The major tweak (and the only one really worth talking about) is the inclusion of a “finishing move”. As mentioned earlier, this is a hack-and-slash affair, with a few minor tweaks thrown in to try and keep it interesting. While the story isn’t going to be winning any awards for narrative brilliance, the gameplay isn’t a whole lot more inspiring. Players must take control of the four heroes and set out to thwart the evil wizard…stop me if you’ve heard this before. To combat the evil wizard’s return, another group has resurrected the four heroes of the past - although, for some odd reason, they don’t possess any of their old skills. Now, 150 years later, some group of clerics has attempted to raise the wizard in hopes of harnessing his power (when will they learn this never works?).
They were victorious, but in his last moment of life, the evil wizard unleashed a terrible spell that killed everyone around him…mainly, the four heroes. Basically, four heroes fought an evil wizard 150 years ago. That’s just the way it played out apparently.Īfter selecting a character, players are treated to a brief explanation of the game’s story - and it ain’t Tolkien. Why was the dwarf a cleric and not a warrior? I’ve no idea. The choices (with one exception) are painfully standard - the human warrior, the female wizard, the female rogue…and in the one odd twist, the dwarven cleric. In a move guaranteed to disappoint everyone, the game once again forces players to choose from one of four preset character avatars. It may not be a “true” D&D experience, but it is at least somewhat cathartic - sending limbs flying about the room can certainly alleviate some of the pressures of a rough day at the office.įor those who don’t mind that the game isn’t a perfect recreation of the table-top D&D experience, Heroes offers up an interesting (if somewhat limited and repetitive) gaming experience. Rather than having an involved combat interface that demands at least a modicum of strategy be employed in order to survive, Heroes simply asks the player to run into an area, hack the holy hell out of everything in sight, and move on.
In other words, Heroes plays more like Diablo than Neverwinter Nights. The latest D&D game to grace a console is Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes, another hack-and-slash game in the same vein as last year’s Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance and more a D&D game in name than actual execution. Granted, these games aren’t quite the same as sitting in a room with a group of guys and a flesh-and-blood dungeon master, but as Jean Paul Sartre once pointed out, “Hell is other people” - and the videogame incarnations of D&D have certainly eliminated this particular brand of torture.
#Dungeons and dragons heroes xbox faq license#
Luckily, I’ve not missed out on the D&D phenomenon entirely - thanks to the fact they’ve been making videogames based on the Dungeons & Dragons license for quite a few years now. I stumbled across a few during my college years, but they seemed far too “socially challenged” for me to get involved with them. In the intervening years, I’ve still never found a D&D group. I kept the starter kit, though (and still have it somewhere…now in my parents’ house in Florida), always hoping I’d one day find an opportunity to actually play.
Unfortunately, living in a rural area where I was the only boy around for a number of miles, meant my D&D career would go on permanent hiatus. While it certainly wasn’t the most high-profile present of the year, it was the one that intrigued me the most. Hidden amongst the veritable treasure trove of gifts Santa had left me was the official D&D starter kit. I had my first exposure to Dungeons & Dragons on Christmas morning when I was 11 years old.
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