10/25 Dark Messiah of Might and Magic (PC)

[Morfiend]

This hits stores today. I think im going to pick up a copy. Anyone have any thoughts?

[MrHat]

It cripples my computer.  I wanted to try out the multiplayer during beta.   Someone let me know!

[Yoru]

Mine's waiting for me at EB.

Or it will be once UPS arrives at 3 PM this afternoon.

I'll pick it up after work, but I probably won't get a chance to play it for a couple weeks.

[Yegolev]

My thoughts are that I'll wait for one of you to report back, at least.  More likely I'll wait for the first couple of patches.

[Strazos]

Maybe if I had the money

Not buying any games until I get the cash for a DVD burner drive and about 60 DL DVD-Rs. I have a lot of stuff to archive.

[geldonyetich]

Judging by the demo, I'd say it's a pretty solid game.  Elder Scrolls Oblivion without the open-endedness but with considerably better combat and world interaction.  In places, the demo lags considerably.  (I've found that looking up and down a few times when this happens seems to resolve or mostly resolve the issue - it's probably a caching problem.)  Word on the street is that this was lack of optimizaiton in the demo and doesn't reflect the retail.  It has both a single player and a multiplayer component and, interestingly enough, those are developed by entirely different development houses.

The single player game resolves around three approaches: Melee, magic, or stealth.  Each wit their own skill trees. The protagonist has some means to mix those up a bit.  Innovations include being picked up and thrown by enemies and kicking enemies into spiked walls or off cliffs to instantly kill them.  Kinda feels Thief-like, but with more physics and with non-stealth options.  You can pull interesting heroics like shooting ropes to release heavy weights or shooting flimy wooden pillars to topple a platform.

The multiplayer beta plays somewhat uniquely to any OFPS competition.  The closest resemblance would be Counterstrike, but replace weapon purchases with RPG character progression, and replace bombs with capturing waypoints.  There's a few classes in the multiplayer, that I can remember off the top of my head: Fighter, Assassin, Archer, Healer, Mage.  It's an undead versus human scenario where winning a round progresses you to the next map and eventually overtaking the last map wins the game.  It seesaws back and forth a bit if the other side starts rounds.

The release date is unfortunate.  While this game is good, and not even the same genre, I expect NWN to snap up most of its customers.

[Daeven]

It's preloaded on my computer. Yay Steam!

I'm so done with going to -Ramdom Dumbass Store which doesn't actually stock PC games- and have to go through the 'when will you have a copy' dance.

[Big Gulp]

The demo blew me away, but I'm waiting for some word on how long the single player game is.

[Strazos]

Melee was somewhat broken in the Beta. It seems like your weapons had no actual....length. Also, there was very little reason to even try and use skill in melee - most people would just run up and spam spam spam. And another thing...the melee was Very sensitive to latency, as if the hit detection was not touchy enough.


I just really hope they removed auto-target, it was a fucking newb crutch.

[Morfiend]

Seems the game is all kinds of buggy and broken, going by the screaming on the official forums. Im glad I forgot to pick it up now. I think Ill wait a patch or 2 before buying.

[Strazos]

Not surprised. At all.

[Yoru]

Impression after install is "WTF?!". I bought the boxed copy, so it first installs off the DVD (9GB) and then installs the MP part into Steam... but registering that also registers you for the SP part on Steam, so Steam demands another 4GB to install the SP part a second time.

Haven't actually gotten to the 'playing' stage yet.

[schild]

Whoa. So might as well buy it off of Steam?

[Fabricated]

I played the demo and rather liked it outside of the odd performance problems. No one but Valve seems to be able to use the Source engine in an efficient manner.

It played well though and I LOVED how movement felt. It was like moving an actual person around when I jumped down onto stuff and ran as opposed to being a floating pair of arms. The demo made melee and/or stealth focus out to be way better than magic though. Gee, I can sneak up on this orc thing and cut its throat out, or I can bash it to death with better weapons, shields, and moves than non-meleers can use...or I can fling like 5 fireballs at it, run out of mana, and then have to try and finish the job with my meager melee skills.

[Yoru]

Whoa. So might as well buy it off of Steam?

That's my impression. I'm guessing you don't actually have to install the Steam DMMOM SP if you have the DVD version, but it will still demand to do that when it starts up the first time.

First CTD on the 2nd actual level, less than an hour in. Pretty buggy, I'd guess.

Edit: Written by monkeys would be my new guess. CTDs resolved by updating to the Oct 16th Nvidia drivers, but it takes >10 minutes to load a multiplayer level, if the level ever loads. That's just fucking unacceptable.

[Yoru]

Buggy heap of unreliable, unoptimized shit. Oh, and it's poorly balanced to boot.

I'd strongly advise against buying it at this point.

Edit: More detail. Just deleted the Steam DMMOM singleplayer pack - freed up 6.5 gigs of space on my drive. The DVD DMMOM SP? Still installed, still working.

To be a bit more thorough:

Pros:
* Asshole Physics is fun for a few minutes.
* Pretty.
* Kicking enemies down the stairs to kill them elicits a giggle.
* Autosave does the 'early and often' bit for you quite well.

Cons:
* CTDs. (Both)
* Seems to lock-up infrequently when loading maps. (MP)
* Takes 5-10+ minutes to load a map the first time, 1-2 minutes subsequent times. (MP)
* Stuttering problem, as mentioned above, appears when looking at other players, open areas, etc. Sometimes clears up by looking around a lot. Sometimes it doesn't clear up. (MP)
* Poor MP balance - the ~15 actual gameplay minutes I got in for MP consisted mostly of me being instantly killed by a warrior. Over and over again.
* Poor SP balance - forget trying to stealth, the stealth model is broken. Magic is impotent, as noted above. Forget ranged combat, it takes 3-6 arrows to kill something (except from hiding, if you get a head-shot) and they charge in before you can get the second arrow off. Just run around hitting stuff with swords, dropping crates on them, and kicking them down stairs/into spikes. It's far more effective.
* Crap stealth model - seems to be distance based primarily, then light based. I've shot arrows over something's head. It turns and stares at the arrow in the wall. However, if I hit it in the leg from the same position, it instantly knows where I am and so do all of its buddies.

There's probably more, but I've only gotten about an hour of the SP in and ~15 minutes (playtime) MP in. It's really, really terribly buggy and I'm not inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt at this point. There's no excuse for this shit from any AAA-list title.

[Bandit]

I guess I learned my lesson buying games at release.

I pre-ordered from Steam, and downloaded the rest of it with little problem lastnight.  However, when trying to actually launch the game the real fun begins. No joke, it takes a bout 10 mintues to actually start playing! The load times are insane. 

Then once in game, it studdered, coughed, and hacked up horribly on my computer.  Sound became nothing but static, which is obviously pretty annoying. So after a quick scour on the Ubi boards, I learned that using Steam to verify the files might fix some issues.  That fixed up the static.  I did however have to bring all my graphics settings down substaintally to make the game at least playable.  The demo worked beautifully on my computer, so it is hard to understand why it now brings my computer down to its knees.

Once in, I found the gameplay actually pretty good.  I didn't go with ranged combat options, so I can't comment on the balance problems others are mentioning. 

I am hoping that some subsequent patches fix many of these issues up! I don't think I am going to attempt multiplayer until then.

[Engels]

Anybody remember Hexen? This reminds me of that game.

[Strazos]

The gameplay or the bugs?

[Engels]

Both really.

[Nija]

I've had one CTD and that was when I was changing settings and it tried to apply those changes as I exited the menu.

By default it ran like total shit. 2 fps, turning 90 degrees in one direction was a 5 second affair.

Changed HDR to bloom, shadows to low and the big kicker is putting sound quality to medium. Runs just as well as HL2 did. Played about an hour, it seems alright so far.

I don't really like first person melee combat much, I've found. It's really hard to tell how far away the bad guys are and how far, exactly, your sword can reach.

[Strazos]

That's why melee in MP is so crippled, and also why people try to solve the problem by mindlessly sprinting and spamming melee attacks.

[Yegolev]

Anybody remember Hexen? This reminds me of that game.

Sounds more like Arx Fatalis, especially the part where Arx Fatalis works best with a certain narrow set of Nvidia drivers.  The official 30.?? if I recall.  Hooray for learning from history!

Also, if Arx Fatalis is any further guide, ensuing patches will stop coming out before all of the bugs are fixed.

I need to get that Carnac avatar back.

[vex]

Mine took forever to download from Steam.  This was my first Steam download and I was desperate for something to play. 

It does take a while to load but was only obnoxiously long the first go at it.    I've only got about an hour on it but the only problem I've really found so far is that at 1600x1200, which it defaulted to, when I pick up objects or wield my weapons everything goes blank except my little inventory bar.  It runs pretty smooth at that resolution, it's just not usable at all.


vex

[Mr. Right]

Loading time are bad.  The story is bad.
But the action is worth the money if you have an high end computer.

I only played one multiplayer game.  It could have been great with more polish and more character options/weapons.

There's an impressive crafting mini-game, with more complexity it would be the perfect crafting system for a mmorpg.

[sinij]

Whoa. So might as well buy it off of Steam?

If you do buy off Steam *anything* and they for some reason decide they don't like you (false-positive on cheating, no-CD or some other thing) then you are SOL and *all* your purchases are gone.

Do you *have* to use Steam to play it? Damn I was looking forward to this title but no way I will be touching it with ten foot pole if steam is involved.

[Signe]

Why?  What's wrong with Steam?  I've never used it so tell me.    

[sinij]

Early days Steam was horrible, lag from hell, you had to connect to internet to even play singleplayer... Now I was told it improved a bit, but not significantly - they added a way to 'backup' your titles but they are still tied to Steam for playing. My *personal* problem with Steam is that they tie all titles on them, so you have to run Steam to play anything distributed through them. Did I already mentioned that you can't, for example, play Steam games if your internet connection craps out or you are on your laptop traveling and don't have connection?

[Signe]

Thanks for the info.  I looked at the demo game, the single player bit anyway, but it didn't really appeal to me enough to buy it.  Righ tried the multiplayer and didn't much like it either.  Since I have no plans to play the multi-player version, especially with NWN right around the corner, I've since removed Steam from my computer.  I don't see anything else they have that I want to play.  The thing is a resource hog, anyway.

[Yoru]

Do you *have* to use Steam to play it? Damn I was looking forward to this title but no way I will be touching it with ten foot pole if steam is involved.

Presuming you're asking about the DVD version, multiplayer seems to require Steam, single player does not.

I've yet to have serious problems with Steam, but I haven't really bought anything major off it aside from HL2. My biggest annoyance so far has been occasionally forcing it to pause updating stuff so I can play something else online.

Oh, and I pushed another hour in to the single player stuff. It gets better, although the story is still crap. The longsword crafting minigame was kind of neat. The AI is rather exploitable; standing beside a crate is enough to get ranged attackers to run right up to you to get a 'clear' shot, at which point you can sword them to death. Kicking people off stairs and gangplanks is still the best part of the game.

Babysitting NPCs sucks though.

[Samwise]

Steam was written by Hitler, and Valve is run by robots.

[hal]

In reality, if you know your user name and password. Every thing youv'e ever bought from steam is backed up and will be downloaded as soon as you sign in. It worked for me. New hard drive , new operating system. Log in and you get it all back. Thats very valuable. Thats not to say that steam wasn't written by Hitler nd valve run by robots. But why is that a bad thing?

[HaemishM]

Thats not to say that steam wasn't written by Hitler nd valve run by robots. But why is that a bad thing?

Are you kidding? Hitler was totally a wall-hacking AWP camping whore.

[Furiously]

I can see it being a bad thing, if someone log in as you and cheats. And you lose access to all your games. All 20 of them.

[Strazos]

I'm thinking you could still call up CS and start yammering off shit about how the IP they used is way different from yours....like on the opposite coast or something. I'm sure there are somewhat-reasonable ways to clear that kind of nonsense up.

Still would be a pain in the ass.