*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

I haven’t posted any game related stuff to the site for quite sometime, mostly because I haven’t had time to post anything due to the classes I am teaching and work. My taxes were done this past week and due to the large amount of money we owed I had to do something to lift my spirits, I bought a new game.

Intro

First off let me say that I have never been a fan of RPGs (role playing games). Throughout my life I have been a FPS (first person shooter) fan. Fast action, blowing things up, and killing fellow co-workers to taught them around the water cooler are just a few reasons I love a good FPS.

To my surprise, a friend of mine (Rael) introduced me to Dungeon Siege. I have to say that it was nice actually getting a quick ‘demo’ of the game before going out and purchasing it. When I first saw the opening screens, I was wowed. The graphics are stunning and the game play was incredibly easy to pick-up on. I mentioned game play because I always thought the RPGs were to complex to use and there wasn’t enough “instant gratification” to them.

Graphics

The first thing you notice when you start to play is the level of detail in the scenes. There are 7-8 towns (I think) that you visit throughout your quest and all of the maps are rendered seamlessly, quite impressive. One of the coolest things about the graphics are the camera angles. They’ve done an incredible job of different camera angles. For example, you can pause the game and rotate around (kind of a Matrix feel) so the rain drops hold in mid-air.

Sound

The sound is an original score and it really sets the tone of the game. Birds chirping, grunts, and squishes are all done at the highest level for realistic playing.

Multi Player

The game also supports three types of multi-player: local network, ZoneMatch, and Internet. Just take the IP of your buddy and type it into the Internet portion and you are off on your newest quest. For those of you running Linux firewalls as myself you may have trouble talking to people outside your network (if you figure this out, let me know).

Cool Features

• Camera Angles
• Purchase a pack mule to carry all your gear
• Intense battles
• Complexity of the dungeons
• Import single player characters into multi-player
• sound, graphics, blah, blah

f my weekend playing Dungeon Siege and trying to get multi-player to work through my firewall. In over 8 hours of careful play I am still on level 2. I managed to buy a mule, have 5 merry men join my quest and killed the biggest spider I’ve ever seen.

Conclusion

For $49.99, this is sure to give you hours of enjoyment. I also have to hand it to Gas Powered Games, they manaaged to do something no other RPG game has gotten me to do and that is play them. Hats off to Gas Powered Games. Final conclusion, don’t walk, RUN to the stores to get a copy.