DUNGEON SIEGE

DUNGEON SIEGE
Posted:2002-06-16 By Master Chief Number of View:12274
DUNGEON SIEGE By :Master Chief Posted:2002-06-16 xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source Dungeon Siege Publisher: Microsoft Developer: Gas Powered Games Genre: Action / RPG ESRB: Teen System Requirements  PII 333, 128 MB RAM, 3D Accel., Win98/2K/ME/XP   In the search for the next big gaming phenomenon, developers constantly mix new, innovative ideas with tried and true formulas. Success begs to be emulated, and releases that shock the entire industry with quality and innovation, such as Half-Life or StarCraft, are bound to see imitations pop-up. One of gaming\'s largest and most successful franchises is Blizzard Entertainment\'s Diablo series. The seminal action-RPGs and their expansions have routinely sold over the million mark and opened the door to a genre full of potential. Other companies, such as Delphine with Darkstone, have tried to duplicate Diablo\'s success, but so far, none has unseated it. Next up at the plate is Dungeon Siege, created by gaming media darling Chris Taylor and his team at Gas Powered Games. Taylor was lead designer on the influential real-time strategy title Total Annihilation, and as such expectations for Dungeon Siege ran high throughout its development. With such anticipation in mind, I set out to see whether Dungeon Siege lived up to the hype.   The focus of Dungeon Siege is on pure hack-and-slash gameplay, so the plot is bare-bones at best. The title begins with a short in-game cutscene introducing the idyllic kingdom of Ehb. Settlers from another land fled persecution to settle Ehb and have remained well off ever since. Their luck is about to change, however. Your character begins as a lowly farmer, shown tilling his or her fields. Suddenly, an injured man stumbles toward you with news of an attack by a race known as the Krug. The ape-like Krug come running for you right behind your friend, and you\'re forced to whip out your knife and start killing. From there the plot takes off in a largely linear fashion as you explore different locations around the world of Ehb, battling the Krug commanders and those behind them.   The vast majority of your time in Dungeon Siege is spent snooping through mammoth-sized dungeons, caves, ruins, tombs and other exotic locales. The entire world is seamless, meaning you won\'t have to stare at the screen waiting for a loading bar to fill up at any point. The title plays out from an overhead perspective featuring a moveable camera. The camera rotates freely and tilts about 45 degress from directly overhead, allowing you to see more of the game world. Areas such as underground caves and tombs pose no problems for the camera system, as the rest of the world fades away upon entering, leaving only a cutaway view of the inner passages.   While exploring the elaborate dungeon environs the designers have cooked up, you\'re bound to come face to face with more than a few nasty monsters seeking your demise. Combat in Dungeon Siege can be compared with Baldur\'s Gate: Battles proceed in real-time, though you have the option of pausing and issuing orders at any time. Your characters have four different methods of attack: melee, archery, combat magic and nature magic. Each method has its own positives and negatives. For example, archers can dole out high damage from a distance, but have slower attacks than most melee fighters. Some overlap exists between nature and combat magic, but nature is primarily focused on healing and attribute buffing spells, while combat is focused on dishing out damage and summoning creatures to fight on your behalf. Character development in Dungeon Siege follows a skills-based RPG-lite formula. Before the game begins, you are given the opportunity to customize the look of your main avatar -- the only character you get to design from the ground up. Customization options include choosing your character\'s gender, head, hairstyle, skin tone and clothing. Dungeon Siege sports only four skills, each of which is linked to one of the four attack types; all advancement is based on the use of those skills. The more your characters attack with melee weapons, the higher their melee skill will increase and the more damage your characters will deal out. In addition to the four skills, each character has three attributes: strength, intelligence and dexterity. Like skills, attributes are increased through battle, and at higher levels offer access to better weapons and armor, more mana for spells, and bonuses to armor and bow accuracy. A non-stop flood of opponents will seek to impede your progress in Dungeon Siege. Monsters come in every size and shape from small insects to room-sized spiders and all things in-between. Most dungeons have a theme monster, such as the spiders in the Wesrin Cross. At the beginning of the dungeon, you\'ll find small, weak monsters like standard spiders and weak ghouls. Further into the depths, stronger, more varied creatures start showing up, such as the mucus-spewing Vile Mucosa. Many dungeons also feature a boss of enormous proportions.   Though Dungeon Siege begins with the story of your main character, throughout your adventures you will find others who wish to join you. Your party can contain up to eight players at any time, so hiring people with a wide variety of skills is a good strategy. Most other characters will demand a hefty fee to join your party, though some will sign up if you agree to help them on a particular quest. In addition to other characters, you can also buy packmules to help lug around all the equipment you will find. Packmules are timid animals, apt to hang far behind in a battle and run if attacked. They do, however, have a much larger inventory space than your other characters.   Dungeon Siege\'s inventory system owes much to Diablo. Character inventories are immediately accessible from the main screen, and are divided into boxes to show how much you can carry. Each item requires at least one box, though larger things can take up six or more. A button at the top of each character\'s inventory screen automatically organizes the inventory to allow for the maximum possible space. Spell-casting characters will also spend a lot of time on the inventory screen. You learn spells by finding or buying scrolls throughout the world. Characters have two slots for magic spells; the slots accept either an individual spell scroll or a full spell book. Carrying around bunches of scrolls takes up valuable inventory space, so the developers included spell books that can hold up to 12 spells each but only take up two spaces in your inventory.   Your quest through the land of Ehb takes you through many varied locations, from lush forests to barren deserts to the tops of frozen mountains. Thankfully, not all of your supplies need come from defeated hordes of monsters. Evenly-spaced along your route are small towns, complete with all manner of shops. Nearly every town features an armorer of some sort, a sanctuary or cathedral for buying spells and potions, a packmule salesperson, and an inn or tavern where you can recruit new party members. Towns are also great places to pick up another quest to push the story along. Quests generally involve simply going from one point to the next, clearing the way for others or delivering some message. Only rarely do you have to return to the quest-giver, ensuring that you constantly feel as though you are moving forward through the story.   Graphics: Dungeon Siege is a veritable feast for the eyes; all the environments are lush with detail and drenched in atmosphere. Despite the fact that you are led along a mostly linear path, forests still manage to feel huge and enveloping, and other environments suck you in as well. The seamless transitions add tremendously to the experience. I very nearly clapped my hands with glee the first time I entered a dungeon and watched as the overworld faded away without the slightest pause or hint of a load. Although the perspective of Dungeon Siege excludes the sky from view, it does feature some stunning day and night cycles. The lighting scheme changes from a standard bright day, to a subdued afternoon red and pink, and finally to a clear blue evening light. Weather hasn\'t been left out of the picture, either: Rain falls frequently in the forests, and snow is near constant when you reach the icy areas of the game. Even Dungeon Siege\'s pause feature is impressive, allowing you to suspend the action at any point and rotate the camera around the scene, even if things like spell particle effects are present.   All this eye-candy comes at a heavy cost, however. Even on my heavy-duty Athlon XP2000+ system with a GeForce4 Ti4600, the program didn\'t offer any higher resolutions than 1024x768. In fact, performance at that resolution was lower than what I expected. Only on rare occasions did my frame rate exceed 35 fps, usually hovering in the range of 20-25 fps. In crowded towns or in the wilderness with full weather and battle graphics, the frame rate occasionally took dives down into the 13-17 fps range. Though Dungeon Siege is a visual treat, you\'ll need a lot of horsepower to enjoy it all.     Interface:  The Dungeon Siege interface is extremely compact and intuitive, borrowing much from real-time strategy titles and allowing near-instant access to anything you could want. Permanently residing in the upper left corner of the screen are the character portraits, showing each character in your party and their health and mana. The portraits offer a good deal of visual feedback for the player, such as flashing yellow when the character is near death, or becoming red when a player is knocked unconscious. Also available right next to each portrait are the character\'s quick slots, where you can select their default attack with a single click. Pressing the buttons with arrows extends a well laid-out inventory screen, complete with character information such as stats and equipped items.   The bottom right corner offers character AI settings and formation controls. It is a bit more cryptic, but still compact and highly functional. Formations can be dynamically adjusted by holding the right mouse button and moving the mouse to rotate the formation, or by turning the mousewheel to tighten or loosen it. Dungeon Siege also includes a highly functional map screen accessed through the Tab key. The map is simply a bird\'s eye view of the action, with stylized representations of characters, enemies, and treasure for easy identification. Any type of orders can be issued from the map screen, including battle and movement commands.     Gameplay: Gameplay in Dungeon Siege is very simplistic and tends toward monotony: You run around the world killing things. Occasionally you talk to a person and buy goods, but mostly it\'s just killing things. This wouldn\'t be so bad if there were new, interesting, and exciting ways of killing things, but Dungeon Siege just doesn\'t bring that much new to the table. With its interface set up for strategic gameplay, one would expect many situations where a good deal of tactical thinking could improve the odds. The reality is very little strategy is required. Battles are simply wave after wave of enemies throwing themselves against your defenses. In fact, the vast majority of battles can be won by simply moving your characters into the center of the enemy mob, then staring at their portraits, and pressing the "drink health potion" button when one of them starts to flash yellow. In densely guarded dungeons, I found myself actually staring at the character portraits more than I did the actual battles. This fostered a strong sense of detachment that got in the way of my enjoyment.   The problem of monotony in gameplay is exacerbated by the fact that there isn\'t that much variety introduced as you advance through the world. Fighting the enemies two-thirds of the way through is not patently different from fighting those in the first ten minutes of the game. Melee characters will always simply run and swing at foes with their weapons, while magic-users and archers will hang behind, firing from a distance. While bigger and better weapons and spells are introduced, the basic feeling of "running and gunning" is never eradicated or significantly changed. No diplomatic options are ever offered, nor are any opportunities given for options such as stealth to avoid battles. In fact, you\'re better off seeking out encounters to provide opportunities for your characters to advance. While it\'s easy to develop the melee and archery skills, magic, particularly nature magic, is problematic. Nature magic primarily encompasses spells like buffs and healing spells, those that can be used far less sparingly than battle magic. Nature magic does include some direct damage spells, but the damage inflicted lags far behind other forms of combat. Combat magic also has a much slower rate of fire than most weapons, and thus a slower rate of advancement. Since more powerful spells are only available at higher skill levels, generally by the time you\'re powerful enough to use something powerful it\'s already become relatively useless.   Further hampering gameplay is a strong tendency toward totally flat level design, especially in the first 20 hours or so. Though there are moments of stunning beauty, such as looking out from the bridge over the waterfall near the beginning, the bulk of the world of Ehb is divided up into a series of flat plateaus, connected by short, squat ramps. The problem is most noticeable in the first few dungeons, which are mostly just large expanses of similar looking rooms lying across the same horizontal plane. The flatness clears up to an extent further into the title, but it is definitely noticeable at the beginning; it becomes a source of tedium when you are making frequent runs back to town to resupply, staring at the same, unvaried terrain each time. The developers didn\'t see fit to include any sort of "Town Portal" spell like Diablo, requiring you to run the full length back to town if you use up all your health potions in the middle of a dungeon. The omission caused me a great deal of frustration on multiple occasions, and makes a packmule an essential item.   Granted, it\'s not all bad: Dungeon Siege sports a wide variety of environments and enemies to tear through. The creatures are all highly imaginative, well textured and animated, and very rarely get boring to look at. There\'s also a strange allure associated with playing an offering focused on such a fine point of gameplay. It is as though the "one more turn" addiction of the Civilization series has been replaced with a need to play through "one more battle." As I mentioned earlier, the game is soaked in atmosphere throughout, and really pulls you in. I definitely felt a strong desire to get to the next environment or see the next crazy enemy design. I only wish the process of getting to those points of discovery felt like less of a chore.   One final point I need to bring up is that I encountered is a nasty random crash bug about once every three hours. When Dungeon Siege crashes, it crashes hard. Each time I encountered a failure my computer went blank, then attempted to reboot from scratch, hanging at the "loading Windows XP" screen. A push of the reset button made everything fine, but I hope the developers address this issue in a patch.     Multiplayer: Playing on a LAN with friends is definitely the way to play Dungeon Siege multiplayer. The developers included an entirely new world exclusively available in multiplayer mode. While some of the content of the multiplayer world is questionable, such as the Pit of Despair -- a giant maze with very few enemies -- exploring and seeing new sights is the impetus that kept me playing through the single player campaign. Thus, the multiplayer portion seemed like a full new game to me. Furthermore, the developers have said they plan to release a third world in the near future and perhaps more content after that. Also on the plus side, interesting multiplayer modes are available, including team matches.                     For those who don\'t have close gaming friends, you have the option of connecting to multiplayer through Microsoft\'s Zone service, but I would recommend against it. Trying to find other players or games on the Zone is an exercise in pure frustration. For starters, many users on the service complain about constant crashes when trying to connect and random disconnects. If you can actually get connected, you\'ll quickly see that there\'s no way to tell such essential information as what level range a game is set up for, or whether or not it is password protected. If you host, the entire process pauses if someone randomly tries to join up, even if they\'re just popping in to see what level you are set up for. Assuming you suffer through and get a good game up and running, there are design problems that hamper the experience. For example, there\'s no way to automatically divide up loot, often resulting in a free-for-all, manic style of playing where everyone has to look out for themselves instead of working as a team. You also can\'t take any packmules or NPC characters with you in multiplayer. After you\'ve finally given up on the entire deal, you try and exit and about 50% of the time the system locks up. Stick to playing on a local network and your experience will be terrific. Those without a local network are left in the lurch, however.     Sound FX: The sound in Dungeon Siege is commendable and complements the graphics nicely to provide an enriching sense of atmosphere. Ambient sounds never cease, from the chirping of birds, to the rustle of the wind in the trees, to the gurgle of flowing streams. Dungeons also sport ambient sounds, most often related to the dominant strain of monster inhabiting it. For example, the Wesrin Cross dungeon features primarily spider-like creatures, and as you travel through it, you can hear the scamper of their legs on the stone. Battle sounds are well-done, with each monster having individualized effects. Voiceovers are reserved for quest-giving characters and sound superb. The only gripe I have with the sound is that some monster effects, such as the Krug and insect-type beasts near the beginning, are very strange, sounding like several different layered effects. The net result is that it is difficult to tell just by sound how many enemies are coming towards you, a useful feature since the thick foliage of Dungeon Siege often obscures enemies until they\'re right on top of you.     Musical Score: Award-winning game composer Jeremy Soule, who also did the music for Total Annihilation and Icewind Dale, scored Dungeon Siege. Largely orchestral in nature, the professional quality of every track is astonishing. The initial track that plays as you depart your farm still sticks in my head, and I desperately want to find it on mp3 to listen to while I\'m not playing. The music changes according to the environment you\'re in, and never manages to get boring. It really goes a long way towards setting the atmosphere.     Intelligence & Difficulty: Enemy AI is sketchy at best in Dungeon Siege. It mostly consists of an alarm radius that causes foes to run directly for the closest character when you step inside their radius. Enemies don\'t work in groups at all, and in fact, you can strategically pick off large groups in a piecemeal fashion by running a single character close to them and then quickly retreating. Creatures also seem to hone in on the first character they go after, refusing to give up the chase even if they are forced to run through a solid line of attackers. This is particularly annoying when enemies decide to attack your packmule, who will always run from them no matter what orders you give him. It is next to impossible to kill off a group of creatures attacking your packmule before they kill him and move on to other targets. Occasionally, a badly hurt foe will turn to run, but whether or not you pursue, they eventually turn back around and fight to their deaths.   The AI for your party characters is quite good, however. The options on the bottom right-hand corner of the interface allow you to customize each character\'s responses to attack. You can set them so that they will attack any monster that comes near, or so they only fight after being attacked. You can also set them to target the strongest or weakest attacker in a group if you desire. Changing the character AI options produces a noticeable change in their reactions to enemies.   Dungeon Siege also features three levels of difficulty that can be changed at any time. The difficulty levels are very noticeable, as Easy is extremely easy and Hard is nearly impossible. The only thing the setting changes are the hit points and damage ratings of monsters, but as combat is the core of gameplay, it makes for a significant alteration in overall difficulty.     Overall: Dungeon Siege is such a pure, concentrated hack and slash title that it overlooks most other features that make great games. It\'s positively gorgeous, but playing through the majority of the title feels more like a chore than it does like fun. Omissions like the lack of town teleports, a poor online multiplayer interface, and the extraordinarily monotonous gameplay all conspire to erase nearly all the potential Dungeon Siege had to be a stellar, innovative title. It makes no apologies for being the way that it is, and while its simplistic style of play may appeal to a small group of hardcore Diablo fans, most players will find themselves searching for a good reason to keep playing after about 20 hours. As it stands, Dungeon Siege is a mediocre romp through varied environments that brings very little new to the table.   xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source we would be happy to answer for your question . if you have suggestion or comment regarding this review our support would be glad to help just join our forum and ask u will get the best answer to discuss check our forum section :-) RATE THIS REVIEW 1 2 3 4 5    / 5   View Stat

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