Dark Messiah of Might and Magic Preview
For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, Dark Messiah: Might and Magic is the latest installment in the Heroes of Might and Magic series. Now I hadn’t really liked the Might and Magic games, so I overlooked this title. But after poking around IGN, I found out it was played from a first person perspective, and it boasted dynamic character development and a deep combat system. I was curious, so I downloaded it. I am certainly glad I did. The demo starts you out in a tutorial type cave area, where your master of many years teaches you how to play the game via a voice in your head. It mainly runs you through all the actions and mechanics of the game itself. Looking around the cave, I could see that the Source engine wasn’t doing the game as much justice as it could. I had the settings maxed, but the environment still looked fuzzy and somewhat hazy. It was odd, it wasn’t horrible or anything, just something I noticed. The animations are nice, though they are just a little bit robotic, but not to the point where it’s horrible. The models themselves are well done, with a lot of shiny details on each, as with the textures. I had no complaints with the sound either, it was fine, everything sounded the way it should, I guess. So I moved around the cave a little bit, flipping switches, sprinting, climbing chains, avoiding traps, and kicking things. This may not sound like much, but judging from the demo, kicking is going to be very important to this game. There were multiple situations in the demo where kick was incredibly useful. You can kick enemies over ledges, kick them into spikes on walls, kick them into a stack of crates to knock them over, kick them into each other, kick them into fire, etc. But kick is also useful outside of combat. You can also kick over weak support beams to get to higher ground, kick boards off of covered areas, and kick debris out of your way. In addition to this, you can also pick up crates, barrels, and other types of debris and toss them at your enemies to throw them off balance and give you the upper hand. As I progressed through the demo, I exited the cave area and was taken to a ‘playground’ of sorts. In this particular level, I was trying to reach a certain area, and to do that, I had to transverse this cliff city inside of a giant cave. It started out with me finding a lone troll. Now at the level start, the game informed me I had six skill points to spend. So I opened my character menu, and saw that I could follow the combat tree or the magic tree, or a hybrid of both. I also had a miscellaneous tree, which had my favorite skill of all time: stealth. I quickly maxed out stealth and was out of points, but I didn’t care. It was stealth. In addition to these points, I was also given three different weapon types at my disposal. I had a short sword, a bow, and twin daggers. You can take a stab at which one I used (here’s a hint, it was the daggers). After flipping my daggers stylishly from my belt, I approached the troll from the shadows. He turned his back to me, and I could now use one of my stealth skills: backstabbing. But wait, he was near a ledge! Oh you silly troll. I let loose a swift kick and sent him spiraling into the abyss of the dark cave. After dispatching him, I continued to explore. I climbed shakey wooden walkways until I got to a trolley on a chain. As unsafe as it looked, I bravely stepped into it and activated it. It began to creak along the chain, and to my left, a troll was standing there. But then, an Orc showed up from out of the shadows and grabbed the troll, tossing him into the abyss. This was going to get a bit more tricky, I was dealing with weak trolls before, but now I had Orcs on my hands. As the trolley stopped at my destination, I stepped out and climbed another walkway. I crouched and hung by the shadows, waiting for the Orc I just saw to show up again. He walked into my view, stopped, and turned toward the ledge leading down into the abyss. How convenient. I kicked him in the back and sent him over the edge. I continued on, moving into a room that was lit by a raging fire in the corner. The room was filled with Orcs, so I stuck to the shadows. One began to approach my way, I circled around to his back, and drove my dagger into his neck. I then picked up a crate and chucked it at another, knocking him into the fire. By this time, another Orc had spotted me and engaged me. I quickly uncrouched and held my daggers in defense, using a parry system not unlike Oblivion’s. I parryed his slow, but strong attacks, dancing around him and striking at his unguarded angles. Apparently, he wasn’t to thrilled with this, so he grabbed me by my neck, stared at me for a few seconds, then launched me a foot or so, sending me clammering to the ground. This wasn’t a very nice gesture, so I returned the favor, holding down my attack key, I readied a power attack, letting loose a poweful slash. By then, my ‘fatality meter’ had filled up, and the red haze around my vision told me so. I held down my attack button again and my daggers crossed, signaling me that it was ready. I let it loose, stabbing him in the gut, and when he hunched over, I stabbed him in the back of the head. Now that all the Orcs had been dispatched, I walked into a shadowy hallway, where I was then shown a cinematic of a gigantic ogre. I didn’t know how I was going to beat it, but I didn’t have to. The demo ended. After doing my fair share of crying in dismay, I closed the demo and drove down to EB and preordered myself a copy. If you haven’t played the demo yet, I recommend you do so. If Oblivion had the combat system that this does, it would of been the game to end all games, I believe.
