The RPG genre, one that has been lacking for years, really since
the days of Ultima, Wizardry and the Elder Scrolls series has been
making a small, quiet, almost unheard comeback in the past
couple years. We have had a few great role-playing Games come
out in the past couple years between Might and Magic 6, Return to
Krondor and EverQuest. However for the most part the entire RPG
scene has been weak at best. Shattered Light tries to portray one
of the older Ultima games, however it fails in every aspect that
Ultima succeeded.
The story behind Shattered Light is one that has been
used time and time again, you are hero who has been brought
onto the land of Delos to save the planet. You are suppose to
accomplish this goal by tapping into an ancient power source and
bring back life to the continent. Well that’s all and good, but in
order to salvage that generic story you are going to need some
serious pickup in the graphics and sound department, that
however you are not going to find here.
One huge aspect in gaming today is how it "looks". Graphics play
the biggest role in the "first impression" department and, well,
sadly Shattered Light doesn’t make much of an impression. This
game features well .. Bitmaps. The graphics are below those of
Ultima 6 and even worse the game REQUIRES 16-bit color, if you
use any other mode you are forced to switch. The game is
completely two-dimensional, meaning both the characters and the
world are completely flat. This game requires no special
hardware and runs in resolutions up to 1280x1024.
Another area we look to when it comes to getting into a game is
the music. The music in this game is at best, boring. It’s mundane
and repetitive, definitely not a title that anyone will be looking for
a soundtrack to accompany it. The SFx are pretty much
non-existent, even in battle they are dull and sometimes even
unheard of.
On area that can, in some cases make or break a game is in the
multiplayer department. Shattered Light does feature a somewhat
comprehensive multiplayer system allowing you to use a built-in
client/server meaning you have the ability to run a server off your
machine. You can have up to 8 players in the game, in both an
IPX and an Internet game. One somewhat interesting aspect to
Shattered Light’s multiplayer engine is that you can modify
characters stats and characteristics on the fly (only when hosting a
game on your machine).
Most importantly with any game is the control, or game play. A
game can be made great or ruined by it’s game play. The game
play in Shattered Light is extremely simple, too simple. The game
is completely mouse driven (except for chat) and gets very boring,
very quickly. There isn’t a whole lot to say on the subject except
you had better not play this game too much or else you may wear
out your left mouse button due to the fact that it’s the only button
used in the game.
Role-Playing games, since they are generally pretty lengthy, must,
most importantly, be fun. I could see myself playing this game for
maybe a week. After that it would be more than boring. It had a
few of the makings of a good role-playing game however it lacks
so heavily in some areas that it just can’t be deemed as "fun".
All in all I would call this a more than pathetic attempt at a
modern role-playing game. While many RPG’s that come out
today are in the first person and even take advantage of some
graphics cards this game choose to stay with the older ¾ overhead
view, but completely neglected to embrace any modern
technology. When it really comes down to it there are so many
features in this game that are just so horrible that really nothing
can be concluded except that the game itself is completely and
utterly horrible.