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
(find
out more about our grading system)

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