Darkside of Xeen (and World of Xeen) - New World Computing
                                         RRP œ49.99
                    (RPG for PC)

               Review by Alex van Kaam

After completing Clouds of Xeen and making a solution for it I
heard from Sue that the Darkside of Xeen was out.  Since I had so
much fun with the Clouds of Xeen I ordered it and when I got it
home I immediately installed it on my hard drive.

Installing was a breeze, the program asks you if you already have
Clouds of Xeen and if so it creates the World of Xeen, this are
both sides of Xeen combined into one game.  If you don't have
Clouds of Xeen it will install Darkside of Xeen as a separate
game.

Again the controls are very easy to use and after a short while
they make playing the game very easy, you can use the mouse or use
the keyboard or even better both of them mixed.

I had no trouble with my Sound Galaxy Pro 16, I just selected the
Soundblaster Pro option from the installation menu and everything
worked fine.  The music was very good, even a little bit better
than Clouds of Xeen, there are some very atmospheric tunes
throughout the game.

The graphics are of a very high standard, they are very bright and
colourful, as for the monsters, the people who made them were
some real artists.  Since the movement in the games is the same
like Dungeon Master or Ishar, (one step forward is one square
forward) you don't get any bitmap graphics like in the Underworld
series.

But most important the story. As you start the game in Castleview
(or Vertigo if you are playing the World of Xeen) you soon get
some easy quests which involve killing some gremlins (or slime
monsters in the World of Xeen).  However if you are near the end
of the game you are fighting some Hi-tech robots !!!!.

If you read it like this it really sounds weird but as the story
unfolds it all makes sense and you don't find it strange that you
first see an old wooden boat and a few miles further a space
craft.

As for the quests, in Clouds of Xeen you had to destroy Lord Xeen,
in the Darkside of Xeen you have to get rid of Lord Xeen's master
who calls himself Alamar (which isn't his real name, part of the
quest is to find his real name so I'll just call him Alamar for
now).  If you have the World of Xeen you get a third bonus quest
which involves the prophecy you read about in the manual of the
Darkside.

As you may have noticed by now I really like this game, it maybe
isn't pushing the boundaries of technology forward like the
Underworld series does but it sure has a lot more playability and
that is what counts at the end of the day.  The quest you have to
go on and the riddles you encounter aren't very easy but they also
aren't impossible and a clue is always nearby.

I always had Dungeon Master on my personal top 10 (played on the
ST) but these two push Dungeon Master into second place.

If you enjoyed Clouds of Xeen you have to get this one.  If you
like a good RPG get both versions and get hooked to your PC for
the next few months.  And if you like Star Trek (old or new) you
already know a few answers to a few riddles.












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