One of the best games I saw while in California last week wasn’t on the E3 show floor, nor was it in one of the many conference rooms scattered throughout the Los Angeles Convention Center, but down the street, up the stairs, and in a private room in the Hotel Figueroa. When I say I hadn’t heard anything about Dungeon Hero I mean it, and I had literally no idea what to expect when I walked into the swanky back room of the hotel to meet with Firefly Studios. When he loaded up the game and started walking around a large, bustling city filled with Goblins I began to see the vision that Firefly was trying to convey.

I’m not going to get into the details of the combat, the leveling system, or anything like that, because out of all of the game the actual mechanics were the least finished. It has typical hack-and-slash fighting, and the finished product will have the hero cutting down all sorts of fantasy creatures. Where the game shines, and where it grabbed my heart, is in its atmosphere.



The plot follows an adventurer and anti-hero that is tricked by a group of goblins into fighting their rivals. Because of this, the game allows you to see a war from the goblins point-of-view, an opportunity not normally given in games. Instead of smashing through a door and slicing down a few spiders, a goblin, and a bear, the game shows you why they decided to throw that assortment of creatures into the room. Instead of seeing the goblins rush at you without any strategy you hear them arguing with eachother in a war room, pointing at a map and yelling about collateral damage. It brings the game to life, and when mixed with the game’s film-quality animations the game has some of the best environments in its class.

Nothing is forced on you, and as opposed to cinematics explaining the plot, Dungeon Hero allows for you to choose how much you want to know about. Character’s conversations with eachother can be listened to so that you can uncover more plot information, creating a real-world environment. Players may hear about the “Damned Red King” from a grumbling beggar, or see some bums around a fire rambling about “Troubles in the mines.” Not unlike BioShock, Metroid Prime, and Doom 3, the game is letting you choose how much to invest in the plot.



I don’t know why exactly, but there is something insanely cool about seeing a Goblin Medical Room, where scalpels are breaking off in the chests of wounded soldiers and doctors are sawing off limbs, sewing up skulls, and tending to the dead. The little I saw of the game has gotten me excited, as I am sure I have made obvious, and I’ll be sure to get more information on the game when it is made available. All I know is that if what I saw in the Hotel Figueroa ends up being as good as it looks, Gamecock will have a definitely hit on its hands in 2009.

 

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