His “home” is a room that happens to lead to the rest of the castle. You have to kill him (and take his stuff) in order to progress through the game. In order to defend his home (and possibly his pregnant wife), he attacks you. For example, early in the game the player encounters a Sharga that says: “This my home! Monster you leave!” Surprisingly, this can lead to a few ethical dilemmas. To add to the already impressive level of detail, many of the enemies have voiced dialog. Thankfully, the game can be played one-handed. The Ice Queen, however, relies on good old-fashioned sex appeal: There’s a large variety of enemies that the developers have titivated nicely. But even these “clones” vary in color, size, and strength. Sure, the same enemy models are re-used multiple times. The special effects used on the actors are Hollywood-quality. It is a dead-end method that was superseded by the motion capture they use today.īut honestly, they put a lot of effort into these characters. Then again, the sprites are technically 2D, so they have no real depth. I’d prefer it over the early polygon styles any day. (Think the Mortal Kombat style of model capture, but with a lot more detail.) I almost wish they’d pursued this rendering style further throughout the years. The live-action characters steal the show! They have multiple fluid movements and realistic features. Strangely, the styles are not dissimilar from Peter Jackson’s vision. In fact, much of this game borrows from the Lord of the Rings universe. These are quaint little creatures that want to kill you something fierce. One of the first real enemies encountered are the Shargas. By the way, the first weapon I found was a crappy dagger, which is peculiar because I recall a perfectly good sword being left on the ground in the opening segment.Īs the game really gets going, it becomes an exploratory crusade to find new weapons, items, and obviously new areas to progress in. For example, when you hover the cursor over a lever that you need to pull, it becomes a hand. Attacking the enemies is point-and-click. The cursor changes depending on what you need to do. When the game really starts, it’s pretty straightforward to play. But the CGI is not that bad for its time, I guess. It looks like the people are running from the prospect of being turned into George Lucas’ special effects. And that dog’s transformation to a pile of poorly CGI’ed bones. But there is a lot in there! What a quaint little castle town…that gets destroyed. Just watch this.īehold! Stonekeep]s cinematic introduction:ĭid you know that that cost about one-million dollars to make? Was it worth it? I could argue no. After the trailer is over, the Interplay logo appears and the game begins. (I don’t want to talk about it.) Luckily, the trailer is only set up to play once. Translation: “CDgamesawesomeness”.Īfter the game was loaded, I suffered through an abysmally dated Star Trek video and almost called it quits right there. With a few simple steps, I was playing the original game in its perfect native display. Pauly Shore never had a career.) So I did the next best thing to play it: I used DOSBox (a program that emulates the specifications of vintage DOS). I own the original DOS CD-ROM, so I was ready to just pop it in and play-except that the computer I needed to run it had been dead longer than Pauly Shore’s career. The game utilizes both CGI and live-action effects to create an engaging experience. A Wiiware re-imagining is purportedly in the works, as well.īut what is Stonekeep? It’s a first-person RPG dungeon crawler developed by Interplay. It lives on today as a semi-obscure oddity that may be in the “cult classic” category. Stonekeep was stepped over by the mainstream. Although Interplay was quick to fix many of the issues, it was too late. Reception was underwhelming for this reason. When Stonekeep was first released, it was more bug-ridden and difficult to beat than a homeless man who won’t hold still.
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