Dark Messiah – Might and Magic

When Steam launched in the early 2000s and everyone hated the idea of downloading their games, there were only a handful of games available. I remember Dark Messiah being one of the first non-Valve games on the platform. It had a demo which I tried and enjoyed. You were able to kick enemies and watch the physics engine do its magic. I thought, “this is cool” and then promptly forgot about it for a couple of decades.

Well, I’ve finally played the game in its entirety and doesn’t quite stand the test of time. Despite using the Source Engine, it has some pretty bad performance issues. In theory, I should have been able to play this at 1080p with all the bells and whistles turned on. I had to down-res it and go to medium settings and it still had below average frame rates.

Then there is a sluggishness to the controls. Every attack is prefixed with a swirling weapon flourish that just makes everything seem unresponsive. The kicking and throwing physics attacks are still okay, but they are under-utilized and less effective than they could be. Half-Life 2 did it much better.

All that said it’s not unplayable. The levels are (thankfully) pretty on-rails making it a more casual gaming experience than a modern open-world RPG where you are forced to follow quest arrows and talk to boring NPCs. In a bit of a twist, your character isn’t necessarily a good guy. There is a “good” ending, but where’s the fun in that? There’s a lot of unrealized potential in this game and it’s too bad it doesn’t hold up.