Dodgy everything
Each level in Mage Knight Apocalypse consists of trawling through dungeon-style levels on rigid quests where you’ll encounter hundreds of monsters along the way. There is some variety with the Jungle and Temple levels but essentially it’s a linear journey that becomes monotonous very quickly. There is no room for the exploration that you see in the likes of Oblivion and even the inclusion of some simple puzzle solving objectives does nothing to help the repetitiveness of the missions.
At the beginning of each level you’ll form a party with the four other heroes who tag along as you navigate through the dungeon mazes. These fellow party members are supposed to help you out against any monsters that you encounter, but the A.I. of the party coupled with your own heroes dodgy control system is so poor that trawling through the dungeons becomes frustrating very quickly. We sat back and watched in disbelief as our fellow adventurers glitched into scenery, walked into walls, or just stood completely still whilst we were in battle. On occasions some of them struggled to simply follow us around a corner, so much so that we just gave up and left them to find their own way back to the party.
Click for larger imageThe combat in Mage Knight Apocalypse is party ruined by the A.I but the dodgy camera angles also don’t help. The free camera system used in the game is totally flawed and never seems to be able to point in the right direction, meaning that you never get a decent view of the action; the developers should have let the camera do the work for us rather than making us constantly adjust the angle in order to get a half-decent view. Furthermore, the combat scenes don’t flow due to the cut-scenes that constantly appear just before you’re about to crack some skulls. If these scenes were exciting then all could be forgiven, but watching yourself sneaking up on a pack of monsters is totally uninteresting.
Click for larger imageCombat is made infinitely worse by the fact that you’re not really penalised when you die, but instead will re-spawn with full health and all of your equipment in tact. When you head back to the place where you were killed you’ll notice that any monsters that were killed prior to your death will still be dead and those who aren’t will still have the same amount of health that you’d left them with. The big boss battles are tougher, but the same rule applies, if you die so what? Just save the game prior to any battle and you can go aback and forward until all the monsters are dead; it’s a breeze.
