The Immortal

"Horrific violence AND sorcery ?? BRING IT ON !!!!! :)"

FOREWORD

Yet another game that I picked up randomly from my local second-hand video games store on the cheap - I think I paid £15 (about US$28) for it. It looked interesting enough, and I always had a soft spot for the Megadrive/Genesis, so I figured what the heck.

... was it worth it ? Or was I royally ripped-off ?? Read on ...

OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVE OF THE GAME

Your master, the Wizard Mordamir, has not been seen or heard from in some time. He was last seen venturing into a set of dungeons in search of magic to broaden his repertoire of spells, and you are worried that something bad might have happened to him.

You decide to investigate the dungeon yourself, to see what has become of your Master. It might be that he is trapped, or injured and in need of your assistance.

You pluck up the courage to enter the dungeon, and the game begins ...

Your objective is to find out what has happened to Mordamir - pure and simple.

GRAPHICS - 8/10

Graphically this is DEFINITELY a Megadrive game. The sprites are a little rough around the edges, and whilst they are depicted in decent size, they do suffer from scaling issues. HOWEVER, they are very atmospheric, VERY impressive for the time the game was released, and boast a large number of frames of animation, making virtually every single move they make a joy to watch.

Though the scrolling can be a little jerky at times (the game is a 3/4 view third-person perspective game, so the screen will scroll along as you bumble along through corridors and so on), the overall feel you get from the in-game graphics is one of attention, polish and professionalism. The guys that animated these sprites took a LOT of time to make sure they were done to impress, and their hard work has paid off.

If you think interacting with the characters is good, just wait until you start to do BATTLE with them. The action zooms in on you and your opponent, giving you two really big sprites in close-quarters combat. The fighting is mundane, comprising five main commands [swipe left, swipe right, dodge left, dodge right and stab], but when you have done enough damage to slay your enemy, the death animations are nothing short of JAW-DROPPINGLY amazing. With some characters the deaths are always the same, but with the majority they are randomly generated from a big bank of them, ranging from lobotomising them to electrocuting them; slicing them from head to crotch (clean in half !!), to disembowelling them - you think you've seen a particularly gory one and then WHAM !! The next one is even better !! Or worse, if you're squeamish.

Graphically, this is definitely NOT a game for the faint-hearted ...

SOUND - 8/10

The musical score throughout the game is very well handled, and you will wind up humming some of the tracks to yourself as you venture about the dungeons. There are a large number of different pieces of music to listen to, and they all keep within what I would call the "traditional dungeon-adventuring umbrella" (think of the music from the city of Shadazar in Conan the Destroyer and you won't go far wrong).

The sound-effects are varied and plentiful. The stabbing, squishing and gut-wrenching sounds are all very well done, as is the swishing sound of your blade as it cleaves the air (and your enemies) in two as it goes.

CONTROLS - 8/10

Whilst your character (the nameless apprentice) is very much what I would call a 'square-by-square' character (as in pointing in any direction will cause him to shuffle approximately 1/2 a square in that direction, and the game is made up entirely of squares in terms of its floor-tile arrangement, he is still very controllable.

There are a number of death-traps in the game, the MOST dangerous in my opinion being a whirlpool on one of the later levels, and even with that, you do get the feeling that you are able to control your character very well (you HAVE to, or he drowns !!), so there is very little that you will want for in terms of moving him about physically.

Combat is nice and easy to get into the swing of - moving the cursor left or right slices in that direction, whilst holding the same direction and the dodge button causes your character to rather amusingly swing his BUTT in the other direction (so dodging in the direction you want him to). Try it and I GUARANTEE you, you won't be able to do it without making a "hut" sound as he swings away. Go on ;)

So yeah ! Controls-wise, the game is simple to work with, and that is great.

PLOT - 8/10

The plot is quite complex, and develops level-by-level as you descend through the dungeons. There are a fair few plot twists and turns, and what you think is the case often is not. Enemies become friends and friends become enemies, and all the while you are getting into ever-increasingly hotter water in your quest to find your Master.

The culmination of the plot is something of video games legend to be honest - even now, a good 15 years after playing this game for the first time, I can remember it clear as day.

GAMEPLAY - 8/10

It's a REALLY fun game to play - the fighting action is very immediate and rewarding - kinda like chess but with tonnes more gore.

The plot is rewarding, enriching and engrossing, and you WILL want to know what has happened to your Master by the time you reach the last level, and there are a large number of puzzles and plot-driven elements to solve along the way, together with hordes of items you can pick up to put to good use (rings which polymorph you into your enemies so that you can sneak past them, dwarves that can be bent to your will by the use of magic dust, and so on).

Every room seems to have some nasty little twist to it, all of which require your attention and often quick reflexes to avoid coming to an abrupt end - there are floor panels that break open when you step on them, green acid jelly that reduces you to a pile of bones, spiders galore and TONNES more besides.

Fortunately, if (or should I say WHEN) you die, the respawn points are, in a good 80% of cases, well-calibrated. By this I mean that when you die, you don't have to wade through hours and hours of game to get back to where you were, only to die again and do it again, and again and again.

Since you are an apprentice wizard, your array of spells is also very impressive and enjoyable to employ (although almost all of them are scroll-based, which is a bit of a bummer).

All told this is a VERY polished game, which will reward your attention and interest with a fulfilling and enjoyable experience that you will remember in years to come.

REPLAY VALUE - 8/10

I play my copy even now, just to watch the horrifically gory death scenes, and to skip to my favourite bits (you can key in level codes as part of the game itself, to enable you to move to your favourite level/s in the dungeon), so yeah - the short-, mid- and long-term replay values of this title are all high. Like a fine wine, it gets better with time !

VALUE FOR MONEY - 8/10

Depending on how much you wind up paying for it, this game is one which you should definitely look to add to your Megadrive/Genesis repertoire. When you weigh up the look on your face and the frantic madness with which you will yearn for more of the same when you've slain your first couple of enemies versus the pittance this title SHOULD cost you, then I believe this title represents GREAT value for money.

OVERALL - 9/10 (This is NOT an average)

The Immortal is one of the greatest Megadrive titles. It isn't incredibly well-known, and it hits you like a kick in the nuts with its violence and gore, but the game itself is deeper than that - the plot drives you on to WANT to find out what has happened to Mordamir, and the combination of swords, sorcery, dungeon-crawling and monsters make for a compelling slice of action that you won't want to put down.

MAIN GOOD POINTS

* Great levels of animation for a title of its age
* Hilariously excessive death scenes for those enemies that fall to your blade
* High replay value
* Wicked plotline

MAIN BAD POINTS

* Graphics are a tad dated, and a bit rough around the edges

SO SHOULD YOU GET IT ?

If you can, then I would say yes - please do try your best to get your hands on a copy of this game and play it. Even if you just rent it - see what you think of it, and I'm confident you will want to keep it as a slice of what the Megadrive/Genesis was like in its prime. Two thumbs up.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/20/07