GregHowley.com

I'd been looking forward to this game for a long time preceding its release - I played the demo, and it was great. But following it's horrible reviews, I decided to hold off and not drop $50 on a game that didn't seem to be worth it. But when I found a copy at Target for $12.50, I couldn't resist.

To my delight, the game wasn't nearly as bad as I'd feared. As a friend commented, that isn't exactly a ringing endorsement. And this isn't quite the best game I've ever played. But I'm actually keeping this game for eventual replay, and as those of you who know my gaming habits know, that is an endorsement.

I should let you know right off - the plot was a sad failure. It was cliché, and it was heavy-handed in its foreshadowing. You hear the POV character speak out loud, a la Far Cry and Prey, and the abrupt change in his attitude at one point reminded me quite a bit of one Anakin Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith.

The game made a poor attempt at creating a relationship between the character you play and an in-game female, and their attempts at portraying the game's females as sexy was just juvenile. Perhaps a 13-year-old would find them sexy, but only the 13-year-olds who watch late night Cinemax and think they're seeing realistic behavior. One of these females is little more than a voice in your head for the majority of the game, and is far more annoying than helpful, revealing the answers to puzzles before you've even had a chance to begin looking at them, and repeating her useless advice ad nauseum when it's not helping you.

Now that I've got the first block of complaints out of the way, let me get to the things I liked about the game. Number one: eye candy. The game looked great. There were noticeable artifacts and jaggies from time to time, but the game pulled off some excellent moments. Watching an enormous cyclops splinter a wooden gate and come through it straight at you, having that cyclops pick you up in its hand and roar in your face later in the game, and watching an entire house collapse beneath you - these are just a few of the excellent effects the game has in store.

The game also makes excellent use of physics. Granted, this game's physics aren't as good as those in the Source Engine, but Valve's physics have been well-established as beyond reproach. Dark Messiah puts psychics traps all over the place: the rope which when cut drops a chandelier on your foes, the balcony with a rickety support you can smash through, the ubiquitous spiked metal panels leaning against walls onto which you can kick foes. Strange then that when you stand in front of a door and click to open it, it will shove you back as it opens. Once, I was shoved by an opening door which completely obscured my vision and pushed me back, changing my facing by 90°. Not being able to see myself change facing, I was completely disoriented. At least the game handles ladders much better than some others - accidentally falling off a ladder just doesn't happen here, thank goodness.

The fight mechanic in the game is also really well done. The combat is very similar to that in Oblivion, but improved in a number of ways. When holding down your mouse button for a power attack, you can hold one of the four movement keys, or none at all. In Oblivion, this would launch the same attack, with a possible different effect if your fighting skill was high enough. In Dark Messiah, it yields one of five different attacks. Hold left or right, and your attack will be a swing from left-to-right or right-to-left. This becomes important when you're standing near a wall. A right-to-left swing when there's a wall immediately to your left will hit the wall rather than your target. Hold forward or back, and you'll stab straight forward. Stabbing attacks are hard to hit with, but the most accurate. Perfect for hitting a cyclops in the eye. Aside from these power attacks, you can tap the mouse button quickly for a flurry of swings, but these are easily blocked, and thus only useful against animals or weaponless necromancers. The kick is a nice addition to combat - it's useful for kicking foes off cliffs or into spikes, but it eats up a healthy chunk of your fatigue meter, and thus must be used in moderation. The kick can also break a foe's block. Blocking can be done with a weapon, but if you have a shield your block improves, and you can even block arrows. The depth of the combat in the game is one of the things that really makes it replayable for me.

There are plenty of other things that are small, but are really nice touches. For example, if you pull back your bow and move the arrowhead into fire, it becomes a flaming arrow, and will do more damage to creatures vulnerable to fire. Nice. I also liked the fact that shields in this game have hit points and will eventually break. The first time that happened in the midst of a combat was quite a surprise, and after that I always paid close attention to my shields' durabilities, and picked up new shields from fallen foes frequently.

The game only has swords, bows, daggers, and staves as weapons, but has a good variety of weapons in each category. Some of the nicer weapons have skill requirements before you can use them, but being able to use that poisoned bow or those lightning daggers really makes it worth getting the skills.

The skill tree is fairly small. You earn character points by accomplishing story goals, and then spend them on skills which improve your combat or stealth, or on spells. On my first playthrough I avoided getting any spells beyond the incredibly useful healing spell and went straight for the uppermost stealth skills. The notion of killing foes before they know I'm there is just too appealing to me. But next time, I'm going straight for that poison resistance skill. I hate spiders.

The game has occasional jumping puzzles in which you're fleeing from something or else chasing someone. These, I've got to say, are supremely annoying. The game auto-saves approximately every 10 seconds, because during any given 10-second period, you've got approximately an eighty percent chance of dying. Running at top speed through unfamiliar areas and jumping across chasms when you're not sure of the the right direction isn't the safest way to travel. The untimed jumping puzzles are far less annoying, and many make use of the "rope bow". Fire an arrow, and a rope magically appears hanging from where the arrow has struck. Kind of cool. There are also lots of hidden weapons, armors, rings, and other items throughout the game. The quiver of endless arrows and the lightning shield have been extremely useful.

My last gripe with the game is with NPC behavior. When you're following someone, you need to move at their pace, not your own. Many times, I'd want to rearrange my inventory to prepare for a fight before, but the NPC wouldn't wait. And since the inventory screen doesn't pause the game, I was simply out of luck. The token "protect the idiot" segments were likewise annoying. In the end, I had the NPC follow me backwards quite a ways, and left her far away from the battle so that she wouldn't get herself killed.

It certainly has its annoyances, but all-in-all, I rather like Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Don't spend fifty bucks on it, but if you can get it for less, I say go for it.