PC Gamer and Dark Messiah

Angelspit · Unread postby **Angelspit** » 04 Jan 2007, 20:32

<a href="/http://img72.imageshack.us/my.php?image ... ew2ah6.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/7333/d ... ah6.th.jpg" border="0" align=right vspace=10 hspace=10></a>PC Gamer joined the Dark Messiah bashing with a very negative review of the game and a score of 49%. The article is not available online, but socketboy sent me the scan shown on the right (click to enlarge). The author had several problems with the game:

<i>"Unpatched, it can stutter like mad and crash to the desktop, and it won't allow you to complete certain quests -- and that's if you're lucky."</i>

To my knowledge, there is one game-breaking bug, related to an itsy bitsy boss that was featured in a previous Picture of the Day, which can be prevented by patching the game to version 1.2 or by replaying a part of the chapter. I can very well understand his frustration, but I wonder why most reviewers ended up suffering from more bugs than I did, and I completed the game on a sub-par computer with only a few stuttering. Still, that's another game review that Ubisoft will want to omit in the next edition of its <a href="/http://newsemea.ubisoft.com/P/v3/Micros ... sletter</a>...

If you would like to take a look at the original page visit this link:
https://www.celestialheavens.com/1167942778

Vokial · Unread postby **Vokial** » 04 Jan 2007, 20:45

WoW, LoL man....

The game isn't that bad, I finish it without any patches

In my country the game have 5 of 6

Justice · Unread postby **Justice** » 04 Jan 2007, 21:20

To my knowledge Dm only got 6/6 - 9/10 reviews in Denmark.- But then again I don't read many Danish newspapers since I don't like to think of myself as Danish but rather Faroese...

socketboy · Unread postby **socketboy** » 04 Jan 2007, 21:24

Yeah I just picked it up the other day and played for about 3 hours with no problems what so ever. I think that the review was a little harsh and that they were probably just trying to make an example of them for releasing it with bugs.

Akul · Unread postby **Akul** » 04 Jan 2007, 21:33

PCPlay in my country gave it a not-to-much posizive review of 83% (which means that it is better then average).

arturchix · Unread postby **arturchix** » 05 Jan 2007, 04:43

Well, I agree that Dark Messiah is full of bugs, however as Angelspit already noted, only one of them is really game breaking - I for one finished an unpatched game twice without any major problems plus the two released patches fix a clear majority of them. I think part of the reviewers have chosen Dark Messiah for bashing to remind the developers that gamers won't tolerate buggy games however that raises the question - why Neverwinter Nights 2 wasn't treated equally? From what I hear, this game is even more bugged than Dark Messiah however that didn't stop Gamespot and others to praise it. It's a dirty business - probably it depends on how good the developer PR specialists work with the reviewers - you can see the result with Ubisoft.

Gothic III ended up with an average of 66% from all reviews, Dark Messiah still is at 75%.

socketboy · Unread postby **socketboy** » 05 Jan 2007, 06:14

Yeah they hit Splinter Cell double agent in the same issue saying it was ultra buggy. And at the end of the DM review you can see they said that ubisoft needs to not treat customers as beta testers. So I think there were getting a little mad about games that are released buggy

Grumpy Old Wizard · Unread postby **Grumpy Old Wizard** » 05 Jan 2007, 07:50

socketboy wrote:Yeah they hit Splinter Cell double agent in the same issue saying it was ultra buggy. And at the end of the DM review you can see they said that ubisoft needs to not treat customers as beta testers. So I think there were getting a little mad about games that are released buggy

Well, the fact of modern pc gaming is that the initial release will contain bugs. I don't think Dark Messiah is any more buggy than the rest of the games that come out. I did have difficulty initially getting it to run but after that I didn't really experience bugs.

I would also like to say that there are some very nice dungeons that other game are hard pressed to beat.

I enjoyed my playthrough as a mage and will play through again as a stealth character. To me the game is fun and well worth the money I spent.

GOW

Cleanpea · Unread postby **Cleanpea** » 05 Jan 2007, 08:57

Gamereactor (biggest gamemagazine in Scandinavia) has a good trend in their magazine:

they have a long review by one writer, giving a grade, and on those same pages there are one to three small boxes, featuring mini-reviewes (mostly whether or not they agree with the judgement of the main reviewer)with grades- from other reviewers in the magazine . The same magazine thus gives up to four opinions and four potentially different grades in one review.

By the way, both the new HMM5 got 9/10, and Dark Messiah 8/10 I think (by the main reviewer)
Edited on Fri, Jan 05 2007, 01:57 by Cleanpea

ThunderTitan · Unread postby **ThunderTitan** » 05 Jan 2007, 13:24

Most review nowadays ignore alot of the bugs because most games have 'em. This one didn't i guess.

jeff · Unread postby **jeff** » 05 Jan 2007, 14:24

I didn't buy it, but I am disappointed with the number of bad reviews, as this will probably affect sales. I do want it to succeed and hopefully lead to a true RPG MMX.

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