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Metareview - Mage Knight Apocalypse
With the release of Mage Knight Apocalypse, Namco Bandai may have been hoping to steal a few precious hours from RPG gamers before Neverwinter Nights 2 and Gothic 3 hit the shelves. Unfortunately, a few hours is all it takes to realize Mage Knight is one for the bargain bins. You might be better off getting your hack-and-slash kicks from Titan Quest, or even Dungeon Siege II: Broken World. IGN (54/100) was displeased with the game's production quality: "The storyline isn't executed very well. The frequent cut scenes never deliver any kind of engaging dialogue and are further hampered by voice acting that sways from average to terrible." GameSpot (44/100) didn't appreciate the innovative combat system: "Since the save points are all over the place, you'll usually only have to take a few steps to pick up the fight right where you left off. You'll quickly fall into a very repetitive and annoying cycle of death where you resurrect, fight, and die over and over again...slowly picking away at the mob of monsters until finally they're all dead. It removes any sort of challenge or sense of attrition from the game." GamePro (40/100) thinks Mage Knight sets new lows in pathfinding: "Allies constantly become stuck behind walls and pillars, enemies lose track of you when you walk out of their line of sight, and glitches allow you to hurl spells at blissfully unaware boss mobs. On occasion, we were forced to complete an entire level solo when our two computerized comrades became stuck in a maze somewhere."
Metareview - Titan Quest
When Blizzard introduced the seminal Diablo a decade ago, they single-handedly invented the hack and slash RPG (and, quite possibly, carpal tunnel syndrome). There have been many followers since -- Dungeon Siege on the PC, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance and Champions of Norrath on consoles -- and while the graphics engines have evolved, the addictive gameplay has remained more or less the same. With Titan Quest, developer Iron Lore stuck to the principle formula, but in a setting that is more Age of Mythology than D&D. Yahoo! Games (90/100) appreciates the attention to detail in level design: "Although there are no random levels, the later game opens up with enough side quests that you don't feel like you're playing Dungeon Siege, being shunted from one canned encounter to the next. The flip side of not having Diablo's tile-based random-level generator is that every nook and cranny is built by hand. And it looks it: Titan Quest is a gorgeous game on many different levels." GameSpot (76/100) notes Titan Quest's potential longevity: "The gradual approach to character creation taken here is welcome, and the sheer scope of the single-player campaign, coupled with the cooperative play and tools to create your own campaign, means that players willing to commit to the experience will have a wealth of content to keep themselves busy with." GameSpy (70/100) recommends a hefty system configuration: "One wart in Titan Quest is its performance -- specifically, the game tends to chug when the lighting and particle effects are full-blast. It never became unplayable, but during the worst moments, it was definitely annoying enough for me to hope that some imminent patches will be released to address the problem."
First Circle of Doom artwork unleashed
Developer Blue Side has gracefully decided to share some early and undeniably striking concept art for their forthcoming Xbox 360 sequel, Kingdom Under Fire: Circle of Doom. Though the Kingdom Under Fire series failed to set retail charts on fire during its run on the original Xbox, vocal fans won't allow you to overlook the game's considerable critical success. The Xbox 360 version's main draw is its Xbox Live functionality, allowing up to 4 players to go on a hack 'n slash frenzy through dark fantasy lands, presumably populated by psychotic clown-men.
