Dungeon Siege II Demo - Sucks Too Much?
You ever have high hopes for a games? You ever love an original and hate the sequel?
I was a big Diablo fan. It was brilliant and ahead of it's time. I tried the original Dungeon Siege and it was brilliant. Loved it. Still do. It prepared me for Guild Wars, which is absolutely stunning in its execution. Do try it. It's small, quick to load, well behaved, and always changing.
Of course, I was looking forward to Dungeon Siege II. Better graphics, same great gameplay, right? Wrong. Guild Wars has ruined it for me. (Or DSII has ruin things for itself)
After downloading an absolutely ridiculous 1,501,551,616 byte demo executable, suffering through at least 10 minutes of rendered intro video, I was faced with an obtuse and counter intuitive interface. Lousy panning, lousy zoomin, marginally improved graphics, no sense of range, expanse or draw depth, a greatly decreased focal length, a strange halo now that indicates selected characters, a cartoonish look, and poor voice acting.
Suddenly Dungeon Siege III is trying to be World of Warcraft-y, but it's not. It tries to be Guild Wars, but it's not. It's somehow a game looking for a reason to exist. I'm just heartsick about it. It's completely lacking in vision. Anyone else try it?
I'll stick with Guild Wars, but I'm still totally bummed.
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Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.
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Tim Haines
What was special about the protaganists in "Beggars in Spain"?
:)
After being very excited about getting it downloaded and installed, I was very disapointed. They don't seem to have improved anything. The impression that I got was that it had been changed to be a MMPORG and nothing else.
So after 20 minutes of running around the opening map trying to complete the little quests, with the one other person on the server, I turned it off and deleted it.
Now I spend most of my, non-programming, spare time playing Face Of Mankind beta (http://www.fomportal.com).
From what I've seen, one of the only companies that can make good sequels is Blizzard.
DS1 was alright, but didn't have the allure that Diablo 2 has (and still has) today. DS2? More of the same, with substantially less soul. Too little too late, IMO.
I reinstalled World of Warcraft last weekend and immediately forgot all the reasons I left it in the first place.
Guild Wars, although visually stunning and nearly perfect in execution; isn't so attractive to me because I felt the PvE experience was diluted with the need to be PvP-ready at level 4.
What I don't like about DS1 is the sequence in the game with all the gnomes and their machine guns, cannons, flame throwers and all that. I refused to pick up and use a single one of thier creations :) And sometimes I tend to spend more time trying out new equipment for all the characters instead of continuing the game, but I guess that part is one of the reasons I love it so much... Can someone tell me why some of the most powerful armours with rate up to 300 in the game have to look like striped clown costumes or barbershop posts? :D
It was released a year after another game gem called "Darkstone", which was a better Diablo clone. That game never received the attention it deserved IMHO.
Compared to the new generation, the gfx are a bit outdated though :).
I now play World of Warcraft, too much...
The quests got a bit boring, before reaching lvl 40, but now it just rocks!
I can't wait to get to lvl 60, and fight the higher level dungeons.
Without any doubt a classic.
Mike L: hehe, I busted out Diablo 1 the other day. I think I'll pick up Diablo 2 tonight, I never did play it.
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