Search This Blog

Tuesday 5 November 2019

=== PC Game Review -- Dungeon Siege - Action RPG - 7/10 ===

What Are We Reviewing?
This is a game dear to my heart as one of the older games I got myself into back in my younger years. This game is the original Dungeon Siege developed by Gas Powered Games back in 2002. So keep in mind that I'm reviewing a game from a while ago by how it holds up (in my opinion) by today's standards on today's technology.


Gameplay:
As an action RPG game, you start as a tiny character and build your way up through combat and experience gaining great power and equipment along the way. Dungeon Siege differentiates itself from games like Diablo by having a party system of up to 8 characters. Each character can level up in different skills including Melee, Ranged, Combat Magic, and Nature Magic. In this game, the way experience works is that experiences is gained each time an enemy is hit by the character, so in theory... a single character would have tons more experience than a party of 8 due to being the only character hitting all the targets would generate much more experience on one character. Unfortunately other than the spells which I believe have a max scaling to their skill level, melee and ranged attacks seem to be unaffected by the skill level.


It is certainly possible that one could beat the game as a single character without a party... though I'd think that would be quite the challenge even for the seasoned veteran of these types of games. I personally enjoy doing fun challenges in games, but even I think that would be an insane thing to try to do.

The game can be paused and unpaused at any time and commands can be issued in either state. Most of the commands required outside of having the right weapon or spell equipped is only to move the characters around to avoid damage rather than standing and fighting strong monsters or getting hit by projectiles. This starts off pretty nice, but I found it started to get rather tedious as the game went on with 8 characters in the party.


Graphics:
As you can see, the graphics are a little older and boxy. Seeing as the game came out in 2002, I would say the boxy 3D models with the ability to turn the camera 360° at any time... that's completely reasonable compared to the iconic Diablo II (2000).


I will however say that some of the enemies are difficult to see through all the vegetation and some of the effects can be difficult to catch as well with all that's going on. For the most part I'm quite happy with the look of the game all things considered.


Sound:
I have no complaints about the sound design of Dungeon Siege. There's good feedback on actions being taken and nothing seems very out of place. The only complaint I have is that sometimes that sound bugs out a bit with repeating of earlier played sounds when going back along the path you came for some... unknown reason.


Replayability:
Would I call this game replayable? Sure... if you wanted to try different compositions of groups, whether that be in numbers or types, then yes I would say this game is replayable to some degree. For most people however, this game is a play once and you're done sort of thing.


SUMMARY:
Dungeon Siege seems to run just fine on Windows 10 and is still a fun experience to play through as it was so many years ago. Compared to the newer games out there these days, it's getting a little bit older and is certainly showing its age, but other than that, it's still a pretty good experience and for the low price of only $7.79, it's really not a bad buy to keep a person entertained for many hours of gameplay.

My score for Dungeon Siege at this point of it's life will be 7/10 as it was a well-made game and is still good to this day.

~ DaemonVirus

Monday 4 November 2019

New Job, New Routine, New Friends

Hey everyone! If you haven't heard, I have a new job! Unfortunately my new job has be being extremely exhausted after work most days which makes it quite difficult to do much of anything... including my blogging. Now, I truly do enjoy typing and sharing my stories with the world, but when you're so tired that you can't even bring yourself to spend some time typing for a bit is quite something.

For anybody wondering, I'm now working at the Thunder Creek Pork Plant in Moose Jaw. Historically, I haven't done MUCH for physical work. Instead, I've done a lot of cashiering and customer servicing and whatnot of that type... this work requires much more lifting and using of the arm muscles that I haven't had much of previous to now. So as a result, I end up being quite tired and sore at the end of the day especially given the fact that I have to get up by 5:00 AM at the latest if I want to have enough time to comfortably get ready for work in the morning.

So how crazy is that? I still like to stay up much later than I probably should whether or not I have to get up so early in the morning... though I find that because what I do for by entire work day is pick up and move meat around, I don't exactly need to be in the best mood and super awake and all that. Basically I still like to stay up late and watch shows and YouTube and Twitch and things, but I often don't have the energy or willpower to get anything else done while I'm here.

Luckily with this new job and new routines around it, I've surprisingly managed to find new friends! Never did I ever think I would find people that I would get along with working in a pork plant of all things, but strangely enough there are people there who enjoy joking around and even playing games outside of work. I've been needing to find new friends to game with for quite a while now and suddenly finding people I can chat about games with and play games with is such a rush that I haven't had for quite a while now. I finally feel like I have interesting things to talk about again!

So for the time-being I'm looking for an office job to take advantage of my schooling and get a higher pay to better support the family, but in the mean-time I'm much happier than I ever thought I'd be working in a cold pork plant. It's definitely something to get us by for now that I can stick with if I for some reason can't find what I'm looking for in an office. With that, wish me luck in my continuing search and let us see if we can get back on track with everything we're wanting to do.

In the mean time, have a great day everyone! ^_^

~ Kyle Welykholowa