Dark Ages
                       (On Disk 279)

                  Reviewed by Graham Raven

Dark Ages is a small, traditional style RPG involving orcs,
dragons, golems and nasty creatures of similar ilk. Before you
lies a great adventure, namely just how good, or bad, will this
game be? Your background is already in place when you start out -
your family, who had a small farm, were slaughtered by orcs in a
particularly nasty way, and you were lucky to survive. Henceforth
it is your goal in life to have your revenge, and slaughter as
many orcs and other nasties as possible (you know it makes
sense!).  This will also incidentally, save the world, literally
move continents and foil some super evil Johnny who's bent on
world domination and probably has an demonic laugh!

So far so good. I liked the background, it had promise. Being a
generous chap (?) I'd certainly give the game 8/10 for
'Possibilities'. Alas, little did I know thereafter the game
would gradually start to gently nose-dive towards a true death
spiral!

Within a matter of a few days I'd apparently explored the whole of
the landscape, or 'just about'. I say 'just about'. Certainly I'd
not seen the floating City of Magic, nor had I seen the inside of
the Rift Cave. I'd been to the latter many times, but the program
insisted that I saw no reason to enter the cave, and therefore I
couldn't! That was annoying, however as it turned out, I'd not
missed much! The great majority of the exploration was rather too
quickly achieved, and thereafter some of my interest started to
fade.

In virtually all RPGs you gain experience and make levels, get
stronger, gain more hit points, etc. As this happens in this game,
simultaneously new, stronger monsters appear from nowhere - there
wasn't one there a moment ago, arrgghh! Now there is! This ensured
that travelling the land was every bit as difficult as it ever was
when I first started, and possibly even more so. Now 'difficulty'
is okay, you expect 'difficulty', but there needs to be something
else to make a game, after all, banging your head against a wall
continually is pretty difficult, but you could think of better
ways of passing your time. After a week of playing on and off I'd
admit to still nearly enjoying the game, but I was also wishing
that something more would happen, that there'd be some kind of
break through and the game would really get going. It didn't!

Travelling the land back and forth repetitively (there's a lot of
this!) my character improved in many ways, but as the monsters
continued to get tougher and tougher, nothing got any easier at
all. Virtually all of my 'improvements' were seemingly no
advantage to me. Why is the 'monster difficulty' such a problem
you may wonder? Hmm, the problem is basically that the game ought
to be getting easier in SOME ways at least, and I shouldn't have
to struggle harder and harder just in order to remain as bored as
I was already with the game! Could I maniacally laugh whilst my
fire spell enveloped a monster and burnt it to a crisp? I should
cocoa! Your hard earned magic is essential for healing yourself,
and for making you invisible - on the odd occasions when that

erratic spell works. Otherwise the magic isn't worth having
really.

As with many games, the old advice 'Save Often' is as true as
ever. If you've made any progress of any kind in Dark Ages, save
the game, because around the next corner (or equally right out of
thin air) will be a monster against which you've no chance!

Conversations - Virtually everyone talks in Dark Ages (largely
drivel), save for those who are trying to kill you. Your control
over what you say however, is non-existent. You press the Space
Bar and hey presto, you're talking! So too is the other character,
and you wait with baited breath to see whether anything worth
saying has been said by anyone, including yourself. You quickly
find that most characters say the same things, over and over
again.  Trained parrots would make better conversationalists. I
found it more than slightly irritating being told the same
'secrets' for the umpteenth time, which were now common gossip and
which often related to quests which had already been achieved.
It's not hugely enlightening to be told that there's a dwarf in
such and such a place, who can help you find the hidden dwarven
city, when you've already been there, befriended him, fought along
side the other dwarves, killed all the baddies and that part of
the adventure is dead and buried. Many characters will impart such
choice information to you, many, many times over! Even though most
of the chat was pretty mindless, I still had to talk to everyone,
over and over again just in case someone said something of note.
They did, though rarely!

Week two and hey woo! I made it into the floating city. Within the
city library which contains thousands of books supposedly, I
managed to see about ten books actually. Some of which were
duplicates, and none contained more than a short paragraph. One
book had a single name in it, which solved a puzzle. That was
okay, I was pleased, but I couldn't help thinking that there was
an opportunity wasted. LOTS of information could have been
available in the library, hints and guidance to a great many
quests. I should have guessed by then, don't hold your breath,
there simply isn't really very much depth to this world at all!

So I read the books and talked to everyone. I even begged the top
guy in the city to allow the banished wizard to return once more
in order to work on the fire wand which he said I would need.
Darkness loomed! I trekked with some difficulty and irritation to
the opposite end of the land in order to tell the wizard that he
could indeed return to the city. He was dead chuffed of course,
and said "Good one mate, see you back there then!" (or words to
that effect). The long, difficult and repetitively boring journey
back to the same place I was ten minutes ago, reunited me with the
wizard, who then proceeded to inform me that his laboratory seemed
to have been emptied during his absence and would need to be
restocked. The FIRST item he would need was Ironwood. "Off you go
now ..."

That did it for me. The 'first' item he needed? Doubtless this was
to be followed by the second, third and possibly one hundred and
ninety ninth item?, and all of them doubtless, at the furthest
reaches of the land?

Erm no, enough is enough, it was an ex-game!

On the plus side, the game was exceedingly inexpensive, if not
exceedingly good, and it is freeware .... and I should think so
too!  Another big plus for me, was that the game pointed out to me
a whole lot of things which are bad in computer RPGs to my mind,
and I'm grateful for that. These little irritations must be
removed from the game I hope to create one day.

Rating: Definitely Flatulent.










                              - o -