"What better way to spend a weekend night with your buddies setting around playing some games, eating pizza and drinking some cold beer (only if your over 21 kiddies, a friendly message from your Uncle Chris.) So to get this night started on the right foot, I recommend for the pizza, anything from Pizza Hut, for the beer, Killians and for game Xicat Interactive’s Blackstone: Magic and Steel .
In Blackstone, Madul (the Dark Lord) has spread darkness through the world of Zedan and with the help of his evil forces of the Underworld, plans to destroy the White Wizards and the Forces of Light."
Overall: A thousand years after their defeat at Zedan, the dark mages
hiding within the Tower of Babylon have grown very powerful.
They awaken the ancient volcano, Moon-eye, which weakened the
powers of Holy Light, that is protecting the land of Zedan.
Without the protection of the Holy Light, the dark mages were
able to steal the people souls of Zedan and turn them all into
slaves. The dark one, Xylon, possesses many pieces of the
Black Stone and now has enough power to fulfill his destiny.
The story begins on this evil night.
The only reason why i rented this game is because it was writed
on the box that Blackstone : Magic and Steel allows player to play
together in a fight for all mankind, and the visual was looking
fantastic. But strangely, this game look like too much
Gauntlet : Dark Legacy without a great gameplay, sound,
fun and lasting appeal.
At all cost, you must not buy
or even rented this game because it's really tedious and too much boring.
The best advice i can give to you is to keep your cash, it's not
the time to waste money on useless stuff like this when Brute Force,
Pro Race Driver, Phantasy Star Online, and Return to Castle
Wolfenstein : Tides of War are coming to your x-box on the same
month. Gameplay: In Blackstone : Magic and Steel, you must press A to hack, B to use
your magic scroll, X to take out your ranged weapon and finally Y to
hurt your friends when you are tired of them. Also you can use the right
trigger to load your magic meter, the left trigger to avoid ennemy's attack
and if you want to onload your special attack, you must combine B and the
right trigger. Finally, the black and the white button can be use to check
your character's inventory or make a map appear on the screen.
First, I will begin by telling that Blackstone : Magic and Steel have
the slowest gameplay you can afford to play on x-box. Can you imagine
that practically every class of character can't run or walk normally ?
In fact, it is so slow that on four player cooperative mod you are always
waiting for someone to progress through the game, like in every hack and slash,
but really longer than what i saw previously.
For example, I took the pirate and I was always behind
everyone and I didn't even got a bit of fun because i killed nothing.
Also, the levels looks really huge when it is that fast, but if you compared
them to Gauntlet : Dark Legacy, you will see that they are really short.
Then, they add a ranged weapon feature like what we saw in Hunter : The Reckoning,
but there are too much unusable when the game run so slowly. As a another
example, when you take the mage you can only shot one magic sphere at time or
with the pirate, the gun bullet is doing practically no damage and he is too
slow to kill the ennemies.
I tough that every game's develloper could have take a lesson about what we
really dislike in cooperative mod, i mean the life's box. Ok, everyone have their
own life box but when you are weaker than the other one, you are always dead and when
there is no much credits in your box, they will play without you.
What was really great in Hunter : The Reckoning and in Gauntlet : Dark Legacy
was when you where in a melee with your friends, but in this game you die so easily
in a melee that it get ineffective and useless to do it again. Probably that
the monster and especially the boss are too strong for us. Everything is so tough in
this game that after two levels, you will not play it again.
Also they need to put more class, but we doesn't really care because there is no game, in this kind,
who have a lot of character to choose from. Also an another thing which we doesn't really
care because it's always present in this kind of game is the camera angle which are always bad.
Bad levels up is also a fact that we are able to see in Blackstone : Magic and Steel. In summarize
you must find a gauntlet, a blade or other special item to boost your character, but what
does the h-e-l-l the experience do without any levels up possibility ? Also why the wizard
isn't more intelligent than the pirate or the thief and why everyone is upgrading
in the same way ? All those question make me know that they weren't actually taking notes
about what is the real dungeon and dragon rules and the real caracteristic of character, so the game looks
erroneous.
One of the worst feature who can be described or mentionned in this game is probably
the ineffective special power.
The pirate, as a example, don't have a powerful special and he always miss his target
with the bad aiming system. Otherwise, the wizard can kill everyone in a blow.
For the positive part, there is a strong multiplayer with some minor lack, twenty six levels,
a completed stats board after each levels and you can load you power.
Finally the shop is horrible ( can't buy item ) and when you find an item, you can't keep it.
To conclude, if you weren't interrested with Gauntlet Dark : Legacy, like most gamers on Xbox
Addict, Blackstone is really not for you.
Graphics: When you will meet this game on your video store, you will automatically watch the design of the box,
but it seems it is not, in any way, related to the game and probably that after you rented it, you will
see the amazing cd art. So after you started the game, you will see the entrance video which is the only
one who explain a bit of the story, and it seem that they all put in the first video
to, after, relaxed near the pool. Finally, you can see a black background when you play and
the character model are ugly. At least, this is where the game shine compare
to Gauntlet. Only on x-box, are you joking ? Sound: In this game you can't heard any voices, there is an exotic and annoying music who is different in each levels,
and there is no Dolby Digital 5.1. Actually you can't heard the sword slashing or the character
walking, what a basic sound !
Overall: If you like Gauntlet, then you will prob like this game. One nice thing about the game, was the ability to upgrade your chacter with the money that you find (as long as it doesn't disappear before you get there). There are a couple of flaws with the game (but what game doesn't have flaws) I would recommend a rental vs a purchase however. Because once the game is beaten, there is no real replay value unless you wanted to go through with friends or some of the characters that you have unlocked. Over, enjoyable but can be beaten with a 3 day rental so save your cash for Fable :) Gameplay: Gameplay is fun. Especially if you enjoy the Gauntlet type of hack-n-slash gaming. Same style as Gauntlet, in fact, my kids were commenting on how much of the trap etc were exactly like Gauntlet. There was a glaring flaw, imo, that really got me quite irked at times. Your character can be facing forward, but he does not shoot forward. He kinda shoots at an angle. So then when you go to turn him, he doesn't turn very well and if he is facing 1 o'clock and you turn him, he does not face 12 but rather more like 10:30 or so :/ So you will find yourself moving back and forth trying to get the correct angle from which to toss your spells and shoot. Also, something which I did not like was when you are shooting, you cannot move until the fired shot is gone. So if you button mash (and who doesn't on a game like this), you could be stuck in the same position (missing the creatures because of the angle problem) and getting whaled on at the same time from the side. However, that being said, I can overlook these glaring flaws because of the fun factor. The storyline could use a bit of work, but all in all, a good game worth a $5 rental at the very least. Graphics: Graphics were done nice. No ability to control camera angles, which at times was a little disappointing. But I am used to this style from Gauntlet. After each level is completed, there was a nicely rendered scene that usually looked very well done. Graphics were done much better than Gauntlet, however this is a newer game as well. Sound: Sound was good as well. There were times when the background music really stood out and helped for those long "back and forth" treks to turn on switches and such. Other than that, the sound is much like any other of this type and style. Suggestions: Make it that you have more precise control over your character, so that when you are shooting, you can aim your shots better. Also, allow your character to move once he has fired the shot, instead of waiting until the shot is gone off the screen.
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