Dark Fate

It probably says a lot about this game that many people remember it not for the game itself, but the history behind the making of it. It involved a Major League Baseball Star, a $75m loan from the Rhode Island Government and the federal investigation that followed. But regardless of the game’s development woes, it was met with a generally positive reception when it released way back in 2012, even if that wasn’t backed up with large sales. Fast forward 6 years and the publishing rights were sucked up by that dormant IP vacuum THQ Nordic and a remaster was in the cards, which has finally seen a release on PC and current gen systems. But all is not what it seems.

THQ Nordic’s track record on the remastering of the games it purchased has been spotty. While the two Darksiders games and Red Faction Guerilla were standard remastering affairs, both Saints Row the Third and Destroy All Humans went above and beyond when it came to polishing up these games for a modern audience. Unfortunately, Re-Reckoning is way down the list when it comes to such polish, to a point where I would consider this more of a re-release than a remaster; they didn’t even bother to change the title screen in the opening scene. In fact, the only difference I found playing on PC was a slight change to the UI. I even downloaded and fired up the original EA version of the game to compare, and didn’t notice any other differences. Because of this the game still feels distinctly ‘last-gen’, but at least the console versions have had a resolution bump up to 4K on the Pro and X, which is better than nothing.

Platforms: PC (reviewed), Playstation 4, Xbox One
Price: $39.99
Price I’d pay: $19.99

In the game, players are the ‘Fateless One’; risen from the dead by a Gnome scientist who has been trying to help create an army who can fight the hordes of eternal dark elves trying to take over the Faelands. Being his only success before his experiment is destroyed they are told to go out into the world and find help from a Fate Weaver, someone who can see the fates of others. You see, in Amalur everybody has a predetermined fate and plays a part in the great tapestry of life, and it is this Fate Weaver who discovers that the player character in fact has no fate and can therefore affect the fate of others and even change the tapestry itself. From here players will travel all across Amalur, vanquishing evil, helping others and trying to find a way to defeat the corrupted dark elves. As narratives go, it is much your standard fantasy affair, with more than a side helping of Fable. I mean it doesn’t go as far as having a dedicated fart button, but the influence is definitely on show, in both the design of the world and the way combat works.

Three of the face buttons are assigned to an attack, one for the main weapon, one for a secondary weapon and a third for magical attacks. The type of weapon equipped also changes the style of combat, so long swords are a general all-rounder, bows are good for ranged and daggers for stealth kills. There are also other types of weapons such as hammers and faeblades, each with their own style. It’s about finding the best weapon that suits the player’s preferred style of play, and it was a lot of fun finding out what worked best for me. As you would expect for a fantasy RPG of this type, there is also plenty of loot to earn and find. As the game progresses and the Fateless One levels up, weapons with better stats become available. These can add stat bonuses, as well as elemental damage. There are also weapons that have slots for gems to be added, which adds even more power. It is rather deep for a light action RPG; as is the skill system. Split into three sections, each level gained unlocks three points to place in any of the three categories; Might, Magic and Finesse. These points can be used to unlock new abilities or allow them to be powered up. Where one places the points will also determine which Fates they can use. These different fates grant bonus stats and can be swapped about at will, meaning even more fine tuning to get the combat style they find most suitable.

Another thing this game has plenty of is side-quests; hundreds in fact. It is great for world building and some of the quests delve into the history of Amalur and the Faelands. But with this also comes a ton of fetch quests and ‘go here and kill this’ missions, and these get dull very quickly. I felt that this game could have done with a more ruthless editor when it comes to the side missions, because as much as they add lore, they detract from the main mission and, having no way that I could filter out the wheat from the chaff, I ended up skipping most side-quests altogether. If you are the type of person who can’t leave a checkbox unticked, then you are in for a long ride.

It also doesn’t help that there was more than one time when the game broke and prevented me from progressing a side mission. On one occasion I ran into an NPC who was fighting a load of monster spiders. I jumped in to help, but despite my best efforts, the man was killed. But not wanting to let Death get in the way of a good quest, the NPC still managed to give me the quest, whilst being dead on the floor (yes, I was standing there conversing with fresh air). But once I had done the first part of the quest and went back to the NPC, I couldn’t turn the quest in as he was dead! Even backing out of the game and reloading didn’t make any difference, that side quest was then permanently broken for me. It is this type of bug that plagues Re-Reckoning and makes it feel dated, and it doesn’t just stop there, as there were many audio and visual glitches that I ran into during my playtime. None of these were totally game-breaking, but the fact that I remember that many of these bugs were present in the original game makes me wonder about how little work actually went into this port.

Feeling very dated in both visuals and gameplay I really can’t recommend it at the full asking price, especially as there are ways in which you can still get hold of download codes for the original release at a fraction of the price. It may have been a different story had there been more work done bringing the game up-to-date and squishing those darn bugs, but this feels like nothing more than a cash grab to make up for some of the money spent on purchasing the IP. Wait for a price drop.

Review copy of game provided by publisher.