Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Dark Messiah (so far)

[quote name="FABIO"]Full game runs much better than the demo. Basically Thief with ramped up combat (the sword fighting even feels like Thief's) but (much) worse stealth (you get a shadow hidden gauge, but it's hard to tell where hideable shadows are and even when the gauge is almost full enemies still instantly spot you from across the room) with a ludicrous amount of Half Life 2 environmental physics traps. It's starts becoming laughable how many conveniently placed spiked racks are just lying around <b>everywhere</b> waiting for enemies to be kicked into. You'll kill the other 20% of enemies by getting them to run blindly into perpetual motion pendulums. + Really good job making you feel like you have an actual body rather than just being a typical FPS floating head. - Skill tree doesn't seem too well thought out. 12 points for health regeneration way up the tree, or 3 points for the healing spell (mana regenerates automatically) at the start of the tree. - No gravity gun fun. Telekinesis is crap. Huge mana cost and you can only pick up barrels to stun enemies (can only pick up people in "adrenaline mode", which you spend less than 1% of the game in, and you can also auto-kill dudes with your sword in that mode whereas you'll need to be near a pit or spike wall if you were to try it with telekinesis) - Wins the Mech Assault special achievement award for briefings done by a slutty chick dropping an endless barrage of embarassingly adolescent innuendo ("you know what they say about a man and the size of his gate..."). + Darth Malak is a villain who even poses for the title screen like he did in KoToR. + Melee combat is decent for a FPS (nothing great though). - Stealth portion feels extremely rushed and tacked on. - Plot was written for 13 year olds. Every hidden motive, betrayal, and foreshadowing is immediately obvious. Embarassingly adolescent slutty chick is introduced for no reason other than to provide poor comic relief and give nerds something to whack off to other than comic books. - The "partial nudity" ESRB notice only amounts to one brief crotch flash of some nasty demon chick (and probably the leather thongs all the ghouls wear). - Too much kicking (no matter what kind of character you decide to make). Get into those spikes! All in all a decent RPS on rails (most of the game is nowhere near as "open ended" as the demo) with a shallow skill tree to develop as you go. If that's enough for you then you'll enjoy it, but don't expect a fantasy version of Deus Ex because this aint it.[/quote]