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War has come to the land of Eo, the once proud races are falling
to the might of the alliance between the Dark Elves and the
Shadow. Can you rouse the realms of man in time to defend
against the oncoming storm? Is it me or is this the plot to
Lord of the Rings and Babylon 5 and why name the planet after
a by-line in old MacDonald had a farm...
Now
I don't want to do a disservice to this game, but as a reviewer
we get this stuff often in its last beta stage with little
or no documentation. This can be a blessing in disguise as
it gives a realistic idea of just how intuitive the interface
is. I'm please to report that I was able to pick the game
right up and start playing. If you have ever played a RTS
or RPG game you should have no problems in getting up and
running.
Spellforce
2: Shadow Wars opens up with a number of options, you
can play over the Internet, as a single player or over a LAN.
You can also set various in-game options. I had only a pre-release
copy from JoWooD so checking out the LAN was out, as was the
Internet option. The game's initial screen boast a very beautiful
Elvin babe in what can only be described as "barely dressed
in a battle bikini." I can see that from its premise
that this could be fun over the Internet, an arena which is
becoming increasingly popular. The growth of Internet games
is phenomenal; some guy paid £135,000, real cash, for a virtual
island in an online game last year.
So
on to the single player mode. Here you can choose between
a Campaign, Skirmish or a free game. I had a bang around on
all these option and it's nice to see that the developer hasn't
presumed that everyone on the planet has a fast broadband
connection. The various game options make a good stand alone
game. Once into the game you can choose the attributes of
your character, it's the usual stuff, male or female; you
can change their looks ala The Sims and choose the
difficulty level.
So,
we're into the game and a pretty impressive CGI sequence that
set the scene of the overrun of the elfish lands by the Shadow
alliance. Once into the game you're in familiar territory.
Your mission, should you accept it, is to travel the length
and breath of the land as a Shiakan, a half man half dragon,
forming alliances and doing favours so that you can eventually
lead an army of prodigious proportions back to your ravaged
homeland and kick some dark Elvin butt.
One
of the outstanding features of the game is the music which
at points is truly beautiful, but that could just be my Celtic
blood getting the best of me. As for the game play it's a
delightful synergy between a RPG and a RTS. The game area
is huge and should give many many hours of pleasurable gameplay.
Graphically, the game is almost faultless, my only concern
would be that to get the best out of the game you will need
a fairly powerful machine to run it on - sometimes the frame
rate dropped to give the game a very jerky feel. That said,
I notice that the first patch has been released so maybe some
of these issues have already been addressed.
Charles
Packer
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£17.99
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