Dark Messiah has its strengths and weaknesses and it all boils down to an average game but it's not for everyone!
It was not particularly expensive; around £10.
First of all, the graphics did not appear to be that of the standard shown on the back of the game case.
You would require a high-definiton television to really bring out the pure, fleshed out textures.
Despite not having an HD tv, the environments do look rather spectacular but nothing new to the 360.
For those unfamiliar with the 'Might & Magic' series, it is a series of first-person fantasy-adventure games, not to be confused with the 'Heroes of Might & Magic' series. The games of which are turn based strategy games.
In the game, after picking a character class (eg: archer, warrior, etc) you start off in a wild location by a great waterfall and a large cliff.
In this point of the game the controls are introduced to you and you are given several easy objectives which will get you used to the gameplay.
You will continue your journey by entering this dark, creepy temple.
In there you get to practise combat which is, while quite pleasing at first, quite simplistic. By simplistic, I mean there isn't much variety in what you are doing and if you get bored of it earlier on...chances are that you are going to be bored for the rest of the game because simply, this game is combat-based and you will kill pretty much the same few kinds of enemies over and over throughout it!
This issue is resolved by the choice of different classes, so if you want to avoid hacking zombies and black guards with a sword over and over, you could choose to be a mage and cast spells on your foes or choose to be an archer and attack them from a long distance or choose to be an assassin to stealthily get behind them and cut their throats!
Surprisingly, gameplay offers quite a bit of variety.
Apart from combat there's also interaction with objects lying around and NPCs and also action; in one particular chapter/quest you are sent onto some rooftops to chase down some strange creature.
You get to jump from building to buildng, climb across boards/planks, climb up chains and ropes, climb into houses, etc.
You are often given other quests such as killing a giant spider (to do so, you must switch on some levers which activate a fire trap), kicking a man off the edge of a cliff, attacking a cyclops with a ballista in a stronghold and even searching for particular people.
It does offer a bit more than you would expect from this genre of game but the problem is that it's just not all that fun. It could have been produced in a far more enjoyable manner.
As I've already pointed out, the environments look great. There is huge differences in each locations, scenery-wise and atmosphere-wise.
In fact, scenery is well adapted to it's location.
I noticed one or two bugs. They were nothing particularly bad but I did notice a few irritating but minor issues in this game and these were:
Npcs have a set trail to walk and they will NOT compromise. You could be standing right in front of them and while on most games they would avoid or walk around you...not on this game. Instead, they will keep walking into you until the screen shudders so much that you have to move out the way!
Another annoying thing was when you interact with a character, sometimes the game will skip a few frames or just react a little late. One example is when I kicked a guard who was standing by an open window. His reaction was a jolty disappearance from the inside to the outside with no noticable transition (but that was before he very pleasingly plumetted towards to the low ground to a very painful death). This brings me to say that there are actually some very nice mechanics in this game but they are spoiled by a few little processing issues.
There is nothing much I can say about the music of this game. When there is any music at all it's un-memorable and unwelcomed because of its ill-fitting timing.
Sound effects aren't particularly great either. Some sound effects work well, such as the clumpy sounding effect which arises when you slice your weapon into a wooden object but your foes speech is all too predictable and gets too repetetive when you hear the same few lines over and over which have no doubt all been done by the same voice actor.
Sound is definately not the prize winner here.
The controls are a little awkward because usually you would a more in-reach button to jump but in this you are made to use Y which proves to be difficult at times.
B opens up the inventory/backpack screen which is not too bad but at first you may open that screen up by accident quite frequently.
The rest of the controls are quite predictable and are really not much of a problem.
On the whole, this game certainly isn't going to be anyone's favourite but it's an average game with a bit of variety in it's gameplay, it plays a bit like oblivion and has it's fun moments.
I would say rent it first because it's clearly not a game everyone can enjoy.
My total score for it is 6.6/10 which I rounded down to 6.5 due to Gamespots rating limitations.
Thank you for reading my review. Please check out my others.