Dark Messiah of Might and Magic: Elements Reviews
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Sadly, for every satisfying kill there's a frustrating piece of sloppy design just waiting to ruin your fun. Enemy AI is wildly inconsistent. Foes have the cunning to spot you shuffling in the shadows from fifty yards, but once you're one-on-one, they'll happily line up and let you boot them into a fire or set of spikes. It's as if the developer is desperate for you to use its (admittedly great) environment kills at all costs. Then there's the raft of tiny annoyances that pile up to chip away at any joy built up from cleverly slicing through packs of orcs. Doors open awkwardly towards you, enemy vocals are constantly repeated, and the sexually provocative one-liners Xana comes out with as you navigate each level will make you genuinely embarrassed to be playing.
Ultimately it's out-dated and out-gunned, so Elements feels like a failure on 360. It may have been a hit on PC two years ago, but since then gaming has moved forward, leaving us wishing for a true sequel to Dark Messiah rather than this half-arsed port.
While the other is at Game Informer with an overall score of 8.5/10:
If you can put up with the game's complete and total linearity and don't mind a largely forgettable multiplayer offering, there is a ton of brutal amusement to be had with Dark Messiah's excellent melee combat. The luster of physics-based gameplay may have worn off a bit over the last year and a half, but setting evildoers on fire is never boring.
