Dark Messiah: Might and Magic from Arkane Studios and Ubisoft, has been an anticipated title for many, and the Single Player Demo is finally here. At a wopping 1.38GB download, I had to leave it over night as soon as it was released, which was the afternoon for me, due to the fact the release was in American time. I'm British you see! As I began to install it the next morning, I made a fake bet with myself: the demo will be the level from all the trailers, including a tutorial before it.

I was right, as you'll see later.

I was surprisingly introduced with a nice intro movie, showing us, what I think, the guy who is supposedly the Dark Messiah, summoning some huge fiery demon. (Don't say I sent out spoilers, this is the INTRO MOVIE!) I was then happily reunited with the same main menu I know and love: the one used on many Steam games. My mouse zoomed over to the words "New Game", and I whispered to myself "Here we go."

I'm not going to go through every detail of what I did, because that would ruin the fun for all of you people out there who haven't played it yet. It was a tutorial, like I said! Good thing was, it still fit into the story. It wasn't particularly boring either, plenty of things to kill, and thanks to the combat system, many ways too!

Now i've done all that, moving on to the level shown in all the trailers. Told you I was right! Anyway, you're provided with 6 Skill Points which you can spend on basic Combat, Archery, Magic, and other skills. You are also provided with all the weapons shown in the trailer, a Sword, Bow, and two Knives. This means, in my case, you can re-do the level over and over again, using different skills. As I had seen the trailers multiple times, I had a good idea of what you could do around the level, for instance, I knew you could shoot a certain rope with an arrow, it would break, and a huge weight would crash into the wooden platform, sending an Ork to his doom.

One thing about this level that we saw in the trailers. (Possible spoiler) There is a Cyclops at the end that you would have to battle, but guess what? You can't fight it, the demo ends as soon as you see it. At this point I was viciously banging my head on the table, shouting "WTF!". This was really dissapointing, but I guess it's a good marketing strategy. "You can battle this huge Cyclops, and many other creatures, October 06!".

Moving on from my rage....the graphics are great, of course they are, it's the Source™ engine. The sound quality is pretty good too, especially if you have a decent sound system. I have a 5.1 system set up, and I was pretty impressed. But it wasn't new to me, it's the Source™ engine! (I'm not obsessed with it, shut up!)

The gameplay was all I thought it would be too, I wasn't dissapointed. Combinations of movements and clicks of your weapon, made every battle I had different, and trust me, i've played through it quite a few times, to spot any small details, and for entertainment. Watching your character shove a sword through an Ork's body, watching him bleed while impaled on it, and then kicking him off it, is great to watch. No i'm not a freak, in my books anyway, I know much worse people.

Finishing off, Dark Messiah looks like an impressive game. Not ground breaking at all really, but good fun. It'll be gladly added to my collection soon enough. Check out the demo for yourself, if you haven't already. That is, if you can be bothered to wait a while for it to download.

This is Joe Marsden, signing out.