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Send it back to the dungeon
‘Orcs & Elves’ is retro in a bad way
By Sean Quast
Every game player has seen this engine and played it to death, so giving me some lame swords and a talking wand instead of a chainsaw and plasma rifle made me loose interest fast
This game saddened me in ways I can’t describe. I loved Dungeons and Dragons-like RPGs that were around in the mid-90s, in which a player wandered around a large dungeon battling dragons and what not.
Their simplistic turn-based combat systems and classic story lines were all comforting to the dorky teenager that I was.
Sadly they lost out to the epic “Final Fantasy”esque RPGs and the gaming industry has never looked back.
So when I heard that “Orcs & Elves” was a new dungeon RPG for the Nintendo DS, I was filled with joy and rushed out to grab a copy.
I couldn’t wait to see what modern improvements were made to this dust-covered genre. I quickly found that there were none.
The game was built using the now almost ancient Doom engine and to say that it might have impacted the final product would be a safe assumption. Every game player has seen this engine and played it to death, so giving me some lame swords and a talking wand instead of a chainsaw and plasma rifle made me lose interest fast.
First problem with the game is that it is entirely too short. The game takes little or no effort to beat and the levels are less than expansive. There are nine levels to the dungeon and each level seems smaller than the next, as if the game designers got as bored designing the game as players do playing it.
The combat system was horrendous. I see now why strictly turn-based systems were phased out of games. It made combat a chore rather than attractive feature. Mashing the sword attack at everything that came at me was so tedious that I wondered if this game could be any less fun.
Then I came across the monsters of the game, all of which seemed to be recycled from other games. One would swear that the imps from “Doom” make a reappearance as an evil race of elves or imps or something else fantasy-like. I really don’t care; I just wanted the game to be over.
The storyline is so awful you forget why you are doing things almost as soon as you hear them. So what if some stupid Dwarven society got over run by Orcs? And why in the hell does my wand talk?
It’s like I am knight rider with a really stupid KITT. Every time the player uses a wand it says some stupid phase like “gruesome.”
The game took almost no advantage of the DS’ unique features. You could press the stylus to the large use button on the lower screen, or like any normal person you would just hit the A button. This game was like a horrible port of a even worse SNES game.
I tried to think what would make this game better, and I really think it couldn’t be salvaged. Don’t buy it, rent it or even play it.
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