"There comes a time in a
gamers life, that a new breed of game develops and will
set a standard for other games to be judged. I pried
myself away from the game for a few hours to write this
review. As you are reading this, I am already back at my
PC, drudging through the brilliant gameplay of Dungeon
Siege."
Intro
Anyone who has been interested in the gaming world, has
heard of the developments of this game for the last two
years. We have seen the screen shots, and heard the
previews. Briefly, the entire Dungeon Siege
project was headed up by mastermind Chris Taylor.
Taylor was the muscle behind Total Annihilation
one of the greatest RTS games of all time. Dungeon
Siege was set to be a hack-n-slash RPG (a la
Diablo), but with added elements to keep gamers
coming back for more. Before DS, Blizzard
sat on their throne letting the masses hack away with Diablo
II. Until now, no one challenged this successful
market. Microsoft teamed up with GAS Powered
Games to make one of the most unique, enveloping and
amazing games to cross the PC in years.
Your basic story is one of puzzles, questions and an
increasing developing plot. It really can't be
summarized in one or two paragraphs, simply because it
evolves as time goes on. After creating your character,
you find yourself on the edge of Kingdom of Ehb. You
play the role of a domestic farmer, and with news of
hordes of Krag attacking a village; you investigate. To
tell anymore of the story, would truly damper the
surprises in store for you.
More than meets the eye
To start things off, you have to realize that the game
is not limited to one world. What make this
unique are the differences in multiplayer and single
player. The single player allows you to traverse the
Kingdom of Ehb, and the multiplayer pits you on the
Utraean Peninsula. Both worlds are gigantic and
amazingly detailed. During your single player adventure,
the game pans out like similar games in the genre. You
are given main objectives with a ton of sub-plots. The
side quests are all tagged in your journal, and
completing them is up to you. Of course if you complete
these quests, you will receive some hefty rewards. These
quests can be anything from finding a family rune, to
cleansing a dungeon filled with bad guys.
While much of the game can be compared to Diablo,
you will soon find out that this it really can't be
comparable. The single player mode, allows you to have
up to eight different members in your party. These
members can range from elven archers, to dark mages. Of
course, they all develop in to the storyline and
depending on how and what you choose depends on the
plots direction.
This isn't a "choose your own adventure"
game, and is still fairly linear... however, the degree
of change is brilliant and allows you to tackle tasks at
your whim...
Changing primary characters is simply done by using your
F1 to F8 keys. Luckily, your team A.I. is quite
good, and will fend for themselves quite nicely. At your
controls, you are given some useful tools. These include
formation and stance. I chose to take an aggressive
stance, where your players will attack first, and attack
the closest enemy available. These actions are all
customizable, and can range from attacking only when
attacked first to attacking the strongest/weakest enemy
first. The controls are easily understood, and should
take you no time to get familiar with them. You
individual controls are neatly arranged and quite
familiar if you are used to RPG's. Clicking on your
character will bring up his inventory. The inventory
also shows his spell book with some basic instructions.
Choosing a functional setup is up to you. There are
three primary cells that include your weapons and
spells. Your primary weapon and two spells are right at
your fingertips during gameplay. If you select your
primary weapon, he will attack with that unless you
choose otherwise. The same goes for selecting a spell.
Your character will use this unless you change it.
Experience comes in depending on how much you use
something (weapon or spell). Your fighting skills
will improve if you continually use melee weapons. Or if
you choose to use spells, they will increase the more
you use them. Each of the three buttons have an
experience meter, showing you how much longer until you
reach the next level. For those who prefer spells, these
can be found scattered throughout the world, or learned
from people you meet up with. Healing is also easier
than pie. The bottom left screen shows a
"pause" menu with a red and blue bottle next
to it. Pausing the menu will allow you to select either
health (red) or mana (blue). Unpausing the
game will restore your character as needed, only using
as much of the potion as needed; which is nice so there
is nothing wasted.
The combat system is a hybrid of many other games and
nicely forms a new breed of play. Depending on your
preferred gamestyle, you can simply click-n-slash to
your hearts desire (aka Diablo). I personally
prefer to automate most of the combat by having it
automatically attack any nearby bad guys. I change this
setting when fighting more powerful enemies, but since
the majority of the game is busting low-level monsters;
I keep the setting how it is.
As with previous hack-n-slash games there is a myriad of
items and weapons. To begin to categorize them would
take forever. You can upgrade anything from weapons and
armor to accessories and jewelry. Your basic control is
just that... basic. Point and click to move your party,
and point and click to attack. A nice added bonus is the
map control mode. By accessing your map (Tab) you
can move your party around. Shaded areas show where you
haven't been, and battles engage even if you are in this
mode. Items also show up on this mode, and by clicking
on them allow you to pick them up. There is also a
button to loot everything lootable, which saves a ton of
time. Outside the map mode, the basic mode is very
enjoyable. This is a true 3D world, even though the game
is not in first person perspective. Moving your
mouse will automatically rotate your view, and moving
the mouse up and down will pan to other views. The
camera angles (which often plague many games) are
resourceful, and add to the drama of this vast 3D
environment. Exploration also plays a huge role within
the game, and your cursor will turn in to a fist if you
are able to investigate. This can be either bashing a
barrel or crate or opening a door or chest.
To be 100% honest, I have not come close to
beating the game in single player mode. I've only
registered a bit over 10 hours into the game, and I
don't see it ending anytime soon. If I had to give an
educated guess, I would estimate that the game would
easily last 40-50 hours. Let me repeat myself... 40-50
hours. Dungeon Siege is one huge game, that
requires a ton of attention and should keep you
interested for months to come.
If that wasn't enough...
Putting in only ten hours on the single player level,
I've only scratched the surface of the multiplayer mode
(about five hours). As with any newer successful
PC game, the online aspects have to be top-notched to
keep it going. To be completely up front, the
multiplayer aspects drowned my expectations. There is so
much there, that I couldn't imagine how long it would
take to become a viable dominate player.
As mentioned, the multiplayer is on a totally different
land as the single player. Some of the ties between the
two parallel at times; but mostly it is individualistic
with so much to do. Similar to Diablo, you can
create a player and build them up to challenge the
plethora of quests available. You can team up with up to
eight others or go at it alone (yea right). The
nice thing (and bad thing) I noticed is your
team’s differences. If another group challenges you,
they challenge the entire party. Since the game is quite
new, there are too many out there playing it just yet.
But, I came across a few "elite" bands that
thought they were the shizit, and tackled and raided our
party like there was no tomorrow. I found it quite lame,
but couldn't blame them.
Chatting amidst your party was simple and the quests
given were even more engrossing than the single
player levels. I also noticed it was much easier
discovering new and unique items via multiplayer than
single player, and upgrading your character was much
easier as well. The online lag was not bad at
all. In fact, I had a hard time telling that I was
actually on line or not. I'm sure this will change when
the game smacks the public in the face with greatness.
You will never play Diablo again
I know I keep mentioning Diablo, but many aspects
of the game are found here in Dungeon Siege. And
believe it or not, I'm not dogging the game. In fact, I lovedDiablo II and the expansion. It was one of my
favorite games to be truthful. All of this has changed,
however, and when you actually see the game, you
won't believe your eyes.
The world is a brilliant combination of 2D/three quarter
view gaming with huge 3D influences. Every detail is
dynamically changing, and beautiful. Every effect
imaginable is here. The trees sway with the breeze, the
fog dissipates and character animations are fluid. If
you don't have a GeForce card, now is the time to
invest in one. The graphics are simply amazing. I'm not
saying that this is the next demo that PC gamers will
show to their XBOX friends; but for the RPG genre
this is the best to date. It's not truly on the same
level as a Final Fantasy X but it is a totally
different feel, that really does play, look and feel
like a role-playing game. For those who loved the old Dungeons
& Dragons games (like Pool of Radiance),
you will find sanctuary and bliss.
One thing that amazed me was not only the animation and
backgrounds; but also the performance. The game never
had a load screen. Don't ask me how, but once the game
is loaded up (quickly I might add) it never
stopped the action and went to a load screen. This kept
the action intense, and the story increasingly
involving. No more loading action when entering a
dungeon, imagine that! I found little to no pixelation
or flickering within the game. In fact, I only remember
once the screen caching to catch up with action.
Overall, the graphics are the best ever in the genre,
and I know you will be impressed.
Audible, the game was a treasure as well. After getting
over the installation error I had regarding the audio,
everything was perfect. I had a glitch where the voices
were blocked out, and after reinstalling the game (three
times) it worked fine. The background music was
amazingly composed of rich and exotic medieval tunes,
and the sound effects were ambient (and if you have EAX
hold onto your hat). The voice-overs were also well
done and the acting was top notched. I was more than
impressed with the music, however this is the only area
where Diablo has an edge. Sorry, you just can't
beat the tunage of Diablo II...
PC upgrade?
For those concerned with disk space, you better make
room. The sucker takes over a gig's worth of room, so
leave some extra for caching purposes. The game is two
disks big, but I've yet had to switch them; except for
the install.
My once powerful gaming system is a bit 86'ed now, but
still ran the game flawlessly. I'm running a Celeron 933
with 256MB of RAM. I also am sporting a nice GeForce 3
card with 64MB of RAM. I believe if you invest in a nice
video card, you should have no problems running this
with anything above a 600mHz machine. Again, I never
experience any hesitation or slowdown; and found the
game to be very stable.
The only drawback was the installation, where I had to
install it three times to get it to fully install. My
CDROM is a bit slow (only 32x) and took about 20
minutes to install it. So, I was a bit frustrated
because it took about an hour to get the game up and
running.
66 Says:
Ah yes... most of you simply scrolled down to the bottom
to get the 'ole 66 Says: part. Well, I've tried
to hide most of my giddiness about the game. But, I just
can't stop thinking about it. If you loved Diablo
than you will definitely love this game. If you liked
parts of Diablo than you will love the game... If
you love RPG's, you will love this game... If you love
God and all good things... you will love this game...
The bottom line here is that this is a truly
revolutionary game. This has set the bar so far for Blizzard
that I would love to see how they combat this. I can
easily vouch that this will still be played a year from
now, and can't see it going out of style anytime soon.
Hopefully with the right marketing, and word of mouth;
this will become the next online mega-hit. I can't wait
to finish the game, and explore the online aspects of Dungeon
Siege.
I admit that the name sounds cheesy, but rest assured,
this is easily the best game of the year and you owe it
to yourself to invest the $50 in it. I hope you all have
a chance to check out the game, and please get back to
me once you have it. I'd love to hear your input. I'm
excited about the game, and excited to get other hooked
on this as well. I've set aside my Ghost Recon,
threw away my copy of Diablo; and Dungeon
Siege is soldered to my CDROM. Go get it.
8.2
