Dark Messiah
No no, not him. Racist!
This past weekend I had a “something new” video game craving and I noticed on Steam that DM was bundled with a bunch of other games for a whopping $9.99. I downloaded a demo and a trailer vids. The trailers pushed me over. Dark Messiah (from the Might & Magic series) is a few years old now, but I figured it wasn’t going to be SO old as to be all revolting and dated.
Fortunately I was right.
Clever game mechanics, a meager attempt at an interesting plot (engaging but only really to see HOW they’d bring out the not too obvious but 10 obvious plot “twists”.)
There was an emphasis on “have to hit it JUST right” that leads you to 9000 save game reloads which is an absolute design failure. Unfortunately I’m not sure what the right solution is to make things difficult but still engage interest, which is odd since I know more about these damn things than I know about an awful lot which fortunately is saying something, which brings me to a sudden strange awareness of how I run on sentences using the word which, which is sorta sad but which hopefully you’re finding funny and which I’m going to stop doing now.
All in all a fun Sunday afternoon and Monday night romp. Unfortunately I was never quite sure how much more there was to the game so I kept playing last night…until I finished at about 3:00.
I still wish someone would put together a really good classic party-based RPG in the 21st century. The last really good one was Baldur’s Gate 2 and even that suffered from the failing that you didn’t really roll your own characters, past the main (so maybe Icewind Dale then.) Plus it was that 2.5d isometric sprite based retardedness that I just can’t stand. But nice plot, good pacing, AD&D mechanics are a bit tired.
Fortunately I find myself doing less and less of this crap as time goes forward. Gaming seems to be gravitating toward the same place as genre fiction. Sure, if something compelling comes out I’ll pick it up and blast through it. I’ve got my standard distractions but they just don’t take up much energy.
I never know how to end these rambling posts. Of course sometimes I have uniquely lucid thought that this means I perhaps oughtn’t have started them.
Nah.
Tags: gaming