Well here we are, it’s Wednesday once again, and time for another game product review at EN World News.  This week, I had the opportunity to check out the newest in the long line of D&D-related computer games – and this new one is the first written with the D&D 4E game system in mind.  Atari has recently released Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale, and I managed to get a couple copies, so I could try out both the solo and multiplayer versions of the game with gaming pal, Tizzbin.

Sadly, the actual resemblance to D&D 4E that Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale demonstrates stops pretty much at the name, and a few titles of powers.  What I had hoped would be a showcase for D&D 4E as a game system turned out to be little more than a twitch-video arcade game, not too unlike Gauntlet.  For a detailed analysis of the game, please click the link below to head over to EN World for a full review:

Review of Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale by Atari

By the way, Tizzbin will also be doing his own review of Daggerdale next week – he is determined to play the game all the way through to the bitter end before making his final judgment. As Editor-in-Chief, I can only applaud his perseverence.

[Editor's Note: Here is a link to the Daggerdale review done by Tizzbin!]

Now don’t get me wrong, Guantlet was a great game, and ate plenty of may gaming tokens at the local arcade.  But when a company advertises Daggerdale as “D&D Comes To Life”, you don’t expect to be sitting down to a run-and-gun-shoot-em-up-kill-fest.  And what really bothered me about the play style was how pathetic melee combat was, compared to ranged combat, where the Wizard could take out whole packs of angry monsters, while the Fighter just got himself torn to shreds running into combat.  This game is definitely not D&D by stretch of the imagination, and as an arcade game is pretty much average at best.

So for now, we’ll have to hope that someone else decides to take a shot at making D&D 4E “come to life” – Dungeons & Dragons: Daggerdale isn’t even close to the mark.  I guess I’ll be keeping my subscription to Lord of the Rings Online a little while longer to satisfy my D&D video game “itch” – at least until The Old Republic comes out anyways, when I’ll be trading in my Hobbit Warden’s spear-and-shield for a light sabre!

So until next blog… I wish you Happy Gaming!

Tags: atari, D&D 4e, daggerdale, EN World, review

This entry was posted by Editor-in-Chief on Wednesday, June 1st, 2011 at 8:09 pm and is filed under RPG News & Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.