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Gods and Heroes Hands-On

Part Two of Four

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Romans Don’t Turn the Other Cheek

Hercules had nothing on me.

Jumping into my premade 2nd-level character, I was immediately thrilled with the quality of the graphics in the game. As the Perpetual developers have stated on numerous occasions, Gods and Heroes is being designed for a mid-level machine, and to my surprise most of the computers that were running Gods and Heroes in the demo were in fact not top of the line. “Most of the machines in here have about 1 Gb of RAM and 128 Mb of graphic memory,” McKibbin stated. “We don’t want to break the banks of the gamers.”

Even with the mid-level machines, the graphics in the game were gorgeous, especially the animations. While almost everyone in the industry has hailed the combat animations in Gods and Heroes, let me again echo that point: I’ve never seen animations in an MMO that were so fluid and still allowed for a truly adrenaline-pumping experience. “It’s more visceral,” said Debbysue Wolfcale, Senior Brand Manager for SOE. “We just wanted gamers to have a more visceral experience when they were engaged in combat.”

And the animations truly are white-knuckled whenever they occur. Even against the smaller opponents, you’ll find yourself knocked and beaten. As I was fighting a level two Dactylus I was tripped, knocked on my face, and beaten over the head with a club. I cursed, fairly loudly I suppose, because McKibbin came to look over my shoulder.

“You just got dactyl'd,” he chuckled.

While the combat animations are revolutionary, combat itself is more along the lines of typical MMOs albeit with a number of refinements and additions. Tactical combat with your minions certainly allows for a greater degree of pre-combat thinking, as you want to prepare the best group possible before heading into an area. With 132 minions to choose from (and 121 that can actually be collected by the user), players in G&H should have no problem looking for additional content to explore if they are more interested in a detailed meta-gaming sort of atmosphere.

Chains and combinations of attacks are also available, with each combo leading to more animations and excruciatingly cool finishing moves. God powers also factor in, with you weighing whether you should save your powers for a more difficult enemy or blast your current foe into oblivion. All of this lends to a sort of tactical-based combat system, and this is accentuated by the use of minions.

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