Lands Of Lore: Guardians Of Destiny Review

9.2

Format PC

Developer Westwood

Publisher Virgin Interactive

Genre Unknown

1 Comments

Stop press! Role-playing gamers to wash hair and be accepted back into society. Jamie Cunningham has the shocking story.

National Health specs, a tupperware pot of four-sided dice and a braying laugh that sets people's nerves on edge. That's role-playing. Or rather, that was role-playing. Westwood Studios have come up with an interactive fantasy that delivers non-stop action and adventure by the lorry load, dispenses with all the point-and-click statistical mumbo jumbo, and puts an end to the myth that RPGs are boring.

The four CDs (count 'em) that comprise Lands Of Lore: Guardians Of Destiny accommodate a colossal world replete with different settings, quests, challenges, adventures and interactive characters.

The first-person perspective game engine feels comfortably familiar and allows you to run, jump, crouch, look up and down, attack with an innumerable list of weapons, or cast one of 80 different spells. Added to this are the graphics, while not up to the high standard of Quake, are clearly distinct from one area to the next, and show a rewarding and lavish attention to detail.

Lying Sorcers

You play Luther, human son of Scotia, the evil Sorceress who snuffed it at the end of the last game. Damned with a disposition to transform into an ogre and a lizard, your quest is to rid yourself of the shape-changing curse - trouble is, not only is it initially beyond your control, but this magic is coveted by Belial, an ancient demon dude who will stop at nothing to get his hands on it.

Everything has been crafted in typically trippy Westwood fashion. Giant half-human spider beasts with the hulking hind legs of a cockroach. Repulsive crawly things with barbs and claws. Things that give you a turn when they leap out of dark corners. Things that snap your arms from their sockets and laugh. If you've been yearning for a game that'll shit you up like the first time you played Doom, look no further.

Fear by the barrel

Quite clearly, the production team took a ride over to their local giggle house and smuggled out a psychotic madman to head up their graphics department. When not talking to his invisible friend with the cloven hooves and brimstone aftershave, he sits at a Silicon Graphics workstation and creates diabolical armies of unspeakableness. Backwards.

The end result is that your adversaries scare the crap out of you when they lurch from the shadows. They then give chase and scare the crap out of you some more when you stop and turn round. They dodge your fire. They flinch when hit. They get angry. They go for backup. They cry out when they're dying. Shoot a skeleton in the kneecap and he'll bend forward, clutch it in pain and hobble after you. Brilliant.

More than one way to skin a cat

But take a step back from the frantic deathfest and you can use your brain as well as your brawn. For example, if you confront one of the subordinate bad guys with an big axe, there's every chance he'll cack himself and scarper. Some enemies are terrified of your ogre-like incarnation. Or if they're standing in a pool of oil and you have a torch, you can set the pool alight and turn them into charcoal briquettes. You'll even find that certain creatures will go about their business when left unprovoked, so killing everything that gets in your way isn't the only option open to you.

There are also other neat features, such as the automap and the ability to stick pins in it - medieval Post-It notes to remind you where you've been and where you should be going. The scenery can also work to your advantage in battle: for example, chop at one of the supports on a bridge and it'll collapse, plunging into the water and drowning anything that happened to be on it in the process.

So it's smart, right?

The point-and-click interface is a joy, with your inventory and spellbook both instantly accessible and easy to use. The game is clever enough to help you when you're walking around, and will automatically guide you around simple obstacles so you don't end up stuck on something you can't see. But there are so many little trinkets waiting to be unearthed as you go along, there simply isn't the space to describe them all. So I won't - you'll just have to trust me on that one.