Game News Legend of Grimrock 2's New GUI

There were a handful of npcs in Eye of the Beholder but very forgettable and didn't really add much to the game.

 

Legend of Grimrock's combat isn't shit because it isn't turn-based, but Codex gonna keep on criticizing cats for not being dogs. Legend of Grimrock's combat is shit because it's a mini-game about abusing horrible AI on a simplistic grid, a mini-game that is painfully easy to solve. Unless we're in complex grid settings where we can fall if we step wrongly. That's basically the only place where Grimrock's combat is mildly decent.

Crawling through the dungeon solving puzzles is plenty fun though

 

And Toorum mode!

 

Don't remember it that well, played it back in the day on my Amiga 1200, but I do remember thinking about those NPCs "what the hell is their agenda", which made me a bit tense and that was nice. Anyway, lots of potential with that. As long as they'd remember that they're primarily doing puzzles/exploration and kept the NPC thing very minimal.

 

The NPC's in Eye of the Beholder 2 added a lot to the atmosphere and fun of the game. Whether it is a decision to attack or not attack someone, or an NPC joining you - even resurrecting dead NPC's. Without that, the game would lose quite some of its appeal.

 

Grimrock's problem is not the dancing (although there was a lot of it even for a game belonging to the RT crawler genre), it's the fact that the combat mechanics are as complex and exciting as doing laundry. There are special attacks that you can unlock but they activate automatically, no need to think, the spell selection is painfully limited and thanks to the system of schools you will only ever see a fraction of that small number in a regular playthrough, and the environments often have a simple 3x3 room to which you can retreat to to and tango (the fights get actually interesting when there are some hazards like pits or fireball traps and multiple enemies involved that you have to keep track of, there should have been more of that). So while it's nice that they have a more ergonomic UI (as has been mentioned previously I don't have any memories of the first game's UI so it must have been OK already), I really hope that they will work on their character systems and include more options.

 

They've already announced a massive improvement to the character system...

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

 

A plastic skin skill?

 

When they said improved UI I expected to see something about how you won't need to click 4 times to cast a spell. This is pretty trivial.

 

"Planet Plastic" will kill us all sooner or later. I just watched a documentary about it and how the gigantic amounts of plastic will kill mankind. Microparticles will go under the skin and will sit there forever, hardly being washed out by the body and making it vulnerable to diseases, miscarriage etc.. I urge everyone to buy metal, glass or wooden products.

As a matter of fact, I don't need a "plastic skin skill" in the game.

 

You're just engaging in baseless scare mongering. More likely we'll all become like Plastic Man and have great adventures in the Real World, far away from our computer screens.

 

That's an obvious DM throwback, I doubt that they would change that.

 

DM had, like, 3 times larger spell icons. A lot less infuriating than Grimrock's.

 

Microscopique buttons suck. I prefer big and clear ones: