Dungeon Master 2: Review (long)

[A.M. Basman]

This is surely one of the most hyped games of recent months, so I'm sure many
people will be glad to hear from someone who's actually *played* the game (as
opposed to many of the `reviews' I've seen) before they shell out their
hard-earned cash. I should say at this point that the review will be negative,
so if this is news you don't want to hear, just read 1-3. For just the bulk of
my negative comments, skip to section 4 now.

CONTENTS:

1. GENERAL
2. IDENTICAL
3. SPECIFIC
4. FATAL GRIPES (SPOILERS FROM HERE)
5. MOVIES
6. BUGS
7. HINTS
8. UNRESOLVED
9. THE DEMO
10. CONCLUSION

I'll summarise how this game compares with the original Dungeon Master:

1. GENERAL

- First, and the first major strike against the game, there is still the
original square-based step movement system. Three years after the publication
of Ultima Underworld this really isn't acceptable, but I was prepared to
forgive it. If DM/CSB were good enough to play in 87, it's good enough now.

- However, this is modified by the small concession that forward movement now
occurs in two half-square steps. Nonetheless, all large objects must be in the
centre of a square when at rest, and small objects must be on one of the
familiar corner spots.

- There is continuous in-game music. This is quite good, although not up to
the very high standards of UU. Probably as good as the bulk of LucasArts
music, barring their occasional stonkers, like `Red Edison music'. In
particular I miss the spectacular `You are about to Die' UU music, i.e. the
game music is location, but not context sensitive (almost all of the time).
Nice DM2 areas are the two Mussorgsky rip-offs, the very atmospheric `You are
about to be blown to bits by a number of small mages' music (eerie, repeated
notes), and the comforting `You've made it home in one piece again' music
(long, lingering notes). Oh yes, and the satisfying `The machine is working'
music.

- The game is better coloured (256), with textures for the backgrounds of
dialog boxes, and better shaded icons. There are many different wall textures
and types, not just stone.

- The game takes almost exactly as long to load from hard disk as DM took
from floppies. AMAZING!

2. IDENTICAL

- DM2 retains the look and feel of the original, mainly by ripping off most
of its elements:
-- Many samples are the same, e.g. fireball noises, spell-casting noises,
teleport noises, "OOOwww" noises when running into walls, etc. However, some
of these have been slightly modified, e.g. some fireballs are preceeded by a
small `woomph', and spells have a `twinkling' noise at the end.
-- The "AAAAAAAAA" noise is significantly more gut-wrenching even than the
original.
-- The inventory screen is identically laid out, and works in the same way.
-- There are four characters, chosen from another Hall of Champions, with
the same stat, skills, and level system.
-- The control system is identical, with the same arrow icons at the BR of
the screen.
-- Many of the objects (flasks, breastplates, daggers, arrows, etc.) have
exactly the same icons and appearance as before.
-- The spell system is the same, with exactly the same runes, and all spells
that I tested from DM still work. However, the rune box is decorated with
quite garish and unnecessary pictures for each of the five stages, and the
left always shows a woman casting a spell, regardless of who is casting it.
Silly.
-- Hitting things with weapons produces the same effect - a number briefly
appears in a starburst pattern, indicating the damage done, although this is
quite a bit quicker than in DM - it's sometimes difficult to catch the number
as it flashes past. Same noise. This is astonishingly primitive by today's
standards.
-- Pits (with ropes), teleports, switches, levers, pointless rings on the
wall all work (or not) just the same.

3. SPECIFIC

Now a list of innovations in DM2:

- Large object movement system: There are a number of `large' objects
(rocks, candle-holders, tables, etc.) that always occupy a whole square, and
cannot be picked up. These may be shifted about by means of the black/yellow
arrows which appear when they are clicked on, only by one square at a time.
You can also move these by running into them, if they are light.

- Money system: There are a series of shops in the game, which are manned
by indestructible shopkeepers accepting money in a base 4 system, on the scale
copper, silver, gold (an IMA!), green, red, blue gems. Each shop is dedicated
to a particular class of goods, such as food, weapons, clothing, etc. In fact,
dealing with shops is particularly tedious. Most of the early part of the game
is a stultifying process of counting out coins, picking up coins, collecting
items, selling them, etc. I remember, carting back my fifth load of axes
(sorry for the spoiler), speculating how much this was like MUDs where you
spend all your time collecting corpses and selling them for 3gp. This really
is an area of bad design in the game. Items are for finding, and fighting for,
not for just buying.

- The Outside: The beginning of the game is set Outside. See next.

- Environmental effects: Outside the castle, it's almost always raining, and
usually a lot of thunder too. This seemed reasonably cool the first time I saw
it (apart from the rain always falling at 45 degrees), but after a day or so
of not being able to see anything, or hear noises of other things, it became
merely irritating. The developers were obviously proud of this, and made it
rain far too often. NB - in the centre of a storm, there's a significant risk
of being stuck by lightning, which is usually enough to kill off a low-level
party. Nice effect - sometimes fixed trees are struck, reducing them to a heap
of branches. OK, no more spoilers until I say so...

- Increased generality of joining locations: In DM, the only join locations
were staircases. You could only face one of two ways on a staircase, and
stepping over it caused the new level to be swapped in, with an attendant
delay. In DM2, join locations can occur on the plane, although directions are
constrained as before. However, small objects can be placed as normal on the
corners. Large objects cannot be pushed/shoved through join locations.

- You may now use both hands to wield objects/weapons.

- Some new spells, some of which don't seem to have an obvious effect. But
then Fireshield never did have much effect in DM anyway.

- Magic map system, with special functions.

- Minion system.

- Infinite Generation: Note that most of the monsters in DM2 are infinitely
generated, and apparently not by the DM system of visible/invisible pressure
pads. They just appear. Which is unsatisfying. At least some of them have the
decency to appear in front of you, with a noise.

4. FATAL GRIPES - MAJOR SPOILER SECTION FROM NOW.

The game is simply a rip-off. It is, in the condition sold, simply
incomplete. Despite being billed as `reputedly enormous', I can tell you now,
that once you go though the Zo link and kill Dragoth, the game simply ends.
Finito. There's a teleport showing mountains that presumably was the gateway
to the rest of the game in some internal edition, but now it simply doesn't do
anything. In my estimation, this makes DM2 less than one fifth the size of the
original DM (which I might mention, came on 2 double density disks. DM2 is CD
only). I repeat that, ONE FIFTH. It took me only 3 days of play to finish
(playing slowly, and killing things repeatedly to build up my strength, e.g.
all the trees), whereas DM, CSB, UU1 and 2 each took in excess of 3 weeks.

The game contains very few puzzles, all of small size, despite the puzzles
being Wayne Holder's (main author) main justification for the ancient movement
system (see interview in PC Gamer, May 1995). The first half of the game is
simply hacking things up and selling them.

The much-vaunted artificial intelligence system, that was supposedly the
main reason for the repeated and pathetic delays in bringing out the game,
(stretching over 4 years, and in particular, over the last year, repeated
claims that the game would be released every month) is simply not in evidence.
Maybe I'm being harsh, but I can see essentially no difference in the movement
patterns from DM.
Creatures have two modes, normal and scared, triggered by their remaining
health, within which they will react in a highly patterned way to your
location and attacks, with varying amounts of random variation. It's possible
that they show an absolutely rudimentary ability to avoid cyclically repeating
patterns of motion that end up in their getting hit (which was the mainstay of
DM), but certainly the green minions show none such. I've constructed a
patented and predictable method of killing them while taking no damage.

Although, I suppose it's just as well, since you're attacked by them
continuously throughout the game. Another fatal gripe, since this is extremely
tedious. It starts out at about 1 per 5 minutes, eventually building up to 1 a
minute. And it takes almost a minute to kill one. You can set your own minions
after them, but in less than cavernous spaces, these do more damage to you
than to them. I must have hacked up several hundred of these things, and they
add nothing to the gameplay whatsoever, just extending the time taken to play
the game, possibly to disguise its smallness. They're just an annoying
distraction, like the continuous thunderstorms earlier on.

5. THE MOVIES:

These, done by Interplay, are nothing short of excellent. Although short,
they are extremely dramatic, detailed, and have great music. One day soon, the
actual games will be like this, but as it is, I'm sure the Interplay artists
spent a month or two on them. Sadly, of course, they form no part of the
gameplay, and are barely recognisable (in style) as having anything to do
with the game at all (apart from the VGA endgame sequence). They seem to be
MPEGs.

6. ENCOUNTERED BUGS:

The game was not very stable, crashing twice during the 3 days. This may not
seem like much, but neither of the UUs ever crashed randomly, a combined
running time of 6 weeks. For the record, UU1 had an interesting inventory bug
that caused your objects to be duplicated or lost, and UU2 had a predictable
bug that crashed when you spoke to the wisps. Both had a number of minor plot
bugs, none of which I ever saw.

The ProAudio Spectrum 16 support is faulty, producing static. This is
apparently a known problem, for which a patch disk is supplied. Now useless to
me, of course (still hasn't arrived).

The mouse support is faulty. The cursor is suddenly displaced across the
screen at the most irritating moments, about once a minute. This is caused my
Microsoft Mouse drivers of the .SYS variety, i.e. prior to about version 18.
The .COM drivers work fine.

The manual contains gross misprints in the spells section. And also box
claims 580k free conventional memory is needed, although much, much less will
in fact suffice (say 540k).

Tests under OS/2 show the game works fine for a small number of seconds,
with sound, music and graphics working perfectly, and then inexpicably crashes
hard. OS/2 system survives.

7. MY HANDY HINTS:

Halfway up the castle, you'll see a pit that winks on and off repeatedly,
too fast for you to run over. This may be tackled by thinking laterally ....
literally!

Two, or very possibly three green minions may be fought simultaneously, with
weapons. Any more than this attacking you will have to lure into a large
arena, and your own minions set on them. Stand well back! In some places, it
will be possible to use non-player devices to bulk destroy them, e.g. on the
Archers level (with the vacuum fuse), there's a room where pads cause
fireballs, and the two reflector puzzles may be usefully diverted.

Note, the object of the first reflector puzzle is to get a fireball back
onto the square with the spiral.

Yes, there is a way out of the basement levels of the castle!

Dragoth, in my opinion, may only efficiently be tackled by use of the
Numenstaff, got from the little mages with the big green cauldron. It's no
coincidence that half of the edge of the Void platform he lives on drops you
right next to the Cauldron, ready for a recharge.

Note, Dragoth cannot heal himself. Just as well.

The spiral staff may be helpful in killing the last mage, with the
Numenstaff and red designs on his robe.

The blue Ya Ew spheres appear to be only for mapping purposes.

The mushrooms are simply poisonous. Sell them for cash (this will save you
the necessity of experimenting). The only difference is the Spirit Cup is more
poisonous than the other!

Do not kill the grey rock-men!

8. UNRESOLVED

Here are things I couldn't see what to do with in the game. Maybe someone can
help:

- The roof of the castle. What the hell is the strange object there (flying
machine?), and what conceivable way is there to make a dent in the Archer
population? Can you close the portal there by some means? I'm wondering if
there is a whole section of the game I've missed, but it sure as hell can't be
a very relevant one.

- The locked door on the top floor of the castle, and the pressure pad among
four pits (near the wandering teleport section). Are these connected? I didn't
have the patience to fill a chest with heavy objects so I could throw it
exactly two squares, in order to find out.

- What the hell does Oh Kath Ros do? And Oh Kath Ku? Some flying
lightning-like thing is projected, but it does not seem to have any offensive
impact on anything.

- Also Ful Bro Neta (presumably Fireshield, if so, feeble. See UW2 for a REAL
fireshield), Ya Ir Dain. Oh Ir Ros has an odd effect, but I'm not sure what it
means - makes you more difficult to hit?

9. THE DEMO

About January this year, a small demo of the shop areas was released. For
those who saw that, the changes since then are,

- The Equui guarding the shop have been recolored to have red eyes and blue
capes. Big deal!

- Doors now close at about 3 times the speed. I think. Or maybe this was in
the demo too. Its certainly much faster than DM, and necessary for a couple of
puzzles.

- Of course, the old sign has been replaced with the rest of the game, and
the disk options does something.

- The music. Sound card support increased, fine dependence on exact amount of
EMS relaxed.

9. CONCLUSION

Thanks for your patience. It's difficult to see what went wrong with this
game. Certainly the general incompetence of FTL isn't seriously doubtable.
They seem to be living in the past, which would be excusable, if they'd
managed to produce a game of decent size. What's more difficult is who out of
FTL and Interplay is more to blame for being the greedy people wanting to cash
in on the DM name, providing a poor product. I'm inclined to blame FTL, seeing
the fine work Interplay did on the movies, the music, and much of the graphics
(I mean, did you see the original trees!? (reapers)).
Small bit of trivia, did you know the entire dungeon description file is
only 40K? Yes, FORTY K. This, along with the 500K executable, may be seen as
the total end product of FTL's 4 year work (yes, I suppose many of their
graphics have been retained too).
The interview with Wayne Holder is puzzling. Re-reading it with the benefit
of hindsight, it's clear that at that time he knew what was going to happen
("I think it's [DM] a little bit too long",
"You can never live up to your legend",
"The graphics were an artistic choice - the way the game plays, it works
better with a more discreet movement system" - NB, discreet, HELL! It's the
most clunky movement system I've seen. UW's system was a paragon of
excellent and seamless design in comparison. And in fact, in absolute
terms, if you ask me.
"It's going to be an awful lot of work to use this technology effectively
and make a good game out of it" -- `This is work which you have not done',
to quote one of my supervisors from a few years back. And which
nonetheless other people have.
).

However, in the context of the review, these all seemed to back the
implicit statement that DM2 was a great game, and he was proud to have
produced it, a statement which unfortunately, on re-reading the interview, he
nowhere made. On first reading, everything seemed fine. I'm simple-minded like
that. And my expectations were not so unreasonable, merely that DM2 would be
at least as good a game as DM. Not unreasonable given 8 years progress in
computer technology and game design.

But when did he know that he would be unable to complete the game? Before or
after the purchase by Interplay?

As a justification for this diatribe I've launched, I'd like to describe the
sense of excitement I felt, when, finally killing Dragoth, the third film
sequence appeared, and I thought, "Wow! I've done it. I've finished the
introduction - I've reached the main game. That Zo machine was quite
impressive, now I see why they spent 4 years on this. It was astonishingly
tough, for just an introduction. I mean, people got up to master level
already... Now I'll be transported to those mountains over there, there'll be
new spells, objects, monsters, puzzles, that'll make these ones pale in
comparison....".
And then I was dumped at the DOS prompt.

NB, the third film sequence seems to suggest that at some point the plot of
the game will be completed. This is denied by Interplay, who quite wisely seem
to indicate to me that no further Dungeon Master releases are planned. FTL
seem to have caused them severe grief with this one.

The division seems clear. The parts of the game FTL worked on are bad. The
parts Interplay worked on are good. However, Interplay did not work on the
actual core of the game itself, only dressing, so this may not be so
meaningful.

Only the forthcoming release of their game Stonekeep will show. I look
forward to it. But I'll make sure I read at least three reviews first.

--
Antranig Basman