Date: 21. August 2002
Type: Game Review
Platform: PC
Author: Peter
Rating: 85%
With at the moment
about 90 entries
in my
review list
Chris Taylor's Dungeon Siege is for sure one of the most popular games 2002.
The RPG developed by
Gas Powered Games and
published by
Microsoft
can be best described as 80% Diablo, 20% Baldur's Gate, 100% 3D with a hero
who lives alone with only chicken, decides to rescue the world, kills about 9999
monsters...to find friends online and finally fight monster chicken. After thinking for a moment
what Freud would have said about that...and a minute of silence and sympathy for all game developers
out there...let's take a closer look at this quite entertaining game.
The game concept is simple: In single player mode you usually start as farm boy or girl at one side of a map and fight your
way to the other side, gaining experience on the way and adding members
to your party. In multiplayer mode you can't create parties, but you can
play single and multiplayer maps with up to 7 others and choose your starting point
within a map. The basic game includes a single player map, worth 50 hours
of gameplay and a much larger multiplayer map. Recently Gas Powered Games released
a third, smaller map called Yesterhaven which is available for free and
also many other maps created with the Siege Editor can be found online.
If you feel the artist inside of you wanting out, you can also create your
own maps, yet I can only recommend that to people with a lot of free time, despite
all the comfort the Siege Editor offers.
The reason for the games great success is definitely great artwork combined
with a game-engine able to present it right. The Dungeon Siege world is fully 3 dimensional,
from plants and monsters to things like arrows and spells. The player can any time
rotate the camera around a selected character and zoom in to see the detailed animated
particle system while using spells or the engine features like shadows or arrows sticking
in characters. Side note: Not all arrows are that large :)
