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| - I don't know why Diablo ever came out on the PC in the first place. The game's frantic pace and button-mashing style of play was better suited to the confines of a joypad more so than the keyboard and mouse. When the title was ported to the PlayStation, I no longer wanted to play it on my family's computer, instead opting for the simplicity offered by the console port. More importantly, I think the port made many console developers take notice - dungeon hack 'n slashers were still very popular and if done right, unlike the recent incarnations of the Gauntlet series, they could be incredibly fun. Snowblind's Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance proved again that the right combination of monster bashing, character development, random item drops, great gameplay, and beautiful graphics could be both a great game and wildly successful in stores - everything a developer can ask for. But
for some reason, Snowblind and publisher Interplay split up leaving Interplay
to find a different developer for Dark Alliance 2 and Snowblind to find
another publisher for their next title. Well Sony Online Entertainment (known
for such big titles as EverQuest and PlanetSide) tapped into Snowblind's
apparent talent and came up with this, the second offline (and online) EverQuest
title, Champions of Norrath. | |||||
player possibilities. Character creation is always a fun and dynamic experience in dungeon crawls as this is you, or at least your representation in the world of Norrath. My first me was a Shadow Knight, bringing back fond memories of Harm Touching Wyverns throughout my jaunts in the online world of EverQuest. But all the stock choices are available here, ranging from the pure melee fighter Barbarian to the magic-user Wizard, with the Shadow Knight, Ranger, and Cleric filling the void between pure fighting and pure magic. Regardless of your play style, you should be able to find a class that best suits your needs. Combat in CoN is a predictable affair. With the X button handling attacks, you can be sure to whack on it as much as possible while occasionally hitting the shoulder buttons for health (R2) and mana (L2) potions and the square button to pick up drops. Blocking is of increased importance, and players should expect to get familiar with the timing of blocking and counterattacking, especially when playing single player since there's no ally to act as a decoy. Item drops always prove to be one of the most enjoyable facets of dungeon crawl games, and Snowblind went to great lengths to ensure that their game is no different. CoN uses a sort of randomized prefix, suffix, item type generator where a prefix is chosen for the condition of the item (like Worn or Elven-Made), then there's the item name (Patchwork Armor or Long Sword) and then, if the item is enchanted, there's a suffix (of Burning) that when put together calculates the item's attributes. It's a system not unfamiliar to Diablo II veterans, but it seems to work a bit differently here. While Diablo II put more of an emphasis on the item type, CoN puts more emphasis on prefixes; so, while plate armor is much better than leather armor, rusty plate mail is statistically much worse than masterwork leather armor. It's not necessarily a bad system, but it may be different than what most gamers are used to. Furthermore, there also rare drops whose names appear in blue and unique drops which similarly appear in yellow type. Character advancement is handled via the standard 'kill-stuff-for-experience formula' that has worked so well in the past. Once characters have earned enough experience to level up, they are allocated several points to spend on attributes like strength, dexterity, intelligence, and stamina. Furthermore, each character has a skill tree that, while not as detailed as Diablo II's, allows characters to learn new abilities and skills straight from the world of EverQuest. These abilities can then be accessed via a radial menu by pressing the d-pad and assigned to either the triangle or circle button for quick, in-combat use. All in all, it's a good, if not unbalanced system. Some skills deal ridiculous amounts of damage without a sufficient mana cost or delay, allowing some characters to walk through later parts of the game like some sort of death factory (the Shadow Knight's Harm Touch ability is a very good example of this). One of the best features about Snowblind's Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance was the great co-operative play. Taking it a step further, CoN not only offers co-operative play among 4 players but it also offers online support for up to 4 players using the PS2 broadband adapter. But players used to the online support offered by the Xbox's great Live service will be disappointed in what is found here. All of the great features that we've come to expect like lobbies, game finders, and friend finders are all absent here, making CoN very difficult to setup and play online. I had to set up a game with friends by way of my computer's instant messaging to properly coordinate all the information required to get going. Once a game is finally started, it can be a mixed experience. If all the players have a fast connection and know what they're doing, the game can be incredibly fun. If even one person has a laggy connection, the entire experience is ruined by unloaded textures (which means a big, black abyss of a screen) and some other definite lag issues. But playing the game cooperatively is really the only way of doing it. Due to some multiplayer balance issues, single player mode is insanely difficult and players will need a firm handle on blocking and retreating in order to get anywhere. With 2 players, the game becomes much more playable, and seems to be the best way to play the game. With 4 players, nothing can stop you and your team as you rain down death on anything that is unfortunate enough to get in your way. There's simply not enough difficulty scaling to accommodate the co-operative play that the game tries so hard to pull off. But multiplayer isn't the only aspect of CoN that suffers. The game's AI and automatic pathfinding is absolutely terrible. Not only was I able to effectively and prematurely end my game by leading an NPC into an area where he got stuck in the geography, but I was able to do so on several occasions without really trying. On top of that, the game occasionally locks up, especially when trying to view a large, diverse inventory, such as those carried by a character after defeating a dungeon - a terrible time for a game to lock up. Furthermore, many of the game's bosses can be easily defeated by taking advantage of the game's poor pathfinding. However, the visuals
are a complete different story. Snowblind always seems to know how to best utilize
the PS2 capabilities and produce titles that are visually alive. Dynamic lighting,
particle effects, and mouthfuls of other visual gems are abundant here and help
to bring the land of Norrath alive. The first time your Ranger shoots a fire arrow
into a nearby wall, causing the neighboring goblins to run away on beautiful fire,
your grin will be from ear to ear. And where would any good dungeon crawl be without
death animations, which is a feature that CoN handles morbidly well. And
then there's the voice work…lets just say it's predictable - predictably
bad that is (badda-bum -ED). Overall:
7/10 [ top ] |
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