Review

This is going to be a really short review. That's because most of what I wanted to say about Die By The Sword, I said first in my Redguard review. Specifically, the ranting I did about interface design, and jumping puzzles. I didn't finish Die By The Sword, and I quit playing it for the same reason that I quit playing Redguard: the game made me do things that it just wasn't any good at; or maybe just things I'm not any good at, namely using sloppy, unresponsive interfaces to jump onto things. Either way, it stopped being fun pretty quickly.

As for the whole VSIM technology (I'm not going to explain it here)... I was really keen on the idea, but never felt like I was getting any better at it. Instead, the damage and collision model struck me as frustratingly unpredictable. More to the point, the whole time I felt like a blindfolded kid trying to hit a pinata with a broomstick. Sure, every now and then I'd land a satisfying blow, but I could never figure out how to do so in any kind of consistent or predictable fashion. I don't think it's my fault, necessarily. I play games with complex interfaces, and am decidedly adept at them if I do say so myself; games like Descent 3, Heavy Gear 2, Infiltration, etc.. And I've been playing first-person shooters for years now, so I think my mousing skills are fairly well honed. So no, I don't think it's the case that I just didn't 'get' VSIM. I could be wrong. I'd love to watch someone play Die By The Sword who felt that they were a VSIM Zen master.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that I went in wanting and willing to learn a more sophisticated melee combat game. After finishing Rune, I thought to myself, "ok, now how about a real melee combat game". Well, I got it in the form of Die By The Sword, and it turned out to not be fun. Still, I'm not going to abandon hope for "analog" melee combat. I don't think that DBTS is evidence that it can't be done, or that it can't be done and be fun at the same time. DBTS is just evidence that DBTS isn't fun.

DBTS failed for me on two counts: the learning curve for VSIM felt like a vertical cliff, and the game committed the cardinal sin of combining jumping chores with a sloppy, laggy interface. On an unrelated negative note, for a 1998 game, it looked like garbage, but I've yet to encounter a game that I wouldn't play just because the graphics were crappy. On a positive note, the voice acting for Enric was positively entertaining!

Next game.

Marketing Lies

Just the "easy to use" part.

Tips

• uh... see cheat codes.