I nearly wasn't going to play
Enclave. I got it anyway, but upon installation
get a blank screen when loading the game. A
month later I decided to come back to it and
check some forums for a solution. Turns out
if your monitor is 60hertz it won't work. A
rediculous problem, but easily fixable as I
pumped my monitor up to 75hertz.
Having played through the entire
game in two days, the second half in one sitting,
I really struggle to think of a game, at least
action game, that looks this good up until 2002.
The level design is top notch all the way through
- to the point of absolutely inspiring me to
make my own levels. The levels are fairly small
and cramped, with a theme last scene in Wheel
Of Time. Only WOT was rather bland throughout
most of the game, whereas Enclave is brilliant
the entire way through. There are many different
design styles from villages, castles and citadels
to more creative islands, mines, hell-like outlands,
woods and even a haunted house. The game engine
is good, but doesn't allow the visuals to depend
on fancy engine features for its looks. Instead
what we have in Enclave is great architecture
and design matched with wonderfully intricate
textures. There appear to be only two level
designers for the game - one of which was JF
Gustafsson, creater of two of Quake 2's best
custom releases, Age Of Panic and 1964. So it's
no wonder we've got a visual feast from Starbreeze.
Only nitpicks with design would
be that there are a few levels used twice in
game. The reason why they're repeated is because
you play this game in two halves. The first
half of the game your playing the good guys,
while the second half you return to the beginning
of the story and repeat it as the bad guys.
It was an interesting way to play through the
game, but ultimately lead to a short and uninspired
story.
Also one major glitch was the
final two levels in the first half were harder
than any of the levels in the second half. In
fact the finale at the end of part two was dead
easy.
While much of the game play
was great fun, it was very unbalanced. As you
progress through the game you get the choice
of different characters to play, with different
weapons. I attempted to play most of them and
found that the Druid/Sorceress was easily the
most dominant character with her long range
spell attacks. Any close-range melee combat
with many of the other characters was poor and
very difficult. Even on easy, I'd die in no
time trying melee combat with the large strong
characters. While as the Druid/Sorceress it
was breeze as enemies usually couldn't even
get to me in time. So playing Enclave as any
melee based characters is likely to be far too
frustrating.
The other problem is no quicksave.
If you die, you start the level again unless
you've found a checkpoint. In that case, whenever
you die you respawn at the checkpoint. It doesn't
restart the game at the checkpoint, it simply
respawns you. Which basically means you can
just keep respawning until all enemies are dead,
which makes it even easier than a quicksave.
Frustratingly, sometimes checkpoints don't come
soon enough, and some levels don't have them
at all. The penultimate level in the first half
was badly needing a checkpoint and I think some
people may give up on that level.
If you only play first-person-perspective,
you can switch from third to first very easily
in Enclave. I couldn't figure out what the key
was, but I accidentally pressed it at some stage.
I'm a FPS fan, but for Enclave it actually seemed
better as third person, especially when you
get to play as the scantily clad Druid. More
third-person-perspective games need the option
of allowing first-person.
Enclave isn't perfect; the
checkpoint feature and lack of quicksave is
frustrating and the characters are not well
balanced. But with gorgeous level design, its
not a game you want to miss. Sadly, I think
many players have skipped it.
