Slightly Off-White Messiah?

It's here! It's here! Woohoo! Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is finally here! Oh...

Um...

This is it?

Ah...

< embaressed silence >

Anyway... what's on TV?

Actually... I'm being unfair. While some may have reacted in this manner, I love it. I know it's not had the smoothest of releases (check out the number of people on the Ubisoft forums that can't run it at all despite being able to run the demo) and that some people don't think it has lived up to all that it claimed to be but, all that aside, I STILL think it's great!

It was never designed (as far as I can tell) to be in direct competition with the likes of Oblivion for first-person roleplaying. It is, in it's most basic form, Half-Life 2 with swords, magic and demonic creatures. Is that such a bad thing?

To be fair, even that comparison sells the game short. The skill point system allows you to customise your character (something you obviously can't do in HL2) and it let's you tweak your abilities and attributes to suit your play style. I read one review that claimed that this was a bit pointless and there was no point putting points into anything except the melee combat and strength... evidently that person had not really tried playing the game as anything other than a fighter. They even claimed that the stealth options were the most pointless and had no effect! Oh how I hate ill-informed reviews...

Speaking as someone who loves to play the sneaky, back-stabbing, sniping sort I couldn't disagree more with the review. With a little careful selection and occasionally saving up some of my points (instead of just blowing them on the first thing that flashes) I've managed to create a fantastic assassin. I can hide in the shadows and remain almost completely undetected... even when some of the necromancers or guards walk right by me. And, once I've singled out a target I can move almost silently to sneak up behind them to dispatch them in one swift movement. Or maybe I'll just hide in the shadows, removing the threats one by one with a carefully placed arrow to the head... it's great. Sure, my character will struggle a bit when faced with full on combat against mutliple foes... but then that's the point; I don't want the odds to always be in my favour!

I will say is that the game does feel a bit short. It may just be that I've been playing it a LOT over the last few days but it all seems to have gone past just a bit too quickly (for the record, I haven't quite completed it... but I'm close). I also wasn't particularly impressed that after installing the game, Steam then tried to install it AGAIN to a different location (and I know a lot of people that didn't realise that it was DOWNLOADING and installing another version!). It's not like I'm short of hard drive space but I don't see much point in wasting it nor the internet bandwidth to download it.

All in all though... it looks and sounds fantastic, the combat is well done (if a little repetitive after a few chapters) and the skill point system allows you to tweak your character enough to pander to your favorite ply style. It's a great game and worthy of my hard earned cash (and I haven't even tried the multiplayer side yet!).

Stop complaining and start playing fools!