Dark Sun: Shattered Lands published by S.S.I
            (Distributed by U.S Gold in Europe)
             RRP: œ39.99 (Floppy or CD-ROM)
                      (RPG for PC)

                IBM PC review by Roy Sims

I normally don't buy any of S.S.I's AD&D licensed games (with the
exception of the Eye of the Beholder Trilogy) because in the past
their game engine (referred to as the 'gold box' series) was, in
my opinion, very poor. I tip my hat off to people like Brian Burke
who have somehow ignored the short comings of the system and have
played through most of them and have enjoyed them too. Maybe I
chose the wrong game to begin with (Curse of the Azure Bonds).
I've also seen 'Heroes of the Lance' and 'Dragons of Flame' but
they don't really count as they were designed and created in the
U.K for U.S Gold as AD&D Action Games. Anyway, I only bought
'Dark Sun:  Shattered Lands' because it was in a post Christmas
software sale at 40% off the normal R.R.P.

According to the blurb on the box, Shattered Lands is a "quantum
leap in (the) computer AD&D role-playing experience". What they
mean is they've ditched the old engine (now to be found in
'Adventures Unlimited') and created a new one to replace it. The
screenshots on the back certainly look a lot better, but how does
it play? More on that later. First, the plot. The Dark Sun world
of Athas is arid and bleak, a wasteland with a handful of cities
ruled by the thousand-year-old sorcerer-kings. Your party begin as
slaves in the city of Draj, destined to die as gladiators in the
Arena.  You must find a way to escape into the hostile wilderness,
join with other escaped slaves and create a rebel force powerful
enough to destroy the evil sorcerer-king's army.

You start the game waiting to enter the Arena. The game uses full
screen graphics and the display employed is best described as over
head but at a slight angle. The graphics are now proper 256 colour
VGA (320 x 200 resolution) and they look much better than those
found in the previous S.S.I games. As default, your party of four
is represented by the leader's graphic. The other three only
appear when combat ensues. The animation on the characters as they
walk around is jerky and generally very poor. The screen also
scrolls and this has also been handled very badly. I know it's a
PC but I've seen smoother scrolling never the less.

Combat is turn based, and this is where I began to think back to
the glorious realtime and fully animated combat sequences seen in
'Legend' (Mindscape). In comparison, Dark Sun's combat system is
very very poor. Each character is allocated a certain number of
moves before the next one gets their turn. If you move them that
can eat up a lot of their moves in one go. By right clicking the
mouse you can change the mode of the cursor from moving to
examining (which includes talking for some unknown reason), close
quarters combat, ranged combat etc. If you are close enough you
can use close combat, or you can fire arrows from further away. To
select a target you move the cursor over the monster. If it's too
far away then the cursor changes to a 'no go' sign. Unfortunately
the hot spots on the monsters are generally very small and off
centre, so I often found it telling me I couldn't attack it when I
should have been able to easily. Accurate it isn't!

Some people will argue that turn based combat is much closer to
real paper based RPGs. You can't deny it, but it isn't a good
enough system for a computer RPG in my opinion. It gives you
time to think, but the battles can grind on for what feels like
ages.  Instead of being exciting and quite tense they rapidly
become boring.

You can rest your party to recuperate but unlike most computer
RPGs, you are restricted to camping only where there is a stone
circle to light your camp fire. God knows how far apart these are
placed, but I've only found one so far! Why not just make a
sensible restriction, like not being able to camp if monsters are
near? As I understand it, the old S.S.I games worked this way
quite happily, so why change it?

You can't try talking to just anyone. Some NPCs won't give you
the option to, and you know then that you have to fight them.
Others will give you snippets of information if you ask the right
question. As with many other computer RPGs, conversations are
generated by choosing from a short list of possible questions and
responses. The spell casting system is also a let down (although
anything is after the flexible system used in 'Legend').

Whilst the graphics look better, they still look odd. The angle
employed is strange and all the objects placed on it look wrong.
During combat, monsters end up occupying the same space and the
perspective just falls apart in the ensuing visual mess.

I'll admit here and now that I haven't escaped from slavery yet,
but my impressions on the system at this relatively early stage
are not favourable. It's creaky at best. Animation and scrolling
is poor, and combat is slow and boring. In its favour it has a map
feature that displays a full map in the middle of the screen for
the entire area that you are in, regardless of whether you have
explored it all or not. All NPCs are shown as flashing dots so
you can have a look at an area before you go there and see how
dangerous the monsters look. It would have been nice to have a
partial map on screen all the time but that's really a minor
niggle.

Dark Sun - Shattered Lands does look better than the previous AD&D
releases from S.S.I, but it is still poor in terms of the game
system. However, maybe experienced S.S.I players will enjoy this
if they liked the earlier games. Personally I'd rather play
'Darklands' (Microprose) and that's saying something!

(The CD-ROM version retails at the same price as the floppy
version. However, it still has to be installed to a hard disk to
play it. It does apparently have a large graphic intro sequence
which is missing from the floppy version I have reviewed).









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