After deciding to give Dark Messiah Might and Magic another try after a few weeks, I've just rage quit from playing. And I'm angry.
Kirsten originally bought two copies a few weeks back on the premise that the demo played out nicely. After the first tutorial level in the demo, you were placed onto a map where you basically had to find your own way. I've never been a fan of games using the Source engine as they usually end up being one way rail road tracks with inbuilt spoilers, but the demo played out nicely. In all fairness, it maybe coincidence that somehow the Source engine ends up tied to poorly told stories, but it's a recurring theme that's actually only adding more names to my personal blacklist.
Thank you Ubisoft, thank you Arkane, thank you Kuju, you lied to me.
So, what was wrong with Dark Messiah? A few things really listed in no particular order. Steam, the story, loading times and the gameplay, and that the multi-player mode really did suck, and bugs.
Firstly, Steam. I'm all for digital delivery, I think it's a rocking idea. I also like update notifications and a level of integration in game services. However, Steam is done so poorly that I cannot begin to comprehend how people continue using it. For those who don't know, Steam is a service run by Valve Software (or a subsidiary of) that provides automated patching, multi-player services and digital purchase and delivery of software.
Steam, while doing absolutely nothing, still managed to chew a couple of percent of my CPU. Not even my Java based Azurerus client does that while downloading torrents. It has a clunky interface with curved corners that somehow manages to redraw slowly, and make operating with it even slower again. The Steam service itself offered nothing with multi-player that couldn't be done without the thumb applied from above. Yet, the coup de grace was really the automatic updating.
Dark Messiah was bought via CD, and the installation proceeded to put the entire game on my machine along with some files for Steam's cache of the game. I had installed Steam on my C: drive, and Dark Messiah on my G: drive. For some reason, Steam decided I needed to download all 7GB of the game again, because I hadn't obtained the media files. I know it downloaded 7GB, because I saw my own traffic stats as I left it running while interstate. As if that wasn't bad enough, I actually ended up with 21 GB of files, for a game that runs happily without Steam in 6.6GB.
The story was poorly told. It was verging on yet more of the cliche "I beg your pardon Sir, but may I petition your good grace for some alms?". Do I look like LARPer to you? Do I look like I've ever strapped on a fake sword and addressed someone as Sir while being serious?
Cliches do not wear well. Even Star Trek learned this regarding speech. Speaking funny does help further the mood or believability of a story. On top of this, it got worse as the story played out to the point were I could second guess everything that I was required to do, or foresaw every event that was about to happen, I was told exactly what I had to do for each step along the way. Not once was I dumped in a room and left to my own devices.
Loading times only made it worse. Just by dumb luck my machine decided at one point to flush the disk for a process running in the background. Nothing major, I'd just used SCP to copy a file. At that instant, I was jumping onto a rope, I missed, fell to my death. Mea culpa, I'll load the save game and do it again.
My machine is hardly a slouch, it's within the top 10% of gaming machines out there according to various surveys. I heard the entirety of Dune Buggy by The Presidents of the United States of America (2 minutes 44) before my save game had loaded. Id Software learned this years ago, Blizzard got it right with WoW, it's possible to pre-load zones. I finished one level in a few minutes, only to have to wait another 3 minutes for the next level to load. By my rough calculation, I was spending half of my time waiting for the game to load.
It's a RPG, players will die. And let's face it, we're a stupid lot trying things that won't work. I suspect the nature of the rail road story telling is actually a device used to cover the fact that the Source engine takes significant time to load levels or saved games.
The last part, was the multi-player mode. Even assuming I could find other interested players locally, forgive me if I snort at the concept of physics based game play. The multi-player levels were so devoid of items I could manipulate that I just gave up and played it as if were a Battlefield franchise game. At least Battlefield and Quake had the capacity for impressive explosions.
Unfortunately, this poor excuse for a game has further reinforced my opinion that games using the Source engine are written by idiots for idiots. Additionally, I've now added Kuju, Arkane, and Ubisoft to my growing list of developers and publishers to avoid.
Maybe I'll publish my personal blacklist one day, so far it has served me well.