Page to Pixel: Dune Part 2 – Dune 2000 and Beyond…

Following the release of Dune II, Westwood had enjoyed back-to-back critical and commercial successes with Command & Conquer and its alternate universe sequel, Red Alert. They had also cut their teeth on full-motion video cutscenes and rendered CG with those games, which were brought to their pinnacle in their adventure game take on Blade Runner.

By this time, the real-time strategy genre was in full bloom. Not only were Westwood’s games popular, but Blizzard was making bank with its own real-time series, and it seemed everyone had jumped on the bandwagon. Some of them, like Age of Empires, War Wind, and Myth were really good. Others, like Eidos’ Conquest Earth and LucasArts’ Star Wars: Rebellion were less than well-received.

The market was crowded. Would Westwood have another hit Dune game up its sleeve?

And they call it a Sietch. A SIETCH!

In the ’90s, lots of things had 2000 in the title. Some of these things, like Gateway computers and Tempest 2000, were awesome. Of course, there was also crap like Blues Brothers 2000. It also seemed common for games to leap up in installment number rather quickly – as can be witnessed by Doom 64 and Marathon Infinity.Do I have a point? Not really, I just wanted to take you back to the days before Y2K for a second. In any case, Dune 2000 turned out to be a rather mixed bag for its day.

The game is largely a remake of Dune II, but with all the bells and whistles six years of advancing technology and hit-game money could provide. Under the skin, it’s functionally a more advanced version of the engine Red Alert (and by extension the original Command & Conquer) had run on. While this led to a less strenuous development cycle (and the engine had never looked better), it also wasn’t as modern as many of its contemporaries. It lacked the push into 3D graphics that Myth had made, and lacked the robust online options of Starcraft, which quickly eclipsed it (and most other strategy games of the day) in popularity. In addition, it wasn’t well balanced and had weaker pathfinding AI than even the original Command & Conquer.

The Sardaukar say you protest too much!

On the plus side, it did manage to excel in a few areas. The game had well-done FMV sequences, which included John Rhys-Davies hamming it up as the Atreides mentat (Davies being no stranger to videogames, having appeared in the Wing Commander series), and the cutscenes in general were cool and fun to watch. I don’t know, maybe it’s my inner Dune series fanboy, maybe it’s the fact that I prefer Westwood-style strategy to Blizzard, but I really like the game. It’s by no means perfect, but it does have some strong points.

And once again, Frank Klepacki was doing the music: this included several updated remixes of of pieces from Dune II – this time with full CD quality!

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.

While 2001 lacked any kind of space odyssey, we did manage to see two very different Dune games by both companies responsible for the previous Dune games. First, we have the incredible, unmitigated train wreck that is Cryo Interactive’s Frank Herbert’s Dune, which, like the Bram Stoker’s Dracula film (the one with Keanu), is something I like to call BLATANT LIES. Ostensibly made as a tie-in with the (best forgotten) Sci-Fi Channel miniseries, the game manages to get things wrong from page…er, screen…one.

Misspelled the author’s name. Cryo just didn’t care.

Of course this didn’t stop IGN from giving the game an 82, which I can only presume is some kind of Harkonnen plot, as most magazines and sites were far less charitable. What can I say? The game is just plain unappealing. First of all, Paul Atreides looks rather like an anime take on Kyle McLachlan (Paul in the original Dune film) after a particularly unfavorable sex reassignment surgery. The environments are also uniformly brown – I guess that fits, but there’s not much texture or shading. It comes off as flat and boring.

This is married with that particularly bad style of control that seems unique to French developers. Not intended to be a knock against that country, but it seems that Infogrames, Kalisto, Titus, and Cryo must have been having a contest to see who could come up with the most awkard and downright obtuse control schemes. This is made worse by the fact that the game would be difficult even with a decent control scheme.

And you know what? This time I don’t even have anything nice to say about the music. Because I could never hear it over the sound of the throbbing headaches this game gave me. I’m sure if I could remember it, I wouldn’t remember it, because it was as forgettable as the rest of the game.

Long Live the Fighters!

Fortunately, Westwood, now a branch of Electronic Arts (and hot on the heels of 1999s awesome C&C: Tiberian Sun), released a game the same year. Their first fully 3D rendered strategy title (the console ports of Dune 2000 and C&C not counting), Emperor: Battle for Dune was sort of Westwood’s last hurrah before becoming nothing more than a soulless puppet husk like so many other EA subsidiaries. But man, did they go out with a bang.

“We have wormsign the likes of which God has never seen!”

Like the previous Dune strategy titles, the game found the Houses Atreides, Harkonnen, and Ordos warring for control of Dune.  However, this time the game had a dynamic campaign, with neutral factions such as the Spacing Guild, Fremen, and Sardaukar joining your cause based on the choices you make. It played similarly to its predecessors, but since I liked those, I liked this too. The new units were, of course, appreciated too.

In addition, we got more of those fun Westwood cutscenes – this time featuring Michael Dorn as Duke Atreides. That’s right, Worf played the head of House Atreides. And it was awesome. You’ll also spot character actor Vincent Schiavelli as the Harkonnen mentat.

As for the music, this time we had three separate composers working on the game, with each defining a different musical style for each house. Frank Klepacki returned to provide tracks for the Atreides, David Arkenstone for the Harkonnen, and Jarrid Mendelson for the Ordos. This was part of what helped set the game apart for me – the different styles and composers really give each side their own identity and personality.

Will we ever have wormsign again?

In the past ten years it seems that Dune has faded from the radar of the gaming industry. Electronic Arts has all but buried the remnants of Westwood with Command & Conquer: Tiberian Twilight. Cryo’s Dune: Generations was canceled soon after their adventure game flopped (probably with good reason). Will another company one day take over the rich backdrop Frank Herbert prepared? Perhaps an open-world Dune RPG…perhaps, one day. Until that day comes, we have five older games, four of which are very good, and one which deserves to be buried in the sand.

Page to Pixel: Dune Part 1: Dune and Dune II

Arrakis. Dune. Desert Planet.

Frank Herbert’s novel Dune was, in many ways, the first of its kind in the science fiction field. Arthur C. Clarke compared its detail, scope, and world-building qualities to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Dune was one of the early science fiction works to move beyond space opera and into its own expansive universe in the far future. And in its five sequels, Herbert turned it into a multi-generational epic of politics, ecology, and deconstruction of the superheroic messiah archetype.

Dune is the saga of the noble-born Paul Atreides, son of a Duke in the feudal houses of the Landsraad. He is born into political strife, and the houses are commonly at odds – the Atreides are particularly at odds with the Harkonnen. As the story begins, Paul and his parents Duke Leto and Lady Jessica are preparing to leave for the planet Arrakis – sole source of the spice melange, a drug which prolongs life and unlocks latent prescient abilities in the human mind – abilities which are necessary for the navigation of space. House Harkonnen, the former rulers of Arrakis, plot in secret to wrestle control of the planet from the Atreides.

For he who controls Arrakis controls the spice. And he who controls the spice controls the universe.

Spice harvesting is a dangerous endeavor, requiring expensive harvesting vehicles as well as aerial transports and scouts, as the massive sandworms of Dune frequent the spice fields. When wormsign is spotted, the harvesters make an effort to get out as soon as possible. Often (especially under Harkonnen rule), harvesters are left behind if the carryalls do not arrive in time.

The desert-dwelling Fremen are also an important political consideration on Arrakis. Living in caves among the shifting sands and wearing water-recycling stillsuits, the Fremen have unusual connections to both the spice and the sandworms, and House Atreides makes efforts to form an alliance with the Fremen. Of course, this happens just before the Harkonnen coup comes to fruition and everything goes to Hell.

The original novel has been adapted into many other forms of media – David Lynch’s 1984 film with a cult following, a 2000 miniseries that the Sci-Fi channel made with cheap CG sets, and, probably most notably, it has been adapted into PC games.

The Spice Opera

1992’s adaptation of Dune, developed by Cryo and published by Virgin,  drew on the general plot of the novel as well as the visual design of the David Lynch film (and indeed featured the likenesses of a few of the actors from the film). The game mixes strategy and adventure game styles. As Paul Atreides you are in charge of balancing your spice harvesting and military, to keep the Emperor happy with your spice output whilst keeping Harkonnen incursions at bay. A good portion of the game involves flying around in an ornithopter and speaking to leaders of Fremen sietches to convince them to work with you, as well as keeping up morale.

The strategy element comes in when you have to manage your Fremen workers – between harvesting and martial duties. While the strategy elements are quite simplistic, they blend nicely with the adventuring. The look and feel of the game captures the intangible qualities of Dune well.

In addition, it began the tradition (perhaps picking up where the Toto/Brian Eno score of the 1984 film left off) of having great music in Dune games. The soundtrack, composed by Stéphane Picq and Philip Ulrich, was later remixed and released by Virgin Records as Dune: Spice Opera, which is now incredibly rare.

The Building of A Dynasty

Westwood Studios’ first project was a port of the Epyx RPG Temple of Apshai. The fledgling studio rewrote the game from the ground up as a real-time dungeon crawl, not unlike a primitive version of their future rival Blizzard’s Diablo. While the Apshai port wasn’t what Epyx wanted, Westwood would continue experimenting with real-time games such as Eye of the Beholder. Then, in 1992, the tumblers all fell into place. Virgin Interactive had the Dune license. Westwood had the concept for a new kind of strategy game. Westwood founder and Dune fan Brett Sperry made the call.

Real-time strategy had been incubating for some time before Dune II: The Building of a Dynasty debuted. There were prototypical examples of the genre such as Stonkers,  Herzog Zwei, and Westwood’s own licensed efforts on Battletech and D&D licenses.

The building of a genre.

But when it came out, no one had really seen anything like it before. Dune II is considered to be the progenitor of the real-time strategy genre, the first of its breed. The game introduced fast action to strategic military gameplay, and was probably the first PC game genre to be designed around the mouse as the primary input rather than centering around the keyboard; it was the game that launched a thousand clones – WarCraft, Age of Empires, Total Annihilation, and Westwood’s own brainchild Command & Conquer all owe their creation to Dune II.

The story is seperate from that of the first game (as following up with the story of the succeeding novels would be more about political intrigue, religion, and ecology), instead offering us a setup in which the Padishah Emperor issues a challenge to the Houses of the Landsraad: whoever can harvest the most spice for him will gain sole power over Dune. He sets no rules of engagement and three houses converge to war for the prize.

This time, House Ordos, a shadowy member of the political landscape, joins the Atreides and Harkonnen in the conflict for the planet. The three factions build their bases on rock islands in the seas of sand, contending with enemy patrols and sandworms alike.  While the sides were for the most part similar, they could each produce their own unique vehicles and superweapons. The Atreides have access to sonic tanks and Fremen warriors; the Harkonnen have the Devastator tank and the Death Hand warhead, and House Ordos has the Raider trike and Deviator tank, in addition to the Saboteur unit.

Between missions (and during, if you choose) you also have access to advice from your House’s mentat, of which the most memorable is the Harkonnen advisor, Radnor. He always reminded me a bit of Max Shreck in Nosferatu. The Ordos mentat is the source of a bit of humor for players my age, because down to shirt color and hairstyle he looks like the Green Ranger from Power Rangers.

Yup, the Ordos mentat looks like Tommy from the Power Rangers.

Frank Klepacki continues the tradition of great music in the Dune games, while developing a musical style that defines what an RTS should sound like (as he also scored the Command & Conquer games). While the sound of the time was relatively primitive compared to the CD audio he’d be working with in a few years, he still managed to bring a lot of mood and atmosphere to the game.

Skyrim Preorders to Include Cloth Map

Can We Barter?

It has been announced that preorders of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will ship with a high-quality cloth map of the game (this kind of practice dating back to the great “feelies” which were included with all of Infocom and Origin’s games). There has been no word on whether or not this will apply to a certain retailer or version of the game.

My question is…what about us loyal gamers who buy it on Steam (on the PC, as it should be played)? Sure, there will be a physical Game for Windows version, but if we choose the download route, will we miss out on the totally sweet cloth map? Why you gotta play us like that, Bethesda?

Review: Hunted: The Demon’s Forge (360/PS3/PC)

Ah, Fresh Meat!

Sometimes, games come out of nowhere and surprise you. It’s rare these days, with as much coverage as the big games get. I first learned of Hunted: The Demon’s Forge a few months back when advertisements started to appear online. It definitely caught my interest: ex-Interplay founder Brian Fargo’s Inxile was developing the game (and, indeed, The Demon’s Forge was the first game Fargo ever published way back in the early ’80s) and co-op action in a fantasy setting? Color me interested.

First of all, let’s talk about what Hunted is and what it isn’t. It is a third-person action game set in a fantasy setting (I fail to see what’s so dark about it, but that is the buzz-word these days) and is published by Bethesda. I understand a lot of people have gone in expecting an RPG, and this is pretty silly. While it culls quite a bit from the aesthetics and plots of many a tabletop dungeon crawl, gameplay-wise I think it most resembles what a modern day Golden Axe might be.

I honestly didn’t know what to expect, so I was flying blind to some degree. The game offers a mix of melee and shooting combat, with gruff man-at-arms Caddoc specializing in up-close butchery and Elven huntress E’lara specializing in bows, although both can somewhat competently attempt the other’s specialty. In addition to physical attacks, you can develop magic attacks as you collect crystals in the game. These attacks can boost your attack and defense, raise enemies in the air, or destroy shields outright, among many other effects.

Looking more closely at each combat style, Caddoc’s perhaps requires more thought and planning. Of course coming right off of The Witcher 2, this was really easy for me. Your shield isn’t dead weight, and in fact blocking is pretty much the core mechanic of his fighting style. You’ll go through quite a few shields over the course of the game, as they wear down and break over time. Choice of weapon is also important: do you want to take big, painful swipes with a mace or go for quick, canceling hits with a sword? His spells are also melee oriented, allowing him to rush in, hulk out, or throw the crowd in the air. I’ve read a few complaints about Caddoc’s slower and more methodical fighting style and I can say this: he’s tanking. He’s supposed to mediate the damage while E’lara picks the enemies off. Understanding this and playing this way helps a lot.

E’lara’s shooting is perhaps more familiar to anyone who’s played Gears of War or Uncharted, as she can similarly take potshots from behind cover. Like Caddoc’s melee weapons, her bows come in three styles: fast, medium, and slow. The fast ones can throw arrows like a machine gun while the slow ones hit the hardest. Early on I found myself trying the fast bow, but later I liked the one-shot kills the slow ones provided. Her main spells are magic arrow types with varying effects, like freezing, exploding, or impacting with massive force.

It Is Dangerous to Go Alone

While the game is perfectly playable in singleplayer, the meaty part of the game is the co-op. Without it, you’re kind of missing the point. (Kind of like Resident Evil 5, but without fifteen years of silly plot lines and tons of quicktime events holding it back.) There are two modes: ‘Adventure’, which takes you through the game’s story,and ‘Crucible’, which allows you to generate your own challenge maps with tons of rooms and enemies and run through it. Though they played well overall, there are a few minor gripes. If you’re going to play split-screen, you’re going to need a very big screen. In addition, the inventory (which only really involves your health potions and mana potions) is so small as to be barely visible. As you hack your way through the game, you’ll come across a lot of gold, and probably wonder what it does. You cannot, alas, spend it; rather, your total counts toward things you can unlock in the Crucible mode (like arena settings and enemy types).  The game was intended to be played co-op, and if you’ve got a buddy to work together with, it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

The environments aren’t bad either. They reflect the kingdom-at-war setting well, and the dungeons look like proper dungeons, dingy and crumbling. My main complaint about the dungeon and town areas early on is that they’re too dark. I had to crank the gamma settings way up to see where I was going. However, the later chapters provide a much more well-lit and vibrant experience, which includes sunny outdoor ruins, a city with some vibrantly burning buildings, and a demonic city deep underground, which, contrary to typical games, is bathed in bluish green light, and the final boss is almost blindingly bright.

The game isn’t entirely linear. While there is a definite straight-line path from point A to point B, there are also plenty of opportunities to explore side areas, which reward you with items, weapons, and gold. After playing games with zero extra exploration like Uncharted, it’s a nice change.

The general aesthetic was to my liking, with a very Frank Frazetta-esque flair. The graphics unfortunately don’t always look great, but they look decent enough that they don’t distract you while playing. The game does have an early current-gen look, and the Unreal 3 engine carries all of its flaws with it (including that one I always run into, with textures still loading as I start a level). The enemies are pretty standard fantasy mooks, with skeletons, minotaurs, orcs (called Wargar here, but seriously, call them Wargar, Darkspawn, whatever: they’re orcs), dragons, and demons. What they lack in originality they make up for with some clever flourishes. The demons in particular look pretty cool.

The story is typical of its genre, but well executed: two mercenaries in search of a big pile of filthy lucre get in over their heads, and much hacking ensues. The voiceovers are well done, and the vitriolic war-buddies banter that Caddoc and E’lara have is amusing and keeps the game from getting too grimdark. I like the fact that they’re cronies and business partners instead of romantic interests. The music also fits the game well; the pounding drums and searing brass fit the fantasy theme well.

Glittering Prizes and Endless Compromises

My main complaint with the game is its general lack of polish. You get the feeling that Inxile was finishing the game by the seat of its pants. There are definitely some places where corners were cut, and a lot of times they’re noticeable. Graphics aren’t as sharp as they should be and are at times incompletely optimized, and the highest setting is 720p. The combat could use some refinement, as could the animation, graphics, and lighting. In spite of all this, I really liked the game. But the lack of polish is over a solid core, and if you’ve got a buddy to play with, this is the first game I’ve played in a while with co-op at the forefront. So if you’re the type that played Golden Axe growing up, I’d recommend giving Hunted a shot. It’s a solid, if flawed, experience, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel to it.

I had fun. That’s the bottom line. You probably will do, too.

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Female Shepard to Be Featured in Mass Effect 3 Advertising

BioWare’s director of marketing, David Silverman, said on Twitter Tuesday that “there will be a FemShep trailer” for Mass Effect 3. The female version of Commander Shepard has proved popular with the fanbase, probably in no small part to Jennifer Hale’s excellent voice work. This will be the first time a female Shepard has been used in marketing; until now only the generic buzzcut male Shephard has been featured in advertisements. FemShep, as fandom refers to her, will appear on the Collector’s Edition of the game and possibly in other venues.

The look for the iconic version of FemShep is as yet undecided, it is unknown whether it will be the default female Shepard or a new design. Images here are the writer’s own FemShep.

My only question is, with all the generic buzzcut space marines out there, why it took so long.

Source: Gamepro

The Personalities of E3

Ah E3, that bastion of gaming which leaves me so little to actually talk about once the reporting is done, other than “Holy crap, that new Battlefield looks great” and “Skyrim is gonna be the manliest RPG in history”. So it’s time for me to shift into Gossip Columnist form to report on the personalities of E3 – whom we loved, whom we grudgingly accepted, and whom we really, really hated.

First of all, let’s talk about Ken Levine. He has developed some great games – among them System Shock 2 and SWAT 4, but let’s face it – the poor guy is not a great public speaker. At least he’s energetic about it, but he comes off as more of a nerd than I do when I’m explaining the differences between the combat systems in the different editions of D&D. Not that he had any trouble selling BioShock Infinite as its demo speaks for itself (unless you’re like me and hate Steampunk with a burning passion), and far be it from me to criticize his game output – he just came off as a little rushed and nervous. Although considering the forum, can you blame him? I don’t want to come down too hard on the guy, as he’s a talented developer and at least seemed to be excited to be at the Sony show.

Then of course we have none other than the legendary Peter Molyneux, who once made good games like Syndicate and Dungeon Keeper, but is now content to collect an ungodly large paycheck by making action-RPGs with skewed senses of good and evil and poor inventory systems. Perhaps his greatest contribution in recent years was getting Stephen Fry to do voiceovers in a game (albeit not a very good game). It says something about him that even he, master of running his mouth and over-hyping the features of his own products, said, in the words of Gob Bluth, “I’ve made a huge mistake.”

Then there’s Mr. Caffeine.

Excuse me for a few moments while I empty this bottle of Maker’s Mark. For me, the pain and horror of Mr. Caffeine, or Aaron Priceman, as is allegedly his real name, is still too near.

OK. Tanked enough to continue. Mr. Caffeine, who UbiSoft trotted out to present their show, was a disaster. No, it was a masterpiece of disaster. It was a disasterpiece (that’s exactly the kind of joke he would make, HELP ME!). I mean…let’s look at this. Mr. Caffeine comes out with the kind of behavior we expect from…a certain type of person who is commonly referred to pejoratively as a type of feminine hygiene product. His jokes were unfunny, and the fact that he persisted made it even more cringeworthy.

And for that matter, why did UbiSoft need this Mr. Caffeine guy to begin with? While the UbiSoft guys did butcher Shakespeare pretty badly (which I suppose is pretty fair considering what my high school classmates and I did to Edmond Rostand’s work), at least it seemed like they would have made a decent and knowledgeable set of hosts, rather than the stale-joke spewing hair gel-wight we got. I’m getting a severe headache just thinking about this guy. And the thing is, with some of their announcements I would have considered UbiSoft’s show to not be too bad. But no, this guy had to ruin that. And I really liked that Rayman trailer!

My thoughts exactly, Kefka!

The only way they could top themselves is by replacing him with Mr. Cocaine next year! Ball is in your court, UbiSoft!

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Share Your Thoughts: Anyhow, those are my thoughts on a few of the more interesting personalities at the show. Did I miss anyone? Feel free to leave your comments on others at the show, and please leave vitriol for the Mr. Caffeine sucker.

Page To Pixel: Twilight

You might be wondering what I’m thinking. When I brought up to my friends that there was a game based on Twilight, they were like “seriously?” And I myself tried to get out of it, pulling up other games that had Twilight in the title- maybe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Twilight, or Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits. But no. I decided I’m gonna take both barrels and play Scene It: Twilight on the Nintendo Wii.

Before we start, here’s a cool vampire for you.

The book Twilight is author Stephenie Meyer’s collection of vampire themed masturbatory fantasies  tale of an author insert girl named Bella Swan, who is…um…into this dude who happens to be a vampire but instead of walking the streets of London dressed like a pimp, turning into a bat, shooting fireballs from his cape, or capping ghouls with a .454 Casull, he feeds on cows and sparkles in the sunshine. There’s also a running subplot with a shirtless Matthew McConagheuy devotee  dude who also happens to be a werewolf.

Now, I can tell you this much through pop-cultural osmosis, although to be fair I did read the book…OK, that is a blatant lie. I read-no, I’m lying again- skimmed the sample pages on Amazon. And I sorta watched the movie too, although admittedly I wasn’t paying all that much attention and pretty much flung up my arms and said “Screw you guys, I’m going home” when they started playing vampire baseball.

But admittedly, I’m an adult male and clearly not in the target demographic. Let’s face it, as modern vampires go, stuff like Hellsing and The Strain are just much more up my alley. I’m naturally going to hate this. It’s like if all other vampire media were Star Trek characters, Twilight would be Neelix. That’s right. Lower on the scale even than Wesley Crusher.

So yes, now that all that is out of the way – I have to process the fact that I have a Twilight game in my hands. Deep breath. THIS EXISTS. And it’s not even anything that they could fantastically screw up. It’s not a hilariously bad graphic adventure, it’s not an ill-advised 3D platformer, nope – it’s a trivia game. And one made by Konami, no less. Regardless of how many Castlevania or Silent Hill entries they may or may not have screwed up (your mileage will vary, naturally)…can they mess up a simple trivia game?

Well the first thing I looked at was the back of the box.  The text at the top reads, WHEN YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER, WHAT DO YOU LIVE FOR? And I’m like…the hell? Is this Highlander?

To remind myself of something cool I’m not writing about.

Well, I roped a buddy into it to find out (which reminds me that I owe him a case of Guinness). And I…guess it’s OK. If you’re really really into Twilight. Which neither of us are. I’m afraid my main strategy came down to “press up on the command cross” and hope for the best. Although at times they decide to exploit the Wii’s waggle function to…exploit its waggle function I guess. Some of the questions use movie clips or stills, but most are basically just typical multiple choice, with very little personality (my sole experience with trivia games is the You Don’t Know Jack series. I mean who would play DIS over DAT?).

Well, I take that back. The game does have an announcer of sorts. It’s kind of like they hired an actor who likes to ham it up a la Tim Curry and gave him a fatal amount of Quaaludes. He’s ordinarily given to instructions and a few uninvolved quips. However, at the end of a round, if you’re doing well enough, he says:

YOU SPARKLE LIKE A DIAMOND.

Cue me rolling on the floor, my stomach aching with pain from the amount of laughter it elicited. Dear Crom, can you even say that without giggling?  Seriously, imagine your favorite characters saying that.

So does it suck? Not as much as it could. It’s still probably coherent enough if you know the stuff. I mean, if this was Scene It: Robocop or Scene It: Universal Monsters edition, I’d probably be good to go. But you know, as far as trivia games go, I’ll stick to You Don’t Know Jack. But hey, I’d rather play Scene It: Twilight than play Splatterhouse again, so it has THAT going for it.

Review: Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale (360/PS3/PC)

Dungeons & Dramamine

The Forgotten Realms campaign setting has been the stage for many excellent games. This includes the SSI Gold Box games, BioWare’s critically and commercially successful Baldur’s Gate series, and Interplay’s enjoyable hack-and-slash Dark Alliance games. Unfortunately, Daggerdale falls short of any of those titles.

But before I dig into the game for what it got wrong, let’s talk about what it gets right. The gameplay is a solid hack-and-slash dungeon crawl (when it works), somewhere between Gauntlet and Diablo. There’s plenty of stuff to collect, and all of it is useful in some capacity – no vendor trash, just sacks of gold, potions, weapons, and armor. In addition, there’s a good mix of quests, a few of which are optional. The storyline is OK. It exists, and in a hack-and-slash game that’s pretty much “good enough”. It pales next to something like Baldur’s Gate or R.A. Salvatore’s books, but it IS better than the Dungeons & Dragons film. In addition, some of the graphics (the ones with actual textures) look pretty good.

Glitchcraft and Heresy

Now, let’s take a look at the bad parts.

Daggerdale is not so much a game as a collection of bugs and unfinished code being held together by the Unreal 3 engine. Characters will freeze up and be unable to move (which is essentially a death sentence as you can’t save mid-quest), textures won’t render on some weapons and armor (leaving your character looking distinctly like a smurf). Within ten minutes of starting the game, my floor textures turned flat black.  It’s bad enough that I made it to the final boss and when it came time to attack the boss…my fighter remained stuck in one place. There’s a small window of opportunity to get through an area while the boss is away, and I can’t move. Brilliant.

In addition, other players are reporting that stats, abilities, and items are being lost during gameplay. While I didn’t experience this particular bug, it just seems fair warning is in order.

The game was pretty clearly rushed out the door. I paid $15 so Atari could have me beta test the game! I mean, this wouldn’t be the first time a game needs patching, but it’s so flagrant that it stuns me. And not to go off on a tangent, but Atari has done the same “release it unfinished” thing with Temple of Elemental Evil and Alone in the Dark in the past. I’m frankly getting tired of it. I know it’s only a $15 title, but let’s compare it to two excellent downloadable titles: Mega Man 10 and Lara Croft & The Guardian of Light. Both of these games released with the same amount of polish one would expect from a full-price title.

Second, let’s look at distribution (for the PC version at least). The game is only available on DVD-ROM, as in you have to purchase a physical copy. And then it authenticates through Steam…OK, but why not just release it through Steam? The Xbox version is downloadable, so…why did I have to purchase a physical copy in a market where physical software sales are nearly dead?

The multiplayer experience, which, with 4-player co-op the game was supposedly designed around, is also quite frustrating. When you try to join a game you’re given no indication of where in the dungeon or in what quest the other players are. It’s kind of lame when you’re at level 8 and the other characters are running the tutorial mission. In addition, sometimes you’re lucky to join at all. I’ve had to hard reboot a few times when the game just hangs on the loading screen when I’ve attempted to join a multiplayer game.

Another major “what?” moment (at least from an old D&D player’s perspective): there is no character creation other than selecting a premade race/class combination and allocating a few feats. Now, when done properly, this kind of thing can work. It worked fine in Dark Alliance. However, in Daggerdale what struck me is that the rogue class is assigned to the elf and the wizard is assigned to the halfling. For those not in the D&D loop, elves have higher intelligence (and thus make better mages) where halflings have high dexterity, making them ideal rogues. Now, if we were creating our own characters, I wouldn’t stop you from taking those out for a spin, but in a game where you have no choice in the matter, you’re giving us these backwards setups?

The music is…well, for me it was nonexistent. It was irritating in the first dungeon so I turned it off and put Basil Poledouris’ Conan score on. The game doesn’t save this option change so I had to turn it off every time I played. The sound is fine for the most part, swords clanging and spells whooshing and bones clattering. And then there are the voices. There really isn’t any voice acting to speak of; however, anyone you speak to is bound to have a little worried sigh or groan. They tend to loop every few text boxes, and it would have been better in my opinion if the little niblet of sound hadn’t been included at all.

The Final Verdict

I can conclude – no, I should beg you not to buy this game. It was released in an unfinished beta state. It’s pretty frustrating to do your work for you, Atari. My question is, why did Atari even buy the D&D license if they’re just gonna make crap like this? If you want a decent hack-and-slash, pick up Torchlight or wait for Dungeon Siege 3. If you’re in the mood for some real Dungeons & Dragons, download Baldur’s Gate from GoG or pick up a 4th edition starter set. There’s no reason for you to play Daggerdale.

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