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Repeat Performance
Deja vu - it's a funny old thing. It's cropped up in a dozen comedy sketches,
from Monty Python through to Red Dwarf, and is essentially that strange sensation
that you've done something or been somewhere before. It's also the feeling you
get when playing a fair few PC games these days. There are innumerable sequels
and prequels floating about, as well as a ludicrous number of 'updated' games
which supposedly are a marked improvement on the previous versions, and are
available for the very same price that you paid previously. EA are the prime
offenders in this area - they've released a plethora of barely different sports
games - Euro, Fifa 97,98,99 and so on. There's no telling where it could lead
- in five years time you could be seeing adverts for 'Super Soccer World Manager
2005' proclaiming 'Now! At last! One of the two hundred players in the game
has a slightly different haircut! Buy it now, you sheep.. buy it now!'. You'd
have more chance of finding a straight character in an Anne Rice vampire novel
than you would of turning up an original title in the stacks of games currently
'gracing' store shelves.
Kipper
'Let me give you a hand..'
So it will come as no surprise to gamers to find that Dungeon Keeper 2 from
Bullfrog looks rather similar to the original Dungeon Keeper. What is surprising
though, is that while this sequel isn't ground-breakingly original, Bullfrog
have added a fair few features which lift it above its prequel. The actual premise
behind DK 2 is pretty much the same as that of the previous game. You are cast
as a breathlessly evil entity, the kind who always get their comeuppance from
square jawed heroes and scantily clad sword wielding amazons in practically
every fantasy book or game in existence. Except that in this game, you get the
opportunity to turn the tables on the goodly fools who enter your realm by assembling
an army of monsters and other nasties, and by building a range of traps that
you can use to kick their heroic arses into oblivion. But if you've played DK1
you'll already know all this. And if you haven't, then you may want to read
Rich Greenhill's review of Dungeon Keeper which can be found here. If you're
still with me, then you must have some idea of what DK is all about - and want
to know what DK2 has to offer over its predecessor. Read on..
Dunjunz
'Oi! C'mere!'
Dungeon Keeper 2 is indeed very similar to Dungeon Keeper 1 - all the room building
and creature raising that featured in DK1 is in DK2. And, as in DK1, mining
and hoarding money is essential, both for keeping your creatures paid and happy,
and for building new rooms in your dungeon. However, and this is the first difference
between DK1 and DK2, there's another factor you need to take into consideration
- mana. Mana, or manna, depending upon how you spell it, is the magical energy
you need to cast spells and to sustain your dungeon-building imps. Mana is automatically
generated by your dungeon - the larger the dungeon, the more mana you have,
so it's in your interest to build up a large and spiky domain. Mana is especially
handy for summoning up the Horned Reaper, a nasty and rather rock-hard monster
who is a little tricky to control but when summoned with the requisite large
amount of mana, can stomp through your dungeon doling out random kickings to
all the goodies he runs into. Better than a children's entertainer anyday.
Savage Pond
'You blinking well see if it's hot - I'm not doing it.'
And speaking of monsters, Dungeon Keeper 2 would be pretty dull without monsters
- kind of like Sim City with lichen encrusted walls, no citizens and no shops
- not unlike some cities I could mention. So it's fortunate that Dungeon Keeper
2 has its share of nasties - and while there's not as many monsties as you'd
find in most fighting fantasy RPGs, they all have their own special abilities,
strengths and weaknesses, as well as a healthy lust for violence. Putting in
a return appearance are Skeletons, Trolls and Goblins, Dark Mistresses, Flies
and Vampires, and entering the fray for the first time are the Dark Angels,
Salamanders, Warlocks (Mages by any other name) and a couple of other creatures,
all ready to kick do-gooding bottom. When not engaged in combat, the creatures
wander around the dungeon, eating, getting paid, and making noxious smells in
some case. They can also be trained up to make them more formidable - though
in DK2 you can now only train them up to level four in a training room - to
get them to a higher level you need to pit them against another creature in
a specially built combat pit, or just chuck them into combat. The downside to
the latter technique is that while this does give your characters experience,
it also means you risk losing them in battle.
Twin Kingdom Valley
From humble beginnings..
Should you need to bring your creatures into play you can pick them up with
the mouse and the dump them unceremoniously near your target area - preferably
near a foe. The latter method of character deployment cropped up in DK1 and
was a bit of a pain, given that it effectively meant that no matter how strategically
you approached your opponent's dungeon, the moment you stepped onto one of their
claimed squares, they could drop creatures on your head. While this system still
remains in DK2, it has been tweaked slightly to make it a bit fairer - dropping
creatures now stuns them momentarily, the bigger and badder the creatures are,
they longer they're stunned. This is marginally better than the old system,
although it can be negated by dropping creatures close by to a fight and letting
them wander the last couple of squares themselves, reaching the fight un-stunned.
And on the down side, you can now carry as many creatures in your hand, ready
for dropping as you want. If DK3 ever sees the light of day, which I suspect
it will as it's somewhat cheekily advertised with a video animation of the Horned
Reaper arriving on a new world, perhaps Bullfrog will have implemented a proper
C&C style walking system.
Giant
'Fight!'
On the plus side, there are a few handy new rooms - including the aforementioned
combat pits where your monsters can gain real combat experience, and the rather
handy casino. The latter lets your monsters gamble their hard earned wages away
and will, depending upon the setting of a switch in the casino, pay out fairly
and make them happy, or be rigged and let you get most of their wages back but
make them less than chuffed with you (but they're going to get killed anyway
so who cares?). Also making a welcome return (or not, depending whether or not
you end up in there) are the prison, where you can er, imprison enemy creatures,
and the torture chamber where you can torture map information from your foes
or even convert them to your cause, making them work for you. By default, instead
of being killed outright, all foes are beaten to within an inch of their life
- if your foes' bodies aren't taken away by your imps quickly then they die
and turn into corpses which can be taken to your graveyard, if you have one,
to help make vampires rise. If you don't want to capture your foes and you have
a prison, you can flick the bar on the prison door which will stop imprisoning,
leaving your foes to die. Bwahahaha. If your monsters are knocked out, then
you can cast an imp spell nearby to generate an imp (you could drop an imp near
them, but given that you have to pick up imps manually, it's quicker to generate
them). The imps then grab your fallen troops and return them to their lairs,
where they can rejuvenate. This works to your favour in single player mode,
but in multiplayer mode it can be a bit annoying to see monsters whom you've
laid low being picked up and whipped off by your enemy's imps - still, conquering
worlds wouldn't be any fun if it was too easy.
Broadsword
'Come get some..'
As far as single player goes, Dungeon Keeper 2's missions are better and more
varied than those featured in the original game. Not only do you have to clear
out the heroes from each of the twenty three or so levels, you also have to
deal with special objectives such as preventing knights escaping through hero
gates and reclaiming the hero-infested dungeons of your formerly living foes,
and generally taking over the world. The "My Pet Dungeon" mode lets
you build up a dungeon without enemy keepers to worry about; when you feel ready
you can release heroes into your dungeon to test your defences. This new feature
may appeal to a number of players, especially younger ones.
Multiplayer mode also lets you pit your wits and might against human foes - with the built in dungeon watch facility you can seek out DK2 games going on over the internet. Multiplayer games are reasonably smooth on a 56K modem - though unless you have a fast PC then taking on four players is not recommended as the amount of calculating required to handle four competing players can be taxing on a lower-end system. Similarly taxing on a lower-end system such as a P200 is the game's graphics - owners of such machines will have to knock down the graphic detail, till the figures look slightly muddy - but even so, the game's rather fun to play, chug or no chug. And on a fast system, the graphics look rather groovy indeed.
Watersmeet
All of Dungeon Keeper 2's ingredients go together to make a rather tasty gaming
cake, albeit one that is rather similar to the original Dungeon Keeper. Nevertheless,
it has a variety of tweaks and extra features, including an enhanced first person
view where you can make a difference, for example, by sniping as an elven archer,
and some humourous cut-scenes between levels. The AI also been improved a bit
- the enemy keepers now only sit tight in their dungeons about half of the time.
It's more fun to play and more of a balanced game than DK1, and it's a must
buy if you haven't got the original DK1. If you have got DK1 then it's still
worth buying DK2 if you've got a decent PC, since the extra features and tweaks
added in DK2 make the game superior to the original, and quite a lot of fun.
Altogether, Dungeon Keeper 2 is a rather good game, and well worth checking
out. And remember not only do the good die young, they have less fun too. So
go on.. be evil.
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