Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
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ESRB:
Blood and Gore,Intense Violence,Language - Mild,Partial Nudity
Publisher: UbiSoft Genre(s): Role Playing Game Home Page: http://www.darkmessiahgame.com/
Admiring the view (when you have the chance)Like many proprietary engines, Source has a distinct look and feel to it, although Dark Messiah tries hard to avoid this and runs with a gamut of modern rendering effects such as HDR, parallax mapping and light ray refraction. The first thing that you should note is that very few of the effects are limited to specific graphics cards - you could even take a DirectX 8 level GPU and still have it looking amazing. The only problem would be one of performance!
Dark Messiah uses the same HDR method as created by Valve for their Half Life 2 episodes, in that it uses a series of integer-value textures in certain areas to create the 'over-exposed' look. This means that any GPU which supports SM2.0 can do the HDR - in addition to this, SM2.0 is only needed for the parallax bump mapping effect which adds more detail and shadowing to the standard normal mapping.
The reason why the minimum graphics cards isn't lower than SM2.0 is that miss out on two very nice effects: water and stained glass - both are of an exceptional quality and although they're not really necessary to enjoy the game, they look oh-so nice! However, all of this prettiness does come at a cost: high resolution textures need lots of video memory for a start. Cards with less than 256MB of RAM will stutter about unless the texture setting is kept quite reasonable and with everything set to maximum at 1600 x 1200, the RAM usage can easily shoot past 400MB. Not everything is all Oscars and medals though - some things are quite disappointing. Blood effects at first glance seem quite cool but on larger monster they degenerate into nasty looking sprites, even on the very best of hardware; the same goes for ropes and chains, with both being sprites too. The animations are good but as mentioned before, character models are repetitive and it's easy to find yourself moaning "Not more zombies, vicar!" In general though, Dark Messiah's graphics and overall look fit the bill very nicely and scale across a broad range of hardware, although it is worth noting that the minimum spec requirements are the barest of minimums! Making a big noise about being a hero!Dark Messiah sports the obligatory catalogue of cheesy voice acting, hammy cut scenes, creepy background music and ambient sounds and yarrrr!!! battle cries that you'd expect from a fantasy RPG. Arkane have worked hard at balancing it all out though and surround sound functions properly too, even for onboard hardware - many games have issues with the voice volumes being all over the place as you pan around but not here. Controlling the hero can be done via the usual mouse & keyboard combination. Fast-moving, high speed mice aren't necessary for the single player mode but I found it easier to cope in the multiplayer realms by increasing the sensitivity of my mouse. The control system largely feels somewhat clumsy with having to use so many buttons to do actions that important to survive in frantic combat. The main issue I found in both modes was judging attack distances for contact weapons - many spells can be guided and the bow is quick and simple, but swords and the like don't seem to connect with their targets all that well. I found myself getting far too cosy with big stinky orcs on many an occasion until I realised that the actual range was further than it naturally felt. Coupled with the often aimless nature of busy fights, hand-to-hand combat just feels 'delocalised' - i.e. not really there. Quite hard to explain the feeling but the satisfaction of inserting a 1.5m length of sharpened steel into some ghoul's nethers is notable by its absence.
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