Development Info Dungeon Lords CE demo out

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Dungeon Lords

<A href="http://www.3dgamers.com/">3DGamers</a> has the new <A href="http://www.3dgamers.com/news/more/1096484461/">demo</a> of <a href="http://www.dungeonlordsgame.com">Dungeon Lords</a>. The new demo is <b>556MB</b>, so it's most likely just for broadbanders. Here's a bit on the new demo:
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<blockquote>New monsters native to Dungeon Lords collector's Edition are located at various areas throughout the demo. Mushmen can be found in the wilderness backwoods near the goblin shacks outside of Fargrove. Be careful as they are tough!
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Beware also of the Carrion Wyrm there for an unlucky souls who find it in the Sewers.
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**IMPORTANT NOTE on TASK SWITCHING**
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Dungeon Lords does not currently support multitasking when run as a full-screen application. If you use the Alt-Tab key combination to minimize the game you will need to close it from the Task Manager and will lose any progress since your last save.
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You can play Dungeon Lords in a window by running the executable using the command line parameter "dlords -gdi". Playing in this mode will allow you to switch between applications, however mouselook will no longer work.</blockquote>
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Heh heh heh.. Mushmen.
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[Twinfalls]

Mushmen? It'd be better if the game now featured M*A*S*H*men, so you face an onslaught of wisecracking field-hospital staff types who start off kind of funny but then get more and more maudlin about 'this damn war' as the seasons go by...

 

[Section8]

Honestly now, is this worth trying at all? I don't like to dismiss a game utterly because it's widely regarded as the worst game of all time, for the same reasons why I'm wary of "best game of all time" praise.

Basically, am I likely to gain anything from burning up 600 odd meg of bandwidth?

 

[theverybigslayer]

A good game gets even better.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

I hate games that don't let you alt-tab. I figure it's just shoddy and lazy programming on the part of the developer.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Mushmen? It'd be better if the game now featured M*A*S*H*men, so you face an onslaught of wisecracking field-hospital staff types who start off kind of funny but then get more and more maudlin about 'this damn war' as the seasons go by...

Whacking Jamie Farr over the head or groin would have probably been better than hitting Mushmen.

 

[jplestat]

Honestly now, is this worth trying at all? I don't like to dismiss a game utterly because it's widely regarded as the worst game of all time, for the same reasons why I'm wary of "best game of all time" praise.

Basically, am I likely to gain anything from burning up 600 odd meg of bandwidth?

It is worth playing. I found the CE to be quite fun to play. It is kind of an old scholl Wizardy dungeon crawl with a fun real time combat system and good character progression.

 

[theverybigslayer]

It is worth playing. I found the CE to be quite fun to play. It is kind of an old scholl Wizardy dungeon crawl with a fun real time combat system and good character progression.

I agree with you completely.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'm willing to give it another go. The first demo was incredibly bad, though.

 

[DemonKing]

I got the full version of the CE recently and it's certainly an improvement on the demo I played last year.

Some of the AI is pretty dumb though - often large creatures will just get stuck on doors to small for them and you can pepper them full of missile weapons.

 

[vazquez595654]

It is worth playing.

If you don't have anything smart to say...

 

[theverybigslayer]

It is worth playing.

If you don't have anything smart to say...

Read his next sentence:
" It is kind of an old school Wizardy dungeon crawl with a fun real time combat system and good character progression."

 

[jplestat]

I'm willing to give it another go. The first demo was incredibly bad, though.

The first demo WAS incredibly bad. And in all honesty the starting location in the regular game is not that great either. But it is a game that improves a lot the farther you get into it. It is quite fun. Not perfect, but old school and worthy of a play through. Some of the graphics are actually quite good as well.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

In all honesty, the dungeon at the beginning is a huge put off to me. It's just rather silly. It's supposed to be a sewer, but it's like a damned fortress in there for goblins. How many sewers have huge, vaulted rooms with catwalks for archers - with no apparent reason for those catwalks? Or drawbridges?! I know all that is supposed to be there to be interesting, but after a bit of it, I wasn't interested in anything more than getting up top. I had gobs of loot already, and I wanted to sell it and just TALK to someone to get a new direction.

I also don't care much for the chest minigame crap, either. You know what would have been better than that minigame? SOMETHING IN GAME! Bash the chest, and hungry monsters hear you. Take too long picking the lock, you risk one of the patrolling critters walking by! Shit like that. That would beat the fuck out of the GOLF SWING minigame.

 

[Section8]

In all honesty, the dungeon at the beginning is a huge put off to me. It's just rather silly. It's supposed to be a sewer, but it's like a damned fortress in there for goblins. How many sewers have huge, vaulted rooms with catwalks for archers - with no apparent reason for those catwalks? Or drawbridges?! I know all that is supposed to be there to be interesting, but after a bit of it, I wasn't interested in anything more than getting up top. I had gobs of loot already, and I wanted to sell it and just TALK to someone to get a new direction.

Couldn't have said it better. After the cheesy "the presidents daughter has been kidnapped, are you a bad enough dude to not go through this gate?!?!" bit, having that goblin sneak up and offer me a different way into the city sounded kinda cool.

"Wow! Looks like there's at least a binary choice between heading out into the wilderness and finding this tart, or talking to the goblin!" So I beat the fuck out of the gob, and wandered off to see if I could find a daughter anywhere.

But apparently, there's a whole lot of nothing out there, and the only way through is to sneak through goblin infested sewers, which as you say, is more like a goblin stronghold, with prison cells, treasure chests, vaults, ballistae, etc. And it drags on.

In the time I've played, I've earned enough experience to gain some extended abilities (like medium armour) and so it would be really handy to find somewhere to at least buy equipment to suit my character. Besides which, my starting equipment is all broken, due to overuse.

But I think my biggest gripe so far are the transparent monster spawn triggers. I walk into a room, and then from behind me, where I've explored every nook and cranny, come a swarm of about a dozen rats. It seems as though the world is completely dead, and monsters are on call to suddenly teleport in whenever the player crosses an invisible tripwire.

The other thing that's a bit mystifying is that the whole bestiary of the game seems to be lifted from other Bradley games. Even the "ooze" type critters look practically identical to the ones in Crusaders of the Dark Savant. Which brings me to my short review -

Wizardry 7 Enforcer

It's not the worst game I've ever played, and the character system looks like it might be fun to play with over time, but so much of the game is just plain mediocre that it would have to be going pretty cheaply for me to invest in the full version.