Review GamersHell butchers Dungeon Lords

[Vault Dweller]

Tags: Dungeon Lords; Heuristic Park Inc.

<a href=http://www.gamershell.com>Gamers Hell</a> has posted a devastating <a href=http://www.gamershell.com/pc/dungeon_lords/review.html>review</a> of the crapfest known as Dung Lords, giving it 4/10 and wishing bad things to Dreamcatcher for the "mockery".
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<blockquote>Dungeon Lords is probably the least finished game to ever be shipped for PC, excepting Battlecruiser 3000 AD, a title that will probably hold the honour for as long as PC gaming exists. Very few features in Dungeon Lords work, and the few that do, work poorly. It's quite sad, too, because underneath the ancient technology, thousands of bugs, flawed combat system, long load times, pathetic AI, poor performance, dated graphics, promised features that have gone missing, and a complete, total, and savage disregard for PC gamers as a group, there is a fun game in here...
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Dungeon crawls are great fun, with tons of monsters to kill, random loot spread on monsters and in chests all over the place, and a character progression skill tree that is second to none. Unfortunately, those two things are all the game does well, and it forces you to do tons of other things in the game that are done so poorly you will likely not bother to play it past the Arindale area, where you begin to finally realize just how unfinished the game is. Literally everything else in the entire game is either poorly designed, left out, or bugged to hell.
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A combat system that is hideously flawed. It relies on action and timing your swings, like Gothic 2, but unlike Gothic 2, the hitboxes and moves suck ass. You never know if your hits are going to connect, and the combat always ends up as a click fest as you jump around and try to get as many hits as possible as a mob of goblins mill about in front of you. Battles never, EVER look remotely like a real fantasy battle, but instead like a drunken mob of cowboys and vikings playing a round of Grab Ass.</blockquote>
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I hope that's the last we've heard of DW Bradley
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPG Dot</A>

 

[Shagnak]

Now that review is certainly a bit more honest, and from a reviewer who liked DW Bradley's earlier stuff no less.

On another note, the DreamCatcher forum moderator is finally doing some work:

2) If any threads disintegrate into childish name calling and "DreamCatcher screwed the developer," nonsense, I'll lock the thread and/or delete it. No more warnings.

Fighting back against customer dis-satisfaction! :wink:

 

[Deathy]

If gamershell gave it bad press, this game really must be BAD.

 

[Kratos]

my biggest beef with this game right now is the female looking "civilians" walking around in town that have men's voices. god, that freaks the hell out of me :shock:

 

[dipdipdip]

Now that's attention to detail!

 

[Deathboy]

Dungeon crawls are great fun, with tons of monsters to kill, random loot spread on monsters and in chests all over the place, and a character progression skill tree that is second to none.

hmmmmm, it might still be salvagable.

 

[LlamaGod]

no, no it isnt. he's saying thats whats can be in Dungeon Crawls, dummy.

I proclaim Dungeon Lords worst game of 2005.

 

[jiujitsu]

Battles never, EVER look remotely like a real fantasy battle, but instead like a drunken mob of cowboys and vikings playing a round of Grab Ass.

Ahahaha! Sounds like fun! Did they mention the cardboard capes?

 

[Shagnak]

he's saying thats whats can be in Dungeon Crawls, dummy.

Yes, and then he says:

Unfortunately, those two things are all the game does well,

What you proclaim following that may still well be true though :wink:

 

[theverybigslayer]

he's saying thats whats can be in Dungeon Crawls, dummy.

Yes, and then he says:

Unfortunately, those two things are all the game does well,

What you proclaim following that may still well be true though :wink:

Yes, the game does well the two most important thing. And there are some minors bugs.

 

[Mefi]

Oh well, gf just got back from work trip and bought me a nice new game to play... :shock:
I have four discs and no map. It also refuses to install on my gf's PC. To be honest, I'm not sure if I can even be arsed trying to get it to work.

Just for info, the reviewer appear to have been banned from the forums over at DL (if indeed it was the reviewer).

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Yes, the game does well the two most important thing. And there are some minors bugs.

It has tons of monsters and chests of loot? Well, who cares if the combat system is "hideously flawed" as is said in the very next paragraph.

 

[abrock]

It was indeed the real reviewer, and I was indeed banned from the official forums. All the banning in the world can't make up for this mockery though, I think my review reflects that even my relatively low expectations for a DW Bradley title were not met.

A terrible, terrible game that COULD be saved into a W&W style cult title with 4 or 5 more patches. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Mefi]

Did you get given a reason for the ban Abrock?

 

[abrock]

Nope. I assume its because I was vocal in my dislike for the game.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

... and the moral of the story is: Don't realease buggy products if you actually want your game to sell.

Oh wait, this is the gaming industry. They don't have morals. I eagerly anticipate the next bugged to crap PC release because "gosh-darned it, making the game actually work is just so hard!".

 

[space captain]

DW Bradley was hanging out with Derek Smart for too long

and yes, I hope he goes away

I was playing Ultima 6 a few days ago and I realized why Bradley was considered somewhat of a good developer back in the day. Its because games were EXTREMELY simple compared to today. You could get away with one person doing EVERYTHING - coding, art, story, etc. It was just so much easier to deal with say 1MB or 2MB of total code for a game - instead of 1GB or 2GB.

Bradley tried to make a '00s era game with a '80s era mindset. It dont work

 

[Shagnak]

... and the moral of the story is: Don't realease buggy products if you actually want your game to sell.

Unfortunately, this seems to go way beyond just bugs. There is a severe lack of content in some parts of the game. The game content has simply not been finished, let alone been tested for bugs.

A terrible, terrible game that COULD be saved into a W&W style cult title with 4 or 5 more patches. We'll see how it goes.

That would be my hope, but I doubt it will happen.
I think W&W had some charms, in fact I thought it was considerably more enjoyable than M&M6-9, but even so it needed more patching than it got.
Dungeon Lords is not anywhere near the completeness of W&W, and will likely sell even worse...I do not see the company continuing to patch a product that is not selling. Even if they deliver an extraordinary patch-o-rama to fix bugs, I doubt the company will supply the resources to replace all of the missing content.

What I want is another Sir-tech to make Wizardy 9 (and a proper JA3) dammit!

Edit:
@abrock: shitty that you got banned for being honest, abrock!

 

[abrock]

I only regged to comment on that specific review discussion, I have no wish to be a permanent member of Dreamcatcher's forum.

Btw, Shag, I thought you were the eternal optimist when it came to Dungeon Lords, have you finally seen the light?

 

[theverybigslayer]

I only regged to comment on that specific review discussion, I have no wish to be a permanent member of Dreamcatcher's forum.

Btw, Shag, I thought you were the eternal optimist when it came to Dungeon Lords, have you finally seen the light?

Yes I have seen the light: I have never seen so "hideously flawed" review. If you cannot use your mouse and keyboard effectively why you are playing a combat crpg?

 

[LlamaGod]

if you think Dungeon Lords is a good game I have a hard time believing you are mentally capable of using a mouse and keyboard, so it cancels out.

 

[Mefi]

I've given up trying to play this for the moment. Playing 1.1 on this system (4 discs in box, no manual, no map):

3.7 P4, 9800 card with 256 MB, 250 GB HD @ 7200, 2 GB RAM @ 533.


The game flickers (well, flashes) for one second in every three or four with my gfx card. Not an exageration as I've actually been doing some timing on this.

Loading times have ranged from around 90 seconds to a mind boggling 8 minutes and 28 seconds.

Just before a monster spawns, the game hangs. The longest hangtime so far was 45 seconds, the norm is around 3 or 4.

Animations stutter and jump even outside of combat.

Quests randomly appear and disappear from your log.

Silly amounts of pointless combat when travelling.

There's more but I need sleep.

I'm trying to hide my irritation with this game from my gf so I don't appear to be an ungrateful sod.

 

[LlamaGod]

I'm trying to hide my irritation with this game from my gf so I don't appear to be an ungrateful sod.

pimp slap her for buying you dungeon lords.

It just leads to more, next thing you know... scat sex.

 

[Mefi]

Nah, bitch slapping her would be mean; she was like a little puppy bouncing up to the door because she'd found a new RPG game for me... Ah well, she did also bring back my duty free cigs and whisky so it's not all bad.

Did the guy who did the review at Gameszone actually play the game? He lists features that just aren't working - the MP is unplayable because of the lag and the random spawning when zoning, the customised avatar doesn't work out of the box and was removed with the patch... I expect marks of 7/10 to be followed by "nothing special" comments on shite review sites but I used to assume they'd actually fucking played it not just padded out the fluff on the box.

 

[abrock]

No, he didn't. It is a well known fact that GameZone writes reviews based on press releases and general information "known" about the game, that's how they always are first to press and generate advertising dollars. A more worthless game site has not existed anywhere, ever.

Edit: And that remark represents MY view, not necessarily the view of GamersHell as a whole. :wink: