Dark Messiah of Might & Magic (That's Hot) (PC Games)

Reviewed by Luke from Wellington on July 4th, 2008

Built on the half life two engine but not half as good, this game was a big disappointment. HL2 ran perfectly on my machine but playing this meant a buggy experience; the most annoying example being that the scripted voice acting of the Cortana rip-off 'lady in my head' kept blurting out garbage at random, when the whole thing was not simply falling apart.

At times the graphics were lush - the orcs look very good and move smoothly, and the cliffside dwellings are one of the best RPG environments I’ve ever seen.

The skill development system is rubbish; it adds nothing but a kind of pretend RPG element which detracts in a linear game. I developed a character with a mix of skills just to see what the spells and weapons look like (you cant even heft a weapon if you don’t have the strength 'skill') and found that pretty soon I was too weak to kill anything much. And do you think I wanted to go right back to the start and make different skill choices in a linear game once I'd done all that boring switch finding and seen the set pieces?

The introduction of some clever physics-driven tricks like kicking enemies into spikes was pretty ho-hum at times, especially given your enemies had the not-recommended habit of standing next to the spikes (or under the massive rickety wooden platform straining to hold up lots of very heavy things). None of which leaves you feeling like you've interacted with the environment in a satisfying way. The rope bow was the pick of these sorts of physics-based ideas and was fun to play around with for a short while.

Reviewed by Vaughan from Auckland, NZ on January 17th, 2008

A great single player game, although the multiplayer could use a lot of improvement.
The main purpose of this review is to TELL anyone who buys this game to immediately patch it because lots of video cards can play very badly without any patches!

Reviewed by Anonymous from Ham, NZ on May 2nd, 2007

The combat takes about an hour to get used to, but when you have it under control it is fluid and visceral, by far the best melee combat in any game I have ever played. The story is tight, voice acting is superb as are the lipsyching and animations. The only gripe that one could have with this game is that you are on rails, there are many paths through a map and many different ways to take those paths but you start and end in the same place> Some old school RPGers may take offence at this but as one I found the mix to just right between story and freedom.

The set peices are top notch, puzzles aren't annoying (there aren't many REQUIRED ones). Replayability is good with the different loadouts/classes (its pick and mix too, not "You are a fight, no magic, not for you"). All in all i can't gush enough about this game, one of the best that I played in a long time

ps backstabbing rocks

Reviewed by Gerard from wellington on February 25th, 2007

Lovely HL2 engine so runs and looks really nice on mediocre hardware,for me,this game was far more interesting to play than oblivion,and has a far better combat sytem,interesting characters,great special effects,the only thing that really annoyed me about it was the sound of my own footsteps.
Some people have reported crashing,but I didn't have one and didn't need to download half a months bandwidth in patches which is most unusual for ubipatch.
Well done.