Review Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Developer: Arkane Studios Publisher: Ubisoft Genre: RPG Release Date: October 2006 Platform: , , Review by Al Giovetti May 14, 2007		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

Might and Magic: Book I: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum was released for Apple II, Commodore, DOS, and Macintosh in 1986. Jon Van Caneghem, Michaela Van Caneghem, and Vincent DeQuattro. Jon virtually wrote the Apple II version of the game by himself and later converted to other formats due to the success

In 1986, I was spending long nights with the Apple II version of the game. I have been looking for the original boxed game that I played and reviewed back then. I remember calling Jon’s home which was in his apartment with an extra room out of which the three person business was run.

I still have the black print on red logo t-shirt that I won for being the second person to call Jon with the code in the game that you were awarded when you found the inner sanctum where a character named Jon was working at a computer console. If you can get the game to work, the phone number you get from the computer in the inner sanctum, alas, no longer works. Jon no longer lives there.

On September 25, 2006, Van Caneghem, former CEO of New World Computing, and Lars Buttler, former vice president of Global Online at Electronic Arts, formed a new company named Trion World Network. Trion World Network has its main office in Redwood City, California. Trion intends to cash in on the billion dollar online multi massively multiplayer games and other venues yet to be revealed.

The multi-character adventuring parties we saw in the “A Jon Van Caneghem Productions,” such as the 6 character parties in Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen, released in 1992 are gone. The new single player game is single character. As the Dark Messiah you have to go it alone. The single player mode comes from Arkane Software’s love of the Ultima Underworld single character type of game.

The turn-based combat in the earlier games is replaced with real-time combat. The fighting is fast and unusual. One of the most fun things is to kick your opponents into spikes on the wall where they stick or off impossibly high cliffs where they fall until they disappear from sight. This is something that you cannot do in any other computer role playing game.

While many things are gone, the first person perspective that started with Robert Sirotech’s Wizardry (1981) and Brian Fargo and Michael Cranford’s Bard’s Tale (1985) is preserved in Dark Messiah. Dark Messiah is more of an action game and less of a role playing game. Your character becomes either a sword slinger, a sneaky rogue, a spell caster, or a combination of all three.

As you use skills, they improve. This type of role playing game has been my favorite since I played Faster Than Light’s Dungeon Master (1987). If you throw something you improve your throwing skills. If you swing a sword you increase sword swinging skills. Your level is only limited by the number of times you perform a certain action. Some people call this role playing light making a reference to the Light Beer from Miller. But as you now see they really were talking about Faster Than Light’s Dungeon Master.

The rope bow is cool. You shoot at an overhanging beam. Climb the rope attached to the arrow that now is sticking to the beam (You shot the beam earlier – please keep up). Now swing onto the ledge. Notice that there is always an overhanging beam next to an insurmountable ledge. What ever happened to climbing walls in these games?

I was being chased by a Philadelphia street gang (I was in Philadelphia, of course!) and you would not believe the height of walls you can vault over with proper motivation. I have yet to see a character in a video game that can climb decently. Even in Prince of Persia a little four foot tall wall can block your way. Someone has to teach these adventurers the fine art of climbing walls now that they know how to climb rope bow arrows and grape arbors.

Let us not forget the plot. The plot is the thing in my book and the plot in this game is about Sareth the orphan who happens to be adopted or raised by a wizard named Phenrig. Sareth needs to find out his true identity and Phenrig and his friends help him do this by presenting him with quests. Phenrig puts a demoness named Xana in your head who you can talk to. Talking to Cortana helps alleviate the loneliness that assaults most single character adventurers.

Unfortunately the plot is linear. Everyone knows I prefer open ended game plots, such as the one from Faster Than Light’s SunDog: The Frozen Legacy, released in 1984 for Atari ST and Apple II. The design was by Bruce Webster and Wayne Holder. Be a space trader, be a mercenary, be a bounty hunter, etc. You can do almost anything as you explore the galaxy and upgrade your ship engines, weapons, etc. This type of game was tried in the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons gold box games (Pool of Radiance, Strategic Simulations, 1988). You explored, you found new places and you forged off in another direction. In the end you came to the same climax.

The game is mostly about fighting soldiers, zombies, ghouls, orcs and dragons. There is a dark army on the move and Sareth will need to stay ahead of it in solving the riddle of his life. Another neat thing to do in the game is to use your arrows to shoot out the supports holding up heavy barrels and boxes that always appear next to the non player characters (NPC) that you have to kill. Shoot out the supports and the NPC is crushed dramatically decisively dead. Note to self: do not stand near heavy objects held up with rickety wooden supports.

One of the most annoying parts of the game was chasing a demon through a ruins in the first major part of the game. I hate timed sequences. If you lost the demon you had to start chasing him again. There was a lot of running and jumping which made it easy to make repeated mistakes requiring you to do the whole sequence all over again. In Rise of the Dragon by Sierra On Line (1990) repetitive animation sequences that the player repeated five times could be bypassed so that the less agile and more aged players could get though these sequences with less aggravation and frustration.

There is a multi-player variant to Dark Messiah that comes with the game. Todays gamer is obsessed with multi-player action games, so it is obligatory to put this feature in so that the game can be a commercial success. There is Death match, capture the flag and team death match that work like most of these add on features to other single player games.

The multi-player crusade mode is a bit more unusual. The plot is humans vs. undead. There are control points and respawn tickets (Battlefield) that make this part of the game more interesting. Characters go from battle (campaign?) to battle (campaign?) allowing the player to increase abilities so that the game is more role playing than most multi-player games. The skill points stay with your character if you stay on the same server.

Character and background graphics, animation, ambient sound, musical score, voice acting, and action related sounds such as the clang of sword on mace or shield have been executed with better than average results. The graphics are cutting edge, and even while they are far too dark. Some people, this author included, have trouble seeing dark things on the screen. My eyes are dark enough already. Please have mercy on those of us who are sight impaired and have a button that lets us set the light without bleaching out all the colors with the system based brightening controls. I can’t remember what they are called. Ah well most games do allow you to set brightness but the design does not look as good brightened.

The game has bugs, so drag out the bug spray. There are some very interesting issues on a variety of different machines. The most repeatable issue is game lock up which requires a reboot and restore of prior save games. Save your game frequently. Some other reported glitches include loosing inventory items

The one thing I would love to see in these games is negotiating a truce with the hordes of enemies who need to know that you will be killing them all. Another thing is that any respectable NPC orc or skeleton would be running away faster than Sareth could chase them if they heard that a player character who has killed thousands of NPCs was heading their way. Does UPS have to kill this many orcs, skeletons and other monsters delivering their packages to wayward wizards who can’t get the item for themselves?

The $19.99 USD Prima game guide was quite good helping you through all the problems. The guide has detailed maps, strategy from the Ubisoft frag dolls, skills for certain classes, and other features. This game guide is really good at getting you through the game without a hitch and helping you to find all the really nice items and plot features you might otherwise miss.

A book I suggest is Beowulf (circa. 700 – 1000 AD). A movie I suggest is Grendel (2007 on the Sci Fi Channel) and Beowulf by Robert Zemeckis (2007). A game I suggest is PowerMonger (Developed by Bullfrog, Produced by Electronic Arts, Released in 1990 for Atari ST and Amiga, Programmed by Peter Molyneux, Glenn Corpes, and Kevin Donkin, Music by: Tim Wright). But I cannot convince Peter Molyneux to produce a game that runs on today’s machines (“PowerMonger was yesterday The Movies is today.” Ahh the French, they have style.) In lieu of recommending PowerMonger for Windows Vista, I recommend you try Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (Bethesda Softworks) which is a wonderful game.

Final Grade: C
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System Requirements:

• Supported OS: Windows XP only
• Processor: 2.6 GHz (3.2 GHz recommended)
• RAM: 512 MB (1 GB recommended)
• Video: 128 MB direct X 9.0 compliant (256 MB recommended)
• Sound: direct 9.0 compliant
• DVD-ROM (4x or faster)
• Hard Drive Space: 7 GB free
• Multiplayer: Broadband internet with 64Kbps upstream or faster Steam software installed is required for play