Dark Messiah - Conveniently placed spiked walls and ledges

When you see a swarm of enemies come towards you what is your first reaction? Blast them with magic? Shoot them with your bow? Stab them in the face with your sword or daggers? NO! You kick them. The kick isn't like the wimpy stomp in Dead Space. When you kick someone they fly back 20 feet as if they got rammed by a truck usually into a conveniently placed spiked wall or ledge. What the hell? Yes, exactly. Dark Messiah is an action game by Ubisoft. You follow the adventures of Sareth, the orphan apprentice to the mage Phenrig to uncover your past and fulfill the prophecy of the dark messiah.

Here is a trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZegsGlGvtAU

Doesn't sound too bad. We'll get there. First of all. Why the hell would there be so many spiked walls? Do people actually put spiked walls in their garden, their study, the streets of a city, the sides of a boat, even the sides of a mountain. Who would build spiked walls everywhere. If it was me I'd probably hold back on building all those just in case some crazed guy walks over and kicks you towards it instantly impaling you to death. And you don't need to send them flying with a kick to impale them, its as if they have some sort of magnetic pull against flesh and bone that you just get near and BAM your head is on the spikes.

The whole game involves doing some crazy platforming jumps, solving riddles, and murdering hordes of enemies. These jumps are frustrating. Its not hard to do a jump yeah, you can do it, but what you don't realize is some kind of trap that sends you over the ledge. A enemy you didn't see that kills you in two hits because you picked an assassin. Yeah that's another thing. If you don't want to suffer while playing this game, don't pick an assassin. Its fun when you're able to stealth and do some back stab instant kills and silent kills with arrows. The thing is 80% of the time you are unable to stealth. Most of the time I'm just running in and strafing around hitting my mouse key as fast as I can to cut stuff up.

Another part of the platforming jumps is that you have to use something called the "Rope Bow." Its a bow where you shoot an arrow with a rope attached. A rope will drop from the arrow towards the ground until it hits something then swings back and forth for a few seconds. DO NO JUMP ONTO THE ROPE WHILE IT SWINGS. I've got my character stuck in so many things because I was impatient. And how the hell does a full grown man hang on a rope attached to an arrow attached to a piece of wood? And how does the Rope Bow have unlimited ammunition? You can get endless ammunition for your normal bow if you find the secret item the unlimited quiver but that is besides the point. I guess they don't want you stuck because you're shooting it everywhere like a dumb ass because there is no clear indication on where you have to go.

YOU ARE GOING TO DIE A LOT. And whenever you load your last save, your character does an attack and most likely it'll hit something alerting all the guards and kicking your ass because you can't sneak up on them to do a back stab. Not only this, auto saving while fighting a enemy will cause your weapons to lock up. In other words, your weapons turn invisible and you cannot open your item menu or use your hot keys or even switch weapons. Even doing a load back to your last save will continue to have this bug since that was where the bug occurred. So the only way is to load back another save earlier.

Some creatures to kill are inconsistent as well. Kicking a human down like 5 feet will cause them to die, but some creatures don't. For example spiders. You'll be seeing these A LOT. Now you don't fuck with giant spiders. These things will kick your ass. They have a poisonous bite that will drain your health unless you use an antidote. Its not like oh 1 heath per few seconds. No, it drains like 10% of your health per second. Second they come in swarms. And when you try to kick them off a huge ass cliff they just land on their backs and start climbing the cliff back. I kicked them off over and over and they kept climbing up. Eventually they got pissed or something and started crawling through the ground. I was getting bit I looked around saw nothing moved back and a spider was crawling out of the bricks. One thing I learned about spiders. Don't kick them off cliffs or they get angry. And you won't like it when they get angry.

Here is an example of the kicks - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tg8h0VAhnYw

As hard as it is to do the crazy jumps and fight impossible creatures. The bosses are incredibly easy. Most bosses can be exploited or they have some kind of event where they just die instantly if you do so and so. For example, you're wandering around the temple and a Pao Kai (dragon) flies down and starts breathing lightning on you. You run to a tunnel and he sticks his head in. You hit the lever and the gate falls down and kills him. Its not like its hard either. Leanna (the bitch) even tells you to run over there and hit the switch while she stands in the center in clear line of sight of the dragon and watches the dragon chase you. What the hell? Even the last boss, you are able to back stab him while he's busy looking away instantly killing him. At first I didn't even realize he was the last boss until the events started to happen.

Last boss, that leads me to something else. The story is terrible. The only saving grace is Xana who accompanies you since the beginning adding jealous comments against Leanna or evil whisperings to congratulate you on what you have done or telling you what you should do. The storyline automatically points you towards the good ending, and you have to constantly do the opposite just to get the bad ending. Sareth automatically chose to not listen to Xana and listen to Leanna. Xana was annoying at the start but gets a bit likable. The ending is terrible. Its about 20 seconds of cut scenes and its over. Pretty much showing you either, banishing the evil demon lord or saving the evil demon lord. With no explanation of what is going on or whats going to happen or whatever.

You can also be an asshole and start abusing things with your bow. If you can't beat them, shoot a rope arrow climb up and start shooting at them out of melee range. This is what usually happens....
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Show some skill before I kill you" - bad guy
*bad guy starts charging the wall*
*fires arrow*
"Help me!" - bad guy
*bad guy starts running away*
*fires arrow*
*bad guy dies*

This works on bosses as well. I just stand there lobbing arrows with my endless quiver until they die. Not because I wanted to be cheap but because I can't do any damage to them. I chose not to learn magic or to wear heavy armor with a huge sword. I wanted to be an assassin, and this is what I got. As long as they are dead, the job is done right? Who cares about honor or cheapness. I guess they did do a good job on designing the assassin after all. Worked out pretty well.

To sum it all up, this game is short, but frustrating as hell. Its shitty but hilarious at the same time. If you like say, oblivion then you wouldn't like this game. It reminded me of oblivion when I started but holy hell the stages just keep going on and on and on and on. It takes forever and how many freaking jumps are there? Well If I said it was completely horrible I'd be lying. It was still decently fun. Still "fun" enough to finish the game I suppose. Its not like Persona 3 where I was only finishing the game to get the ending and to see how much torture I can give myself.

By the way here's Xana for you - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DYm8j3cAxk

In German so you don't get spoiled. No there's no hot succubus sex you fucking pervert.