You may already be familiar with Volition's Summoner, which originally debuted on the PlayStation 2 console, from the hilarious 342121Summoner Geeks movie that the developer created some months ago. But you may not be familiar with the actual game: Summoner is a 3D role-playing game that tells the story of a young man who's born into a prophecy of sorcery and betrayal. The game itself features elements of both traditional console and computer role-playing games as well as a powerful 3D graphics engine and both single- and multiplayer modes of play. Although it's fundamentally a good game, Summoner has a number of problems that often make it frustrating to play. And that's a shame, considering how promising Summoner seems, but perhaps not surprising, considering how many different things it attempts to do.

Summoner features impressive special effects and scenery.

Summoner is a fully 3D role-playing game; just about everything in the game, from its well-animated characters to each of its huge areas, is rendered in true 3D. Unfortunately, not all of Summoner's graphics are terribly detailed; certain of the game's environments use simple, repetitive textures that look washed out and blotchy at some points. In addition, many of Summoner's larger areas suffer from rather obvious draw-in that's poorly hidden by fog. But the game's powerful graphics engine also allows for some of the biggest, most colorful, and most picturesque vistas ever to appear in a 3D role-playing game. Summoner's enormous towers, throne rooms, and chapels compare favorably with the best environments in other graphically impressive role-playing games like Vampire and EverQuest. Summoner also features excellent special effects: As your characters grow more powerful and learn more magic spells, they'll be able to create blazing walls of fire and bolts of white-hot lightning. And though you may find it strange that each of the game's characters has pale, gray skin, you'll definitely appreciate your characters' fluid movements, expressive facial animation, and wide variety of weapons and armor--items that all appear on the actual character models when equipped.

The characters in Summoner are expressive and memorable.

However, even though the game's 3D graphics generally look impressive, they present a number of problems that tend to detract significantly from Summoner's gameplay. Specifically, the game's 3D camera is completely inadequate, even though it's clear that the developers tried to make the camera work well. Summoner lets you change from a behind-the-back third-person perspective to an overhead perspective, rotate the camera, and zoom in and out slightly. Unfortunately, these options just don't seem sufficient in practice. For instance, unlike the console version, which lets you freely move your character using an analog stick, Summoner only lets you move by pointing and clicking, as in Blizzard's action role-playing game, Diablo. But Summoner's restrictive top-down view doesn't let you see far enough into the distance to spot important landmarks or wandering enemies, and in the behind-the-back perspective, your characters and any nearby scenery or objects will tend to obstruct your movement so that instead of clicking to a point ahead of you, you'll often end up clicking on and selecting one of your characters instead. This becomes especially frustrating in both cramped dungeon areas and areas with varying heights. In either case, you won't be able to get a good look at your characters in action, since you won't be able to see them behind a wall or above the curve of a hill. The camera does cut away some barriers; that is, it makes them transparent as you move in front of them. But for every town building that conveniently cuts away, Summoner has a thick dungeon wall or winding cavern that doesn't. What's more, Summoner's camera isn't entirely under your control; at times, it will automatically rotate to center your characters onscreen and will occasionally rotate continuously unless you move your character. These problems can make combat needlessly frustrating. And because of these camera problems, and the general size of most of Summoner's areas, it's easy to get lost even with the in-game map--especially considering that the map itself takes up half of the screen and restricts your immediate field of vision even further.