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- The Wheel of Time
Wheel of Time
- November 24, 2000 14:47 PM PST
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There's nothing quite like The Wheel of Time-a rich blend of 3D action and strategy.
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Based on the fantasy novels of Robert Jordan and founded on the Unreal engine, Wheel casts you as Elayna Sedai, a member of Aes Sedai sisterhood dispatched on a 17-level quest to recover a stolen artifact. You're deposited beside a fast-moving river with a palpable tension in the air--a storm is about to break--and a mission: You have to catch up to an assassin before he reaches the gates of the ruined city of Shadar Logoth.
Even in the grays and shadows of collapse, Shadar is gorgeous and genuinely creepy. (I kept thinking of the Mines of Moria in The Lord of the Rings.) It's empty enough to make each appearance of an enemy a shock--the red-eyed Minion in the darkness under the stairs and the gaseous snakes that sneak up on you just when you think you're safe. And it's just dark enough that, every time I heard one of those echoed draughts of breath--the sound is throughout--I took it for some dead, evil thing brought to life and looked over my shoulder. (Even the starting enemies are intimidating opponents at medium difficulty--a refreshing change from other action games with let you in easy.)
Elayna doesn't have a weapon per se, but has at her disposal all the ter'angreal she can find in the wild. Each of these magical artifacts, lined up efficiently at screen-bottom and accessed by the number keys, casts a spell when activated. You start with only Air Pulse--the short sword of combat ter'angreals--but will quickly come upon others (there are 40, all told) that heal, allow you to throw fireballs, pass through barriers, erect shields, reflect attacks or breathe underwater. (A rich supply of in-game info on each is available on each with the press of a key.) I suppose you could read this as the 3D shooter's standard array of weapons, but it doesn't feel that way. It feels like an inventory and perhaps that's why I often sensed I was on an adventure.
Developer Legend Entertainment (last heard from in the Unreal mission pack Return to Na Pali) made its name in the adventure game market, and that experience shows in the way puzzles have been integrated into Wheel.
For instance, some distance into Shadar Logoth is a ruined pathway that you're likely to traverse more than once as you make your way into the city's depths. Every time I walked by a particular spot along this route, some stones would fall. "Atmosphere," I thought, and moved down the path to the next room.
It took me a little while to realize that the stone abutment above this spot was gradually decaying--you can actually see the spot from which the stones fall--and that a ter'angreal would hasten the decay enough to bring it down a notch and allow me to jump to the top.
I think that was the moment I realized I was on to something special. That's a sense that followed me throughout the game--in the richly interactive tutorial, the main menu (you can walk around, and even drown, in the ruined room that serves as its graphic backdrop) and even the straight-forward, helpful manual. (The only problem I had was getting the Wheel of Time editor to work.)
But I didn't know how special until I got into the multiplayer game. The "Arena" mode is a spin on death match, but "Citadel" is a new and immersive experience. In a nutshell, you use an editor to populate your home citadel with defensive traps (spears, pits, walls and so forth) and AI-operated guards (grunts, captains and champions) to defend its seal, and then go into the citadels of your opponents and brave whatever wickedness they've prepared for you to steal theirs.
I'm never seen anything quite like it. It's a breeze to find, get information about and join games (You can even set up a server.) The editor is intuitive and uses an interface much like the one for the game proper. And it's a privilege to play or just watch--a crowning touch to this delightful original game.
