|
|
Mistmare: In Tenebris Erroris
|
|
|
|
|
|
Graphics & Sound:
An evil fog descends upon 13th century Europe. Only southern France, Spain,
and Italy are spared. Civilization slows to a halt and come 1996, southern
Europe is still the same as it was 600 years ago. This is the back-story to
a game developed by Arxel Tribe called Mistmare: In Tenebris Erroris.
Unfortunately, the game seems to have been ravaged by a fog just as evil as
the one that's engulfed Europe.
While the rest of the game's aspects are pretty bad, the graphics are sharp
and, well, mundane. While the screenshots on the back of the box are
extremely colorful, when you actually see the game, all the colors look very
washed out and drab. No doubt this was an attempt at creating a 'dark ages'
atmosphere, but it just made me feel kinda sleepy. Also, there's almost a
total lack of character animation. Outside of battles, there is almost no
animation at all, aside from people walking. The battle animation isn't that
great either, something akin to stiff wooden puppets. The spell effects
aren't very good either. They are far too much like Everquest spell
effects, big globs of particles being thrown around with very little
artistry or glamour. I have to add that the game did run pretty well
considering I was 100MHz below the minimum requirement.
The sound is probably the only redeeming feature of Mistmare. There's
a good deal of ambiance in many locations, and the voice acting isn't too
shabby either. I like music in my games; I've never had a problem with a
musical theme playing constantly in every location. However, Mistmare
follows the trend of a small flourish of music every now and again. The
music isn't bad, there's just not enough of it. |
|
|
Gameplay:
Well things are only gonna get worse from here, I'm afraid. For the most
part, the gameplay in Mistmare is just plain boring. Let's start with
the way the story is presented. Now I'm not against text adventures and the
like, but it seems like a waste to spend all this money in developing these
pretty 3-D graphics and then not really using them. The story is pretty much
presented in text, plain and simple. The NPC's just kinda stand there while
they talk, and talk, and talk. It's not a bad story either, certainly a very
interesting premise. I think they could have done a lot more with it,
however.
The game itself is often an exercise in staying awake. The way the game
works is that you usually have a small list of quest objectives you must
complete in a certain time frame. During this time, you may also engage in
other tasks such as reading, breaking into things, training, and the like,
in order to improve your character. Eventually, when you run out of extra
time, the game will prevent you from engaging in these activities so that
you have to continue with your quest objectives. Unfortunately it's
repetitive, and it's just not fun. Even the fighting isn't fun.
The battle system feels as if it's either unfinished or they didn't spend
the time on it they should have. You're either attacking with your weapon,
defending to get back stamina, or casting a spell. You can also strafe and
walk back slowly, but neither serves any real practical purpose. Frequently,
none of the spells are really useful either. Considering how fast your
health is going down, a spell that doesn't directly heal you or hurt the
enemy is often pointless. Also, the healing spell is frequently useless
during battle since, in the time it takes to cast it, you're going to take
more damage than it heals. |
|
|
Difficulty:
To put it bluntly, the game is simply not balanced properly. Many of the
enemies are just too powerful for their locations. In my first 'real'
encounter, I had no chance of defeating the two robbers, and I had spent
every extra bit of time powering up. This was on Normal, by the way, not
Hard. There's an option to resurrect with the enemies a little easier. After
doing this three times, I was still slaughtered very badly. Spending fairly
mundane time powering up only to be slaughtered anyway by more than half the
creatures you run across is bad.
|
|
|
Game Mechanics:
Things only go from bad to worse as we hit Game Mechanics. Let's start with
the points of view. There are three options you can take. A first-person
point of view with mouse/keyboard movement, a third-person point of view
with keyboard movement and mouse camera control, and a third-person point of
view where you click where you want to go. The problem is that if you want
to click on any of the on-screen interface icons, you have to be in that
last point of view so that you actually have a mouse cursor. Yes, there are
hot keys for the icons, but when you see actions appear on screen, you'd
like to know what they are before you do them, and the only way to do that
is to move the mouse cursor over them. Another big complaint I have is with
the first-person movement. You strafe way too slowly, and you also can't
move forward while you strafe. I thought we had nailed this first person
movement back with Doom. Guess someone at Arxel Tribe lost the memo.
Aside from that, it's just a ton of small things. For instance, you can
right click an item to get more detailed info on it, but to close that
window and go back to the inventory, you have to drag your mouse down and
left click a button. Why can't we just right click this new window to close
it? Also, even though you can get some items to make you walk faster, the
base walk/run speed definitely needs to be higher.
Mistmare: In Tenebris Erroris is a bad game. Unless you are the most
die-hard PC RPG fan or simply a masochist, you won't be having much fun with
this one. |
|
|
-Alucard, GameVortex Communications AKA Stephen Triche |
Minimum System Requirements:
Windows 98/2000/ME/XP, Pentium III 800MHz, Direct 3D video card with 32MB
RAM, DirectX 8.1 |
|
Test System:
Windows 98, Pentium III 700MHz, GeForce4 MX 420 with 64mb of RAM, DirectX 9,
Sound Blaster LIVE 5.0 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
