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Spellforce 2: Shadow Wars
By admin | August 29, 2010
When I saw this game it immediately caught my attention. What was so intriguing about this game ? More likely then not it was the half-naked woman on the front. Once I put this game in my dvd drive my curiosity quickly turned to anger. It took several tries to get this game installed on my PC. I have never had so much trouble with an install in the 18 years that I have been a Pc user. I did some research on the internet and did a quick scan of the disc to check for problems. Sure enough there was only one problem with this disc. It had Starforce on it. For those that don’t know what starforce is it is one of the many tools designed to prevent piracy. The problem here is that this game installs hidden drivers for your cd-rom. These drivers have a broad range of negative effects on your machine. Aside from opening a serious security hole it slowly kills your cd drive.There is currently a class-action lawsuit for people who have had their computers damaged from starforce. Several game studios have stopped using it due to the several problems.
Once this game was installed my cd burner would no longer burn discs in certain programs. To be sure this wasn’t a fluke I put the game on my other PC and had even more trouble. The game wouldn’t recognize my very common video card. When a game says designed for Nvidia on the box and it won’t recognize your Geforce 6600 there is a problem. The issue turned out to be that the game needed the older video drivers to function. Great now I have to use crappy video drivers just to run this one game. Now that we have discussed the “Fun” install lets get to the game.
The game begins with your choice of character design. Once you have chosen your character has been customized the adventure will begin. The graphics in this game look very nicely detailed but nothing amazing. During the game you can choose a close up Rpg perspective or a zoomed out RTs View. I found it very helpful to switch between these views at the appropriate times. The characters have lots of facial movement during dialogue sequences. There is also heavy use of shadows and lighting effects. The trees blow in the wind creating a performance drain on all but the fastest machines available. The player is given the option to turn down the use of shadows to suit the players PC hardware.
The sound is a department that this game has cornered. The ambient music really adds to the overall experience of the game and serves to immerse the player in the realm of Spellforce 2.Lots of sound effects and dialogue help create the mood. The leaves blowing in the wind sound so realistic it is almost scary.
The player will get to travel to a variety of strange new lands. |
Some characters need less clothing then others. |
The game controls fairly well if you are used to the typical layout of adventure games and Real Time Strategy games. The movement is smooth and responsive.
The game is a great blend of rts and rpg games. It quickly brought back fond memories of Diablo and Black and White. Fans of Dungeons and dragons will definitely enjoy the deep story and diverse characters. As you play through the game you will meet new heroes that join your quest. Some of these will not be under your control but will still be very helpful. these non playable helpers will stay with your party for a short period of time. Once whatever task they wish to accomplish is completed they will be gone. I really enjoyed the characters in this game. The designs were fairly creative but the back story of each character was almost non-existant. I really didn’t find this to be a bad thing. If you were traveling in the wilderness fighting evil you will take all the help you can get and not ask any useless questions.
This game has only one large fault. The starforce copy protection renders the game practically useless for most gamers that would enjoy it most. It is ironic that a technology invented to prevent piracy is having the exact opposite effect. Bit Torrent fans can obtain a version of this game that has been stripped of the starforce protection. The only people that will have a problem with this protection are those of us that have a legal copy. I would advise anyone who is thinking of purchasing this game to wait until a patch to remove the starforce is released. After doing this review I have to format both of my computers to remove those starforce drivers to avoid permanent damage to my hardware. Users that have Nero or any other cd authoring software may have trouble writing discs after installing this game. It really is a shame that such a wonderful game has to be held down by such a serious problem. This game will not be installed on any of my machines until a patch is released or more likely a hack to remove the starforce limitations. If this game did not have starforce on the disc the install would have been faster and it would have received a much higher overall rating. This game is truly a wonderful example how a copy protection scheme ruins a good game. The pirates out there that have illegally downloaded this title are enjoying it without any problems while those that have legal copies are running the risk of ruining their Cd drive or even worse system problems.
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