Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: First Play, Final Play

Because of the mostly hand-picked software we review at The Game Chair, our particular progressive blog has been largely about delving deep into the experience of a triple A title. Not so in this one time only progressive review of the worst game I’ve played this year. After my first catastrophically glitchy play experience on Might and Magic’s launch day, I decided to hold off on my review until the developers had time to get their first patch out. Unfortunately, it didn’t do much for the experience.

I don’t often purchase titles on release day for exactly this reason; however, on the merit of my recent rock-solid experiences with the Source engine combined with my fond childhood memories of the Might and Magic franchise, I took the plunge. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Being a seasoned PC gamer, I’m more than familiar with the practice of releasing games that aren’t quite complete yet. Even the universally acclaimed Half-Life 2 suffered from several game breaking problems in its early months. Hence, I wasn’t that worried when I couldn’t get past the second level of Might and Magic without painful stuttering crashes. I tried messing around with the graphics settings, drivers, and sound acceleration for around four hours before giving up to wait for a patch.

My heart lightened a bit after reading a patch change log longer than Mr. Food’s shopping list. There was hope that this tunnel-ratting fps/rpg hybrid would be playable after all. I bravely booted the game back up and KVMed over to the 360 for a little loading screen Lumines. Several minutes later I was back in the action.

Oh, Dark Messiah, how do I hate thee; let me count the ways. First let’s talk about storyline. I’ve played some misogynist lite games in my day; however, Dark Messiah features a storyline which may even cause certain Custer’s Revenge developers to blush with envy. I play as the apprentice of a completely mad sorcerer bent on world domination. Neither of us appears to have any motivations whatsoever. Oh yea, did I mention that I’m also possessed by a shape-shifting soft-core dominatrix? Don’t ask; I have no idea. All I know is that she wants me to learn to enjoy the pain. My soul sharing porn-fairy also makes continuous unCortana like comments in her hornster drawl. I’m sure the actress involved had to take several showers after that recording session. Combine this poor acting with cutscenes that somehow manage to look worse than the game engine and you have a recipe for disaster.

Speaking of bad looking game engines, I thought this was Source? The very same engine that butters away at 60 beautiful synced frames per second with every single detail setting stretched to the limit in every other Source titled I’ve played? In Dark Messiah I had to settle for medium detail just to break 20 fps. This left me with fantastically bad looking textures. I swear I’ve seen more detail in N64 games. But wait, that’s not all. The levels are lit so badly that my gameplay options are reduced to proceeding blindly, Doom 3 style, or activating the garishly bright night vision and washing out every trace of detail in the already blurry textures. Also, apparently the level designers couldn’t even be bothered to line up adjacent textures, leaving me with some very strange looking brickwork on dungeon walls.

Despite its complete failure as a package, there are a few good points to Dark Messiah. The most prominent positive is the combat, which takes Oblivion’s visceral physical encounters to a whole different level. If you can find a small enough room to boost your framerate up to acceptable levels, the combat is fantastic. Kicks, blocks, sword strikes, and spells all feel just right. The satisfaction of kicking a marauding guard into a conveniently placed bed of spikes is so thick, you gotta spoon it up. Dragging corpses around and tossing them into piles is also fun; despite there being absolutely no gameplay reason to do this.

Another big positive with Dark Messiah is its excellent body awareness. I’m not simply referring to ability to look down and see your knees hitting you in the chin like in Halo 2. Dark Messiah also features very realistic turns (first turn the neck, then turn the body) without impeding those necessary mouselook spins the way Thief did. Also, the detail on the hands and arms is fantastic, especially when I’m readying those fire and ice spells. I can honestly say that this is the first game where I’ve really felt imbued with magical power, rather than simply tossing around yet another projectile. Too bad there isn’t much of a game to go along with these few table scraps of genius.

The Might and Magic series was a large part of my growing up gamer with Might and Magic 2 probably being solely responsible for my survival of Junior High School. No one is sadder than I seeing the franchise driven into the ground so effectively. I think I speak for all of the fans when I say, “Where the heck is Lloyds Beacon?”

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