NEVERWINTER NIGHTS

NEVERWINTER NIGHTS
Posted:2002-04-15 By Master Chief Number of View:14966
NEVERWINTER NIGHTS By :Master Chief Posted:2002-04-15 xtreview is your : Video card - cpu - memory - Hard drive - power supply unit source Neverwinter Nights Publisher: Atari Developer: Bioware Genre: RPG ESRB: Teen System Requirements Minimum: PII 450, 96 MB RAM, Win98/2K/ME/XP, 3D Graphics Accel.Recommended: PIII 800, 256 MB RAM The PC role-playing genre owes everything to its pen-and-paper brethren. Even before Richard Garriot first dreamed up the world of Brittania, groups of players regularly gathered together to become wizards and warriors, scribbling crude maps onto graph paper and rolling oddly shaped dice late into the night. The experience of taking on mythical personas together with ones friends is what drew players to games like D&D and Shadowrun then, and why those games continue to be popular. Despite the years of technological advancement in the gaming industry, there has yet to be an RPG that truly recreates the pen-and-paper experience on the PC. All that is set to change with the release of Bioware\'s Neverwinter Nights. From the title\'s announcement over three years ago, the famed developer of the Baldur\'s Gate series made it clear that their goal was to recreate as much nuance of tabletop D&D gaming as possible.  Technically speaking, Neverwinter Nights is actually four components rolled up into one package. The first is the single-player game, which can be most succinctly described as akin to a 3D Baldur\'s Gate. The second is the Aurora toolset, a very powerful editing tool that allows players to construct their own adventures. The third piece is the multiplayer component: Anything you create with the Aurora toolset, as well as the full single player game, can be played online with others. Finally, there is the DM client, a powerful set of in-game tools that lets a player simulate the experience of dungeon mastering a tabletop game of D&D.Single player is where most gamers will begin their Neverwinter Nights experience. The title opens with a cinematic consisting of hand-drawn graphics with a minimum of animation, much like the cinematics of Homeworld. A plague has begun ravaging the city of Neverwinter: Referred to as the Wailing Death, the disease began in the Beggar\'s District and spread throughout the city. Eventually a quarantine of the entire city was necessary, and now chaos rules the streets as the remaining city guard tries its best to keep order. In an effort to defeat the plague, Lord Never issued forth a call for champions to come train at Neverwinter\'s elite Academy in hopes of finding and eradicating the source of the Wailing Death.   You play the role of a character personally invited to the Academy by Lady Aribeth, a paladin famed throughout the land, and the woman in charge of dealing with the Wailing Death. Character creation is handled through a system of menus. The process should be familiar to anyone who\'s played AD&D before, especially those familiar with the 3rd Edition rules, as all of Neverwinter Nights is based upon them. For character creation, this means the removal of artificial race and class combination restrictions. Want that half-orc sorcerer? He\'s yours. For those not totally familiar with AD&D rules, the character creation process is well-documented with helpful tooltips and description boxes at every step of the way. There is even a "Recommended" button, for when you just don\'t want to mess with distributing ability scores or picking spells. Neverwinter Nights plays out from a third-person perspective that highly resembles Dungeon Siege. You begin in your bedroom at the Academy, and are greeted by another student. The entire beginning process at the Academy is designed as a tutorial session to familiarize you with the sometimes complicated Neverwinter interface. As you move from room to room, trainers give you crash courses in things such as your journal, inventory, and combat systems. After the basic combat tests are complete, you are sent off to special rooms to learn your class-specific abilities, such as wizard and cleric spellcasting or thief skills. There is even a zoo maintained at the Academy where you can check out some of the larger creatures you will come across later in the game. After your training is complete, the Academy is attacked, and your greater role as assistant to Lady Aribeth in her search for a plague cure is revealed. The plot spirals out over several chapters from that point, to include all the twists, turns, and intrigue one would expect from a great RPG.Probably one of the most significant changes to the single-player portion of Neverwinter Nights from the Baldur\'s Gate series is that you can only have direct control of a single character. That\'s not to say that there\'s no party system to speak of, however. Throughout the campaign, you\'ll run across NPCs of every profession willing to join you for a small sum. You can only have one of these mercenaries in your group at any time, though. Try and hire another one, and the original tips his or her hat and returns to where you found them. Aside from NPC hirelings, mages can summon familiars as permanent party members (Rangers and Druids can summon animal companions), or other summoned creatures as temporary party members. With the exception of a mage\'s ability to possess his or her familiar, at no time can you control these other party members directly. You are limited to give them simple commands such as "Attack the nearest enemy," "Guard me," or "Stand your ground." The Aurora toolset is the part of the game that has probably received the most hype, and it\'s easy to see why. The tools are the same as the developers used to craft the single-player campaign, and allow anyone willing to put in a little time to craft their own adventures, referred to as "modules." The toolset operates on a tile-based system, making it very simple to create new areas. You simply load up a brush with a certain landscape or architecture type and then click, drag, and watch as the program creates an area to your exacting specifications. If even that\'s too much of a chore, there are help wizards available to automatically create areas just by inputting some simple information such as area type and size. From there, customizing is as easy as dropping in whatever monsters, clutter, and loot you want, connecting it up to other rooms if you choose, and loading it up to play either alone or with online friends.  Combining the toolset\'s powers with the DM client is where players have the most power to customize the game\'s experience. The DM client allows a player to enter the world as an ordinary character. The difference is that the DM character is invisible to standard players by default, and also has a tremendous amount of powerful options at his or her immediate disposal. Whoever mans the DM position can do such things as spawn monsters anywhere he or she desires, possess NPCs and monsters, and provide custom dialog on-the-fly to the player, and trigger scripts and special events. Bascially the DM has complete and total control over the gaming environment, just as in the tabletop game. Death is handled in an innovative way with Neverwinter Nights. Since it is intended to play primarily as a multiplayer game, Bioware took that into consideration when designing death. Instead of simply dying and being given the option to load a previous save, you can now respawn back at the closest Temple of Tyr. Doing so incurs both an experience and a gold penalty, however. Once resurrected, you have the option of returning to your party leader through the magic of the temple leader free of charge. You also are given an item very early on in your quest called the Stone of Recall. Anytime you use it, you\'re whisked away to the temple, where you can heal and resupply. A magic portal can take you back to where you were, but it requires a fee in gold. Bioware seems to have thrown everything but the kitchen sink into Neverwinter Nights, but do all these options add up to a good gameplay experience? Graphics: Neverwinter Nights has the best combat animations in any game outside the fighting genre. Finally, an RPG where sword fights actually look like sword fights instead of weapons waving around in the air or passing through solid bodies with no effect. In Neverwinter Nights, characters will duck, parry, and react to hits with amazingly lifelike animations. You don\'t need to listen for a "whoosh" sound to tell when you missed. Instead, you can just watch the fight and see the enemy dive out of harm\'s way in the nick of time. Setting a high-level fighter character to parry results in a fantastic display of swordsmanship, with blades and sparks flying in every direction. Spell effects are similarly amazing: Particles shoot out in every direction, expanding and contracting, swirling and everything else they can possibly do. You\'ll actually flinch when an enemy sorcerer hits your character with a fireball, or lights up the room with an ice storm. Texture design is exceptional at the highest setting: Floors are covered with intricate patterns of stones, mosaics, and even actual blades of grass in some areas. Turning the texture detail down even a single setting results in an overcompressed mess, however. Shadows on characters and objects respond to multiple lighting sources, and are some of the most detailed and realistic shadows I\'ve ever seen: shadows climb walls appropriately and animate perfectly in synch with the object that casts them. The downside of Neverwinter Nights\' graphics comes from a combination of an overall low poly count, and the title\'s tile-based architecture. While characters animate very fluidly and wear their individual pieces of armor in the appropriate places, overall they appear very blocky and unnatural. My Dwarven paladin\'s beard was composed of two flat rectangles hanging from his chin. Also, the low poly count is noticeable in the barren state of most of the game\'s environments. At best, a room will be brimming with crates and a few chests. Certain rooms that are well decked out are divided up into annoyingly small areas, requiring loads to go from outside to inside, and then from the first floor to the second floor. The tile-based nature of the program favors hard angles and blocky environments. Landscaping is virtually non-existent since the world editor doesn\'t really support robust landscape editing. Usually you\'ll just end up running up and down ramps all set at the same angle. Interface: The basic interface of Neverwinter Nights takes a very utilitarian look, mainly consisting of plain, transparent windows that can be moved and resized to your heart\'s content. There\'s a shortcut key for everything, and commonly used functions can be stored on a bar at the bottom of the screen for instant access through the function keys. Basic interaction through the world occurs through a radial menu: When you right click on something, a series of round buttons appear in a circular formation around the object. These include basic actions like pickup, cast a spell, rest, etc. Clicking on one of the buttons can often open submenus, which also pop up as circular menus, replacing the former menu so as not to clutter the screen. The Neverwinter Nights interface is a great attempt at condensing a ton of information down into an accessible format. The only quibbles I have with it is that sometimes the sheer amount of information available is staggering. Also, the map is highly functional, but it would have been nice to be able to click on it and have the character go to the particular point, as in an RTS.Gameplay: The single player campaign in Neverwinter Nights surprised me with its scope. With all the attention that was focused on the toolset and the multiplayer possibilities, I was worried the single player campaign would be an afterthought. Thankfully, that was not the case, and the campaign is very well done. While it might lack some of the character personality of the Baldur\'s Gate series, it makes up for it with an engaging storyline, exotic locations and creatures, and a number of side quests that avoid the overkill of Baldur\'s Gate II, while still offering a variety of optional play opportunities. ultiplayer is the way to go with Neverwinter Nights, however. The first night I got the game, I stayed up until 4am playing the included campaign on a LAN with some friends. The first chapter is pretty text-intensive, which isn\'t so great for a multiplayer game, but once you get into it, things really take off. It\'s just a blast to be able to shoot a Negative Energy Ray to pick off the zombie who was about to take out your party\'s healer -- who also happens to be your friend down the block, or across the room. A well-implemented co-op experience is something that RPG gaming has been sorely missing, and Neverwinter Nights delivers in spades. The Aurora toolset is simply the best design tool on the market for the beginning game designer. You can literally open up the toolset, play around, and be inside in your creation half an hour later, even if it\'s your first time using it. The tile-based approach Neverwinter Nights uses is something of a double edged sword, however. It allows mind-bogglingly fast area creation, but also hamstrings creative power to a certain extent. For instance, you can\'t really have a grassy area in the middle of a dungeon setting. Other editors like the Morrowind and Dungeon Siege tools allow for more creative manipulation of their individual pieces. Still, nothing else out there can beat Aurora in terms of its accessibility, documentation, and raw speed. Some problems with Neverwinter Nights still exist in the form of bugs. While I had to rollback through three sets of Nvidia drivers before it would load the save/load screen without crashing, the most annoying issues are the gameplay bugs. For example, several sidequests are easily breakable just by talking to certain people before you have the necessary objects. Also, some problems still exist in the DM client. For instance, if you possess a monster that\'s part of a larger group of creatures, the larger group has a tendency to see you as an enemy and attack you. Bioware does deserve kudos for getting patches out of the door so quickly, however, and hopefully the remaining issues will be resolved soon. It is also disappointing to me that Bioware didn\'t include any more playable material in the box other than the one campaign. After harping on the multiplayer capabilities for so long, I expected at least another, smaller campaign specifically tailored for multiplayer as in Dungeon Siege. While the included campaign tailors its difficulty to the number of players in your game, it still would be nice to have something different to play when your friends are around. Multiplayer: I would definitely recommend sticking with a dedicated group of friends for online multiplayer with Neverwinter Nights. The title does come with GameSpy Arcade, allowing you to find games online anytime. However, much of the experience depends on how well the other players or DMs behave. Most of the online games I accessed were simply either DMs spawning random, high-powered monsters on our low-level party, or simply "every man for himself" type scenarios that lacked even the slightest sense of group cohesion. Playing with friends or a dedicated DM who knows the controls is a real treat, though, and the possibilities in replay value are virtually infinite. While the title allows for up to 64 players to join in on a single game, realistically, the best connections can only handle about 10 before lag starts rendering the experience unplayable. Sound FX: Combat sound is excellent throughout Neverwinter Nights. Enemies have effects that range from funny to frightening, and the sounds of weapons clashing and spells firing off are all convincing enough for me. Voice acting is hit or miss; one of my biggest disappointments was the lack of any sort of subdued voice for my own character. The options available for your character\'s voice range from very over the top to "what the heck were they thinking?" Voice acting for the principal NPCs is very well done, however. Musical Score: The soundtrack for Neverwinter Nights was composed by Jeremy Soule, currently on track to become the John Williams of game development. He also did the music for Neverwinter\'s main competitors in the genre: Morrowind and Dungeon Siege. The soundtrack is at the same level of excellence you would expect from Mr. Soule, fitting the mood perfectly for any given situation. The combat music is appropriately tense, and ends logically once the fight is over without stopping suddenly or simply fading out. Exploration music is subdued enough not to interfere with the voice acting and varied enough not to become annoying. Chalk up another victory for Jeremy Soule.Intelligence & Difficulty: The AI of enemies in Neverwinter Nights is quite good. They will gang up on weaker members of your party, and break off to chase you if you try and help out a teammate. Magic-users are impressive in their spell selections, prioritizing buffs to themselves, then generally either hitting you with state-changing magic like stuns, or immediately pulling out the big guns with area damage spells. The difficulty of enemies seems well suited to a single player with a henchmen, and if you don\'t agree, a difficulty slider is included that can change settings on the fly.The AI of your henchmen is a bit sketchier. In combat, they tend to simply use charge tactics, hitting whatever is nearest to them by default. Thankfully, you can change their behavior by right clicking on them and selecting an option from the radial menu that pops up. They tend to respond well to orders, although occasionally they will take a second before changing tactics. The worst part about them is their pathfinding. Your henchmen can get stuck on things like open doors or bookshelves. Anything that sticks out into an open room can potentially cause problems. This can be fixed by running back and forth in front of them, but it\'s an annoying problem. Thankfully, its frequency is only moderate, and probably less so than the Baldur\'s Gate series.Overall: Neverwinter Nights represents a revolutionary step forward in role-playing games. Like most revolutions, it has its growing pains, but the gameplay experience, as well as the monumental potential for community involvement vastly overshadows its problems. Any fan of the RPG genre should not be caught dead without a copy of Neverwinter Nights on his or her PC. It goes a long, long way toward getting at the heart of what draws players to RPGs: It supports a vast array of gaming styles, its systems cannot help but feel polished after so many years of development on tabletops across the country, and the production values are sky-high. I\'d recommend Neverwinter Nights to any gaming friend I\'ve ever had. 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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