Dark Messiah - Patch News & Tweak Guide

VoodooExtreme has a short note from Arkane's Raphael Colantonio on the fixes they are working on for Dark Messiah:

We're currently fixing a lot of the stuttering that happens with Dark Messiah on some hardware: We're modifying the way we're accessing some of the audio and precache files. A patch will soon be released for both the Retail and the Steam version. It fixes a lot of issues, including a few scripting bugs and some performance [issues]. We are really sorry for the problems some of you have had with the game, and be sure we're fixing them all.

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...and they are also pointing out a tweak guide at TweakGuides.
More information.

It is nice to see how hard they are working on the technical issues ... unfortunately, like Dungeon Lords, there are fundamental things wrong that patching just won't fix.

Holy crap Dungeon Lords? That's a pretty serious allegation Mike! What's so critically wrong with it?

ToddMcF2002 said:

Holy crap Dungeon Lords? That's a pretty serious allegation Mike! What's so critically wrong with it?

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I look at it this way - an action game is like a triangle: there is the story, the level design and the combat system. You need two of these done right to make something that works well. A game like Blade of Darkness did a reasonable job with all three. Dark Messiah has an awful story with shallow characters that you will learn to hate as you roll your eyes at their predictable actions. Not full of stilted 'Dungeon Lords'-speak, but just as bad. The levels look gorgeous, but when you actually think about it they are almost universally awful. Each one is pretty much a demo area for the combat system - in particular the kick combat exploit. And there's the combat system - it is well balanced, with a really well done skill system ... except for the kick system. 75% of the game can be dominated by kicking opponents out of the terrible levels.

It can be fun ... it is just not very good. And you can fix the AI to an extent, you can deal with the bugs and performance issues. But you can't stop the levels from being absolutely awful and unbelievable in their context.

Interesting. Personally I was unimpressed with the demo. It felt like the basic melee of Oblivion with a kick - but the levels seemed contrived for the kick/physics gameplay. They practically put "kick here" on stuff.

Anyway - it was always a bargain bit game for me. I think if you added a full blown RPG on what they made it would have been great.

True - and I'm not saying that the story in 'Blade of Darkness' was great - but it didn't pretend to be either

Despite my negativity, I had fun playing ... and am likely to replay it. Because kicking people off cliffs *can* be fun

Also - people running this should check the Tweak Guide link. There is loads of good stuff there.