Hands on with PSP's Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony
Brush the cobwebs into your hair and sharpen your sword - we're back in RPGland
Messers Freud and Jung would undoubtably have stern things to say about our propensity to spend days playing games the only purpose of which is to fight our way through numerous dark, enemy-filled dungeons while slowly accumulating experience points that will allow us to level up in an ultimately Sisyphean task to reach some sort of 'goal'.
But when it comes to PSP, the psychologists can go and lie back down on their couches because there seems to be plenty of titles to indulge our violence in the womb-like fantasies. The latest is Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony, which is loosely based on million-selling PC series, albeit with a new from-the-ground-up PSP focus.
And catching up with one of the producers from debut developer SuperVillain Studios at E3, it's clear this is a game with plenty of potential. For one thing, it looks incredible, with large onscreen characters and plenty of glittering magical attacks and other spectacular particle effects.
In terms of the gameplay itself, it also appears to be quite open-ended.
You started the E3 demo in a hub-style level environment which was populated with uninviting-looking openings to various dungeons that you could choose in which order you entered. Once inside, you had to fight your way through the levels of that particular dungeon before returning back into the hub and making your next choice.
According to our man from SuperVillain, this hub structure carries on throughout the game as you play through an island structure, which is slowly expanded as you gain use of vehicles such as boats and airships.
In keeping with the game's PC heritage, there was plenty of inventory fiddling to keep you occupied too, with the available character classes in the E3 demo split between the archetypal melee meathead or a mage, who had ranged magic attacks. A nice touch was the ability to tag a companion of the opposite class who would fight with you through the dungeons, although as is the way of most artificial intelligence, it seemed to work better if you played as the mage and let the AI deal with the close-in action.
Still with this particular demo noted as only being 50 percent complete, (it's due for an autumn release), Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony would seem to be shaping up quite nicely.
