by Gwynhala
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Developer: |
Rebel Act Studios |
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Publisher: |
Codemasters |
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Price: |
$29.99 |
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Demo: |
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Release Date: |
2/23/01 |
My first impression
of Rebel Act Studios’ Blade of Darkness
action / role playing game was not good. Playing through the tutorial level, I
was bothered by the poor tracking of the 3rd person camera, and by
the way my character waddled as he ran. A big fan of the 3rd person
view, I missed the much better controls and camera tracking of Heretic II
(Raven Software) and Rune (Human Head Studios).
NOTE: The version
1.01 patch released in May, 2001 fixes some of the camera control issues.
Despite such basic
control and animation flaws, Blade of
Darkness did not disappoint overall. Deeper in the game I found beautiful
sound, animation, architecture, and lighting – almost good enough to immerse me
and make me forget about the awkward mechanics. Melee combat with this game’s
great variety of weapons was entertaining, and it’s the first game that’s
actually given me vertigo looking down a virtual chasm.
In Blade of Darkness you begin by choosing
a character – a barbarian, a dwarf, an amazon, or a knight. Each of the four
character classes begins with a different background storyline, and starts the
game playing a unique map. The rest of the maps are the same for all classes,
but the story branches and often allows you to select from several maps to play
next. There are at least two endings, depending on whether or not you’ve found
certain secrets.
Whichever character
you pick, you eventually get mixed up in thwarting an evil god’s plan to take
over the universe. The storyline isn’t all explained up front; you discover it
gradually through secret texts and runes you find in roughly 18 different areas
of the game.
I found the secret
texts somewhat pretentious and incoherent. They spell out a Zoroastrian
creation legend about gods, treachery, war among gods, good and evil, etc. You
don’t need to understand or act on this story to play the game, but you do have
to find all of the parts of it in order to meet the final boss. So, the
storyline is just kind of there, not really adding a lot to the game other than
setting the mood, but at least it doesn’t get in the way.
Blade of Darkness successfully combines elements of console
RPGs and 3rd person melee combat games. The deathmatch is
rudimentary (no arena or team game modes) but fun, and the single-player game
is pretty good.
The game gives you
two basic control modes – normal movement and “locked on” melee movement.
Normal movement lets you move and look around freely; use this mode to explore
levels and to retreat from enemies. Melee movement,
invoked either automatically or by pressing a bound key, locks you onto a
specific enemy. In melee mode you can move toward that enemy, or away from that
enemy, or circle the enemy using the strafe keys, but you can’t turn away. This
“lock on” takes some getting used to – you may want to retreat to a more
strategic position, but find yourself charging to your death instead. Other
quirks of the controls include the need to “double click” your movement button
or key (instead of, for example, pressing SHIFT) to run, and the mouse speed (I
couldn’t find any really comfortable setting, but got used to it over time).
The fighting
controls are about as complex as those of any arcade-style martial arts game.
The attack button plus optional movement keys give you basic attacks. If the
first attack hits, pressing the correct extra keys starts a powerful combo
attack. Typically 2-3 keys at a time must be pressed, in sequences of 2-3
steps, for a combo. Each attack drains energy from your energy bar, which
recharges during defense or rest. If the energy bar reaches zero, you’re
momentarily defenseless. You’ll learn quickly to pace and aim your attacks,
rather than slashing madly. Each character class can use class-specific
weapons, armor, and attacks as well as general-purpose weapons.
In addition to
fighting with melee weapons, you can throw things and shoot arrows. You can control
the force of the throw, by pressing one key to charge up the throw gradually,
and another key to release the throw. To add to the realism, there’s no
crosshair for aiming.
I played through the
single-player game of Blade of Darkness
as Zoe, the female warrior. My experience was a mix of great fun and real
tedium. The single-player game started out slow and kind of boring, but got
progressively better. The last three levels were the most enjoyable, a pretty
good sign that the creative team didn’t run out of ideas halfway through.
Most of the fun came
from the beautiful level and sound design – the levels are huge and fun to
explore. Also, there are so many weapons to find and try out, and each has its
own special moves and combos. Each time I found a new weapon, I’d go to a safe
spot, play with it for a while, and (because you can only carry a few weapons)
decide whether to keep it or discard it.
Most of the tedium
came from fighting the monsters. When a pair of 35,000 hit point monsters attack, and you have to kill them both to get to the next
part of the game, you spend a lot of time running, hiding, circling, dodging,
getting in your attacks, and trying to stay alive. It’s not something I enjoy
in games, even though lots of games (RPGs in particular) feature this kind of
gameplay. At least in Blade of Darkness
the tedium is pretty to watch.
I’d rather solve
puzzles. Blade of Darkness has
puzzles, but most are “where did they hide X” or “how do I get up there” or my
all-time pet peeve, platform jumping. Surviving the onslaught of two 35,000 hit
point monsters is more challenging than any of the game’s puzzles – a
disappointment to me.
The monster AI is
typical for this type of game, meaning, pretty dumb. I found no game difficulty
setting in the options menus, to make the monsters smarter, so I’m guessing
what I saw is as good as it gets. Monsters don’t appear to coordinate their
attacks with each other, using only simple strategies like: (1) occasionally
surrounding you; (2) drinking potions to replenish health; (3) switching from
bow to melee weapon when closing; (4) running away. Enemies often accidentally
kill each other while attacking you in close quarters.
To get experience,
go up levels, and move between maps, you have to kill – a lot. You start out a
Level 1, and progress up to a level 21 killing machine
by the end of the game. Each level increases your attack strength and hit
points and energy bar. Since your energy bar determines whether you have enough
energy to perform certain attacks, going up levels also means being able to
learn new and more powerful attacks.
More than once, when
falling off of a cliff in-game, I had the same physical reaction I’d have when
falling off a real cliff – cool free-fall at first, then that gut-wrenching
sensation that you’re too high up and it’s going to hurt a lot when you hit
bottom. I think this is a credit to the engine’s physics and lighting
capabilities, that makes a big positive “immersion factor” difference in-game.
Playing as the female
character, I noticed some gender inconsistencies in the scripted cinematics and
text messages (mostly narrators referring to Zoe as “he” or “him”).
One novel thing
about the single-player game, is that it assigns you a
rating with several steps between “heroic” and “lame” based on how many times
you save during the game. Less saves, more heroic. More saves, more lame.
There’s no general
internet server browser in Blade of
Darkness, but the game is able to find LAN servers and accept manually
entered server IP addresses. At this writing the game isn’t supported by
GameSpy 3D™ or GameSpy Arcade™, two popular game server browsers. This makes it
relatively difficult to find and set up deathmatch games unless all players are
on the same LAN.
Due to the
proprietary engine used in Blade of
Darkness (which has many great features), there’s no traditional console
for changing maps or server options on the fly, like you’d find in games based
on Quake™ or Unreal™ technology.
Five small 1-on-1
deathmatch maps are provided. You set up the map list during server
configuration, by selecting each map’s icon and pressing ENTER to either add or
remove a border around it. Maps without a border on their icon are left out of
the rotation.
In deathmatch you
can select a level between 1 and 4, and a character class. This determines what
weapons you get and what attacks you know. You’re a relatively low-level
character and this somewhat limits your combat options. You get a basic attack
that can be combined with directional keys, and a special attack and a combo
that are the same for each of your weapons.
There’s plenty of
blood and gore, including decapitations and severed limbs to pick up and use as
weapons. There’s even slow motion multiple dismemberment of the loser of a
battle, with limbs and heads flying through the air and realistic blood pools.
A gore adjustment option is available to calm the squeamish.
LordRinvaran and I
enjoyed playing Blade of Darkness
deathmatch on our LAN. It was especially fun to have two different character
classes face off, to see the relative strengths and weaknesses of each, and to
watch the various combo moves and try to counter them.
The map graphics in Blade of Darkness range from average to
exceptional.
The lighting effects
from the proprietary engine are stunning: torchlight casts flickering shadows,
water reflections undulate realistically, and the engine creates convincing
indoor and outdoor ambience. The game looks great in 16-bit or 32-bit color.
The 3D character and
creature models, and their skins, are attractive, some even very good, but not
exceptional. Sometimes the poly count seems a little too low, for example –
doubtless a necessary performance trade-off, but it detracts from the graphical
impression of the game.
Blade of Darkness
uses motion-captured animations (meaning a genuine human being or animal did
the original movement, and a computer recorded it and applied it to the game’s
models), with mixed results. Many of the player and creature combination moves
during combat are both graceful and lifelike, while some of the common animations
like walking, running, and climbing look awkward and contrived.
Weapon visual
effects (like weapon trails showing the path of an attack, weapon strike
effects like sparks, and the lighting effects on magical weapons) are nicely
done.
Blade of Darkness has decent sound with some real high points.
One high point comes later in the game, when you enter a cathedral with
beautiful choral ambient sounds. Most levels have moody, well-produced ambient
sound and / or music.
The character sound
effects are weaker – you get the feeling you’re hearing a few sounds over and
over again as you or creatures attack and interact with the environment. Same
grunt every time you climb, same yell every time you attack in a certain way.
Some of the sound
(and related visual) effects overstay their welcome in other ways. For example,
when Zoe dies in a pool of lava, she seems to scream and writhe in pain
forever. You might find yourself saying, “OK, I get the point, she died in the
lava…lets get on with it.”
The object sound
effects are great. One example: Blade of
Darkness has one of the best arrow-strike sound effects I’ve heard in any
game – really solid and realistic. Falling rocks, rolling boulders, and
clanking metal are all believable.
For $30 you get a fun
game, lots of weapons to play with, and lots of big monsters to kill. You also
get some real sensory delights in the audio and graphics and physics of the
game engine (I’m looking forward to other games on this engine so I can get a
more complete opinion of its capabilities). All of this should appeal to fans
of hack-and-slash RPGs.
If you don’t like to
beat on impossibly powerful creatures for long periods of time, or want really
challenging puzzles to complement the slaughter, or play a game mostly for its
engrossing story line, or hate 3rd person perspective, you probably
won’t enjoy Blade of Darkness.
- Beautiful lighting and particle effects
- Rich ambient sounds and music
- Lots of interesting weapons, each with unique
attacks
- Dramatic gore and violence for those that
like it
- Limited deathmatch capability and game
configuration options
- Non-intuitive combat and control system
(especially the “lock on” feature)
- Character animations and sounds not on par
with rest of game
An entertaining game
built on a promising new engine.
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Graphics: |
8 |
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Storyline: |
6 |
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Gameplay: |
7 |
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Sound: |
8 |
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Value: |
7 |
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Total: |
7.2 |
This review originally ran on
mindlessgames.com 6/12/2001. The site is now offline.