Darkstone

"Possibly the worst game I've ever played..."

Ever play a game and wonder what you were thinking when you bought it? Well Darkstone is one of those games, in my opinion at least. Read about my journey through the hell of video gaming below if you wish. There may be a few spoilers, so watch out.

Story: 6/10
Pretty much the best part of the game, if you could name a best part. There IS a storyline, something about some guy who turned evil and is now wreaking havoc on the land. There might be more to the story but I got so sick of the game that I turned it off and never went back, but that's a different part of the review.

Controls: 2/10
Very difficult to figure out, and when you level up you have to push one of 6 buttons that make no sense in how they arranged it. Killing monsters is easy: bash away at the X button. Walking around, too, but the camera controls are clumsy and the menus just suck. This would probably be one of the first things in the game to be redone if I had a crack at it.

Gameplay: 3/10
Not much to it, other than go to dungeon, hit monsters, collect items. Not really worth the time needed to figure out where the dungeon is, then where the next level in the dungeon is, etc. After you're done a dungeon, you have to find your way back to the town, and that might take a while, depending on the enormity of the dungeon.

Sound/Music: 1/10
What music? There's not much at all, and most of the time it's too quiet to hear, or there are too many sound effects cluttering up the audio. Now music doesn't really make the game, so I forgive them on crappy music, but the rest of the game is inexcusable.

Graphics: 4/10
Not much to the game, and what there is isn't very good. Many of the parts are reused over and over and over...the surroundings can get extremely dull after even a short while.

Replayability: Poor
Replayability? How about some playability first? Instead of being a game I couldn't put down, it was one I couldn't wait to put down. Quite a change for me, as I usually have pretty good taste in games, but I guess it happens to everyone once in a while.

Buy or Rent: Buy, if you must
Despite the fact that the game sucks, it would be more worth it to buy it, seeing as it costs about the same to buy or rent. So it's spend 5 bucks to have it for a week or spend 5 bucks to play what you want then throw it out the window.

Bottom line: Don't even bother unless you're extremely bored and/or low on cash, or if you go for games that you can just push a few buttons and win. I really don't see how anyone could like this monstrosity, but I'm not everyone and I respect other peoples' opinions. This review may help you make your decision, but please don't make it the sole reason you don't buy the game; if anything add it into the tally with the other reviews that show it's a piece of crap. If you've read any of my other reviews you'd see that I don't usually bash games, but this is one exception that I just couldn't praise.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 06/15/03, Updated 06/15/03