StrangerThis real-time strategy game brings you to the dark and light sides of a fantasy world and features a wide variety of characters.Developers Fireglow Software have come up with something quite surprising in their magic and fantasy PC title Stranger. It has what I would consider to be found less and less of late, something often overlooked in place of (fair enough) gameplay and graphical finesse. But Fireglow have been careful to give themselves as much of a head start as possible in winning over the gaming masses by including for our collective pleasure a rather excellent plot.I like it a lot - apparently it's based on an existentialist novel of the same name by a French writer called Albert Camus who I had not previously heard of, but with a bit of research it seems that the game has stayed true to the intricate plot, changing only some names and locations. Basically, you play the part of three separate characters lost in a mysterious world that you have been cast into by the town council, after your innocent experimentation with highly forbidden magic. The three of you aren't the best of friends but, as strangers in a foreign land, you are reluctantly forced to cooperate in your efforts to return home and execute justice on your persecutors. Unfortunately, the execution of this tale of deception is not well done. Still cartoon scenes move things along, made up of simplistically drawn characters and voiced over by what sounds like the developer's janitor at the last minute (take a monotone and completely non-threatening "I will come back and eat your hearts." as an example). It's a real shame that more effort wasn't put into this and although money isn't always readily available to create Hollywood FMV sequences, there is a huge amount of room for improvement in the style and presentation chosen here.I've never been one for immediately classifying a game into its respective genre; for one thing, it can encourage scepticism and apprehension (mention 'text based adventure' to anybody aside from UNIX users and they're running for the polygonal hills, yet it's unlikely they've ever actually given one a go!), but Stranger just begs to be a bold outcast when it comes to its definition. At heart it's a real-time strategy and a role-playing game, with elements of both showing through in different proportions depending on the task at hand. Think of Blizzard's excellent Diablo hack n' slash combat system and the wonderful visual style of underrated classic RPG Silver, and somewhere in between you get Stranger. It's a decent effort at least to defy convention and works at a certain level to achieve a blend of monster bashing and item collection with party-based gameplay into the bargain, and has qualities to satisfy fans of a range of related games.You begin your quest for justice in the hideous gnarled form of a mutant creature after being hurled into the portal to the desolate land from which you must escape. You are however told, much to your dismay, that nobody has ever willingly returned from this land and the only way out is through an unstoppable, unspeakable beastie who would make toothpicks out of you in your current state. Also separated from your fellow outcasts, you are alone for now and left to figure out where to go. Luckily there's a tutorial to play through, which gives you the basics of the gameplay.The first few levels lead you by the hand and around the map with arrows all over the place, so it's pretty impossible to get lost, but the environments are not open-ended enough to actually wander off anywhere anyway, at least for most of the game. This tight level design is in line with the objective-based gameplay, ensuring you don't lose too much direction. Objectives aren't the most original, ranging from killing another small army of inexplicably aggressive insectoid life forms or hiring yet another solider for your party once you have amassed enough crystal. These soldiers can be found loitering around small townsteads and will help you as you slash and stab your way to the next objective.It's pretty apparent from early on that there's trouble ahead with the control system, particularly the inventory interface, which is often struggled with in RPGs. Combat is just verging on the side of being interesting but did not once truly feel like I was in a fight, my hero just standing there repeating the same animation until whatever he's striking at falls over dead, ready to be looted. The game's currency comes in the form of three different crystals that are found around the lands and carried by most of its inhabitants (including, as I always find strange, the monsters) and transferring amounts of these crystals between yourself and recipients is an awkward and cumbersome task, requiring fiddly sliders and selections. The action can be paused at any time so this isn't too big a deal, although it would have been wise to implement more accessibility. These crystals are also magical; each grants the ability to cast certain spells, either to harm or manipulate the enemy is some way, or to bolster you and your team's strengths of defence. Further to this you can mix various crystals to create new combinations, like cyan crystals for example, which allows you to cast a rather nasty ice shard spell.One thing I do quite like is the environments. They are very well detailed for a game with such a simple engine (there are no physics or active environments present) and the little buildings and fauna have a wonderful charm. NPCs are rudimentarily animated, but smoothly so, and there are a lot of creatures to hack through, all of which are very interesting designs from your standard 'low experience' bugs to giant spidery monstrosities. There are some very cool boss designs too, which I won't spoil. All in there are over one hundred monster designs and I have to credit Fireglow on this, as that's a lot of beasties to pen down - there's a hell of a lot of work in between conceptual design and the final production of a creature, from visual design and texturing to animation, so credit is due here. The sound is very pleasing to the ear too, with a very good ambient soundtrack keeping the atmosphere up, along with some well-conceived creature snarls and roars.While I was playing Stranger I had the impression of playing a game a that is a few years old, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing - I was remembering moments from classics I had played in the past that took me through many great evenings of cloak and dagger wand wielding. It's not easy to create a convincing universe and then bring it to life; players demand immersion these days, as RPGs take a lot of effort to get into, but the RTS element here eases you along by keeping you occupied while the RPG elements sink in. It's a great experience when you feel totally involved in what you are doing and the reward is feeling like you have actively changed something within that world. Stranger is nearly too much effort to get this much out of it, although there is charm it is saturated by oversights such as the mediocre cut scenes. When you are attempting to implement two gameplay styles then you'd better be careful that there are no distractions or irritations to the player, or the tentative grip a game has to build upon will be lost. Stranger is still just clutching out with a gauntleted hand.
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