"Awesome! AD&D without the math-ish stuff."

OK, I've never actually played the original AD&D games, so I don't know much about them. But I've owned this game for quite awhile, and I've taken a liking to it. Enough, in fact, to write a review for it....

STORY: N/A
There is no story, and Slayer doesn't really need one anyway. You're an adventurer guy, and you are in a dungeon. You go through many levels of the dungeon, finding items and fighting monsters. Your goal is to defeat the giant boss monster at the bottom.

GRAPHICS: 9/10
Good 3D graphics, and cool-looking monsters. All the items have small icons which are simple enough to understand. You can pick from about 30 faces to give your character, and they look pretty good. The monsters are well-done, but their animations get kind of annoying. Battles tend to be long because of missing, and the monsters' ''between attack'' animations play many times. Spell graphics like fireballs and cure-light things look decent, but you won't really notice them. Slayer is played from the first-person point of view, so you can move in three dimensions. The textures are good, and small objects like torches blend in well. The menu and inventory look good, too. So, basically, the game looks good.

GAMEPLAY: 8/10
It's AD&D without the math-ish stuff! You walk around the randomly generated dungeons, picking up items and fighting monsters. If you like a dungeon, you can go back to it later by entering the same ''seed'' later. When you set up the game options before you start, you can type in any code you want and it will generate a unique dungeon. You can also select things like item availability, monster types, and the number of traps. The game is very customizable. Also, like the original AD&D games (I'm told,) you can make your own character by setting their gender, class, attributes, race, and alignment. It's quite awesome.

When you're ready to start, you'll enter the first level of your dungeon. The basic goal of each level is to find the gold key and use it on the exit door. But there's lots more to do! The fun part of Slayer is finding all the cool items that are lying around. Slayer uses a system similar to Diablo's. Some items you find have special abilities you can't see until you identify them using the right spells or items. So, your crappy boots might actually be acid-walking boots.

There's also many other small things that add variety to the gameplay. For example, you can turn on traps. When you step on certain spots, the floor breaks away and you take damage from some lava underneath or something. There are also other, funner traps, like things in the walls that shoot fireballs you have to dodge. If you find a game easy, you can do things like make a crappy character or turn up the number of monsters. Slayer has huge replay value.

Pretty much the only reason gameplay gets an eight is the combat. Combat is really boring! You just walk up to a monster and push the button you equipped your weapon to. Then, you most likely miss. Now you get to wait five seconds while your character catches his breath and lets the enemy attack him. Then, it starts again. It's just too slow.

SOUND AND MUSIC: 7/10
The intro, credits, and menu music are awesome. From there, it kinda goes down. There are about five different dungeon songs, and they're rather short. Meaning, they play through many times before you finish a level. Then, the sounds. There really aren't many, and the ones that are there aren't particularily noticeable. All you really hear is the swing sound, and the ''ow!'' sound, and the ''beawl!'' sound. They're not really bad, but hey.

CONTROL: 7/10
In this game, control DOES deserve its own category. Just tapping the left or right buttons make you overturn far too often, but you can hold L and push them to turn in smaller degrees. The same goes for looking up and down, and moving. Just thought you'd like to know that.

BUY? RENT?
Slayer can't be very expensive on Ebay or something. I recommend it if you're interested in RPG-ish stuff. If you're just looking for a 3DO game in general, you should check out some other games first.

FINAL SCORE: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/03