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This is one of the X-Box games I was looking forward to, couldn't wait to try out, and so on and so forth, and so with gusto
I put aside the strange feeling that a good game couldn't fall to the $19.99 price point so fast, plunked down my hard earned
jack, and went to home to get in some good, old-fashioned, hack-n-slash action.
The first thing I noticed is how slick the graphics are. The armor is shiny; the fire is very nice, as is the water
effects. The game is very nice to look at. Fluid animation (for the most part), not a great deal of slowdown, and generally
just a good amount of detail for this genre. The only issue I have with the game, graphically speaking, is with the snow
and ice world, it just didn't seem as nice as the other areas. It was the brightness of the area that did it, but it is really
a minor complaint as it is still very nice.
The mechanics of the game are great. The combat is easy to get the hang of, the menus are easy to use and very intuitive,
and overall, the mechanics of the game are polished and don't take away from the game at all. Having said that, it also means
that there is nothing new either. The developers have made no attempt what so ever to incorporate any changes that might
make their game deviate from the standard hack-n-slash at all, and really, that's where this game's problems start. No innovation,
nothing new.
Design is really the only drawback to this title. It seems the designers took every well worn convention of the
hack-n-slash and packed them into this game. From the standard jungle, ice-n-snow, graveyard, castle areas to the character
choices (with the exception of the dwarf cleric, that was a little odd), Heroes is packed with the standard. It's not anything
terrible, or broken, it's just standard, standard, and standard. Push the pressure plate, pull the lever, and follow the
one path for you to follow. There is one thing that stands out however, the elimination of the silly conversations that plague
some games of this type. Heroes gives you cut scene, tells you where to go and what to do, and lets you go do it, not spend
time pretending to be an RPG by wading through useless conversations, at least in this manner Heroes has no illusions about
what it is. On the good side, there are plenty of weapons, armor, and magical items to sort through and equip, and it is
easy to stay on task, there was never a point when I was unsure about what my task was or where I should be. It should be
a good game for the neophyte to the hack-n-slash. I played through the game on the normal difficulty and found no challenge
at all in playing through. Even the bosses fell easily to my warrior. This brings me to a personal gripe about this game
(but it is not the only offender by far), It is time to come up with a better ending design for RPGs (or in this case, faux
RPGs) than the "here's the ending battle, oh just kidding, fight through some more dungeons, here it is, no, fooled you
again, more dungeon" ending. This is stupid, and a cop out by game designers. Try again; this one is done to death.
The gems system would have been nice if it had made any kind of difference in the game, but it didn't. These complaints
don't make Heroes a bad game; they make it a standard game.
Now is the good stuff, where Heroes shines like the gem it could have been in single player with only a little more
work. Multiplayer. This is a great multiplayer game. It's not that it plays any different than in single player so much,
as it doesn't get really boring after the first two hours. If you have a group of friends to play along with you, this is
certainly a great purchase.
Having played Heroes to the bitter end, I can say honestly that I grew very tired after three hours of play. The
single player game is dull and tedious, standard in every way. It will appeal to the neophyte, and to the "hardcore"
fan of the genre, but no one else. While I would certainly recommend as a multiplayer purchase, I would advise the single
player to stay away.
3 out of 5
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