Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £34.99
Where To Get It: Steam

Blood Bowl, the turn based strategy game set in Warhammer’s equivalent of American Football, has returned. Except it never really left, and I’m feeling very conflicted about this release. For context, this review comes from somebody who has been playing the game since Dark Elves Edition of Blood Bowl “1”. Which was the second of four editions of the same game. This, in essence, is an elephant in the room. And I can’t really avoid talking about it.

No, no, that’s the *Ogre* in the room, not the elephant! Geez!

At its core, Blood Bowl is about positioning, use of skills, and dice. Lots of dice. Dodging is a dice roll. Passing, blocking, throwing, catching… All dice. Rerolls are a thing you can buy for your team, and they’re important. Beyond that, there’s play styles that each team are suited to. Skaven, for example, play a running game: They’re only okay at passing, but they’re good at dodging away from players marking them, and they can run a long way. Orcs, by contrast, are bashy: They excel at punching things, relatively bad at passing and dodging, and are about average in terms of mobility. It’s relatively easy to learn, but mastering it takes a bit of thought and practice. Your average game takes between 1 and 2 hours, so it is somewhat time consuming.

I would like to begin by mentioning that Blood Bowl has a variety of teams, but this is only really true for Blood Bowl: Legendary Edition, and Chaos Edition. 2 is a complete reset, with a new engine, and new design decisions… And funnily enough, this is part of the problem, the elephant in the room. Blood Bowl 2 is undeniably prettier than the previous 4 editions, with meaty animations, a UI where players’ stats and skills are represented by collector’s cards, and some quality sound work. But it’s also a more limited experience than previous editions, in more areas than just the 8 teams (plus one team if you pre-ordered) compared to Chaos Edition’s 23 (More teams are coming, but as DLC.) Not helping is the fact that many of these new or changed features are implemented in odd ways.

The animations are undeniably cool… But they pad playtime.

For example, the “Campaign” is somewhat similar to Legendary Edition’s, in that it’s a combination tutorial/challenge mode, with surprise events. But it’s more limited in the sense that you are playing one team (Humans, the generalists) instead of learning core mechanics from multiple teams, and oddly implemented in that the tutorial section (Comprising at least the first two hours of play if you go there first)… Is teaching in ways that experienced Blood Bowl players would scratch their heads at. Part of a match is played before teaching about buying players (With less options than you’d have in a real game, and much worse AI), and then another match goes by (Finally showing you blocking and other important skills) before you can buy “Staff” (Apothecaries, “Fan Factor”, Cheerleaders, and, rivalling in importance to Apothecaries… Rerolls).

Meanwhile, if a new player chooses to hotseat play both sides of a Friendly match, with an experienced Blood Bowl player’s YouTube video open, they’ll get a feel for movement, passing, skills, and the like in… Probably less time than the Campaign does, and for the team they want to play.

Animations, meanwhile, are a feature that experienced players would like to selectively ignore. But the selections are… Touchdowns only, “No animations”, or All animations. So that’s a choice between “Watch running and touchdowns”, “Watch running”, and “Watch running, touchdowns, and every single block that isn’t a push, with a side order of every time you fail a dodge or attempt a pass.” The animation system also appears to have led to less customisation than previous editions of Blood Bowl, with only set colours, no armour changes beyond those gained by levelling up (and some skills/mutations), and a set of heads to choose from as your main customisation option.

It is an unofficial “rule” that you must make bad puns when naming your team and its members.

Controls and camera, similarly, will make returning players scratch their head. Previous editions had a fully movable camera with the ability to show player names, player positions, and tackle zones/movement ranges, but Blood Bowl 2… Plays it slightly differently. There are two cameras at a fixed angle, with a fixed zoom arc (Movable, though) marked “Blood Bowl 2 Camera” (Faces toward the opposite left corner of the pitch) and “Blood Bowl 1 Camera” (Faces the opposing endzone). Controls are also in “Blood Bowl 2” and “Blood Bowl 1” flavours, but the latter isn’t quite accurate, as Blood Bowl 1 allowed a player to queue movement, then passing in one go, while Blood Bowl 2… Doesn’t. The difference appears to be “Right click for movement in Blood Bowl 1 Controls”… And that’s it. Passing, as opposed to BB1, is a case of moving, waiting until the move animation is done, then passing.

Some features, also, appear to be missing or imperfectly implemented. Jim Johnson and Bob Bifford, the two commentators, have been placed firmly in both the menu and the Campaign, but their expressions in Campaign mode… Don’t follow nearly the same range as their voice does, and their subtitles have this tendency not to match what they’re actually saying (Sometimes drastically, as in the case of the Halfling Joke. Two bad jokes for the price of one if you have subtitles on, I guess?) You can buy cheerleaders for your team, but will be faced with human cheerleaders every time. Buying rerolls before a team basically involves specifically turning down buying players, then going through the tabs and buying what you want, in the order that you want. And there is an achievement that involves deliberately inflating your Team Value (A dangerous proposition in a League) by having 500K in your bank (A new rule was introduced that means all earnings in your account over 150K count toward your Team Value, you see.)

Generally your first action in a Blood Bowl match is to hit someone.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t some new and interesting features. Upgrading your stadium. Coach levels. Sponsors. Aging. And, of course, the newly implemented team, the Bretonnians, whose Blitzers do most of the work, whose Linemen are, as with most Linemen, fodder that you might care about if they levelled up, and whose Blockers are interesting in that their starting skill (Wrestle) means you have to make a deliberate choice of ignoring Wrestle, and thus having a slightly weaker “Blocker” than similarly levelled Blockers of other teams, or making a nonstandard build and ignoring the majority of the Strength skill tree (Which is normally a good thing for Blockers, but the majority of Strength skills don’t synergise well with Wrestle). The preview of what your action will likely do is also nice.

Normally, I’d say this was an interesting game with some odd design decisions and implementations. But the elephant in the room, that all important context that there are four previous games, at least two of which have more teams (Legendary/Chaos Edition), at least one of which has a better tutorial/challenge campaign for its Single Player in terms of teaching and team variety (Legendary Edition), and at least one edition has both a devoted playerbase and a cheaper price tag (Chaos Edition, at £20) means that… I’m not entirely sure I can recommend Blood Bowl 2 at the present time. Which is incredibly awkward for me, as, while I want Blood Bowl to continue selling, the increased shininess… Really doesn’t disguise some awkward design decisions that make it, in its own way, just as clunky as the previous 4 games in the series.

The Mad Welshman coaches many teams, in many universes. He’s going back to the one where he can play the Legendary Khemri Passing Game now. He feels oddly sad that this is so.

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This is a reprint of an article originally published on the older version of Da Game-Boyz. It has not been edited, including the original editorial mistake, as a complement to this article. The game scored a 7.5 overall, with 7 in half the categories, 8 in the other half.

What the hell have I gotten myself into? First I got involved with some rebellion, and that led me to the headsman’s block, and then there was a dragon, and weird voices, and… now, I’m wandering through a dungeon killing some people called the Silver Hand because I didn’t realise my fellow warriors were actually werewolves! Heeeelp!

Okay, so that last bit may seem like a spoiler, but it really isn’t. See, everything except the werewolves happened in my first hour of main plot play, and that last bit? I’m not telling you. Skyrim, to those who don’t know (for shame!) is the latest in the Elder Scrolls series of RPGs, games with lore so deep, and so thick on the ground, that not even a +15 chainsaw could get through it all. The basic idea of this installment is that… well, after centuries of being who-knows-where (maybe having a good sleep?), dragons have come back to the land of Tamriel, and you, through the usual Elder Scrolls mcguffin of the prophecy, are the fated one. Don’t let the corniness fool you, Bethesda are good at their job of storytelling, and I’ve seen them pull off cornier premises. In the same series.

Visuals

For those looking for an improvement from the last game graphically, there is… and there isn’t. See, the creatures and characters are even more beautiful to look at, although the character engine doesn’t seem to allow true obesity (if it did, my chargen abominations would have been so much more evil). So yeah, the characters look great, most of the creatures look great. Know what doesn’t look great? Watching trees suddenly pop into clarity in the distance as I run forward. On High settings. Seeing the base ground texture if I look at it in just the right way. But in dungeons, and when exploring ruins, my two favourite activities, it’s just fine, and the architecture, as always, is pretty damn stunning. Sure, the cities aren’t always great, but when you see a barrows with huge stone ribs poking out of the ground? You know you’re in high fantasy country, and the immersion skyrockets.

Sound

If you’ve heard the soundtracks of Morrowind and Oblivion, you have at least some idea as to the music. The sort of music you’d hear while Aahnold and James Earl Jones have a good staring match, or when Aragorn is kicking righteous buttock. It fits with the theme, is stirring when it wants to be (in combat), and, while it’s nothing new under the sun, it’s still pretty cool. The Bethesda Curse, as it was known in gaming circles, is also much less evident here. No more does it sound like there’s maybe 5 voice actors phoning it in. It’s definitely quite a few of them, and only one or two characters sound like their lines are being read in a classroom. Combat sounds, similarly, are slightly improved, although it’s sorta hard to improve on “BASH, CLANG, THUMP, Urrrrggh!”. They still pull it off, and even manage to make arrows swoosh past. The one thing I personally found special however? The dragons. They’re obviously the focus of the action, and… wow. Every wingbeat sounds visceral, and the sound of dragonfire is audio-coded for “This will roast you. Hard.” Even the other creatures occasionally sound cool, like a wolf howl on the plains at night. How many are there? Daaaamn, can’t tell! And that, again, adds to the immersion.

Gameplay

One thing you ought to know, if you’re new to Elder Scrolls games, is that they’re always pretty big, world wise. Not always full of content, but big. At the time of writing this paragraph, I’m 4 hours in, and, while I’ve completed something like 11 quests across 8 or 9 locations (and explored another 4 or 5 on top of that), I have only finished two, maybe three story missions out of god knows how many. Including the mandatory tutorial quest. One thing that old Elder Scrolls players will either take or leave, and experienced CRPG players may be a bit concerned about, is that some quests are not “take the quest and finish it when you can be bothered.” They have to be done, as far as I can tell, immediately after taking them. On the one hand, this means people going for the main quest will be rushing into situations they can’t control, and possibly moving further along than they feel comfortable with, but, on the other, it does keep that vital immersion factor going. Good example: Killing your first dragon. The military aren’t going to wait for you, and so, going seems pretty important. Even if it turns out I’m wrong, and it isn’t mandatory to follow them, it certainly puts some virtual pressure on. But, as my play time increased, I saw the cracks…

Skyrim is the first Elder Scrolls game to be designed for console accessibility, and, in places, it shows. Is this a bad thing? It’s not bad, it’s not good, it’s just different. For example, while the mouse controls for inventory and conversation choices are finicky (and downright annoying in the character creator, due to small sliders), using the keyboard is actually much simpler, and the interface itself has become a lot more user-friendly, with nearly everything do-able with just the direction keys, mouse buttons, E and Q keys. The obviously regenerating health (not ultra-speedy, we’re talking obvious to an RPG player here) feels sort of odd, but considering factors I’ll get to in a bit, it’s nonetheless welcome. What isn’t so welcome is the lack of HUD tips for things previous games told you, like the fact that you have a disease. Check your active effects semi-regularly people, because the messages are easy to miss, and I almost became a vampire, thanks to not realising I was about to catch it. Dual wielding finally came to the Elder Scrolls with Skyrim as well, and good god, it feels good… although instakills for both you and your opponent when low on stamina is a mixed blessing.

There’s too much to talk about in one sitting, so, with these examples in mind, I’m going to say that, where Skyrim gives with one hand, it takes away with the other. Argonians, for example, finally have some semi-regular use for that Water Breathing fix they had back in Oblivion, yet melee characters will quickly find themselves in large amounts of the brown stuff if they don’t also take mage and rogue skills. This isn’t much of a problem, because characters in the Elder Scrolls can learn anything they want, but pure melee characters are definitely a tougher proposition than in previous games.

One thing that I will finish on is the difficulty. To say the difficulty in this game is erratic is like saying ghost chillis are “slightly warm”. One second, you can be happily slaying skeletons in single hits, and the next, a Master Vampire might lay the smackdown. Or you could be walking merrily along, slaying some bandits as you go, and… you hear the dreaded wing-flaps of a dragon, the screech that lets you know it’s seen you, and… you might as well savescum there and then until you’ve got some decent cutlery. It’s also quite glitchy, crashing while screenshotting, screwing up the Steam overlay on PC, and, in one instance, hurling me 200 feet up from a giant’s smackdown, only to crash as I tried to screenshot the awesome. And then refusing to catapult me when I reloaded the game and died again to try and bring you some awesome-sauce.

Conclusion

Skyrim is good, but it’s a flawed good. It’s a different experience in many ways to previous Elder Scrolls games, but, at the same time, it’s still the familiar world Elder Scrolls fans know and love. It has the usual kickass story, but the difficulty curve is a bit wobbly, to say the least, and, in general, it’s a story of give and take. I’d still give this my thumbs up, but only to RPG fans, as opposed to newbies to the genre. You want a “my first RPG” to ease you in, this isn’t it. You want an entertaining, but sometimes frustrating experience? Go for it, empty your wallets, and don’t be like the douches who torrented this game with no intention of buying.

EDIT: The review was written after 33+ hours, the specific paragraph was written 4 hours in. Apologies for the confusion.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £6.99 (Episode 1), £23.99 (Season Pass)
Where To Get It: Steam

It’s a sad fact of life that we grow old, and we die. It’s unavoidable, really. But there’s something my father said once, and it’s stuck with me ever since he did: The Norse believed that so long as stories of a person survive, they aren’t truly dead. Their stories still affect us. And, in a sense, this appears to be the theme of the new King’s Quest, lauded as a prequel, but… Just as much a continuation of a long running series.

The facial design and animation is something to behold, very fitting to the story it wants to tell.

So, a little background, because King’s Quest, despite the lack of number after its name, is most definitely a continuation of a franchise thought long dead: Way back in the late 80s to the early 2000s, there was a company called Sierra. And one of its first products of note was King’s Quest. It wasn’t a pretty game, although it was considered so at the time. It was an arbitrary game, mocking you for deaths that weren’t always your fault (That bridge… That fucking bridge), and some of its puzzles were poorly communicated (Nikstlitselpmur in particular). But somehow, it caught people’s imaginations, and the Land of Daventry was known and beloved to many, with the exploits of the royal family (King Graham, Queen Valanice, and the Prince and Princess, Alexander and Rosella) being followed by many an adventure game fan. Of course, it wasn’t to last, and with the 6^th installment, and the death of Sierra, the title lapsed into obscurity.

Fast forward to the 28^th of July, this year, when Activision, having already resurrected Sierra as its Independent publishing brand, and asking The Odd Gentlemen (Creators of ) to make a new installment using the Unreal Engine, released the first episode of a planned 5… A new beginning.

Reactions, so far, appear to have been mixed. So let me put my own two cents in. I don’t mind the controls, they’re pretty simple, and I have yet to find any problems with controlling Graham (Past Graham, that is, as told by of the Magic Mirror of Daventry, and Grandpa Graham, the much aged ex-King.) What I was less enthused by was that, of all the design elements of the original series, The Odd Gentlemen decided to keep the arbitrary deaths (Albeit to a lesser extent), but not the comedic messages. Either that, or they’re not so good at comedic death messages. The second “puzzle” (For the beginning’s environment puzzles are not terribly complex) involves two wheels, one of which leads to certain death, one of which leads to progress. They even tell you as much. However, when going for the obviously wrong one (Although the death was not precisely what I expected), I got… The equivalent of the Prince of Persia’s “No, wait… I got that wrong, let me start again.” It was quick to get back to the scene in question, and indeed, the checkpoints throughout the first segment were fair, but… It felt like trying for a homage, and missing the mark.

References to the game this is effectively rebooting abound, but they don’t outstay their welcome.

Still, it grew on me. The first section, while somewhat arbitrary, wasn’t incredibly hard to master (in fact, I quit after I’d finished, to check how long it took me. Half an hour, including one and a half cutscenes afterward), and ended on an interesting choice. The voice acting definitely drew me in (Chris Lloyd playing Elderly Graham quite well, and other talent including Josh Keaton, Michael Gough, and Wallace Shawn… Who we shall mention again in a minute or two) and the game is undeniably pretty visually, with the music and sound hitting the right notes too. Buuuuut…

There’s not really a polite way of saying this… Yes, Odd Gentlemen, we loved Princess Bride too. I have yet to meet someone who doesn’t (Although I’ve met people who hadn’t watched it). Wallace Shawn was pretty memorable in it. But if I wanted to see Vizzini get outwitted in a prisoner’s dilemma puzzle that’s rigged, I’d watch Princess Bride. Or I’d watch something Wallace Shawn has done that isn’t just Vizzini, because the man’s done other damn good work. You’ve clearly got chops for writing some heartwarming fantasy coming of age stuff, I can tell that from the very first scene where Gwendolyn talks to her cousin. In fact, I quite like Gwendolyn. I didn’t at first, precisely because she was filling the same role as Fred Savage did in Princess Bride (And similarly wasn’t too fond of Elderly Graham until he started showing more character than “I am reliving my glory days” and… Filling the same role as Peter Falk did in… Do I need to say it?)

Whisper’s voice actor, along with the rest of the cast, manage to make the stereotypical and archetypal… Believable. “But most of all… Whisper… Love Whisper!” <3
…Me too, buddy.

So there’s an annoyance ranted out. But this episode of the game definitely doesn’t deserve a panning, because it definitely does have highs. Gwendolyn is a strong character. She’s intelligent, as bloodthirsty as I’d expect a small child to be. The characters shine, even the ones that seem somewhat stereotypical (Acorn is the Big Guy with a heart of gold, for example), the voice acting is top notch, and the puzzles often have multiple solutions (I’ve mostly gone for the friendship option in playthroughs so far). The game, as you can see, is quite pretty, and the writing has been interesting. Most of my complaints outside of the Vizzini “homage” are niggles, and I’ve not been stuck on a single puzzle element for more than about five minutes.

For the price, King’s Quest, Episode 1 will, like Graham’s puns, grow on you if you like adventure games, especially games like Life is Strange or The Wolf Among Us, which concentrate more on an engaging story than “Use cat hair with glue with [list].” If you’re not terribly fond of exploring an area, or don’t like arcade segments and quick time events in your adventure games, I’m sad to say you’ll find this a bother. Give it a go if you think you can get around it, otherwise avoid.

The Mad Welshman has befriended many a creature in his lifetime. Some of them he regretted. But most of them still come for tea and biscuits. Like Steve and Susan.

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The Eye of the Beholder Trilogy is a microcosm of the problems of the games industry, even today. Despite this, they’re still pretty much lauded among RPG players, with the exception of the third game, which has widely been panned, for reasons we’ll go into. So let’s go back, to the early to mid 90s, to see exactly why these games are both good… And why I said that first sentence.

D’aww, isn’t that Kobold adora- AHH KILLITKILLITKILLIT!

Eye of the Beholder was developed by Westwood games, who you may remember for the Command & Conquer series, and, if you’re old or savvy enough, the Lands of Lore and Kyrandia games. It was published by SSI (Who had a license from TSR to make Dungeons and Dragons games) in 1991, and, for the time, it was pretty good. In essence, it was a simple dungeon crawl beneath the city of Waterdeep, which had a big problem: An unknown threat (That totally isn’t a Beholder, folks!) wanting to conquer the city from beneath. As you travelled, first through sewers, then through ancient dwarven tunnels (Recently recolonised by some of said dwarves), and through ever weirder locales until you reached the Xanathar, head of the monstrous guild of the same name, and slew him. Along the way, you had hints of a larger plot that, for the most part, went unanswered. What was up with the dark elves (Drow) under the city, and their fight with the dwarves? Were they connected? What were these portals, and how did they come into the whole picture? Why did Waterdeep’s Sewers have a prison system, of all things inside it?

Meet one of the tenants of the “Correction Facility”. Next stop, the Death Room!

Part of this would have been the 90s “Rule of Cool” design (Where style over substance was the key), but just as importantly, the game was rushed. How do we know it was rushed? Because we can see cut content, if we look hard enough. And, since games were somewhat simpler back then, and state or save hacking was easier, it was completely possible to see hints of cut content, just by exploring empty space. For example, there is a stairway, from the lowest level to the highest. You can never walk to it without a trainer, and there is one final portal, with no missing slots for you to put one of the many portal keys you get in the game into. The official guidebook doesn’t even have them on the map. There’s other, smaller signs (Such as one of the surefire ways to kill Xanathar being hidden behind a “Secret Quest” that it’s kind of hard not to run into, or the somewhat abrupt ending, partly fixed in the Amiga and Sega CD versions of the game), but even reviewers of the time noticed it was incomplete.

Still, for the time, it was a pretty good game with a difficulty curve that nonetheless spiked rather hard toward the end, with some good enemy visuals, real time combat (Which was a slightly awkward fit with the spellcasting system… Right click on the spellbook/holy symbol and… Oh, shit, whole party paralyze from the Mind Flayer) and, despite the incomplete feeling, a surprisingly good story for RPGs of the time. I say this, in spite of the seemingly nonsensical placement of monsters (Kobolds on level 1, followed swiftly by undead, then Gnolls and Kuo-Toa, Spiders and Dwarves… ), because it was aimed at AD&D fans, and it was set in one of the more well known settings of the time: Forgotten Realms. Specifically, the City of Waterdeep, and the dungeon the city was built upon, Undermountain.

That Mind Flayer fires invisible all-party paralyzes, to represent his psychic powers. He has brothers.

That’s right, in a true blue example of Fantasy Characters Are Not The Smartest, they built a capital city on top of a massive, active dungeon. Several years before Recettear and other games lampshaded this rather distressing tendency.  A shining example of Civic Planning in Fantasy Worlds, people!

Playing through it, at first, is a delight. It’s a simple setup: We’re sent to investigate the threat beneath Waterdeep (One of, it must be stressed, a multitude), and along the way, we find shining gems that defy explanation. The Sewer system has a small, forgotten prison complex inside it (With an execution chamber, hence the undead), and evidence of some pretty nifty, if badly applied fantasy technology (The Rapid Access Transport System… Teleporters for sewer workers. A pressure plate based flow management system). Later on, there’s a small, failing dwarven kingdom, besieged on all sides, but unable to ask the Lords of Waterdeep for assistance (And, as it turns out, hold a key to defeating the Xanathar.) Both the known henchmen of the Xanathar are treacherous (Shindia, and a threatening mage who sadly remains unnamed) , aaaand… While it’s absorbing, it’s bittersweet to look back and know that precisely none of those mysteries (Shindia led a group of Dark Elves planning to attack the surface. What became of that? What was with that “Museum” full of monsters in stasis? Had we upset the delicate balance of power in Undermountain?) are explained.

Outdoors! Finall- Eeee, wolves! Crap!

For the second game was to take place somewhere entirely different. Now, one thing about the Eye of the Beholder series (And many other RPG franchises of the time, such as The Bard’s Tale, Wizardry, Might and Magic, and a few other games, such as Breach and the rest of OmniTrend’s “Interlocking Games System” series) is that the characters can be preserved between games, and Eye of the Beholder 2… Depended on that. EoB 1 was an incomplete game (Albeit a fully working one). Eye of the Beholder 2 suffered from a second common problem in game design: Difficulty Balancing Issues.

Eye of the Beholder 2, very early on, pitches you into a cramped room with sixteen skeleton warriors. It has an entire set of levels where you can’t heal, or regain spells. It’s a tough game to finish. But it’s still lauded as the best of the trilogy. Why is that? Well, partly rose coloured glasses, but it has to be admitted that Westwood stepped up their game on every front except balancing. More spells. More moments where your characters’ alignment/class actually means something (For example, if you try to dig up some graves you find in the first area, your Paladin will tell you it’s wrong… And then just straight up leaves if you push. No, I’m not going to tell you if it’s worth losing them.) Better music, and somewhat better visuals. The main villain is still a stereotypically evil cackling… Er… Skeleton Dragon (Dran Daggoran, or A Grand Dragon… sigh) with stereotypical, cacklingly evil plans (Build up a fake church in a world where atheism is a bad choice, gain an army of undead goons, rampage for a bit… ??? … Profit?) but the writing, overall, is better. Here, let me take an example from the beginning.

See! She’s so harmless… Like… That other lady, from Lands of Lo- Oh. OH…

There’s a nice old lady you meet in the woods who can guide you straight to the Temple of Darkmoon (Where your quest lies), avoiding encounters along the way… But, in a fit of Adventurer’s Paranoia, you strike her down. On her body is a single note. No, she’s not a mimic, or a spy… She’s a terrified old lady whose family is being held hostage. Well, now you know the temple is shady… But at what cost?

The Temple of Darkmoon, in a shift from the first game, is pretty self contained. Everything is to do with the quest, and there are no unexplained details that I’m aware of, and this actually adds to both the quality of writing… And the feel of isolation. You are definitely up against it, but alas, the difficulty really does spike in this game. Fought Xanathar last time without the oh-so-secret item? Had a hard time? How about multiple Beholders? Or timed puzzles? The ending, once it comes, feels less of a reward, being almost as perfunctory as the last game. Well done, said Khelben Blackstaff, High Wizard of Waterdeep. You stopped the evil plans, go rest for a bit in a pub, that’s what you adventurers do, isn’t it?

Sod you, Blackstaff. You and the rest of Waterdeep.

Yes, and you’re a 20/20/20 Wizard/Fighter/Plot Device , maybe, just this once, you can sort it out?

So we come now to the third game. The one that, of the trilogy, is widely considered both the worst, and part of the reason the “Legends” series didn’t continue. And it arose because of a third common problem in the games industry: Creative Differences. Now, that label covers a multitude of possible reasons for cutting ties with a studio, not all of which are actually to do with the creative direction intended, but, for whatever reason (I refuse to speculate, although I’m quite happy to be told), Westwood and SSI parted ways, with the in-house team creating Eye of the Beholder 3.

Visually, it was much better. The music was good, the cutscenes were good. But other things were… Not so good. No, let’s not mince words here. Other things were abysmal. Once again, you could import characters, and that was all well and good. But I hope somebody kept an axe, because without one, you’re going to be wailing and gnashing your teeth… In the very first area. At least until you firstly find an axe, and secondly, realise that large portions of the first area (A forest) can be cut away to reveal treasures, more encounters, and a dungeon. The game was relatively nonlinear, but the encounters felt weaker (With a few surprise exceptions, such as the Feyr… A mostly invisible monster. Thanks, folks, for reminding me to always have See Invisibility on… Or, y’know, flail in that general direction until it died), and the story.

The story also felt weaker. Especially since you could see the plot beats before they happened. From the top…

Yep, this isn’t in any way going to lead to resurrected evil gods, no sirree! That’s a trustworthy face!

…A totally not suspicious guy asks you to go to a lil’ place called Myth Drannor (Known among FR fans as a place where Ancient Magic and Things Not Meant To Be Woken Up reside) to kill a demilich (Known to be mostly good), which is guarding something Not-Suspicious Guy’s boss claims is endangering things.

At least one god (Lathander, the Morning Lord) has to help you clean up a mess that you, the player, knows is coming. Hell, the characters, being longstanding adventuring types, should know this is a bad idea. But no, you wake up an Ancient Evil, have to put it back in the box, and…

…Really, as in Wargames, the only winning move is not to play. The cutscenes are pretty, it’s true. But they’re the story of four to six folks doing something they should have known better than to do in the first place, then cleaning it up with divine assistance. The characters, rather than tied up in a cohesive plot, are split among the history of Myth Drannor, and… Don’t really have much to say, beyond what you already know (This Is A Bad Idea). All the extra nice bits, the new monsters, the pretty outdoors areas… They don’t compensate for this core fact. The difficulty curve, if anything, swung the other way to EoB 2… And the critical reception was, as I’ll get to in a moment, deafeningly negative.

Looks meaty… Not actually all that bad.

Good writing won’t always save a game. But bad writing, and frustrating design decisions can definitely help kill it. Reviewers at the time disagreed with my note on the visuals and audio, and, if anything, were more disappointed than I am, looking back after some years. It was seen as a Cash-Grab (ding), a disappointing end to a series, and it was unequivocally seen as an end. They were perfectly correct. Apart from the remakes of the first two games, the Eye of the Beholder series was dead, dead, dead.

Now, for all my talk of the games showing that problems have existed in the games industry for some time, and are by no means new, does that mean they’re bad games? Funnily enough, no. Just as some games have their flaws, but are still enjoyable (And indeed, enjoyed) by many, the Eye of the Beholder trilogy is enjoyable. You can even try them yourselves, thanks to the wonderful folks at Good Old Games. They even come with the official cluebooks and manuals of the time, which are themselves worth commenting on, because they’re good examples of such things done pretty well. I have fond memories of the first two games, and, when I feel I’m confident enough to tackle them, will definitely try to Let’s Play the trilogy, warts and all.

But I wonder how things could have turned out differently, sometimes.

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Source: Cashmoneys
Price: £10.99 normal, £14.99 incl. Soundtrack, £5.59 separate soundtrack.
Where To Get It: Steam

Guild of Dungeoneering is, in essence, a game about how impressionable and petty adventurers are. There’s more to it than that, obviously, but at its core, it’s about how a shiny thing, or an easy kill, is one of the easiest ways to lead an adventurer in a dungeon by the nose. In fact, the game counts on it. Because while there’s some things you can directly control about the illustrious (?) members of the Guild of Dungeoneering, where they go isn’t one of them.

When you get going, you really get going, and reveal new dungeons to loot as you go!

Now, it’s not often I comment on the visuals of a game, but Guild of Dungeoneering hits a sweet spot with me, because the look of the game is a better version of how I used to try and draw my dungeon maps, back when I was a younger, harder working Dungeon Master. It’s charming, and a lot of effort has gone into making a seemingly simple looking game… Look good. Not in the “It is shiny, and has lots of pixels” sense, but in the sense that it fits the theme really well. It’s a small thing, but it counts for a lot, hearing the scribbles, and watching the map tile being etched into the graph paper that is the world of GoD. In fact, the feel of the game is amazing, and the music… Has to be listened to to be believed. On that, I will only say two things: The game is filled with Ye Olde Bardic Limericks like in the trailer for the game, and they are all pretty awesome, making the soundtrack (£4 or £5.59, depending on whether you buy the Deluxe edition, or buy the OST separately) well worth the purchase.

As far as gameplay goes, it’s again, fairly simple, but meaningful. Adventurers like, in this order, unguarded loot, a monster that will gain them sweet, sweet XPs, aaaand… That’s about it, actually, but the value of the loot is always a factor. Combat and loot, however, requires a bit more thought, because the adventurer will take the shortest path to what they want (Which can definitely be a bad thing) and the classes you choose have a bearing. Will you enter a dungeon with an Apprentice, who starts with no physical defences, but powerful magic? Or maybe a Bruiser, the thug whose spikey demeanour (or armour, it’s not certain which) is so cutting that blocking all damage means you hurt the enemy? And once you’re there, will you go for magical kit, or physical? More blocking, more damage, more healing? Simple choices, but they add up to make a challenging experience. Even putting down more map tiles may open up pathing options for your poor, dumb adventurers that you really, really didn’t want them to pick right now.

The more loot you get, the more powerful you are! Simples!

So, for all that I’m talking up the game, is there anything I would complain about? Yes, but it’s niggles. There is always the possibility of a fail from turn 1 (For example, the only dungeon tile card you have bridges you straight to higher level wandering monsters), but death of an adventurer… Has no consequence I can see, so feel free to abandon quest if you see that. Animations play at a set speed, and while I’m fine with it, preferring the tension, the option of speeding it up could be put in for the less patient (A concession toward this has been added to the game with the ability to turn icon animations off). It’s also slightly unclear when a guild expansion is going to close off building directions, so a little extra mention there would be great. But, as I mentioned, these are niggles. The difficulty curve seems just fine, as you get a feel for a dungeon and its challenges after only one or two plays, and the game is mostly pretty intuitive. In short, it’s the best idealisation of Monty Haul dungeons I’ve ever seen.

Want to spend around £11-£16 on something with charm, wit, and simple play that’s easy to learn, but hard to master? Guild of Dungeoneering is a turn based strategy game for you. But if you’re the kind of person who groans whenever you have to wait for a movement, or attack, or animation to finish because you want to play quicker, it might be a better idea to wait, see if animation speed options get patched in. Overall though, I think you can tell that I’m enjoying this a hell of a lot. Now, to send a Mime into a Boss Dungeon… Muahahahahahaaa…

And, of course, the more you earn, the bigger and more powerful your guild gets!

The Mad Welshman was put in charge of The Guild of Dungeoneering, and within a week, the hero population dropped drastically. There is no correlation between these two events, honest.

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