Been downloading a few game demos from Download.com lately.
Spent ages trying to get my hands on a working Civilization III demo. There’s been alot of problems with the demo and in the end it wouldn’t work on my machine as my monitor is Plug and Play (with just the default Microsoft drivers, I can’t work out the make), but in the end I got the Civilization IV which worked.
Civilization, or Civ as it is affectionately known, is a world-famous game of empire building. You start with a small city and build your empire to dominate the globe. It’s supposed to be really good and addictive, and for the most part it is pretty good, but I knew there was a reason I haven’t played my Windows ’95 Civilization I game for awhile: It’s a turn-based strategy.
I knew this before I downloaded it of course, and one of my favourite turn-based games on PC is Risk. But I just found Civ boring. Admittedly I didn’t finish the tutorial so perhaps when I don’t have to follow instructions from an avatar all the time it will be more interesting, but it didn’t run great on my machine anyway and I like real-time action.
I also downloaded a completely free MMORPG called Martial Heroes. It’s actually quite good considering it’s free. I’m not a great fan of RPGs, I like the idea of them, talking to characters and quests etc, but alot of the ones i’ve played have you running about doing nothing for ages. Eve is a MMORPG too but I guess the fact that there’s always something you can be doing (you can look up all the agents on the map and go see them when you want) helps keep it interesting.
Anyway, Martial Heroes is in 3d for a change too. I chose to be an assassin. The character choices are quite limited – warrior, mage, assassin and monk, but I think later on you can customize your character with clothes etc.
The menu system is quite confusing and I think it’s an Asian developed game as funny text characters turn up here and there. One major niggle I have with it so far is that although there’s a minimap (which zooms to a fullsize map) you get given grid references to meet people. For example “Go see such and such at X1567 Y2354″ – Great! I spent ages running about trying to get to the right spot on the map. Once i found the person it was okay though. Here is a screenie of me hunting foxes for the first quest (For the record I hate fox-hunting irl!) and a close up of my character:
