It's been a while since i've
been able to play a fantasy-based action game,
first person in particular. It's a welcome change
from all the war and sci-fi shooters of 2005/2006.
Now typically i'll play a game
in a few sittings over just as many days. However,
85% of the way through Dark Messiah the power
went and everything around me hit the floor.
An earthquake hit of epic proportions, causing
upwards of 15 billion in damage and, tragically,
hundreds of lives lost in the city of Christchurch,
New Zealand.
My computer survived and it
was 1.5 weeks before I resumed the game (I had
no power for a week), by which time I'd started
to forget the first part. Nonetheless it is
a fairly lengthy game; none of this 5-7 hours
rubbish some of the top developers have been
spitting in our laps. Dark Messiah is at least
10 hours long.
The highlight of the game is
the level design, as you'd expect with it's
setting. Villages, mountains, temples... it's
all standard fantasy but it looks fantastic.
Unfortunately the game is let
down by it's gameplay. You're forced to use
a more strategic approach at times by kicking
enemies into spikes, fire or off cliffs. This
is clumsy and frustrating, but taking on enemies
in a swordfight is just as bad. Often enemies
will wipe half your health off in one swoop,
while you try to do a silly combo-move and completely
miss through no fault of your own. Most fights
you need to pull off a combo in order to kill
an enemy because simply hitting the attack key
repeatedly is took weak and you'll die after
a few enemies. Ultimately, having to hold keys
and use other keys to pull of these combos is
annoying and slows down the action. Most enemies
have slightly too much health and should go
down quicker. There are a number of enemies
in the game that just aren't worth fighting,
such as zombies who have huge amounts of health
and are very lethal. You're better off running
past them and a game should never promote skipping
action because it's too hard.
Having said that, the last
1/4 of the game is an exception as you FINALLY
get given some decent weaponry. Either that
or it took most of the game to master the combat
effectively.
The RPG elements are strong,
as you'll need to do many upgrades throughout
the game and you can go various ways; strength,
magic, archery, stealth. I chose the strength
route and barely used the spells throughout
until the last few levels. The spells were mostly
uninspiring projectile attacks and easy to miss
the enemy anyway.
For the explorer, there are
plenty of secrets and health throughout the
levels, but i'm not a big secret area scourer.
Nonetheless I saved plenty of health vials which
ultimately went unused as the final battle was
easier than expected. The game might have been
slightly more fun had I used the health vials
more freely or if it was automatically added
to your health instead or letting you horde
it.
Overall Dark Messiah is a great
looking game, but the gameplay is for the more
experienced players. Some of the enemies could
have done with some tweaking to make the game
more action-packed instead of a reload rampage.
Still, it's great to get an action-oriented
fantasy game as there are very few around.
