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> Results: Ninety Nine Nights
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Join in an epic battle between humans and goblins. Fight from the perspective of several key players on both sides. Sounds great, doesn't it?
The first thing you notice is the graphics on this one. The in game footage while you're in the thick of it is gorgeous, and it's not just the landscape and the environments. You have hundreds of soldiers from both sides of the fight on screen at the same time with their own individual movements and tactics. The combat system is not exactly complicated but it does have a few surprises. Think of it as mowing a digital lawn. Your soldiers are dumb and pathetic even for the average NPC. You spend a lot of your time swinging your sword through a mixed crowd of your guys and the enemy trying to keep your soldiers alive so they can keep tying up the enemy later on in the mission when you really need them to. I've only been able to use them to keep the bad guys occupied so they don't come at you all at once. They really serve no other purpose I can see. Except dying. They do a lot of that.   
The first sticking point shows up in the initial movie in front of the game - Inphyy. As you watch it, you see a little montage of each character out there doing what they do best. The priest guy is being wise and reading ancient runes, the cute little witch is blowing away a whole crowd with that gorgeous water spell. What does Inphyy do? She gets dressed. Complete with several shots of her putting on her upper armor. I won't call it a chest plate since it doesn't cover her chest. She has this great big hole right in the middle of it. Then you find out that you have to play her first - none of the other characters are unlocked. Once you get into the game it's worse. She is every bad female stereotype in gaming all rolled into one.
It's not gory. There's no blood, and the bodies fade into the landscape. It's the sheer numbers that are amazing. My younger son strung together a 1,400 kill combo in one single skirmish by drawing four big crowds of the bad guys all into one area and going to town. A big issue came out of the story - you're knowingly committing genocide. Your characters hack their way through literally thousands of enemies just because they belong to the same race that killed Inphyy and Aspharr's father. And at least one point you start hacking into goblin civilians. Some of the story gets pretty dark and grim, but I honestly don't know why it's rated M when stacked against some others out there. Outside of the sheer numbers of the dead there's nothing all that out of line. I didn't find any huge smoking guns like there is in Oblivion or Fable. Even if you decide that's okay most kids aren't going to like it much. My kids wouldn't touch it until I'd finished Inphyy's missions and unlocked a couple of the other characters. The story is hackneyed, the missions are maddening, and there's very little payoff. They might enjoy watching you play, though. This review edited by Andrew Bub Comments? Chat about it in our forums! Format For Printing | Tell A Friend | Digg | Slashdot | del.icio.us | Buy This Game Home > Review Archive > Video Games > Results: Ninety Nine Nights |
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