Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

[Syranetic]

I have been waiting for this demo for about a month. Dark Messiah is probably the most incredible FPS melee combat I've ever seen. In my opinion it makes up for what Oblivion lacked in-- combat. Although Oblivion's combat was much improved over morrowind, it lacked dismemberment, and I somehow felt I was just slapping people with my weapons. Dark Messiah gives you the feeling that you're actually slicing someone's face with a sword.

[Know Your Enemy]

Ok guys, just got done playing a bit of the demo, and here's some tweaks stolen from HL2 that should give a good boost to load times, hopefully.

On your Dark Messiah shortcut on the desktop, add this to the end of the Target section: -heapsize xxxxxx with the x's being...

512000 for those of you with 1 GB of RAM
768000 OR 1024000 fpr those of you with 2 GB of RAM. This should help stuttering (if any) a little bit, as it's the same tweak that HL2 uses to allocate more RAM to the game.

[Masterwerk]

wow! that was a killer demo! i despised oblivion's combat, but this was absolutely fantastic! probably the first game since riddick that got hand to hand combat right, and being able to use the environment adden much to the experience. i'm really happy with how teh source engine physics being used here.

i'll be buying the full version. i love free demos!

[Koroush Ghazi]

There's no need to post these tweaks, they are already in the Half Life 2 Tweak Guide - people should refer there for the tweaks and correct usage instructions.


Ok, I've had a bit of play around with the demo and I'm impressed in many ways by the nice touches it has.

Graphics wise, running at 1280x1024, all settings max including HDR, 2xAA, 4xAF the performance is very good on my system. Roughly 35+ FPS in even the larger and more detailed areas. The reason for this is that DMOMM is using the Source engine, which means that it's reasonably optimized, and more importantly it doesn't have insane polygon counts like some next-gen games do.

Textures are a little bland and some of them are very cartoonish, but that's not unexpected in a fantasy-based game. All up though, particularly with HDR enabled, the game looks quite convincing and very nice overall. Some screenshots I took below:




And you also have body self-awareness which is a nice touch:


I've also posted a brief YouTube video of the combat here.
A better video of gameplay and general atmosphere of the game I've posted here, and here.

The combat system is not actually very different to Oblivion in my eyes. Same idea - you can block attacks, you can do power attacks, the types of which are varied based on holding down the mouse button and the direction you move in.

What makes this game different though is that the characters react a bit more realistically to being hit; they get thrown back, they seem a bit more agile, they fall down and steadily get up, they can be kicked down, you can impale them while they're down, knock them off ledges realistically. So to me it's more like 'Oblivion improved' in that respect, since Oblivion also has these features but perhaps not as refined or realistic in some respects.

The gameplay appears quite sound, nothing different to most other games. Opening doors, pulling levers, killing things, etc. But clearly I can't judge the gameplay just from the demo. Hopefully the full version will have a detailed storyline and more innovative gameplay.

You can pick up objects and throw them, you can kick objects, you can throw crates on a fire and they will catch on fire and then burn out. You can cut ropes, climb chains. The physics and game world interactivity appears quite good.

Of course this game is going to be compared to Oblivion every step of the way. I personally think (at least based on the demo) that Oblivion is still my favorite. But this is a matter of personal preference so really there should be no arguments about this: some will prefer Oblivion overall, some this game. I would recommend people at least try the demo if they can, because Dark Messiah really does have a lot going for it. There's no reason at all Oblivion fans shouldn't want to play this game (and vice versa).

As mentioned, for the moment to tweak the game, skip startup movies, console commands etc. please refer to the Half Life 2 Tweak Guide. The console doesn't appear to work in the demo, but I haven't explored this further just yet. I will look into doing a specific guide for this game if it appears it is sufficiently different in various respects, but for the moment most of the tweaking is identical to any other Source engine game it appears.

[Bathazar]

Magic looks great in this game. Much better (looking) than Oblivion's in my opinion.

Here is a shot of what damage the fire spell can inflict:


Note the charred face. :P

[Masterwerk]

yeah, it may not have the immense scale of oblivion, but the look and feel of the world is top notch.

[Ethernal Demon]

I really liked the demo, although this game might not be as open ended as Oblivion, its magic effects and combat physics surprised me in a good way. I love how you can see the air distortion from flame magic etc.
Characters also look quite unique(I didnt notice any copying of how characters and environment look, comparing to Oblivion, so game appears quite unique). Source engine, as Koro said, is pretty optimised, I was able to play it 1920x1200 and it was pretty smooth.
Its one of the very few games that I really want to play, I love ancient adventures

[doughnut]

I don't want to be pedantic but the correct thread title should be Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
It's been quite some time since Might & Magic IX so I'm definitely looking forward to this new M&M title.

[Stryker]

OK, thread title changed. Thanks for pointing that out, doughnut.

[Ethernal Demon]

I love the games HDR, so powerful Dungeons in my opinion look very atmospheric, during the second mission in that massive mountain hollow it can get a little heavy on the system I gotta say
Ill try to optimize it now according to the HL2 guide as Koroush suggests
Damn I really want this game, 2 great titles are on horizon: this one and CoJ. Ubisoft has been releasing some true excample games recently, hope they'll keep doing that, good on em