Czech this lot out...
There's still pleanty of ECTS to dissolve, so on with Czech publishers Cenega.
Cenega
Eastern Europe has never really been seen as the home of videogames. This isn't actually a very fair assumption, as a number of quality titles (Operation Flashpoint & IL-2 Sturmovik, for example) have made their way here to critical acclaim. Cenega is a new Czech publisher & distributor, a combination of Bohemia Interactive (of aforememntioned Flashpoint fame) and the Polish IM Group. They currently have a limited number of titles in the works (they're hardly the size of giants such as Electronic Arts, to be fair), of which two are of particular interest: Another War and Shade
Another War
Another War is one of the first goblin-free roleplaying games ever. More specifically, it's based in World War II, at the height of the German occupation of France. World War II, however, doesn't mean serious - the whole game is approached in a very Indianna Jones tongue-in-cheek style, with constant film references and cheeky humour. Your character (you have a choice of three, much like Fallout) begins the game in a small town in france (in a small bar run by a familiar-looking barman named Rene). Very quickly, your character is captured by the Gestapo & taken to a particularly grubby jail (which you have to escape from, of course). The methods taken to get through the game are heavily dependant on the type of character you chose. Even in the first room, the strong guy will bash the cell door down whilst the smart guy will talk his way out and the thief will pick the lock.
Graphically, this is actually quite similar to the Baldur's Gate games. Whilst 3D games have all but taken over, the 2D backdrops and characters in AW lend it a pleasant organic feel (which most tile-based 3D titles lack). Also, it means the game can afford to be pretty damn big - 3 CDs in total. Whether it's enough to satisfy my cravings for a satisfyingly sizeable singleplayer experience can only be answered when we get the full finished game for review.
The game plays much like a cross between Planescape Torment and Diablo, with the interface looking and behaving a lot like Fallout. However, the game's much much wordier than any of the above; there's an awful lot of stuff to read in this game. The third CD of the finished article is the Speech CD, which should make the dialogue more bearable, but I admit I was somewhat put off by having half the screen filled with converstaion. At least it has some depth :S
The demo build I played of the game was highly entertaining. Obviously it was not a finished title (the limited number of voices were still in Czech), but if the rest of the game pans out to be as engaging as the limited section I played in the jail, (and if the game has the huge number of locations Cenega have promised me) then we may well have a must-have RPG. A full review as soon as we can.
PC Screenshots: Screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen screen
