[PvK]

Yes. As I wrote in an email to an old gaming pal earlier today,

"Dominions II tramples ***. Not only that, but after tramling *** with a group of zombie elephants, it then hacks *** to bits, incinerates it, and ressurects it to fight for its side as cannon fodder to distract its opponents from the real attack force mustering in its undersea kelp citadel, where it is summoning unmentionable horrors through its Cthulod void gate. Awesome game. Totally addictive and wonderful."

When I compare the gameplay of GTA III to Dominions, I think, "ok, so GTA III had a graphics budget in the millions, is a real-time 3D action game with some nice parts to it, but it holds my attention about 1% as well as Dominions." GTA III has titanic economic advantages, being backed by budgets and ad campaigns in the millions, hit sales, pop/corp media reactions, console sales, etc, so that's one huge unfair advantage. I actually find GTA III pretty fun as far as it goes, but compared to Dominions, for me, it doesn't go anywhere near as far on my personal fun-o-meter. GTA III scores about 1% compared to Dominions in gameplay areas such as consistent world design, number of things that can occur, impact of player actions on the game world, options to try new strategies, etc. For examples:

* In GTA, you can cause massive chaos, and it has essentially zero impact on almost anything. Walk around the block or turn your back after obliterating all the traffic on a downtown street, and the game tends to forget anything at all happened, and regenerates a random new peaceful street.
In Dominions II, the game remembers many variables for every character in the whole game world. Lasting injuries to specific body parts, armor damage, hunger, disease state, experience, who they killed (in case someone casts Vengeance of the Dead on them, or they enter the Hall of Fame) - and those are just the things tracked outside of combat.

* In GTA III, the game world has lots of completely illogical limits on what can and can't be done, and the way (generally singular) to get around them is equally illogical. Gee, this metropolitain area is completely isolated from anywhere else - no one can get off the island, but business goes on as usual. The one bridge off is blown, and the subway is "under construction". There is no way to obtain a boat, waiting for them to fix either the bridge or the subway will avail nothing. What's the ONLY way to open them within the game world? Oh, do missions for the underworld until you get to the end of the missions, and suddenly there's a scripted reason for there to be a boat. By the way, once you sail the boat to town part two, instantaneously the bridge gets fixed and the subway re-opens. Also BTW, there is practically no good reason to limit it that way, except arcade game mentality, to keep you from the new mega-expensive new graphics for a while. Gee, such freedom - to kill people, run errands, or do mob missions. What if you don't do mob missions? Practically nothing in the game world will ever change. What if you fail at a mob mission? You get to try it again, or maybe try another mob's mission. Gee. What if you want to do some Lasting damage to one of the mobs, outside a scripted mission? Sorry, persistent world state data is limited to under 100 pieces of information - that'd be too complex, and cause intelligence requirements for the mission scripters.
Little or no such nonsense in Dominions. Quite the opposite. Heaps of possibilities. Be a monolith, a dragon, a plague of undead wiping out the entire world, lead a faerie realm, customize magic paths and abilities through innate magic, items, modding... Turn off the sun. Perform cross-breeding experiments. Etc etc etc.

In short, there's no other game that offers what Dominions does, and if you appreciate Dominions, it's well worth the $50! The developers have put years of very creative and well-considered work into the game. Why does it cost so little?

PvK

[ January 26, 2004, 05:07: Message edited by: PvK ]