Two Worlds (Xbox 360)

Borrows a page from Bethesda Softworks' best-selling open-world RPG Oblivion, but fails to rewrite the book...
1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

Blame Bethesda Softwork's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion for Two Worlds' failings -- the chart-topping success of the former 3-D free-roaming role-player opened the floodgates for a sea of new, equally ambitious titles to invade American shores.

The only problem -- as evidenced by this far-reaching but ultimately too-familiar take on fantasy adventuring, to produce a game with that much polish requires several magic ingredients. Specifically, you need a generous budget, obsessive attention to detail and sweeping imagination -- three areas where Reality Pump's latest is sorely lacking.

That isn't to say that the saga is a complete and utter mess. Rather, it's just a would-be epic tale turned tedious genre clich&eacure;. The obvious culprit here is the clearly understaffed/-funded outing's sheer enormity of scope and content, which inherently precluded the degree of craftsmanship fans expect after the benchmark-setting Oblivion.

Accordingly, lack of empathy becomes just the first of many quibbles you'll deal with here, thanks to the title's star, a nameless swordsman on a quest to rescue his sister. And how's this for a big surprise -- it's soon revealed her abduction merely foreshadows a greater conflict pitting orcs against mankind's forces, with the potential resurrection of an evil god and the fate of the world hanging in the balance. (Yawn.)

If you've heard this one 10,000 times before, and told with much better voice-overs and lesser old English verbiage, be prepared for apathy to set in early -- even more so, given the developer's equal lack of enthusiasm for polishing the surrounding world.

Despite the sheer enormity of the virtual realm in which you'll play, technical glitches are just the beginning, with scenery that suddenly appears out of nowhere, bug-filled animations and hit-detection issues being commonplace concerns here. Plummeting frame rates, most often encountered during action-intensive scenes, combined with long disc load times, compound one's woes. Frankly, the immense size of featured realms and non-linear nature of the tale notwithstanding (admittedly, this is one huge-ass odyssey) such gaffes only underscore the title's less than A-level production values.

Free-form setup aside, you'll all too frequently find yourself engaged in mandatory level grind. Boosting the main character's stats (lack of featured hero classes aside, such enhancements clearly push you towards traditional roles like warrior or wizard) proves only semi-engaging, as well. Thankfully, the simple process of killing to obtain more powerful loot remains entertaining as ever; there's also a catchy card-boosted magic system available, as well as an alchemy creation model that lets you combine plants, herbs, crystals and other collectibles. This latter feature lets you cook up potions and other power-boosting brews, whether in the form of attribute-enhancing tonics or recipes that grant weapons magical powers -- a nice added touch.

Still, there's only so much wolf-, skeleton- and dragon-bashing you can do before the whole formula becomes tiresome. The pressing need to take on optional assignments to gain enough power to tackle story-driven missions slows the title's pace somewhat, too (though, happily, it is possible to use teleportation points and mounts to speed up underlying travel times throughout). A clunky menu system that makes you repeatedly scroll through your inventory, and a world map that renders active points of interest hard to spot further take the excitement down a notch. The repetitious melees packed with either daft enemies who let you aimlessly beat on them, or difficult foes that make you constantly dodge and dance around attacks don't help, either.