Developer: Arkane Studios
Publisher: Ubisoft
Genre: Action RPG


Arkane Studios should now be in the polishing phase of development of Dark Messiah, which is meant to bring small elements of an RPG into an FPS within the Might and Magic universe. You play the part of Serath, the young apprentice of a wizard. Much of the story is still clouded, but apparently someone got a hold of something they're not supposed to, and you find yourself in the role of the unlikely saviour of the entire nation...

What sets Dark Messiah apart from other games is that you can play a Warrior, Wizard and Assassin at the same time. Imagine the skill system as 3 seperate trees that you can upgrade as you wish. Each upgrade costs a certain amount of points and they rise exponentially down the line. This is awesome in like 50 different ways, but I'm basically going to do an actual example. Take the demo level for instance; I decided to go for a cross between a wizard and an assassin. Killing everyone with dual daggers to the neck worked excellently until one orc managed to spot me. I think quickly, get my ice spell out and freeze the floor infront of him, causing him to trip whilst flying towards me. Finishing him off is short business.

Dark Messiah runs on the Source Engine created by Valve to power Half Life 2, so you'll have all the excellent physics to play around with. Arkane has decided to give the user a world full of traps that are just waiting to be unleashed. The thing about these traps is that they're usually very well hidden, or very obvious. Say you're in the middle of a room and you see a rope attached to the wall. You grab your sword and cut it. 2 cases out of 6, there's some sort of heavy device that will fall down and cause a lot of hurt. The other 4, the rope simply doesnt do anything, which is nice.

The game will also feature a multiplayer section with the standard modes one would expect, and a crusade mode, in which stats are persistent from one fight to the next, which is a nice twist in this kind of game. I don't think that enough games use this system.

There's a demo out for the game, which shows a lot of the core gameplay. The demo includes a wealthy tutorial level and a cyclops cave filled with orcs and goblins. The demo is a very fun play, and if it is anything to go by, this game is going to be one of the best  I've played this year.

Set for release on October 24, Dark Messiah will ship with a regular and limited edition version.

Official Website: www.mightandmagic.com/us/darkmessiah/teaser