Arx Fatalis first impressions
Werner Purrer
beginning of the week over here in Austria. But now to my comments
Well what can I say after playing around with it (and having never played
the demo), Ultima Undworld 3 thats exactly what it is. I constantly get the
feeling, that they took this and that from UUW and improved it. This game
simply blows me away on my first impression.
Ok, now lets get to the points why my impression is very favorable. First of
all install was pretty simple no problems there. Then the first start. I
started it, nothing happened for almost a minute. I thought what the heck
is going on there, it seems that the first time it takes quite a while to
check the CD copyprotection and to initialize the game (the subsequent
starts where much faster). Then a really good intro which set the mood
perfectly and then the game starts. In Ultima underworld you were
imprisoned and sent into the dungeon as a prisoner, in Arx you wake up in a
cell not knowing what is going on and who you are, in the cell besides you
is an inmate who gives you first instructions and hints. So basically the
mood and story is set and you have your first task free yourself. And that
was the point where I thought what is this shit. I checked the manual all
the commands were there but no description which keys. So basically I
though, fine no in game tutorial no real key description, they screwed it
up already. I only thought so as long as I didn't solve the first problem,
then the in game tutorial kicked in and described every action and key
extensively as the game progressed, and how it progressed. Basically it
started to progress like underworld in a good way. The environmental
interaction is there (so far it seems to be the best 3d game so far
interaction wise). The NPCs seem to have schedules and stories to tell and
the handling is an improved underworld handling. You even have the rune
spells again, but in a way which first frustrated me but after trying and
testing really made sense in a good way.
But back to the environmental interaction. How far it goes should show this
story which happens in the tutorial (so no spoilers are set here).
Basically you come into a room, after you might have killed several giant
rats and got their meat. The tutorial tells you you should ignite the
fireplace with an ignite runespell, and after doing that, the fireplace
starts to burn, the tutorial also tells you that you should put the food
into the fire to cook it. Well I put every thing which consisted of meat
into the fire and after a while it was cooked. Also there are the usual
musrooms you can pick up plants etc... Also things can crush again like in
underworld....
Now to the handling. Unline UUW the handling is very mousecentric with only
a few icons on the screen. The Spellcasting, although clearly derived from
the ultima rune system is solved differently in quite a refreshing way,
only a handful of keys are used but you definitely need the in game
tutorial to learn the handling. The fighting sort of is the same as in
Underworld.
To sum it up. I got NWN yesterday and started to play it. But after fireing
up Arx Fatalis today just to check it before going back to NWN I have to
think that NWN has to rest a little bit more. Arx simply is awesome, this
one definitely goes very high into my all time favorite list if it can keep
the high standards it sets at the beginning!
Werner aka Memory Dragon....
--
Wenn ich eine Windows CD an einen Politiker binde und ihm Geld dafür
gebe, dass er einmal um den Block rennt und dabei grunzt, dann läuft
Windows endlich ohne unerklärliche Abstürze.