Archive for September, 2009

The Longest Norwegian Adventure Game

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Apologies for not updating with anything yesterday, unfortunately, I was enraptured by Ragnar Tørnquist’s insane Adventure game The Longest Journey.. Which for several hours sucked my soul dry, due to its stunningly brilliant storyline.

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The art direction is absolutely magnificent and the character design believable, none of that Japanese leather straps or ridiculously complex bullshit outfits.

Nope, all the characters looks absolutely normal and surprisingly realistic. The human ones that is, all the non-human characters look absurd and apparently Ragnar has some very interesting dreams.

Or he smoked a not small amount of marijuana in his youth, seeing as he’s Norwegian, he probably still does to this very day.

Hell, even my Danish parents used to have pot plants in their backyard, they stopped when I was born. Nothing unusual in that. I’ve tried the fumes off it at a party, talked for roughly six hours afterwards, can’t remember a thing.

The game is, in itself, just an adventure game of the old school, point there, walk there, grab stuff, use on everything. Even if they have made a small indicator, flashing item, to signify you can actually use them, rather than just randomly smashing everything together.

As far as I know, it’s very hard to actually die, although there might be one or two scenes where it could happen, during my play-through it didn’t happen, and I can’t be bothered to try again.

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Unfortunately, The Longest Journey is an adventure game, and I really fucking loath adventure games, they are an archaic and obsolete game form, which deserves nothing but spite and hatred.

It’s useless garbage, which requires you to try and figure out whoever made the games twisted logic, which is often very hard, as logic is an alien concept to adventure video game developers.

And Ragnar is Norwegian, and thus absolutely mad, makes it much harder to penetrate.

However, the storyline is absolutely brilliantly well written, and the voices are stunningly good, two things that are absolute top priorities for yours truly, I can forgive a game a lot, just because it has good storyline and voice acting.

And I can really fucking tear the shit out of some graphically impressive video game, if the storyline is made of cheese and the voices drive me insane, hello Final Fantasy 10, please go die in a FIRE!

And of course, the Longest Journey’s graphics are so utterly outdated they don’t even have any fingers, but it’s forgiveable due to age and storyline. In the end, it’s a standard adventure game bollocks with an anything but standard storyline, which would actually make a decent movie, because Adventure games are basically very slow movies with a lot of interruptions.

You can pickup The Longest Journey on Both GoodOldGames and Steam. The Steam link is actually to the sequel, but they have a package option.

I haven’t tried Dreamfall, so I’d personally recommend GOG’s offer on this one. Or just buy it off Amazon for absolutely nothing.

Those who scream incomprehensibly beneath the table.

Monday, September 28th, 2009

Those Who Lie Beneath send me a billion lines of useless text.

First of all, thank you for opening the message and giving us this much of your time! You will be surprised with what you hear if you make your way to our profile. We promise!

We know what it’s like to be tired of the waves and waves of no name, unmotivated, unprofessional bands that are seeking your approval by the thousands. We would be embarrased to add Those Who Lie Beneath to the sea of cliche MySpace bands and we would never do that to you, or ourselves. It would not only be wasting your time, but our own. We would not go out of our way to ask you to listen to us if we didn’t think there was a good chance that you might actually enjoy it! It’s a sad state of affairs when someone has to BLOCK friend requests from musicians because they’re so tired of being unimpressed.

With that said, we’re a brand new upcoming Metal band that has recently been signed to Rise Records. This is the time in any band’s career where it’s time to push harder than you ever have before, and that means getting our name out there, getting people to hear this music whether they like it or not, and making them be familiar with the Those Who Lie Beneath name. We have posted two brand new tracks off of our upcoming debut full length album, “An Awakening”, that will be released on October 13th. We have poured our hearts and souls, given our everything to making music since we were kids, and finally, this is our chance to do something with it, our potential pay back. If want to help us with this, and it would be an immense help, truthfully, ALL you have to do is take a listen, if you dig it, accept us! Add a song to your profile so kids hear it, let some friends know, post a bulletin asking others to check it out, and/or add us to your top friends! Anything helps. This is the most important time of our lives! And if our music makes love to your earholes, PLEASE HELP US MAKE IT A GOOD ONE! It would mean the world to us.

It’s only going to get better from here and we’d love to take you along for the ride.

THANK YOU!

Wow, let’s just recap on their horrible myspace site:

A: Giant picture at the top that blocks out everything advertising something stupid: Check.
B: Billion tons of useless JPEGs replacing any link? Check.
C: Black, black, black, black? Check.

Holy shit, failed on all counts, I’m sorry Those who Scream Wolf, that’s an F-, and I’m going to have a VERY serious conversation with your families, mostly involving screaming “Why did you allow your kids to breath air?” at them for eighteen hours.

The first “song” is “Awaken”, and I have no words.

Wait, yes I have, why did you do this? Why would anyone listen to this? And why the hell do you exist?

It’s a garbage song, it sounds like the singer is a drunk longshoreman screaming through a pillow into a microphone covered in tar. I haven’t got a fucking clue what he’s singing about anyway.

The instruments are being played by hateful and spiteful people who doesn’t like little innocent kittens, and take out all their hatred on their poor instruments.

It isn’t even music, it’s just unbearable noise.

“As the Vultures circle” is the same song.

Of course it isn’t, and yet, is it? There sure isn’t any freaking difference in the general areas, both are loud and generally annoying.

“Out of Sight, Out of Mind” is exactly what I’m going to do with this. I literally cannot understand how this “noise” came to be.

It isn’t any good, it isn’t even close to decent.

The closest I come to a description is “Apocalyptic sewer garbage sound assault with intent to harm”.

It’s utterly horrible and with absolutely no chance for any sort of redemption.

What the hell happened to England?

Sunday, September 27th, 2009

‘I do not roll over,’ says Brown

Yeah, kinda hard to roll over when you’re welded in place, to really fucking awful policies of bullshit nanny-state surveillance society, populist warmongering junk and pandering to giant Banks who’s moral code would make Machiavelli blush.

It’s absolutely astonishing that anyone in England actually considers the Labour Party worthwhile or useful, oh wait, I forgot.

Their opponents are hideously malignant Populist reactionary scumbags who are even deeper into the pocket of the Corporations.

Still, these Conservative bastards will probably still win, and then people will be reminded why the entire country of Scotland will start singing the day Thatcher’s deal with the Dark Gods expire, she’s already slipping, that will teach her not to sign deals with malevolent Dark Gods.

But then, it’s just another fine example of the enormous failures of Two-party systems, what happens when both parties are fucking amazingly stupid and utterly useless?

Simply, your already damaged nation just keeps going into the drain, Italy may be the sick man of Europe, wallowing in corruption, stagnation and Berlusconi’s unbelievable popularity.

But the United Kingdoms are definitely a fine number two, and your continued pandering to “family issues” will create nothing but votes from absolutely terrible parents.

And those CCTV systems you’re setting up everywhere? Ain’t gonna do shit in the long run, sooner or later Electronic Warfare will spread into the criminal society.

And then we’ll have true SciFi dystopia, with hackers scrambling cameras will grunts are moving drugs and guns around without intervention from the police, whoa re paralyzed without their precious cameras.

Gordon_Brown_smiles

And how the hell do you elect that? Oh wait, you didn’t, the Labour political apparatus moved him into place and then just rubber stamped him into his present position.

Looks like he never grew up, a giant manchild in a giant position, oddly fitting, still he’s no worse than this:

Alistair Darling

Ahahaha! How the hell? What the hell? Who the hell? Alistair Darling ladies and gentlemen, the Chancellor of Obsolete name for Minister of Finance.

Looks more like a Sith Lord, give him some yellow eyes and let him shot lightning from his hands, Beware! Darth Darling comes!

He’ll reinstate the British Empire, and then get his ass kicked by a nuclear armed 900 million people strong India.

The Chronicle of Deimos of Titan!

Saturday, September 26th, 2009

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By the Emperor’s Grace! What foulness is this? This is neither Titan, nor is it Holy Terra! Another trickery of the Arch-fiends?

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What is this? Mutants? Filthy mutants? Unworthy of the Emperor’s Blessed Light! Unworthy of Life! Purge them from this mangled world, in the name of the Emperor!

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The Emperor grant you his Blessings in the purifying flames poor creature! Be at Peace with your Dark Gods, for I am Deimos of Titan, and I know now of Mercy!

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This world must have suffered a truly devastating war some centuries ago, and though the Emperor’s Blessing is with the skies above, the world itself has yet to recover.

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And yet life goes on, the few uncorrupted men I have encountered so far, tells me strange stories of a Great War some centuries ago, and they seem to have personified the God-Emperor into avatars of some sort, some worship “The Atom”, as a sort of creator force and I have encountered a Chapel to St. Katherine, oddly enough, they seem to have no understanding of the Golden Throne, and yet, they are not heretics worshiping the Dark Gods. Perhaps the Ecclesiarchy will send missionaries when I reestablish contact with the Imperium.

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So there are Heretics on this world! Ha! I shall rejoice in their purge!

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By Fire be Purged!

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What is this? What Technosorcery is this? The Tau? The Eldar? Filthy Xenos Scum!

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RAAARRGHH! Filthy Xenos! How dare you lie hand upon a Grey Knight, long shall be your suffering, sweet will be your deaths!

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By Fire be Purged!

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I have linked up with a few other brave civilians, who had been placed into some sort of cryostatis on-board this Xenos, a young girl seems to know much about this ship and it’s foul occupants, her bravery is worthy of one of the Emperor’s finest, with their assistance, this ship shall be purged, and perhaps I can commandeer the vessels communication system or perhaps event he navigation systems, for return to the Imperium I shall!

Oh dear me, why?

Friday, September 25th, 2009

Rose from the asheS send me a message that’s ultimately useless and insignificant. But dear merciless Shiva, how the hell did this band, and I use this as loose as I can, ever come to be?

“Plastic Girl” is the first one to come up, come up and hit my in the back of my head, with a sledgehammer, made of poisonous magma.

I’d be able to describe the sheer suffering of actually listening to this piece of abysmal shit, if I was standing on a cliff in a violent storm, screaming my pain towards the unmerciful gods of the Dark Reaches of the Voids.

“Living in this Nightmare” has the single most fitting name in the history of all mankind. How the hell? WHY? PLEASE DEAR DARKNESS TELL ME WHY? WHY DOES THIS EXIST? WHYYYYYYYY?

It’s so fucking awful, the instruments are played by drunk monkeys in the process of being raped by the undying corps of Genghis Kahn and the singer sounds like Celine Dione being thrown into a large blender.

“Never coming home” is what would happen to me, if I hadn’t been home when I wrote this, I’d probably have killed myself somewhere outside my home.

Fortunately, thanks to Rose form the morons, I can commit honourable Suicide right here, the comfort of my own room, my own house, my sanctuary.

“Better of Alone”, sounds like a football riots, where all the participants are a lovely mix of Vikings, Genghis Kahn’s Hordes and the entire population of the state of Kentucky.

They couldn’t even agree for a fucking theme for this one, it goes from Viking death metal into whiny emo goth rock and then into the bowels of Municipal Chemistry Reclamation in Nyborg, Denmark to produce something that could be used as a very primitive form for torture.

And it can’t even be redeemed by decent music, for the music sucks just as bad as the awfully high-pitched “singer”.

“All my loving”, a cover of a Beatles song, made by the single most imcompetent crap band I have ever had the misfortune of listening to, the Greatest Band in history (Beatles) brought so far down by the worst (Rises from Idiots).

It just so fucking awful, that whoever murders the guitar, actually drowns out the horrible singer, how nice of him.

To bad he can’t fucking play for shit.

Event he chorus sucks, they can’t hold a freaking tone worth shit. How the hell did these idiots ever get it into their thick moronic heads that they are worth anything?

THIS IS MUSIC, NOT THAT CRAP:

“Better days” isn’t one of my better days, as a matter of a fact, this is rapidly going to be an absolutely horrible day.

Because it sucks, if only the singer could sing, the guitarist play and everyone was competent and interesting, this could be redeemed.

And why the hell do they keep switching between whiny voice and Viking voice?

“Wounded Angel” starts with a fine example of the guitarist being horrible with these occasional little sounds that sounds like he’s stepping on mice, I think they might be on purpose, so I shall now wish for Damnation to his entire bloodline for nine generations.

The lyrics are pretty fucking stupid too.

“I can’t remember when” is just awful right from the start. It fits into around fifity-six trillion stereotypes and generic things within seventy nanoseconds.

It’s amazing really.

So much awful music, in such a small band. It’s fucking bewildering, who told these idiots they where worthy of anything but scorn and stigmatization?

Do us all a favour and die in an Ocean of fucking Misery!

Awful Generic crap band.

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

We start out with “Awake by Design“, which has a boring name, and they have:

Hi,
This is the Myspace site for the band Awake By Design a Heavy/Rock and Metal band with a tinge of Gothic from the UK.
Their debut album Sentiment is out Now on sale via the Myspace and FaceBook page and is being sold worldwide. They currently have 4 tracks from the album uploaded onto their Myspace. If you have the time to check them out that would be great. We hope you enjoy them.

Any information you would like to know about Awake By Design is on the page.

Thank you for your time and effort we hope you stay in touch and catch them on tour.

Yours kindly

Paul – Manager/Myspace team.

Yup. A stupid spam message send out by their fucking manager of their “Myspace” team, how utterly delightful, and by that, I mean that I am going to rip their fucking crap to shreds.

We start out with “The Visions of Truth”, which is crap. No, seriously, it’s a boring piece of crap, played by the single most generic band in the history of the fucking planet, and sung by someone who doesn’t have a voice that fits to his genre of “Metal/Gothic/Rock”, on the other hand, it could be “Gothic”, although it doesn’t sound very old-German to me.

But what do I know right? Just because I have decent taste doesn’t mean I’m right now does it?

“Ethereal” or as I’d like to call it “Pretentious”. It’s the same thing as the other one, really, it is. The music is just a drone in the background, and the guy who is singing is just boring as fuck.

Boring is really all that sums up that one.

“Sentiment” at least have the decency to start with a bit of old-school guitar play, that sounds like something from a café singer without talent or merit.

It’s not even metal at all. It’s just a slow, quiet Emo piece of shit. It would be decent, without the fucking horrible singer.

“Silence Undone” they try to mask the awful singer with some stupid voice effect, some eletronica bullshit and general incompetence.

Yeah, there really isn’t anything redeeming about this piece of shit band. Let’s move on to their site:

Awful.

And the lovely pictures of the band?

Awful.

So yeah. Awful, awful, boring, generic and awful.

And here’s some very silly metal for you.

Why does Techno degrade women in their live acts?

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009

Yeah. Skimpily dressed female “dancers”, who are really just wank material for 14-year old boys in right-wing nuthouse families.

So, why do they do it? And yes, I know Smith, not all Techno acts rely on cheap skin, and yes, I know, that probably isn’t even Techno, I used as a example.

But who the fuck cares? And yes, I’ll agree that most modern music make heavy use of skimpily dressed women, thus twisting young girls world view into a giant mess, mostly due to poor parental supervisions designed purely to limit young people’s prospects, rather than to encourage them to explorer their own world.

Also, by a mechanistic society who ostracises the odd and the unique away from the physical world, into the sweet sickly embrace of the Internet, where it just gets worse, and they all end up as furries and weaboes.

Covering up their own enormous insecurities in huge amounts of paper-thin pastiches of characters, straight out of the Hollywood book of heroes/villains etc…

It’s a loathsome reality isn’t it?

A society where physical beauty is guided by adult marketing executives simply looking to profit more and apparently eliminate any sort of individuality, in the name of the Lord and Master Mammon.

It’s just an old German guy screaming into a microphone, why is this appealing to teenagers? Oh yeah, because it’s “the thing”.

And drugs, a shit load of drugs and sex.

Which wouldn’t be so bad, except the drugs kill you, and the sex is unprotected, rendering your life either A) miserable due to an unwanted pregnancy or B) traumatized due to a fucking abortion.

So, what’s my real problem? It’s not actually the Techno itself, it isn’t bad by any stretch, if nothing else it does have more merit than that noisy mistake that’s rap music.

It’s just that it, similar to Rap, R’n’B and Pop music sells itself by the way of sex. You really can’t argue against it, it’s selling through sex.

Fuck talent, let’s turn all singers into sex symbols and just ignore their potential talent, or lack there off, who cares if they can sing, we’ll fix that in post-production.

Your singer a 35 year old women? Who cares, we’ll just make use of some slutty dancer and let her lipsynch through the ENTIRE FUCKING SONG?

What the hell? How the hell can anyone even considering acceptance of something like that? How the hell can anyone ever defend it?

Why should I have to attack it? It should just happend purely automatically, that someone would fucking stand up and go “Hang on? What?”.

But no, we just accept it and suck some more on the tit of the Corporate machine, you fucking consumer whore.

Stop buying your goddamn Gucci bullshit, a cheap piece of shit bag you bought in freaking WalMart was PRODUCED IN THE SAME FUCKING ASIAN COUNTRY!

If nothing else, at least Walmart are honest in their “this is cheap shit” spiel, whereas Gucci honestly tries to tell us their crap is more worthwhile due to a giant FUCKING “G”!

Why the fuck you you idiots buy that crap?

No fucking wonder Marketing executives are doing so great.

No sex there, at least nothing beyond tight t-shirts.

Socialism is the coolest shit since the Wheel.

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009

socialism_explained
WRRROOOOOOOOOOOOONG!

Socialism is basically the coolest thing on the fucking planet, not hardcore Communism in a way that’ll make Stalin horny, nor the fake bullshit Hitler slammed onto his party to attract voters.

Nope, good old fashioned Socialism, the one where the general principal is that being so absurdly rich that you run the country, should result in a taxation rate of 405% and mockery from the rest of the populace.

We sure as hell don’t accept that our politicians receive literally millions from enormous thoroughly morally repugnant corporations, as “campaign contributions”, then again, most Socialist parties don’t believe in individual election campaigns.

It’s not about the individuals singular strengths, it’s about the Strength we develop as a whole, a combined people, Strength through Numbers.

change-to-socialism
Ahahahahaha, this is so wrong!

Remember, National Socialism isn’t actually Socialsm at all, it’s a fancy name for Hitler’s old party: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which good Old Hitler just made up, to draw in votes. National Socialism is just another word for “Fascism”. It hasn’t got anything to do with Socialism as a whole.

socialismThis is Socialism explained!

Communism isn’t fucking Socialism either, they’re related, but only related the same way conservatism and reactionary is.

Communism is the doctrine of every one has equal worth, whereas Socialism is that everyone have equal rights, choice, opportunities and worth.

In a communist society, your worth is predetermined according to a general list designed by whatever Central Committee there is, and there isn’t anything you can do to change it, no matter how hard/bad you perform.

In a proper moderate Social-Democratic system, your performance will have an effect on your rewards, it’s just limited to something that isn’t absurd.

Like getting paid millions for driving your Bank into Bankruptcy, because long-term planing went straight out the window.

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And you should always remember, that I’m from Scandinavia, we’re doing just fine in these days, even though the Liberal-Conservative right-wingers have had their periods of power, in Denmark thanks to the Racist Danish People’s Party, we’re a thoroughly Socialist society.

Everyone in Denmark are Social-Democrats, except the Social Democratic Party, which is probably why they are going down the drain.

And why the Socialist People’s Party is doing so awesomely good.

So as a conclusion, we’re doing better than the self-pronounced Capitalist societies, we’re happier, we’re healthier and we have a much lower rate of infant mortality.

And remember, the only ones who enjoy a Laissez Faire capitalist society are the ultra-rich, who will ruthless prevent anyone else from ever getting close to them.

Also, such societies will usually stagnate without some sort of external stimuli. If you’re more interested in that subject, go have a look up at the time the British Empire was being crushed industrially by the more restrictive governments of the 1890’s Germany and America.

So in closing. Socialism is awesome.

And we’re using the Red Rose as symbol these days you fucking yanks, not a damn Hammer and Sickle.

And Obama is fucking conservative you dimwits.

Obscure Cartoon: Cybersix.

Monday, September 21st, 2009

Yup, one hell of an obscure Cartoon, Cybersix, originally an Argentinian comic, turned into a cartoon by the good people of TMS for the Canadian channel Teletoon.

So yes, it’s a cartoon, written by two Argentinians, animated by a bunch of Japanese under the direction of a Canadian company.

It’s technically spoken a Canadian-Argentinian Anime, isn’t that Terrifying?

Let me recap the main character, Cybersix, a female cyborg build by a deranged WW2 nazi doctor, escaped, needs some green crap the erstwhile doctor’s insane creations have on them, becomes a superhero fighting his minions.

Oh yeah, and she cross dresses as a male teacher, to avoid suspicions, and has a crush on one of “his” colleagues, a giant bulky blond guy, who looks vaguely like Brock Samson.

It’s not an American cartoon, I think we can pretty much define that easily. Not that many reverse drag queens around in the mainstream American media, especially not in children’s cartoons.

It’s fairly well drawn, with the usual setting being a sprawling dark version of Buenos Aires, vaguely resembling Batman’s Gotham City, just with low European houses instead of Dystopian skyscraper canyons.

The main charcter, Cybersix, even runs around dressed in black leather with a cape and a hat she stole from Carmen Sandiego.

A cheap Argentinian cross-dressing female Batman? Almost spot on, and considering that the original comic is supposedly a billion times more sexually and maturely charged than the cartoon, it’ll probably be right in the comic.

Who unfortunately doesn’t exist on English, only Spanish, French and Italian. Surprisingly not on Danish, which is rather odd, as the Danish Libraries love European/South American comics, hell, I like them too.

Tintin is a fuckload better than any Manga.

But back on track. The Cartoon suffers from the usual; One plot per Episode foiled and a rather limited list of characters.

It’s really just Cybersix, her Brock Samsonesqu love interest, a street urchin and Cybersix’s, and hold on, younger brother, who died, but who’s brain is not placed inside a giant black panther.

Furries, eat your heart out. Here’s a human brain inside a cybernetically enhanced panther, build by a deranged Nazi mad scientist.

Isn’t that lovely?

Besides is enourmously bizarre concept, it’s actually a fairly straightforward cartoon, the Nazi doctors son, stuck in a little boy’s body, conjures up some scheme to impressive his father, cybersic either:

A: Foils to scheme and the son, Jose, runs away.

Or:

B: Jose’s enormous incompetence foils the scheme with only the slightest push from Cybersix.

And that’s basically it, oh they try to make something more out of it, like the interplay between Cybersix in her male alter ego Adrian and the cheap version of Brock Samson, who seem to have a relationship like brothers.

Adrian is of course still Cybersix, who’re pining for him through the entire series, which only last a season, so yay?

And Episode 10 has a female werewolf.

Yeah. Furries are really everywhere aren’t they?

Gotta admit, that the Intro song is absolutely stunning, compared to most of the bullshit you see out there.

Probably because it’s sung by a Jazz vocalist, and not some bubblegum pop star.

Also, this:

Hey, I also like Adrian more. He’s hot! They should have just made c6 a guy. And he would disguise himself as a female literature teacher by the name of Adrianna!

Hell, why not just call the show Drag queen?!

I know I wouldn’t watch it… 😀

There’s also the slight problem that the cartoons is fairly slow paced, and suffers from the earlier mentioned “one villain a week” syndrome, the main Villain himself, never even leaves his massive Bavarian castle in the middle of the Argentinian rainforest.

Which reminds me, how the fuck have every single intelligence Agency in this stupid world ever managed to MISS something like that?

No wonder Argentina’s version of the Batman can defeat him so successfully, everyone must be idiots.

Son in conclusion, well drawn, stunningly brilliant character design, boring as hell.

Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Simulator

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

There probably isn’t a whole lot of you who knows about Majesty, and old awesome simulator, where you weren’t the plucky Hero of the Land going out to murder the bad guy for gold and glory.

You’re the King, who sends out the plucky heroes with promises of Gold and Glory, but really just Gold.

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In the first Majesty, you build market places, Inns, a blacksmith and other economical buildings to make Gold, which you then used to build Guilds for Heroes, Towers for local defence and other residences.

It was great fun, for the kind of people who prefer a bit more slower paced action, rather than crazy screaming Goblins in your face every five minutes. Sure, it had it’s moments of utter annoyance, and sure the Wizards went “I’m melting!” every 35 seconds, because they where made of cheese.

Majesty was simply a city-builder simulator with RPG heroes management at it’s core. It was fun and didn’t take itself very seriously.

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It’s Gone 3-D!

Majesty 2 is essentially the same game, with a 3-D rework, streamlined hero management and a few tweaks all around. What its done is preserver the point of the original game, and wrap it into a beautiful 3D engine.

It’s still based on the same old concept, you’re the Local King, you have a problem with your neighbours, due to them being wolves, bears, undead, werewolves, vampires, ogres, Minotaurs, elementals and other supernatural annoyances.

You build a small city, hire heroes from a bunch of Guilds, and bribe them into murdering everything that looks at you funny, in a lovely number of creative ways. From cheap rogues who love gold, into rangers who murder beats and love exploring, into clerics who are basically the best of the best, since they can fucking heal, into Warriors who are though.

And the Wizards, who are glass cannons, they are, however, slightly more competent and durable in this particular incarnation. you’ll still get the “I’m melting!” now and then.

And when some of your heroes die, guess what? A freaking graveyard spawns in your city, where you can resurrect your heroes, and be attacked by: THE UNDEAD!

Also, as the number of heroes grow, the number of peasants you can gather taxes from grows too, this does, however, carry a penalty: Sewers.

And guess what sewer exit’s spawn? That’s right, rats first, then Ratmen! So expansion and losing heroes has a downside too, but, these graveyards and sewers keep spawning low level creatures, so you can use them as training grounds for new inexperienced heroes.

Just remember to build some guard towers around them anyway.

So in the end, Majesty 2 captures the original game, simplifies the heroes a bit, but it’s still the same game, which in this case is a good thing. It even uses a large element of the original sounds and even the advisor, who sounds like a drunk Sean Connery.

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You can even play Multi-player, using your heroes to murder HIS heroes.

A single criticism is really just the lack of a random map generator, but it’s alleviated by the slightly lower price, at least in Euroland.

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