The demo for one our most anticipated games of 2012 is up and running. And if you don’t want to take your time to download and play it, maybe this preview will convince you why you should play 2012′s version of Skyrim.
The demo I got to play included the tutorial section of the game, and 45 minutes to roam around the first area of Kingdoms of Amalur. For the sake of time I will skip the tutorial part and dive straight to the gameplay. Much like Skyrim you don’t choose a class at the beginning of the game, you play the way you feel like it, which seems to be the new trend with RPGs now in days.
Unlike Skyrim however the game’s interface is much more friendly to play around with. If you want to use your primary weapon just press X, if you want to use magic just press RT + X. No longer you have to pause the game to switch between spells and weapons, which was one of my major gripes with games such as Skyrim and Dragon Age II. In that aspect Amalur does a great job in being friendly towards the player.
With that said the controls are very sensitive. Moving seems like your skating on ice and dodging is kind of hard to maneuver. After my second playthrough I got the hang of it, but it’s definitely something to watch out for in this game.
The game follows your standard RPG style gameplay; do quests, get gear, sell junk, level up. When compared to Skyrim, Amalur doesn’t feel as epic scale as the RPG juggernaut. Of course I only saw one area of the game and this can easily change, but the one area I got to play seems to be a lot more confined than anything I saw in Skyrim. The game also feels a lot like World of Warcraft (WoW) in a way, and by that I mean the environment and the atmosphere just reminds me a lot of my adventures in Azeroth.
Again much like Skyrim the game allows you to play the way you want to, if you like to approach enemies using stealth you can, if you prefer to go straight up against your enemies you can do that as well. Leveling up however is not based on how much you use a certain weapon or spell, the game follows the same the gameplay style of Borderlands or Diablo, where every time you level up you can add a point to spells/abilities your own choosing.
Presentation however is where the preview didn’t impress me. Graphics are 5 years too late, and some really cheesy sound FX removed me from the immersion (just break a jar and you will see what I am talking about). On top of that the PC version has a lot of graphical glitches, heads are missing sometimes, and mouths sometimes don’t move when their suppose to.
“What are you looking at?”
For those that enjoyed games such as WoW or Skyrim, they will find themselves in familiar territory with Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. The full game will be released on February 7 for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC, you can download the demo for all those platforms right now.
This preview is based off the PC version of the game using a Xbox 360 controller and played on following PC specifications:
Windows 7 (64-bit)
Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.77GHz
ATI Radeon HD 4850
8GB of DDR2 Memory
