Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (Xbox 360)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 1.5 stars Poor
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 3.5 (1.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Brett Todd
• Reviewed on: 02/19/2008
• Released on: 02/12/2008
• Originally published on GameSpot: Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (Xbox 360) Review

Adding a subtitle hasn't improved Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. This tardy Xbox 360 port of the first-person action RPG that premiered on the PC in late 2006 remains solidly third-rate even with the word "Elements" strangely appended to the original name. Arkane Studios and Ubisoft may have taken well beyond a year to presumably spit-shine everything for the game's console debut, but the mind-numbingly repetitive combat, bland story, and awkward level design haven't been changed much at all. Only revamped multiplayer modes of play offer anything new, and they're pretty weak and offset by control and visual issues that make this 360 version of the game much worse than its PC predecessor.

At its heart, Elements is a straight rehashing of the PC edition of the game. The solo campaign again tells the tale of Sareth, who is wandering the lands of Ashan trying to find the long-lost Skull of Shadows for his mage master, a rather sinister piece of work named Phenrig. And also once again, this story is so poorly told that you can't summon up the will to care about any of the characters or particulars. Everything is hacked together, from the ludicrous goo-goo eyes made between Sareth and his sidekick Leanna to the capital-E evil of bad guys such as Arantir. The only interesting conceit is your attachment to a demonic entity called Xana, and she's such a dumb caricature of a jealous woman that her catty comments will offend even the most hardcore chauvinist. Furthermore, all of the dialogue is delivered in hammy drive-in movie tones (why exactly are medieval knights calling you "pal"?), and the bare bones of the plot are so poorly presented that it's hard to figure out what you're supposed to be doing. You get the feeling that Arkane Studios was going for a grim swords-and-sorcery saga à la Conan but could never settle on taking the whole thing seriously or playing it up for laughs.

At any rate, you likely won't be doing any chuckling while toiling through the campaign's nine chapters. Although they're mercifully brief and let you save Ashan from dark, stinky demons in about 10 hours, they're also so tedious that it seems as if you've been stuck on the couch for more like a solid week. The biggest problem is, again, Elements' schizophrenic identity. This isn't really an RPG or an action game. Role-playing fundamentals have been tossed in seemingly just to lure elf aficionados, considering that they don't add anything to gameplay. So even though you choose from the usual warrior, archer, mage, and assassin character classes at the start of your adventure, and then proceed to level up and collect the usual ever-cooler swords, armor, scrolls, and potions, there isn't any depth. A single class skill is dished out automatically every time you gain a level, and most of these are autopilot buffs to core stats such as strength and stamina. This is actually a step down from the skill system in the PC version of the game, which at least let you spend skill points in strength, magic, and stealth categories, and somewhat personalize Sareth.

Combat is equally undercooked, so you can't simply forget about the RPG omissions in favor of just hack-and-slashing it up. How you fight varies somewhat depending on class, but repetition is a huge annoyance regardless of whether you're slinging fireballs or twirling a sword. All you ever seem to do is pull the right trigger to attack until bad guys explode in spouts of blood. Warriors and assassins have access to a trio of combos with the downward blow, charge, and whirlwind melee-attack skills, although you really don't need to ever bother using them. The number of enemies never reaches true action RPG proportions, either, which means that you steadily slog your way through tiny groups of mostly unthreatening goons. Even the odd boss monster is pretty easy to handle, due to the presence of some gimmick or other that enables you to take down the big foozle in no more than a couple of minutes. Lack of enemy variety is another problem, in that the game throws the same foes at you over and over again. The first few levels are so stuffed with dark-armored blackguards that you feel like you've interrupted some kind of convention, and even when new blood arrives, you get nothing but fantasy-ghetto archetypes such as goblins, orcs, zombies, and spiders.

Continue reading

Where to buy

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (Xbox 360): $14.47 - $15.54

store	price	in stock?	rating
	$15.54	Yes
	$14.47	No

see prices from 2 stores

Compare prices for Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements

	Amazon.com	$15.54
	Deep Discount.com	$14.47