolts of elemental stuff in which ever way you are moving. You can also save or load a game here. In an unfortunate oversight, it is ONLY here that you can have another player join you – no joining in mid game, which means when your friend comes over you’ll have to either restart the level losing all progress, or wait until you’ve completed the level.

The gameplay is pretty fast and relentless, and that’s cool if you like that, but with 26 levels all practically the same it becomes rather old, quickly. Building up your character is fun, but at even at lower levels they all play pretty much the same. The camera can become annoying as it is stuck in a certain position, and you have no control over it. It obscures things at best, and hinders you at worst. The game seems to have some weird auto aim that causes you to shoot in an entirely different direction to what you want to, and has difficulty firing and attacking on the diagonals. I did think it was just me until two of my friends said the same thing. Multiplayer is fun, but again the camera angles can get in the way, and as you are all on the screen at the same time, you can only move when you are all heading in the same direction. This bites when you unlock a chest and it pops out with needed food, but you just can’t reach it because the others are fighting monsters on the other side. It is also a pain when your allies steal you food / gold/ power-up. Then again, it was the same in Gauntlet, so you really need to use teamwork in order to get the most out of it.

The graphics are lacklustre at best, and simply don’t push the Xbox at all, which after the opening credits is a tremendous let down. The sound is simply atrocious. The music isn’t too bad, but there’s no option to put your own in, which again ignores the power of the Xbox. But the sound effects, my gosh, they are just simply BAD. It was like they were recorded for the commodore 64 and given echo effects, with some of the sounds being as annoying as fingernails on a blackboard. Moreover, they don’t suit the action. You fire off a Warlock’s magic sphere, and it sounds more like a pinball hitting a bumper than a ball of powerful destructive magic. It was a real shock to me that the sound was so bad, and I’m so glad I haven’t invested in 5.1 surround speakers yet!

Overall Black Stone isn’t a bad game, it’s just simply not a good one. It’s a rip off of an old game, with a couple of elements from other old games, but doesn’t improve on them, nor does it use the power of the Xbox in any way, shape or form. Multiplayer is fun and adds to the games value and playability, but it’s just too repetitive to keep your interest longer than a week, especially with the other, more quality, hack and slash games about.

Positives:

Its gauntlet for the new millennium!

AWESOME introduction.

Multi-player havoc abounds.

Negatives

It doesn’t move very far away from the original gauntlet gameplay, which is nearly 20 years old, and it shows.

It’s very repetitive, even for a hack and slash.

Graphics are PS2 standard or worse.

Sounds are simply atrocious.

6.5/10