Dark Messiah Of Might And Magic (PC)

Dark Messiah attempts to merge semi RPG with FPS-style gameplay and successfully creates an new type of game.

OK, time for a game review.

Most of my gaming time is taken up by my passion for Guild Wars, in fact most of my time is taken up by Guild Wars! It's about the only game that could have pulled me away from Battlefield 2, which I did play for quite a bit, but got drawn back to GW, which I have been playing solidly ...
...Let me introduce you to Dark Messiah - part of the Might and Magic series. I know nothing at all about the MM series so I won't go into that here, rather I'll just tell you about the Dark Messiah game itself.

The game is in First Person perspective, one connection it has to other FPS games, although as it has no guns etc, it's not really a first person shooter, more of a first person melee or combat game. It's set in a fantasy world, ... more

Dark Messiah attempts to merge semi RPG with FPS-style gameplay and successfully creates an new type of game.

OK, time for a game review.

Most of my gaming time is taken up by my passion for Guild Wars, in fact most of my time is taken up by Guild Wars! It's about the only game that could have pulled me away from Battlefield 2, which I did play for quite a bit, but got drawn back to GW, which I have been playing solidly for over a year now, as well as run my Guild site and small community.

You may think that GW and Battlefield 2 (and games of it's ilk) have nothing in common, and until now that would have been true. Let me introduce you to Dark Messiah - part of the Might and Magic series. I know nothing at all about the MM series so I won't go into that here, rather I'll just tell you about the Dark Messiah game itself.

The game is in First Person perspective, one connection it has to other FPS games, although as it has no guns etc, it's not really a first person shooter, more of a first person melee or combat game. It's set in a fantasy world, where their advertising blurb tells you don't play as a warrior, or a wizard or an assassin - play as them all! As you follow the exploits of Sareth in the single player storyline you will learn new skills and get new items/weapons which will enable you to become proficient in a specific area or jack-of-all-trades. It's a skill 'tree' if you like, where if you choose one particular branch, you may be weaker on another.

The storyline itself gives you the role playing aspect, and what holds this up apart from other similar games is that it uses Valve's Source engine. For those of you who have played Halflife 2 will know how good that is - infact it's even better because it's an 'enhanced' version to boot. What this means is that the whole 'world' you play in will be very interactive, pick up barrels and throw them at enemies, move boxes around to get at hidden items and so on.

In what basically amounts to a seperate game (but within the same scenario), there is also an online multiplayer aspect for up to 32 players. This is where it becomes more like an FPS game similar to BF2 etc (although without tanks and planes!). There are 5 classes to choose from: Warrior which is your basic soldier, fastest on the field and most powerful when it comes to dealing direct damage as well as taking it; Priestess can be considered the medic of the group with her healing and protective skills; Assassin with his ability to cloak (looks like the Predator!) and stealth attributes can be considered your covert ops specialist; Ranger can also use stealth and ranged attacks (sniper maybe?); and the wizard has been compared to artillery with area of effect attacks etc. The online aspect of the game has been developed independently of the single player game (by an English company!) so should be a good indication that it will play well not just look nice.

Gameplay modes include your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch but also introduces the Crusader mode, where you start off in the middle map of five and depending on whether you win or lose, you will go either forwards or backwards onto the next map until you hopefully reach the enemies stronghold and conquer it to win. Another aspect of gameplay that is similar to BF2 is the use of various spawnpoints and the map on which to select them as well as change you class.

During the campaigns you will earn new skills and become more powerful with better weapons etc, and these will be saved over all the maps until the campaign has finished, when it will be reset - sort of an xp save type of thing. Should you switch to another class mid-battle, you will start that class from scratch but will keep any skills learnt on subsequent changes. Skills that can be gained vary depending on the class but include things like better stealth, zoom attack when using a bow, shield blocking and so on.

Technically, the game ran fine on my low/medium spec system, with both an ATI Radeon 128 Mb 9600 All-in-Wonder card, and now on my nVidia 128 Mb 6600GT, although the video setting will need to be low to medium unless you have a reasonably new card, this is especially important with the Texture setting which can be found in the Advanced section of the video settings.

The game itself has fairly slow loading times, but nowhere near as bad as BF2, in fact I would say they aren't too bad at all. During gameplay I only came across one bug which happened during a cutscene so didn't affect the game at all. The game ran very smoothly on my mediocre system and is a joy to play - it is a genuinely refreshing take on the RPG/FPS scene.

So, if you fancy a bit of swordplay (and be honest, which of you guys didn't have a sword and shield when they were kids!?) in an FPS setting, then this may be right up your street.

One word of warning - as the graphics are so good, as well as the physics of the game, there is a lot of dismemberment and decapitation to be seen, as well as various methods of stabbings and impalements.

If you're interested in this sort of blood and gore, check out the demo which is out now on Fileplanet and other good sources. The game is out now in standard and limited Collector's Editions.  

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