If you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy a game, there are plenty of game reviews you can read to help you reach that decision.
But what if you’re not ready to decide whether or not to buy the game? What if you’re not even ready to decide whether or not to read the review? Hell, what if you’re not even sure if you want to download the free demo?
I’m here to help. Yet another blog I started and abandoned — this time without even creating a single entry, a new record — was called Demoman, in which I’d (planned to) review game demos to help you decide whether or not you wanted to even take the time to download them for free.
Another bonus — a lot of these games have been out for, like, years!
I’m starting with Dark Messiah Might and Magic, which came out like in 1994 or some shit.
I heard this game demo was like a Half-Life 2 demo meets an Oblivion demo — an FPS/RPG. Or is that RPD? Role-Playing Demo? Anyway, it’s not. It’s a completely linear FPS demo with a few RPD elements. Still, there’s some fun stuff going on here.
First thing I notice while I’m booting up the demo: It’s not Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Or Dark Messiah colon Might and Magic. It’s just Dark Messiah Might And Magic. Most reviews (of the game) tend to stick an of in there. That’s so fucking unprofessional.
I personally think it would be cool if it were Dark Messiah Re: Might and Magic. Give it sort of a corporate flavor.
The demo begins with my Master, Phenrig, ordering me to retrieve a crystal from a dungeon. Phenrig, it should be noted, is an incredible homosexual. Just flaming. He sounds like the love child of Mr. Sulu from Star Trek and Dr. Smith from Lost in Space… I’m going to suggest now that he is perhaps the gayest character in video game history. I’m not complaining or anything, I’m just really impressed. I didn’t know the technology was in place to make a character quite so gay. [Here he is on YouTube.]
Anyway, Phenrig, somehow speaking directly into my brain, guides me around the dreaded Dungeon of Tutorial, where all adventures begin. He directs me to use the one object I find, a spider-shaped key, with the obstacle blocking my path, a door locked with a spider-shaped lock. They’re about four feet apart.
Thanks! Wouldn’t have figured that out on my own.
He also tells me I can lift and move crates that block my path. I know this is a tutorial and all, but wouldn’t my character, a grown man, have been in a situation in some point in his life where he needed to lift and move something? A chair, maybe a table? I guess he’s led a sheltered, clutter-free life.
I notice I can look down and see my entire body. I guess this is sort of the thing to do in FPS demos now — first time I saw it in was the F.E.A.R. demo. It’ll be interesting to see if other demos institute it. See how I keep using the word “demo” instead of “game” to keep my theme intact? Yeah.
Finally, we get to some combat! The first thing I do is kick some sort of ghoul down into a hole, which is pretty cool. Kicking is a big part of this demo, it seems. I’m instructed to kick a soldier off a ledge, and then kick him into some spikes.
Kicking enemies is fun and gory, but sort of distractingly so. As more opponents appear, I don’t so much fight them as try to kick them into spikes. Pretty soon each and every battle simply turns into an exercise where I try to maneuver my opponent into a situation in which I can kick him into some spikes, or flames, or off a cliff, or into some shoddily built support pillars that are holding up some heavy junk that will then fall on my foe. By the time the demo has ended, I honestly have no idea how to fight, I just know how to kick dudes into stuff that hurts.
I’m not saying it’s not fun. It is fun. I’m just saying.
After I kick a bunch of guys into spikes, I get six points I can spend on various attributes, like stronger attacks, better archery skills, or more magic. That’s where the RPD stuff comes in, as you can start to tailor your character. You can build him into a warrior who faces enemies head-on and kicks them into spikes, a stealthy type who sneaks up on people and kicks them into spikes, or a magic-user who, I’m just guessing here, can summon a ghostly foot and a ethereal spike from some other realm and use one to kick a person into the other.
Okay, that was the whole demo. I guess I need a scoring system. How about:
Detpack = Great! Download this demo at once!
Mirv Grenade = Good. Give it a try sometime, you know, or whatever.
Sticky Bomb = Bomb. Do not right click. Do not save as.
I give Dark Messiah Might and Magic a Detpack! You’ve gotta check out the gay dude, and kicking people into spikes is entertaining for a bit. Plus, when you have a bow and arrow, you can stick the arrowhead into a flame and then you have a flaming arrow, which you can shoot into people and they light up as if they were made out of oily rags. And then you can kick them into spikes.
The Dark Messiah Re: Might and Magic demo is downloadable through Steam and via Gamers Hell and probably other places for all I know.
15 responses so far ↓
1 Dave // Mar 20, 2008 at 10:08 pm
I can’t help but smile when I notice it says “Kick things off” when there are no comments, like your website structure has led to this.
2 Pwnzerfaust // Mar 21, 2008 at 12:17 am
That was certainly amusing. Mostly, it was because I had tried the demo before and you described it exactly how I remember it, and all I really remembered was kicking people into pointy or firey things. Great fun, really.
3 Joerdgs // Mar 21, 2008 at 2:47 am
I played through the full game. It’s pretty fun, but linear as hell.
The combat is also much more entertaining than that of Oblivion. I hope Bethesda looks at that for Elder Scrolls 5 :-)
4 drunkymonkey // Mar 21, 2008 at 3:05 am
Just a warning: it’s very heavily demanded on your PC, and some parts are really badly optimised.
This is what stopped me from completing what seemed to be an otherwise pretty cool game. When you get to kick people off ledges, decapitate them with swords, or turn them into ice blocks only to then chop said ice blocks to pieces, you know you’re onto a winner.
5 Kylroy // Mar 21, 2008 at 5:08 am
Yeah, the demo gives you a pretty good idea of how combat in the actual game works - fun, but bizarrely fixated on objects. One review referred to the game as “The Adventures of Sir Kicks-a-Lot in The Land of Conspicuously Place Spike Racks.”
6 Blaze // Mar 21, 2008 at 5:29 am
Good luck with this. I used to review Xbox 360 demos on my blog all the time and my friends laughed at me for it and nobody really seemed to care.
However, that may also be because I don’t have an audience like you do. Nobody visited my blog to begin with, you see. At least, not very often. You, though, people read your stuff. You’ll probably get tons of people begging you to keep going and to update and I’ll just be over here, making dumb youtube videos and Sonic fangames.
7 Pixi // Mar 21, 2008 at 5:56 am
Haha, that was amusing :D
I’ve played through the full game, its a hell of a lot entertaining :)
Not open gameplay like oblivion, but the combat owns it in every single way.
8 sortie // Mar 21, 2008 at 6:55 am
That was an excellent blog post! It had the gay and kicking elements that every review needs.
If I wasn’t a FPS guy, I’d rush and download that demo thingey right away.
Yet I love reading that Living in Oblivion blog, for the note, there is a new issue up. :D!
9 Pentadact // Mar 22, 2008 at 8:34 am
The best thing about Dark Messiah is that when you kick someone, the game tries to decide how cool it would be if he went flying, taking into account what’s behind him, and if it would ’so cool’ or greater, he does. Otherwise, he just stumbles a tiny bit.
I like to think it’s my character kicking extra-hard when there’s something to kick them into, spurred on by his gleeful anticipation of their sticky demise.
Amusingly stairs count. The full game starts with a nasty knight dude running up the stairs in the house you’re in. You can kick him straight back down them, or open the shutters behind you, circle round him and kick him out of them.
PS. I think you should rate out of 8 possible Stickies.
10 Encephalon // Mar 22, 2008 at 11:00 am
Re: Pentadact
Since there’s also a civilian in that room I usually kick HIM down the stairs, crushing his weak and frail spine killing him instantly and causing the knight to topple with a face-full-of-civilian… both bodies falling to the bottom of the stairs.
Then you just run down there and stab him before he gets up, it’s much more fun that way.
PS. I think the current system is better.
11 Mattias // Mar 22, 2008 at 2:23 pm
I’ve always wished for a demo that satisfies my love of kicking. I’ll try it out.
12 ApolloIV // Mar 22, 2008 at 5:42 pm
“Teh gay” he is really gay. That made my day. It also starting to feel more like home here seeing Pwn and Drunk
13 Pentadact // Mar 22, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I think we’ve established the game is worth buying for the opening scene alone. Unfortunately a lot of the rest of it involves spiders in caves and big set-piece monsters, neither of which let you do cool fighting stuff to them and both of which are really badly done. It’s one of the few games in my favourite genre (first-person action RPGs) I never bothered to complete.
The most fun I had with it actually was in the demo - there’s a hacked ini file that lets you spawn monsters with keyboard shortcuts, and give yourself full-game weapons. I’d spawn twenty, thirty knights, whip out the staff and just see how many I could take by bonking them on their metal heads. All of them, it turns out.
PS. I guess I just don’t see why Stickies translate to suck - to me they’re the best of those three weapons, both in terms of fun and just how utterly and reliably you can own people with them. Also I thought ‘bomb’ was a good thing but maybe I’m out of date with my lingo there.
14 drunkymonkey // Mar 23, 2008 at 3:24 am
The goblins are hilarious too, and ALMOST make up for the damn spiders.
15 Aaron // Apr 14, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I keep on debating whether or not I should actually buy Dank Motuba Mork and Mindy. I’m downloading the demo now for what must be the tenth damn time in the past year.
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