This is a game I wanted to write about while the site was “suspended”.

Well today Arakne released the 1.02 patch after a looooooooong wait. At release this game was plagued by terrible technical problems and some design issues, with this patch I think everything should be much, much better.

I think I actually contributed with the fixing of the major memory leak that could bring Nvidia 6800 series cards to slow down considerably on reloads with HDR enabled. At one point I was able to got 1 FPS, with sound going in a loop, till the whole thing crashed miserably.

The memory leak appeared after the tutorial chapter and used to affect FPS sometimes mildly, sometimes to an unplayable level. But it was always there crippling performance in a form or another.

I reported this problem in detail on their forums, they asked me to send them a save game by e-mail where the problem was more visible. I did that, providing detailed instruction to reproduce the issue, and a few days later they posted a command line parameter that completely fixed the leak:

For Steam User: In the “My Games” menu, right click “Dark Messiah of Might & Magic Single Player”, select “Properties”, then “Set Launch Options” and add: +mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0

For DVD User: Right Click the shortcut to the game and add on the target exe line +mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0.
With a default installation you should get:

“C:\Program Files\Ubisoft\Dark Messiah of Might and Magic\mm.exe” +mat_forcemanagedtextureintohardware 0

It proved to fix:
– Crash on Loading
– Crash on Bink
– FPS down to 1 on GeForce 6800 during gameplay
– Increase Loading times a LOT

After that I was able to play the game in high detail with no problems, but I decided to wait the final patch to continue.

– Dark Messiah 1.02 patch (changelog)

I’m still downloading this patch, so I don’t know if it actually “delivers”. But I’m confident it does.

If you are a fan of fantasy melee combat or have at least an interest for it YOU HAVE TO play this game. While it isn’t a masterpiece, it still delivers the very best melee combat ever. Before the primate was of Mount & Blade (that also got updated but that I didn’t like at all). That game still excels in larger battles, ranged and mounted combat, but Dark Messiah is FAR superior when it comes to pure melee.

And it also has some great combat with staffs.

Some comments I wrote taken out of a forum thread:

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This game has probably the best melee combat ever. Competitors could be Mount & Blade and Oblivion, but there are reasons why they are left behind.

Mount & Blade has still better ranged combat and mounted combat, but the melee isn’t as good compared to DM. What MB does better is the parries, that need to be timed perfectly and are more reactive, but DM has something similar that if you don’t read the manual you don’t notice (if you wait the last moment to parry an attack you force the enemy to recoil, so it’s better than keeping the parry stance on the whole time).

It feels better overall compared to MB not just because of the production value (spectacular animations, fatalities, variety of attacks etc..) but also because the combat is faster and the controls more responsive.

The kick/shield bash mechanics are well done, and it’s something that I was suggesting for Mount & Blade on this forum a year ago (since piling up enemies while you backpedal is simply bad). It really gives space for more interesting combat since you get more mobility and can escape better from corners and groups of enemies.

Another thing that this game does perfectly and that is better than any other game to date is the “feel” of the body. The way the camera moves differently depending on your state, the way the arms move… It’s the first thing you notice just by moving the first step in the tutorial. I thought it would induce motion sickness and become annoying, instead it’s great and it has a very important role to make the combat and action in general feel truly visceral. It shows how they dedicated to it a lot of time and fine-tuning.

Jumping in particular is done perfectly and has a great feel. There’s a part during the game where you chase gollum on rooftops, in other games this could be the worst part as jumping levels are always the most hated and dreaded, instead in this case the sequence is actually really good and has a great feel just because the controls are superbly designed.

What makes DM stand out (interaction with the environment) is also one of its weakness. Fire and damage from moving object is out of scale and feels incredibly cheap. In these cases they just pushed them too much and they can ruin the challenge of the combat.

The AI is easily exploitable. It was never intended to be truly challenging, but in many situations you can climb out of reach and kill everyone with zero risk. There was a part where I was up a ladder and just waited and kept kicking down guards one by one. It was fun, but also stupid. It’s also interesting to notice that they decided to unbalance the game all toward the player, instead of trying to make the fights more “fair”. Fire does almost no damage to you, while it’s an instant kill on monsters. Spikes and physics object deal also zero damage to the character, and enemies never pick up objects to throw at you.

This is a precise design choice, and also the reason why it’s not suitable for multiplayer. Ever if it was technically possible, the combat system was designed to be completely asymmetric.

About the graphic I have mixed feelings. Some of the art is awesome but there are highs and lows, as if not all the game was equally polished and detailed. I hate some too dark rooms, in particular those where you have to fight. I would have appreciated environments with dim lights, but at least more uniform. Models and animations aren’t on part with the level design, but they do their work. I’m still not far into the game, but I would have liked a bit more variety in the encounters, instead of seeing just one type of enemy through a whole level. Mixing monster types together would be definitely more fun than fighting one enemy type changing for each level.

As a rollercoaster it tries to go close to what Valve is doing with HL2, but it just doesn’t have the same kind of polish and attention to the detail. Some sequences are fun, but the constant loading continuously breaks the flow and it gets rather annoying (the sequence on the rooftops I mentioned could have been fun if it didn’t have a loading screen every two jumps).

I’m playing on “hard”. The game is fairly challenging if you avoid the blatant exploits. The combat is well balanced despite its flaws and sometimes I went to replay some parts just for fun.

In fact I almost think that this could have been a better game if you removed the story entirely and transformed it into a pure hack&slash with endless combat. Like a first person version of Diablo.

An “arena mode” like the one in “Sin” could be insanely fun. I mean, if it’s a sandbox on rails, why not add a mode that removes the rails and keeps just the sandbox. It’s something that could hugely increase the replayability instead of having to go through the storyline (and long, constant loading) again.

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One thing in particular that I noticed. The jumping has an absolutely GREAT feel. There’s something that makes it feel better compared to every other FPS I played. As I wrote above this is an aspect where Dark Messiah absolutely excels: the feel of a real body. You don’t feel like a floating camera that slides around. You feel the body, you feel the corporeality, physicalness. You feel the arms you see in first person as part of the rest of the body, and not just floating mid-air. And this is all done through a great, precise use of the camera movements. That’s a part of really wonderful game design.

Well, one thing I noticed and that I believe is responsible of the great feel of the jumping is that while in other FPS jumping just moves the camera up and down, but always “parallel” to the terrain, in Dark Messiah the camera also TILTS slightly downwards. Try to do just a simple jump and you’ll notice that as you land, the camera rotates slightly downward, giving the feel of actually landing on your feet. It’s actually hard to explain in words, but in the game it’s much more evident.

Oh, and the game also has a flavor of “twitch” magic system that is incredibly interesting to see in action (no “lock-on” spells).