The Shapers Return

I probably should have linked this a long time ago, but better late than never, right?

Gene Forge is an old style crpg (free demo downloadable at that link) with several very good points.

First of all, if you have ever played any of the games in the series, you will instantly be at home with the interface. (And if you haven't, go play them)

Secondly, it has a nice complex plot. You're stranded on an island, the inhabitants of which are split into three basic factions. The first village views you (in the main) with fear and wishes to be treated as equals. The second village treats you as their god (and are snivelling cowards who will doubtless want you to solve all of their problems for you, ala B&W) The third village hates you and all that you stand for.

The island is a lot larger than it looks, and the removal of the 'traipse around on the world map' that the older games in the series suffered from is welcome. (It is replaced instead with a mario-style zone map, you can revisit any area that you have cleared)

Nifty. Five paragraphs and I didn't even mention my pet dinosaur yet. Ah, I just did. Ok. I named my pet dinosaur 'toast'. He spits horrible flaming death at my foes. He's a bit cowardly if I let him get hurt, and he is the key feature of this game. Two of the three characters you can choose to play get to create pets. Potentially lots of pets. They have a 'pool' of essence which they can split up among their pets. As you progress, you can create different pets - and if you make your pets smart enough then you can control them in battle. You also get spell casting abilites, lots of different weapons and all the usual loot hoarding going on. (Sadly you don't get a pack mule pet, one thing this series of games holds in common is a strict inventory weight limit, and you can never carry enough. On the other paw, at least in this game you aren't juggling equipment amongst half a dozen party members)

Oh, don't grow too attached to your pets. You can re-absorb them and mix and match new ones later...

Graphicswise, I have one major niggle. 800x600 fullscreen. You can choose not to change to 800x600, but all you get for your trouble is a black border. Other games in the series happily ran in a window - but if this one can, I can't find the option. This annoys me greatly. The fact that I still payed the game despite this should give you a hint. Other than that, the graphics are clean and recognisable (again, having played other games in the series helps, but hitting TAB pops the name of everything up over it - so it's not vital)

Sounds are simple and clean - and background sounds are well used (except for the pig munching sound) The sound of children playing in a happy village is a nice touch that you hardly notice. Music is nonexistant and combat sounds are simple. (whoosh. Whoomph. Boom. Crash. Munch)

The helpfile built into the game is pretty minimal, but it does explain the keyboard shortcuts. (f to enter fight mode, g to get stuff) and reminds you how the shops work (just click the coin icon inside every saleable object in your inventory to sell it - I always forget that) And the tutorial section walks you through simple stuff like moving about and casting spells. Oh, and EVERY item in the game has some help text - just click the little help icon attached to it, or click on the name of the item for text boxes.

Gameplay. Nice and clean. The 'automatically enter combat' doesn't always seem to work quite right, but that might just be representing monsters that have snuck up on you. I was a bit scared that combat was going to be realtime, but no such horrors await here. Turn based, action order depends on speed, action points (it costs five to attack) attacking ends your turn, gold-box goodness. One niggle is that there is no grid overlay showing you how far each action point will take you - it's not hard to estimate, but it would be nice to say 'go as far as you can while keeping enough points back to attack with'

Outside of combat - dialogue is option driven and you can copy any text to your journal for later. Quests get listed seperately so that you can find out what you were supposed to be doing. Places on the world map have names, so you can FIND things again (and the names are like 'ellhens fort' so quests like 'kill ellhen' remain easy to remember) Putting it like that makes it seem like the game might be shallow. It isn't - ellhen (I probably spelt the name wrong there, but oh well) is the leader of the 'Awakened' faction (the ones who sorta like you) and pissing them off is likely to have big consequences. But there's a dispel wand that I really want... and the quickest way to find out about the dark power is probably to join the dark faction... You get the idea.

I will admit to not having played too far through yet, but by their previous showings there should be about 100 hours of gameplay here, and then you can play through again as each of three characters and side with each of the three factions (although a lot of the game is the same) - this isn't a small game. Although, to be fair, the demo is a lot shorter.

I don't think final percentage scores are sensible. But while the RPG bug has me, and until nwn arrives on my mat, this game fills a pet-training shaped hole. Damn them, I fear that the Friendly spiders will be taking yet more of my money. And deservedly so. Simple, playable, fun adventure games are a good thing.

Oh, and it works on a macintrash too - if you bend that way.

In closing, go download the geneforge demo now. You probably won't regret it, unless you have to get up for work in the morning. (Warning, download sites can get a little slow unless you have a registration key to their fast servers - so you'll want a resumer of some kind)