Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes : Web Wombat : Games

He had fashioned five Planar Gems with which he harnessed the powers of the planes of Nature, Fire, Ice, Wind and Death, making him the ultimate power in the realm.

He abused this power, wantonly laying waste to countless villages and towns until he threatened Baele itself.

From various corners of the world came four heroes. The valiant fighter, the warrior-mage cleric, the reformed rogue and the noble wizard.

These few were the only ones who stepped forward to challenge Kaedin's evil might, and they were ultimately victorious, if somewhat dead, as Kaedin took them down with him.

Now, one hundred and fifty years later, Kaedin has been resurrected by some seriously misguided clerics who sought to take his power for their own. Kaedin's castle has reappeared in the sky above Baele, and again the realm's inhabitant's have turned to the four heroes, resurrecting them in the hope they may once again defeat him.

...And so the game begins.

You choose which hero you will play as from the beginning, and must fight your way out of the crypts in which you were raised to find Baele and ultimately to Kaedin's castle in the sky.

D&D Heroes, as you may have already guessed, is a game in the vein of Gauntlet - Legends. It is an isometric viewed, hobgoblin slashing, skeleton smashing, magic blasting, chest-opening, high-intensity adventure. But while the game play is similar, Heroes contains a lot more depth to keep you motivated in dismembering the vile hordes of Kaedin's minions.

98 per cent of the game is combat, and the controls are a little different from other isometric button-mashers, in that you have a primary attack button and two other ability buttons, X and Y, which can be reassigned on the go.

The black and white buttons use mana and health potions, while the left trigger blocks and the right trigger allows you to map your X and Y buttons to different spells, finishing moves and abilities.

Giant shadow + huge axe +
oblivious hero = nasty mess

Character development is a major part of Heroes, and it is this which keeps you stuck at the controller for that extra hour to gain that level or learn that special skill.

Each character, while sharing some skills like wearing various armour types and gaining resistances to the elements, also has their own unique skills and abilities.

The fighter's skills are based on melee fighting like the high-damaging Reverse-Thrust combo finisher and earth-shattering Stunning Fist. And while he specialises in melee fighting, all classes have their own hand to hand combos and finishers as well.

The cleric enjoys a balance of hand to hand combat skills and offensive magic, such as sticks to snakes and fireblast, as well as the ability to heal himself, and at higher levels the whole party.

The wizard has a multitude of spells, which can be offensive (like the classic D&D Magic Missile), defensive or both, for instance vampiric drain. Lastly, the rogue has a plethora of bow attacks, a few tasty spells and also stealth moves for damage bonuses.

In addition each character has a series of weapons specific to their class. There are no generic weapons, except the miscellaneous thrown weapons like knives, axes and potions of assorted properties. Skills in each weapon can be boosted, and each type of weapon has different damage stats, allowing you to find one which suits your tastes.

Each character also begins with their ancestral weapon, with which they defeated Kaedin last time around. Often you will possess a weapon better than your ancestral one, but you can't throw it away or sell it as ultimately you need to defeat Kaedin again.

The ancestral weapon's strength lies in the fact that it can be upgraded by collecting Soul Shards. There are twenty of these scattered throughout the world, and with each five found your weapon becomes more powerful, and as a result of a timely lightning strike, looks way cooler.

Further, by the time you have acquired all five gems you can imbue your ancestral weapon with the powers of the various gems, which you need to defeat Kaedin (the old use-his-own-power-against-him trick. Ah-ha!). Once your ancestral weapon is imbued, the nature gem deals poison, wind stuns, death steals life and fire and ice I hope are self-explanatory.

There's an option that allows you to see exactly
how much damage you deal out, which is nice

The fact that various weapon types, as well as specific powers can be gained and usually developed to up to four levels means that there is a lot of scope to customise your character as you progress through the game. This keeps it from becoming stale and monotonous as you hack your way through countless baddies, as you always have that next skill or weapon level you want to gain.

Equipment is also quite varied, though not to the level of Diablo II or anything similar. As stated above, weapons come in five categories per character, and armour comes in five categories that all characters can use. These are leather, scale, chain, splint, and plate.

But again, within these categories are various attributes which give the equipment (both weapons and armour) different characteristics, such as +2 constitution, or +15% health regen, and combinations of these are not uncommon either.

As each class has its favoured attribute, equipment allows for further customisation. In addition, rings and necklaces abound to further develop your character's strengths, while offensive and defensive magical one-off trinkets can often change the tides of battle with their effects.

Every few levels you also get the opportunity to develop your character's attributes. As already said, and as D&D nerds know, each class has a certain attribute or two which benefits them most. Ergo, you can build on your strengths or cover-up your weaknesses, further enhancing the customisation of your character.

While gameplay is virtually identical to that of the Gauntlet style, the ability to customise equipment and elemental nature of many enemies means you are constantly adjusting your character to excel in whatever environment you're in. Swapping from ice to fire to ancestral weapons and upgrading armour also keeps the time ticking along while playing this game.

On the outset, the graphics look reasonable, with the characters and enemies enjoying notable detail. Some of the levels, however, are gobsmacking, as are spell effects, and then you'll come across others that are utterly mundane, with very little eye candy or environmental detail.

Checking out your suave new armour on a zoomed camera angle is a must, and if you get a chance to look at any of the enemies up close they look good too, especially the larger golem-types and bosses. Backgrounds, walls and textures are pretty standard, but then you don't really want to be losing sight of enemies in extravagant surfaces.

The cleric summons meteors from above,
even though he's in a mine, which theoretically
would have a ceiling, blocking such an onslaught

Features like water, blood fountains and the like look cool, though very arcadey. The goo that splurts out of many enemies and particularly blood golems brings sweet satisfaction as you carve a swathe through their ranks on your way to the next golden nimbus inducing level-up.

The camera is rotatable and zoomable which works well enough in single player mode, but when in multiplayer, each character can mess about with it, which can get very annoying when everyone's got their own "angle agenda".

Sound is again arcadey, but it's that sort of game. Through a surround sound system with a big fat woofer, ambient sounds, enemy howls, the crunch of metal through flesh, and special-power mantra cries all sound quite good, though it's nothing special or groundbreaking.

As you may have guessed, the hack and slash nature of gameplay can become, at times, monotonous, but combos and special powers prevent it from becoming RSI-inducingly so, as well as giving you the opportunity to find more efficient ways of despatching your foes.

Powers and spells can often at first seem ineffective, until you find their appropriate use or level them up, at which time their effectiveness shines through.

Get a few friends around to play, and Heroes makes for a lot of fun. With four players simultaneously going the tonk on the one system, spells flying thick and fast, finishing combos being cracked out every 10 seconds, it's a very hectic, but ultimately enjoyable experience. When you step up from a one player game, the enemies get tougher in order to compensate the increased number of heroes too, which a nice touch and means everyone gets a fair share of precious experience points.

If there are any sour points to the game as a whole, the saving system would be high on the list: it really sucks ass. You can save as many games as you want, but the characters are also saved in that specific game only, which makes using them in a different multiplayer game an exercise in tedium and nonsense. Better yet, save over a game, and that character is gone for good.

Another quibble involves the multiplayer game, and the camera system that any player can tweak at any time. The lack of a locking viewpoint will see many sessions ending in name-calling and tears, but on the upside you can always trade equipment and give lowly ranked players extra health potions.

While there is nothing particularly new or groundbreaking about Heroes, it is a sufficient improvement on the genre to warrant numerous extended sessions at the 'Box. As I'm sure many out there will agree, there's nothing like an RPG aspect to extend the longevity of a game -- just ask anyone who's ever rolled a dice in D&D-inspired fervour.

Game: D&D: Heroes
System: Xbox
Players: 1-4
Online: No
Developer: Atari
Distributor: Atari

Rating: 85%

(Ratings Key/Explanation)

D&D: Heroes is on the shelves now.

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