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Arx Fatalis Preview |
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Arx Fatalis
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You awaken in a damp jail cell with no clothes, no weapons, and no recollection of who you are. After escaping from the cell and killing the guard you release a fellow prison mate, who gives you the name Am Shaegar translated to mean, without a name.
The successful PC game, Arx Fatalis, has made it's move the the X-Box. What you've got here is a classic first person RPG, with a fully interactive environment, detailed character dialog, real time combat, and a unique spell casting system. The main quest in the game of course, is to discover who you are, and where you came from. Just like any RPG it's not that easy, the only way to do so is to complete a multitude of smaller quests to build character skills and become strong enough to face a variety of enemies.
Spell casting is a huge part of this game, and unlike other real time RPG's you can't just pick up a spell book then cast away. Instead as you progress you'll gain new and different runes, and different combinations of these runes will allow you to cast different spells. Each rune is represented by a direction, or a series of directions on the arrow pad, which makes spell casting more difficult and will force the player to use more strategy while casting.
There are a variety of different races of enemies in this game, as well as all kinds of wild and tame creatures. This along with the interactive environment make for good smooth game play. Just about every object you see can be moved or used in some way. In fact in one quest you can use your ability to move the objects in the level to turn your enemies against each other. If you listen carefully you can hear two Goblins talking about how if the leader of the Goblins leaves a dirty plate on the table again they will kill him, so when their backs are turned, you slip into the room and move a dirty plate onto the table. Once they discover the plate they turn against their leaded and fight it out themselves. Of course it all depends on how you want to play the game, sometimes it's almost better just to run in and kill them all yourself.
I'd say that the graphics in this game are just slightly above standard. The character face detail is impressive, but as far as the character models themselves goes, it's about average. The levels are also about the same, the graphics are very nice, but nothing ground breaking, and sometimes the level of detail overruns the engine. It's similar to Morrowind, all the textures and levels are extremely detailed, at the cost of smoothness and a clean flow. However, it's an RPG, and the goal is to make the environment seem as real as possible, so it's a great trade off.
The sound is great, the complex dialog, action sounds, ambient sounds, they all flow together perfectly for a great game experience. Especially the ambient sounds, this is something that most games fail to take advantage of, but Arx Fatalis has captured perfectly. This game did well on the PC, and will probably do equally well on the X-Box console where RPG's are scarce.
Review By: Travis Parrott
Game Info: Arx Fatalis
Buy Game: Buy Arx Fatalis Now!
Screenshots (11):
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