Dungeon Siege
PC £34.99 Microsoft ****
Dungeon Siege has come at a good time for Microsoft. Faced with slow European Xbox sales - witness the £100 price cut - the company needs something positive to report. Luckily for them, Dungeon Siege is a cracker.
Not that this is immediately apparent. A quick look at the box suggests a cliched fantasy role-playing game (RPG), stuffed full of the usual orcs, goblins and broadswords. Initial playing confirms this, but by the time you've skewered your first Krug, the lack of originality becomes irrelevant.
It's not what it does, but how it does it that makes DS so special. So progress is made by slaughtering beasties, but rather than using unfriendly stats to determine your levels, a transparent system allows you to tailor your fighters depending on the skills they use. You can control a party of characters, but DS gives you greater scope for tactics than in most RPGs. The impressive 3D visuals help, allowing you to zoom right into the action, or retain a lofty view from the clouds. This is exhilarating adventuring, although it can get repetitive.
With a plot skinnier than an anorexic wafer, the incessant combat and treasure looting don't satisfy as much as if part of an epic storyline.
Nevertheless, the beautiful environments create a desperate urge to see the next area, driving you on well into the early hours. If you find yourself finishing the game, then there are multiplayer and map editor modes included to elongate thee xperience. Dungeon Siege is a much-needed triumph for Microsoft. (GH)
Shrek
Xbox £44.99 Digital Illusions/ TDK Mediactive ***
Now that the Xbox costs the same as the PlayStation 2, Microsoft's console can be judged purely on the merit of its games. To persuade people to buy Xboxes, Microsoft simply needs to come up with a selection of exclusive killer games. Shrek, sadly, is not one of them but it should keep a young audience happy.
Shrek has very little to do with the film in terms of storyline. You play the lovable, ugly, green ogre, and your mission is to perform various good deeds to get to the hidden castle and defeat the evil wizard Merlin. For example, you must help Bo Peep pen her sheep despite the close attentions of a wolf, or rescue Mother Goose's eggs from the murderous intentions of Humpty Dumpty.
Graphically, Shrek is very impressive (although the unrealistic-looking water lets the side down). But its gameplay is bitty. When performing good deeds, you either find that trying to perform the same task endlessly breeds frustration and boredom, or that your mission has been completed after just a couple of minutes' gameplay. Although you can choose which good deed to perform in any given location, Shrek lacks any sense of being a coherent game.
Still, there is plenty of humour on offer - Shrek can immobilise enemies with his green farts and even set fire to them if he has found a chilli pepper to ingest - along with plenty of Super Mario 64-style surreality. Pre-teens who enjoyed the film won't feel short-changed, even though Shrek is not the greatest of games. (SB)
Heroes of Might and Magic IV
PC £30 New World/3DO *****
The Might and Magic series used to be strictly defined and predictable: quality role-playing games (RPG) with the emphasis on role playing rather than epic battles. Recently, however, the series has split, with Heroes taking the classic path through character development and tactics, leaving the others to worry about combat and 3D graphics. It is a wise choice.
Heroes IV is almost baffling in its attention to detail, one of the few RPGs in which you will have to delve into the instruction book. On the surface, this seems unnecessarily complex, but patience is rewarded with a deep and well-structured game.
Of course, it's still about traditionally "heroic" pursuits such as undertaking quests, building up your base, securing resources and recruiting troops - and the action is still turn-based. However, this is no bad thing: those with a few hours to kill will find six new campaigns, more than 400 structures, 100 spells and 60 creatures to command.
This time around, you can enrol more than one hero, chosen from 11 initial classes before branching out into nearly 40 - all with strengths and weaknesses. Achieving the right balance is slightly less important than before, as you recruit soldiers to do much of the grunt work, but there is still danger in every battle that your best recruits might be taken from you because of one mistake.
However, combat remains disappointing, resolutely 2D and laughably crude compared to the genre's benchmarks. Organising your troops is still imprecise and the animation appears almost a slapstick-pastiche of recent titles such as Etherlords.
Despite this, Heroes IV is a worthy successor to a well-loved series, with hundreds of hours of gameplay on offer. (MA)
