- Release date: February 12th 2008
- Developer: Arkane Studios
- Estimated time to beat: 6 hours
- My time: currently playing
- Date beaten: currently playing
- Achievements: 17/49 (250/1000)
- Chosen by: Struglord (IG)
Dimly lit caverns crawling with enemies on patrol. Inching closer to avoid detection I notice a beam that looks compromised. Focusing my gaze upon it I point my finger to release a ball of fire. As it strikes the weak point the overhang collapses killing two of the three guards. The remaining soldier pulls out his bow and draws back. Ducking back into the shadows I dart down a side passage that leads me behind the unsuspecting foe. I whip out my staff and connect with a charge attack followed by a kick to keep distance. By the time he can grab another arrow he has been dispatched.
Dark Messiah is an arcade like action adventure RPG. It’s physics are great and the game gives you some very entertaining tools to play with. The rope bow in particular is my favorite mechanic of the game. It allows you to shoot an arrow at a wooden surface and create a rope that can be used for traversing the levels. This causes for some fun platforming and some hilarious moments when things don’t go as planned, and from what I played things rarely go as planned.
The game has more than its fair share of issues. Granted I did try to break the game on multiple occasions by attempting to Stuff bodies into chests and close them. This caused the games frame rate to drop to a point where it seemed like everything would crash, but then there’s other times that weren’t so fun. At one point I got to a boss area where there is a lever. You’re supposed to pull the lever to open a door and place an item into a socket triggering the fight. When I pulled the lever it broke off the wall and I was stuck causing me to lose an hour and a half of gameplay. The second major break was when I transformed into my sweet demon form and at the same time I pulled out my bow. Realizing I’m not suppose to have a weapon in demon form I quickly put it away, but once it was away, I couldn’t attack or pause or really do anything other than run.
During my playthrough some people noticed the game has similarities to games like Oblivion, but the longer we trekked through the game the more it felt less like Oblivion, and more like someone saw a demo of Ovlivion. Then went and told their friend about it, and that friend decided they were going to try and make it. Don’t get me wrong. The game is insanely fun when it works, but by mid game I was at a point where I felt I couldn’t trust the game anymore. At times I’d be lost and was trying to decide if I was not going the right direction or if the game had broken again.
The story is decent but at times can be difficult to follow. The game delivers some story content through cutscenes and some through text logs during load times. The issue with the text portions is that sometimes the game would load faster than you could read the information, and once that screen had passed it was gone forever.
I’m not sure if the games issues carry over to the pc version, but despite the ever apparent troubles I experienced, I’d still recommend giving the game at least a single playthrough. I played as a mage but there are a handful of different classes so there’s really something for everyone. I’d love to hear about others experiences. After all, maybe I was just very unlucky, or maybe the game was paying me back for stuffing bodies into chests.
- Eye feel: 6.5
- Ear feel: 7
- Hand feel: 8
- Mind feel: 6
- Overall feel: 6.8
