Fang, City of Lost Souls, once known as the City of Plenty. Years ago darkness filled the sky in the shape of Melkor the Red Dragon. Old and steeped in malice, it rained fire and destruction upon the peaceful inhabitants of Fang. Melkor enslaved the people to its will, oppressing them with fearful ferocity, feeding on them, and stealing their wealth. He forced them to build a labyrinth, deep in the hillside above Fang. The Dragon made it his lair, and filled it with all kinds of tricks, traps and loathsome monsters to guard him. Baron Sukumvit, once the ruler of Fang, tried to free his city from the terror of the dragon. He let it be known that anyone who slew the dragon would receive a great reward. Ever since, warriors and heroes have tried to overcome the trials of the labyrinth and kill Melkor. Survival is unlikely, yet many take the risk, for the prize is great - a purse of 10,000 Gold Pieces. The first year, seventeen brave warriors attempted "The Walk" , as it later came to be known. Not one reappeared. You have decided that you will attempt "The Walk", for the reward, or perhaps to free the people of Fang from the evil Dragon, and to avenge those that have suffered under his foul dominion.

For me, this is a long anticipated release (could you tell?). I have been looking forward to this game since it was first announced back during the Tomb Raider craze. While the story line is completely cheesy, the game itself is what's important. As you can expect, it's third person perspective ala Tomb Raider (and made by the same company, what are the chances?) you get a choice of the female heroine (again TR) or a burly unshaven Conan wannabe. There is no advantage to using either, just different models and skins (which I'm sure we can expect to show up as Quake II mod and skins). The game play itself is not as smooth as TR though, I found the camera jumpy and unfluid. You occasionally get disoriented as you are running around and the camera decides to give you a theatrical, yet difficult to maneuver screen view. The characters motions suffer from this also, the jumps are unnatural looking and detract from truly emersing yourself into the game. Your begin with the standard sword to defend yourself with and gain better weapons as the game progresses.

Now before you get ready for an action fest I will tell you now - 'It ain't so'. DD has more puzzles in the first level than TR did in the whole first half of the game which is probably the explanation for only 10 levels to the game. DD also sports Multiplay but, as usual, Deathmatch only! In the case of Deathtrap Dungeon, this is really a design faux pas. If you are going to create a game that is heavily puzzle oriented, why have a brainless multiplayer deathmatch option? It's like having Virtual Rubics Cube with the multiplayer option of taking turns blasting the cube to smithereens. It exists only for one reason - salability! Not because it's a good idea or fun.

The graphics in the game are mediocre and borderline bland even in 3DFX. The textures are low res and things like shading and light sourcing (other than fire) are either too subtle or non existent in a lot of areas. The sounds are, well, sounds - nothing special. I would guess the CD would have some nice gothic tracks to listen to but there are no additional atmospheric sound effects. There is some attention paid to detail like blood appearing on the characters face as they slowly expire, all the monsters die with limbs flying and decapitation, but a 300 foot drip from a parapet grants you nothing (Go figure).

The controls are your standard TR/Quake genre with a nasty inventory system. You use the function keys to select a category, which in turn opens the sub categories which you use the same function keys to select with. Needless to say, during a sticky situation you have little or no hope of selecting anything quickly. The save game feature is horrid (and not working thanks to Class), you can only save at certain intervals when an illuminated skull (one of the games only 3D enhancements) pops up. Your typical PSX style save feature and really should have been changed for the PC version.

Overall this game could have been better and I am unfortunately disappointed in its release. The combination of camera angle switches and occasionally difficult keyboard control detracted heavily from my enjoyment while the sometimes clueless puzzles left me frustrated. However, the learning curve was nice and smooth.

Graphics: 10 / 20
Sound: 7 / 15
Gameplay: 15 / 25
Fun Factor: 10 / 20
Multiplayer Play: 1 / 5
Packaging: 0 / 5
Overall Impression: 6 / 10

Overall Rating: 49 / 100

Graphics 14/20

I wasn't able to get the 3DFX to work with this game unfortunately. It decided to puke on my Voodoo Rush card, so I used the Direct3D. The D3D was pretty smooth though. Graphically, it looks a lot like Tomb Raider II (also by EIDOS). The frame rate seemed smooth and I didn't notice a significant amount of lag in movement. However, Tomb Raider II came out last year and these graphics don't really go above and beyond what you saw in TR II. Also, last I remember blood was RED, it seemed to be black every time I died as it pooled on the floor. The character damage was pretty well done although the graphics for the character made him look like one of the members of KISS when he got damaged too badly. The blood sticks to the wall when you hack someone up but it looks a little like goo instead of blood, though in big fights you get a most delightful room full of bloody mayhem. The menus were well done and very detailed. Not to mention some of them were somewhat humorous (such as the Orc band for Music Volume).

Sound 10/15

It was decent. Ambiance was pretty poor (I'll explain later). Sound effects were average. Nothing interesting like Die By the Sword had. The background noise tended to be an irritating drone. I really found the orcs annoying since they sounded like a very poor Beavis and Butthead impression. The Menu sound effects were the highlight of the sounds. They went with the graphics and sounded cool.

Gameplay 14/25

Well if you liked Tomb Raider, the gameplay's quite similar. It seems to run slow though. Not a frame rate issue or anything along hardware lines (it was the same on the PSX) it just plain feels slow. However, my biggest pet peeve was that the camera angle was always moving around which not only made it hard to control, you had to continually stop and go to the first person view in order to see anything. I tended to miss a lot of things the first time by just because the camera angle made it so I couldn't see switches or items. This also made ambient sound impossible since the sound didn't follow the camera. The sword fighting is similar to Die By the Sword but simplified down. Due to the camera shifting non-stop, I found it hard to see where and what I was swinging at. DBTS's combat scheme gave you much more control and unlike much of DTD, you could actually see what you were fighting.

Fun Factor 13/20

A lot of traps, too many switches. I like hacking up stuff, not going through clicking a switch every 30 seconds. The first few levels have few monsters and this makes it extremely bland to get through. The higher levels have more monsters, but you have to solve stupid puzzles in order to get anywhere in the game. Big TR fans would probably like it. But if you didn't like TR, you probably aren't going to like this one. The gameplay is slow, tedious, and can get downright frustrating. Many people may hit the old delete key if they get stuck too frequently since there's not a whole lot to keep your attention.

Multiplayer 3/5

Packaging 5/5

Overall Rating 5/10

Decent attempt by EIDOS to use the Tomb Raider idea in another project. A little bit boring, a cumbersome control system, and poor camera angles made me want to go really hack up somebody. It was graphically smoother than DTBS, but I found DTBS more entertaining. I did really like the menus in DTD though. They were nicely done with cool sound effects. The save game screen where it chops off the orcs head when you click save is probably the coolest thing in the game. (sorry I didn't think anything in the actual game was revolutionary or extremely eye catching or noteworthy)