Silverfall: Earth Awakening

The First Silverfall game was a visually appealing tousle through the well-trod genre of action-RPG. Set in a world where nature vies against technology (a battle as illogical as it is time-honoured), you pick up the action as the leader of the town of Silverfall. You're a hands-on kind of leader, though, so it doesn't take long before you're running around the outskirts of the town you run, employing the tactics you've learned in your first adventure. Namely: run within range, attack until it looks like you're going to die, then run away and regenerate. Repeat until all enemies are corpses.

For a game that didn't really innovate beyond a simple graphical trick, the first game did a lot of things wrong. The frame rate often dipped to single figures; your equipment wasn't re-equipped when you finally got back to your corpse -basically the game wasn't a friendly one to play. That's much better now with WASD and numeric pad controls backing up the mouse control. MMO players should immediately remap the numbers to the main keyboard, at which point it'll all fit together.

Eighteen months have passed, so the frame rate issues have faded. Little niggles like the cursor in your mini-map often facing in unintuitive directions have been sorted out, and you don't have to suffer the indignity of getting dressed whilst the same mob that just killed you tries to pull the same trick twice. Earth Awakening is still a difficult-to-love game, with over-written scripts in tiny fonts that you're forced to read to make sure you're accepting a quest. Starting out with a level 45 character (or importing your Silverfall hero) means you're instantly decked out with excellent-looking weapons, but even the game's visual appeal can't snap you out of the repetition of combat. Exploration is hampered by annoying obstacles, untraversable shallow inclines and loading screens. It's a compliment, however, that the world is beautiful enough to make you want to explore it in the first place.

This is a definite improvement, but the combat never lives up to the promise of the graphics. If you haven't played the original, Silverfall: Earth Awakening isn't too hard to pick up. It's just very easy to put down, too.