Awesome game with great atmosphere.
Thumbs up for releasing this patch and the source code. :)

But ZeniMax are evil-mass-market-dumbers-down aren't they? ;)

The decision was Arkane's i believe. Still, kudos to Zenimax for greenlighting this.

arcane+id+bethsoft=potential best FPS/RPG ever.

Never played Arx Fatalis, just starting it now. You have to draw the magic like in black and white? :/ Maybe I should reroll a warrior lol

Dark Messiah was awesome though. It had the best GAMEPLAY of any fps/rpg ever. By far

You need to play the System Shock games and Deus Ex.

It's almost offensive to me that you think I haven't!

Neither of those games had physics enabled objects. In dark messiah the interaction with the environment was fantastic and still unsurpassed today. You could knock out supports and send things crashing down on people. Kick them into spikes on the walls or off edges. It had fatalities involving dismemberment with a stylized "bullettime" effect for extra crunch. It had loads and loads of secrets. The spells had multiple functions/applications. It had an excellent stealth system including 1shotkill backstabs. You could knockdown, leap attack, block, use your bow to attach climbable ropes to any wooden surface.

System shock 1 had almost no gameplay and was very ugly compared to Doom. Systemshock 2 was pretty good for its day but mostly for its story and atmosphere. The gameplay was very bland FPS under par compared to other action FPS games of its generation. It did have a co-op mode, however, which I have clocked with a mate.

Deus ex 2 sucked. Deus ex 1 I loved but mostly for the various ways you could go about the same goal. This is also true for Dark Messiah! Again, the actual action on the weapons was not as good as in pure FPS games, but the RP elements made up for it. I found the Hitman games just as good RPing as deus ex.

You should give DM another play! I have a feeling you went in expecting an RPG when its really an action game with killer gameplay. Compare the melee combat in DM to any other game. Lightyears ahead.

edit: Does that make sense? You went in with a very pre-formed idea of what you expected/wanted it to be and finding something else you disregarded it; failing to enjoy it for what it was? Compare sysshock2 Wrench or deusex baton to DM daggers. QED!

Hardly.

I haven`t played DM, what you`re saying about it got me really intrigued and I`ll try it soon.

That does not change the fact that saying things like "System shock 1 had almost no gameplay and was very ugly compared to Doom"/ "Systemshock 2 […] gameplay was very bland FPS under par compared to other action FPS games of its generation/ "I found the Hitman games just as good RPing as deus ex" is, for lack of better word, crazy.

If I`ve seen it anywhere else it would be an obvious troll.

DM was indeed really great, a very underappreciated game. The cheesiness is on pair with Two Worlds 1 though, quite hilarious at times.

Arx Fatalis was quite good, wasnt as "epic" as a Bethesda or Bioware game maybe (or Underworld), but what was there was good. I remember that i thought the graphics was great when i played it + the atmosphere did have a UUW feel to it, too bad the game world was a bit small.

Whoa there! What did you say?! Them's fighting words, buddy!

Granted, Dark Messiah has its moments, but after all's said and done, I found it to be repetetive and somewhat dull. Don't go mistaking eye candy for gameplay! IMHO, DM is nowhere near the greatness of SS1 and SS2 for sure. It's not even close to its "older brother" Arx Fatalis.

I mean, take for example, the spider temple in DM and the endless waves of zombies in it. After about 20-30 minutes, it started to get so repetetive that it was mind-numbingly boring and it just went on and on and on. Compare that spider temple level to Arx Fatalis' crypt level. Both have the same kind of premise, but the crypt is leaps and bounds better designed level. It achieves so much more in terms of mood and gameplay than DM (with "lesser" tech, no less). Not once during the crypt level did I feel like it was dragging on too long and that the level had been stretched to the max to "pad up" the game length or something. The spider temple sure made me feel that way many times over.

The Havoc tricks in DM are cool for the first couple of times, but they lose their coolness factor pretty fast after you kicked a few guards to those strangely everpresent spikes or off some ledges. HL2 had the right amount of gravity and environment tricks with Havoc, DM was really tring too hard with them and it resulted in totally unrealistic (yes, I know it's a fantasy game) and just plain silly environments.

Even if the first person combat is pretty cool, there just is way too much of it, so much so that it starts to become boring ("oh look, yet another batch of zombies"). Even if there are the basics of an RPG character progression there, with such a limited range of weapons and small array of skills, it just doesn't seem to click. The exploration aspect is well done in a "find a hidden area" kind of way, but still the levels are quite linear and it shows the FPS side of the game strongly. DM does look great, even today, but still feels hollow. The main NPCs are extremely well made (NPC animation especially, one of the strengths of the Source engine), but everyone else is just an enemy with a very generic look. (Have to give a quick thumbs up for the orc models, though. They're superb!) The entire time I spent with DM, I felt something was amiss, like it was a movie that was just slightly out of focus. So close to being something really great, but never actually achieving it. Unlike SS1, SS2 and Arx Fatalis, which all achieved gaming greatness. So don't go badmouthing them, ya hear!

Well, i've only just started Arx Fatalis and while I feel like there isn't enough combat I have been enjoying it a lot. Initially I didn't like the magic system, but after I found an ice rune and realised there were secret spells that wouldnt appear in my spellbook Ive been really enjoying exploring the magic. It feels like theres lots to discover. For example if you put 3 "mega" runes before a summoning spell it… well… summons a rat that kills you. BUT STILL!! It was fun. :)

I'm looking for shanny and have just discovered that im the guardian.

I played Dark Messiah on HARD for my 3rd play through and it really is hard. I think what i mean by "compare wrench or baton to daggers" is that both the former have one function. Swing. With the daggers you have "flurry of blows", 4 directional stabs with varying effects, backstabbing and throwing them from behind then 4 fatality moves. Between daggers, stealth and telekinesis you've got more moves than all SS2s weapons combined. I still prefer SS2 to Bioshock though!

Anyone try to play this yet? It runs ok, but I can't get it to go to full screen or to keep a resolution change. Every time I restart it reverts back to the minimum resolution and always windowed. Not sure why it won't go to full screen. There is no choice in the option menu for fullscreen.

Are you using Windows 7?

Try running it as Administrator and see if that makes a difference.

cfg_default.ini

[LANGUAGE]
string="english"
[FIRSTRUN]
int=1
[VIDEO]
resolution=1680x1050
bpp=32
full_screen=0

fullscreen gave me major mouse lag but apparently you can fix it with "enable render fix"

i was just happy to make the window the same size as the desktop.

Thanks. All I needed to do was switch full_screen=0 to 1. Feel like an idiot now. That's the first place I should have gone :D

That "enable render fix" is an absolute must. Without it the there is no way I could play this game with the mouse lagging so badly.

In any event, it works great. I'm using Windows 7 64 with a quad processor and not having any problems at all. Gotta love those guys from Arkane Studios for doing this.

Oh how ignorance is bliss when help falls on deaf ears - see my post number 25.

:D

I absolutely loved this game. I did not like the bugs though. I hope they make a part 2! I'd replay but I doubt I'd be able to find the game in my house.

I still need to play this…One day (in the next decade, probably) ;)

The only thing I didn't like about Arx Fatalis was the low level cap. Iirc the max level was 10, but it was very hard to even reach level 9 because of the lack of ways to gain XP.

This was an addiction for me for weeks. Loved the game, the spell casting, and the story was not bad. I still have the walk-through I used way back when. Downloading the update now. Thanks for the tips on the screen size fix.
There were several hidden things in the game btw. If I recall you could summon not only the golden rat but something else which was quite rare. Memory is lacking but the hidden were fun to search for. ;)

Golden rat you say???? I never knew this. Explain further, please. :)

I do know about the Ultima Underworld graphic trick. I never got it to work, but according to some, IIRC if you cast UUW and the game would look like Ultima Underworld.

This game just begs to be hacked and played on the kinetic. Doing those magic motions with your hands would be a lot easier than a mouse.