Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements (Xbox 360)

By adding a first-person perspective, this action game presents a new way of looking at dungeon crawlers.
3/18/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 1 of 2

As a fantasy action/adventure game with a first-person perspective, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements is just begging to be compared to The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. But as anyone who plays it will quickly realize, Elements actually has more in common with such action RPGs as Untold Legends than Bethesda's epic fantasy adventure.

Developed by France's Arkane Studios and published by Ubisoft (originally for the PC last year), this spin-off from the long-running Might and Magic role-playing series is a hack-and-slash action game. Playing as the wizard's apprentice Sareth, and assisted by the Cortana-esque Xana (if Cortana was a jealous pain in the butt), you're sent on a quest to find an ancient relic called the Skull of Shadows, which basically means you have to run around maze-like dungeons and kill tons of nondescript people and monsters while looking for a key or a switch or whatever you need to open the next door.

But while most games of this type have an aerial, third-person perspective, Elements employs a first-person one. As a result, the gameplay -- especially the combat -- feels more intimate and immediate, recalling such melee-intensive first-person games as Condemned: Criminal Origins and Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay.

Elements is more than just Untold Legends with a different viewpoint, however. Though not radically different, it does add (and, to be honest, subtract) from the formula. Besides slashing enemies with your sword, shooting them with an arrow, stabbing them with a dagger, or affecting them with a spell, you can also now kick people, which comes in very handy when they're near a cliff or spike-covered wall.

The worlds also have a number of traps you can spring, such as switches that will fry your enemies with a spurt of fire, while the realm's low construction standards ensure that there are times you can knock out a support beam or cut a load-bearing rope, dropping barrels or a chandelier on some unsuspecting enemy's head.

Elements also adds competitive multiplayer to the mix, though the modes -- Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, the objective-based Crusade and the Capture-the-Flag-esque Blitz -- aren't anything you haven't played before.

For every addition, however, there is some subtraction, making Elements feel like a simpler, albeit more action-oriented, version of a dungeon crawler. Creating a character is just a matter of deciding whether to be a Warrior, a Mage, an Assassin or an Archer, while leveling up automatically gives you a new skill instead of giving you skill points to distribute.

There is also no gold to be found, no valuables to sell, and enemies don't drop anything when they die, so there's nothing to buy or carry. Unfortunately, this means you only get better weapons or armor when you find them lying around, where the developers left them.

There is also, unlike most dungeon crawlers, some platforming. But since platforming has never worked in any other first-person game ... well, you know.

While all of this should make it apparent why Elements isn't trying to be Oblivion, there are some aspects of the game that deserve being compared. For starters, Elements has much better combat than Oblivion, since it makes you feel like you're really hacking and slashing someone, as opposed to just knocking them over.

Elements also eschews the open-world approach of Oblivion for a largely linear approach, though one that does occasionally require some backtracking. While this eliminates the need to ride a horse for 20 minutes just to get to your next objective, the lack of a map occasionally results in you getting lost or accidentally going somewhere you're not supposed to go, which can cause you to fail your mission and have to start over.