Finally The Wheel of Time went
gold and a demo was released. So I downloaded
the demo of two levels from the game and didn't
really know what to expect. Legend Entertainment
has been around for a while, but doesn't seem
to have had much experience with first-person-shooters.
Although they have done the Unreal mission pack,
designing a few new monsters and weapons and
making a dozen levels isn't quite the same as
making an entire game. And I haven't played
this mission pack anyway. So all I could go
by, was that James Parkman was one of the level
designers (who started with creating free Q2
levels such as The Azure Mine, which I gave
77%).One of the other level designers was Warren
Marshall, and his only Q2 release, Bad Seed,
wasn't too impressive (52%).
Nevertheless, my first impression of the game
- wow! And that is exactly what is needed for
a new fps...
As I ran through the first level I was very
impressed. The architecture and design was great,
textures were pretty nice and the atmosphere
was perfect. Just look at those screenshots
- when was the last time you played a level
that was so blue? For me it was way back in
the days of Quake (Ikspq). If the rest of the
levels are like this one, then we have a nice
non-linear game here. There were alot of paths
to take, and at one time I didn't actually know
where to go next.
On to the second level, which started off in
some kind of prison, but parts of it seemed
more like a palace to me. It was quite different
from the blueish town I'd just finished, a refreshing
and beautiful change.
These levels were grand, and if this is what
the rest of the game design is like, then we
have a winner! This is better than anything
I have seen to date.
Unfortunately, the gameplay
might be what ruins this game. I have mixed
feelings about it. For the first time the enemies
are quicker than the player! While some are
fun to kill, others were a little frustrating.
In the first level, other than some silly cloud
which would follow you and leave a hazardous
path of smoke, you mainly fight a bunch of very
fast tall monsters that run at you and try to
slash you. Maybe this is WoT's version of Quake's
Fiend, Quake 2's Mutant and Half-Life's Zombie.
If it is, then the WoT is going to be a helluva
alot of fun and very challenging.
The second level was not fun at all. You fight
humans this time - one with a sword and shield
so whenever you fire an arrow at him he would
deflect it straight back at you, while the other
was a guy with a bow and arrow - and he never
misses either! He seemed to take quite alot
of hits before dying (or maybe my aim isn't
that good!) and they were both faster than the
player. I just didn't find these human enemies
very fun to fight.
Another thing which let me
down quite alot was the speed. Running on a
Pentium 450, 128mb Ram and a 32mb Tnt2 card,
I experienced quite alot of slowdowns while
running in OpenGL mode, although I was running
at 800*600, and I had all the settings as high
as they could go. It was very noticable on the
second level while fighting the swordsman and
arrowman at the same time - it was like doing
deathmatch (I'm always lagged)!
Overall, I'm still not sure
about WoT. The levels look brilliant, layout
is good, weapons seem fine, but is it too hard?
I didn't notice any skill settings either. Hopefully
we will see Wheel of Time become a classic,
and yes, I'll be reviewing levels for it too!
