(Note: Jesus H. Christ this one took forever)
Explain to me how the dwarf is taller than the elf.
A few months ago, me and my oldest brother had a chat about games and reviewing them.
At one point, the conversation turned to Final Fantasy X and he explained that he rated it 5 out of 10, but would have given it 6.5 out of 10 if they had called it something other than Final Fantasy. At the time, this didn't make much sense to me. I also never really understood why Yahtzee said that he'd rate Silent Hill Homecoming higher than he had, if they had called it The Adventures of Captain Scowlyface. I mean, it's just a name right? How could the title of a game possibly affect the reviewer's final rating? Thanks to this game, I finally know.
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes is not Dungeons & Dragons, regardless of what Atari may claim.
Oh sure, it looks like D&D, and it sounds like D&D, but it doesn't taste like D&D.
To illustrate my point, let's have a look at the story of the game, shall we? It is shorter and more undernourished than an Olympic gymnaste (and for anything carrying the D&D label to have a bad story is a mortal sin in my books); it is completely linear, defeating the very principle of D&D gameplay where it is the player himself that dictates what happens next; all the NPC dialogue is downright terrible (and the main villain in particular) and the plot-twist at the end can be seen from Mexico (if you already live in Mexico, it can be seen from the Netherlands).
The story is essentially as follows: Many years ago, the evil wizard Buttercup terrorized the kingdom of Baele and four heroes went out and killed him and saved the day, but got themselves killed in the process (stupid wankers). Fast-forward to present day, and a bunch of stupid and evil cultists (is there any other kind?) find Buttercup's crypt and resurrect him in order to use his powers. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that building a crypt for the worst thing ever to happen to your kingdom is infinitly more stupid than say, burning the guy's corpse and flinging the charred bits at the crows, it should really come as no surprise to anyone with an IQ above that of the average amoeba that Buttercup instantly kills his resurrectors and summons his old Fortress of Doom[sub][sub]TM[/sub][/sub] back from wherever he left it last time. So the Kingdom of Baele resurrects you (begging the question of why the fuck they didn't do that before; you'd think that the saviours of the free word would be entitled as much) so that you can go and kill him...again.
The arctic Frostbourne areas were my favourite. You know why?
Because they're the only place that doesn't like a dragon wiped his nose with it.
Now this sounds simple enough, but if this were actual D&D, you would have more options at your disposal than silently going along with it all. You could just kill yourself again because you didn't want to put up with this shit, you could kill the shopkeeper and take all his fancy mithral armor for yourself, or even switch sides and join Buttercup. But, as previously established, this isn't D&D, so you're just forced to do whatever the random pricks you've never met before tell you to.
So, with that out of my system, let's just conclude that the writing is a pile of tripe and that the game should never in a million years have been called Dungeons & Dragons. Now that that's over with, let's move on to the actual game-part of the game.
Graphically,D&D: Heroes hasn't aged very well. It's not exactly terrible, but I've seen better graphics in more places than I can count on a long afternoon. And of course, it has a bad case of Dirt-Filter going on. As for the design, there are quite a few different types of enemies, all fairly well-done and with their own unique design and attacks (except for the archers, which are universally annoying). The levels are all very large, but there's only 6 or so themes to each one. Castle Baele is very different from the Yuan-Ti Wilds, but that doesn't change the fact that every room in Castle Baele looks the same as every other room in Castle Baele. The gist of it is that each environment gets boring extremely fast, and becase they're so huge, they stay boring for a very long time. All the bosses, however, are classic baddies from the D&D universe and are really cool and well-done (except for Buttercup, who looks like something you'd get if a pit fiend fucked a drow).
But, while the graphics can still occasionally claim to have a halfway interesting exception to the rule, no such luck for the music.
D&D: Heroes is the only game I own that I just mute and play with music from my computer in the background. Not that the music is abysmally awful, I hear worse music every time I find myself in a carnival (a mercifully rare event). It's not that the music sucks, it's that it's just SO.GODDAMN.DULL. The music is rage-inducingly repetitive, and since the levels are so big and require so much time to complete, you get to hear each of the approximately 8 tracks the game has to offer about 580 times. It totally breaks what little immersion there is, and is definetly one of the worst examples of videogame-music in history.
"Guys? Seriously, how long until we get the shot?
My knee's starting to petrify here guys."
D&D: Heroes is a western RPG viewed from an eagle-eye perspective that's best played co-op, not unlike Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance or (arguably) X-Men Legends. There really needs to be a general term for this type of gameplay, yet despite extensive searching I've found nothing so I'm going to make one up: satelite-RPG.
Neologisms aside, the gameplay is probably the best part ofD&D: Heroes, albeit (like everything else in the game) troubled by inevitable repetition. You play as one of four different heroes: The human fighter, for people who like uncomplicated bashing; the dwarven cleric, for people who like uncomplicated bashing and being pious about it; the elf wizard, for people who don't know the difference between a wizard and a sorcerer; and the halfling rogue, for people who want to play the best class in the game.
Left trigger is blocking, A is your standard attack-combo, X is your primary special attack, Y is your secondary, and B is your special item. What attacks, spells and items to use for X, Y and B can be selected by pulling the right trigger, which slows the game down but means you don't have to pause and open a menu, which keeps the gameflow nice and going. You can unlock new spells and attacks, as well as more passive skills such as Resist Poison and Improved Critical, by leveling up and spending skill-points. You can buy new weapons, armour and items from two different shops: The standard one, for people with little money to spare; and the expensive one, for people with a little more money to spare.
You see, the only advantage to the game's huge open levels is the fact that they reward exploration and feature many secret area's. So if you're willing to spend a little longer and fill in all the blanks on the map (I forgot to mention, you can open a mini-map by clicking the right thumbstick) then you can get lots of fun extra's. And this is actually fun, right up until the moment you get the best equipment in the game, and money becomes obsolete. From that point onward, the levels their huge sprawling nature becomes nothing more than an annoyance.
The gameplay can basically be summarized in two words: Fighting & Fetchquests. Literally everything you do besides fighting is a fetchquest of some kind or another. There's about 5 or so sidequests that you can take or leave but they're all fetchquests too, so once again boredom and repetition rear their ugly heads.
I never quite understood how the wizard can summon a meteor storm inside the castle.
All of this boredom can assuaged somewhat by bringing in a second, third or fourth player but not enough. Even if it makes the fighting less dull, more players won't do anything against the repetitive levels or the terrible soundtrack. That, and having four people on-screen instead of one makes things a lot more chaotic than you might think.
To me,D&D: Heroes' most distinguising feature is it's length.
The game requires a considerable amount of time and effort to complete (just time actually, the game is so easy that the whole "effort" thing is up for debate), and normally I like that in a game. I like games that can keep me entertained for long periods of time. Of course, the part whereD&D: Heroes kind of shoots itself in the foot is the entertained part of that sentence. The game just felt like one long, monotonous grind that seemed to go on far longer than it should have or be necesarry. I was glad, jubilent even, to see that it was over and as a rule of thumb that's the que for the developer to ritualistically sacrifice themselves to the Gods of Shamefully Awful Adaptations of Beloved Franchises (see also: Star Trek 5, Highlander 2, and the Dune prequel-books).
As I read over what I've written so far, I can't help but feel that maybe this review is a little too negative.D&D: Heroes sucks, no denying, but it's fun the first time around, especially if you've got a few friends to play it with. But the second time, and every time thereafter, you'll start to notice the many, many flaws that reside in the game.
So I supposeD&D: Heroes is worth renting if you happen to find a store carrying it and you've got a weekend with nothing better to do, but it's undeniably flawed, and definetly not worth buying.
It might be, though, if the store replaces the title on the box with Fighting & Fetchquest: Heroes.
Explain to me how the dwarf is taller than the elf.
A few months ago, me and my oldest brother had a chat about games and reviewing them.
At one point, the conversation turned to Final Fantasy X and he explained that he rated it 5 out of 10, but would have given it 6.5 out of 10 if they had called it something other than Final Fantasy. At the time, this didn't make much sense to me. I also never really understood why Yahtzee said that he'd rate Silent Hill Homecoming higher than he had, if they had called it The Adventures of Captain Scowlyface. I mean, it's just a name right? How could the title of a game possibly affect the reviewer's final rating? Thanks to this game, I finally know.
Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes is not Dungeons & Dragons, regardless of what Atari may claim.
Oh sure, it looks like D&D, and it sounds like D&D, but it doesn't taste like D&D.
To illustrate my point, let's have a look at the story of the game, shall we? It is shorter and more undernourished than an Olympic gymnaste (and for anything carrying the D&D label to have a bad story is a mortal sin in my books); it is completely linear, defeating the very principle of D&D gameplay where it is the player himself that dictates what happens next; all the NPC dialogue is downright terrible (and the main villain in particular) and the plot-twist at the end can be seen from Mexico (if you already live in Mexico, it can be seen from the Netherlands).
The story is essentially as follows: Many years ago, the evil wizard Buttercup terrorized the kingdom of Baele and four heroes went out and killed him and saved the day, but got themselves killed in the process (stupid wankers). Fast-forward to present day, and a bunch of stupid and evil cultists (is there any other kind?) find Buttercup's crypt and resurrect him in order to use his powers. Leaving aside for a moment the fact that building a crypt for the worst thing ever to happen to your kingdom is infinitly more stupid than say, burning the guy's corpse and flinging the charred bits at the crows, it should really come as no surprise to anyone with an IQ above that of the average amoeba that Buttercup instantly kills his resurrectors and summons his old Fortress of Doom[sub][sub]TM[/sub][/sub] back from wherever he left it last time. So the Kingdom of Baele resurrects you (begging the question of why the fuck they didn't do that before; you'd think that the saviours of the free word would be entitled as much) so that you can go and kill him...again.
The arctic Frostbourne areas were my favourite. You know why?
Because they're the only place that doesn't like a dragon wiped his nose with it.
Now this sounds simple enough, but if this were actual D&D, you would have more options at your disposal than silently going along with it all. You could just kill yourself again because you didn't want to put up with this shit, you could kill the shopkeeper and take all his fancy mithral armor for yourself, or even switch sides and join Buttercup. But, as previously established, this isn't D&D, so you're just forced to do whatever the random pricks you've never met before tell you to.
So, with that out of my system, let's just conclude that the writing is a pile of tripe and that the game should never in a million years have been called Dungeons & Dragons. Now that that's over with, let's move on to the actual game-part of the game.
Graphically,
But, while the graphics can still occasionally claim to have a halfway interesting exception to the rule, no such luck for the music.
"Guys? Seriously, how long until we get the shot?
My knee's starting to petrify here guys."
Neologisms aside, the gameplay is probably the best part of
Left trigger is blocking, A is your standard attack-combo, X is your primary special attack, Y is your secondary, and B is your special item. What attacks, spells and items to use for X, Y and B can be selected by pulling the right trigger, which slows the game down but means you don't have to pause and open a menu, which keeps the gameflow nice and going. You can unlock new spells and attacks, as well as more passive skills such as Resist Poison and Improved Critical, by leveling up and spending skill-points. You can buy new weapons, armour and items from two different shops: The standard one, for people with little money to spare; and the expensive one, for people with a little more money to spare.
You see, the only advantage to the game's huge open levels is the fact that they reward exploration and feature many secret area's. So if you're willing to spend a little longer and fill in all the blanks on the map (I forgot to mention, you can open a mini-map by clicking the right thumbstick) then you can get lots of fun extra's. And this is actually fun, right up until the moment you get the best equipment in the game, and money becomes obsolete. From that point onward, the levels their huge sprawling nature becomes nothing more than an annoyance.
The gameplay can basically be summarized in two words: Fighting & Fetchquests. Literally everything you do besides fighting is a fetchquest of some kind or another. There's about 5 or so sidequests that you can take or leave but they're all fetchquests too, so once again boredom and repetition rear their ugly heads.
I never quite understood how the wizard can summon a meteor storm inside the castle.
All of this boredom can assuaged somewhat by bringing in a second, third or fourth player but not enough. Even if it makes the fighting less dull, more players won't do anything against the repetitive levels or the terrible soundtrack. That, and having four people on-screen instead of one makes things a lot more chaotic than you might think.
To me,
The game requires a considerable amount of time and effort to complete (just time actually, the game is so easy that the whole "effort" thing is up for debate), and normally I like that in a game. I like games that can keep me entertained for long periods of time. Of course, the part where
As I read over what I've written so far, I can't help but feel that maybe this review is a little too negative.
So I suppose
It might be, though, if the store replaces the title on the box with Fighting & Fetchquest: Heroes.
