GT Interactive and Reality Bytes are trying their hand at the Dungeon Crawl genre with their latest release, Dark Vengeance. It takes a less humorous storyline with fewer quips than past games, like DeathTrap Dungeon, but does a little better job on the storyline. You get to play the Warlock, the Trickster, or the Gladiator. Each of the three characters has an entirely different storyline, as well as game levels. This is quite different than any other games in its genre. Reality Bytes paid pretty good attention to detail and this turns out to be an enjoyable title. There are, however, some problems which should have been resolved.

The basic storyline has the Dark Elves taking a little revenge on the good folks of Amagar. Hordes of evil, once banished to the Underland have been released creating chaos and death, etc. Fulfilling the prophecy, the sun is eclipsed and the Dark Elves take a little Dark Vengeance.

Graphically, it's by far the best in it's genre. It's not as bright as Deathtrap Dungeon or as interesting, but it's definitely the most realistic. The weapons all look fantastic and the environmental lighting was great. The graphic engine looks good at ALL resolutions which sort of blew me away. At 400x320 it looked damn good! It runs all the way up to 1280x1024 and the graphics are nicely done at each resolution. My biggest complaint comes in this category though. You use the mouse to control the camera in DV, but this game lags way, way, way down when you try to look around too much. It ran fine in the highest resolutions with no drop in framerates. When I went to look around an area, no matter what resolution, the game suddenly crawled to a standstill with a very noticeable drop in framerates. Now I suddenly felt like I was playing a third person game like Trespasser. My other complaint is that it's too dark. I don't get a spooked feeling by the dark so it really doesn't seem to enhance the environment. Also, why the HELL does the trickster look like Lara from Tomb Raider? Can't you guys come up with your own chicks? You'll need a Direct3D supported card for this one.

It's got decent audio. The monsters get a little annoying and there's very few quips from the characters. There's a good bit of environmental sounds like doors opening and boxes being pushed around. The weapons all have unique sounds as well. It does support 3D positional sound, but I don't think it liked my Monster M80, because the box was greyed out.

Dark Vengeance gets similar criticism as other games of its genre. The control is somewhat of a hassle. It's complicated trying to hit something with a back swing while you're spinning around trying to find your attacker. Like I mentioned earlier, DON'T TOUCH THE MOUSE. You start moving that thing while you're in combat, pretty soon you'll be looking at the ceiling while the little ogres are tearing you apart. Die by the Sword had decent support for a joystick/gamepad which I have yet to see used in games since. Maybe developers should take a peak back into gamepads.

The AI in DV is pretty lacking. They'll pretty much just plain out attack you. However, they do try and run away if they're injured. If you're on one level at the top of a stairwell and the enemy is at the bottom, there's a pretty good chance he's not going to come up the stairs after you. The archers, which stand back and fire at you from a distance, don't make much of an effort to run away from you when you're standing next to them chopping away (kudos to Diablo).

It's definitely difficult enough so you can't breeze through it in twenty minutes, and the unique storylines for each character give it some decent replayability. It's still a third person dungeon crawl and for many, it may be a genre that's been beat to death by poor games. Heretic 2 is the major exception and DV sure isn't H2. It's pretty good, but the Tomb Raider-esque controls and terrible camera control put some big dents in the entertainment value of DV.

It's got quite good multiplayer support, allowing for games of 32 players with 64 spectators. I don't know exactly why you'd want support for 64 peepers, but it's there. Multiplayer is pretty nicely done. Its TCP/IP only and has connection speed options to optimize based on connection speed. The game comes with a dedicated server option which is a very good option. It also allows for custom skins and teamplay. It has by FAR the best options for multiplayer I've seen yet, rivaling even Heretic 2.

Dark Vengeance puts a tight package in to the sort of bombed third person dungeon hack genre. It has some big flaws and some nice features. It also is pretty entertaining. I'd have to definitely recommend this to anyone who liked Deathtrap Dungeon and Die By The Sword and hasn't been totally tarnished by Heretic II.

Highs: Great graphic support, great multiplayer support
Lows: Terrible camera control, iffy tomb-raider style control

Graphics: 17/20
Sound: 10/15
Gameplay: 24/30
Fun Factor: 16/20
Multiplayer: 5/5
Overall Impression: 8/10


Minimum Requirements:
CPU: Pentium 166
RAM: 16MB
Hard Disk Space: Est. 100MB
DirectSound^TM 100% compatible sound card
DirectDraw^TM 100% compatible PCI video card

Recommended:
CPU: 200 MHz with MMX
RAM: 32MB
Hard Drive Space: 250MB
Direct3D^TM 100% compatible 3D Graphics accelerator w/ 4MB vRAM