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The Plot:  "Barbarian", a game that was marketed seemingly like a role-playing adventure, is actually more along the lines of a straightforward fighter, such as "Mortal Kombat". "Barbarian" offers an equally trippy bunch of monsters, warriors and other generic types often seen in these games. Players battle it out with simple fighting or spells in a best of 3 series - if the player wins, they recieve points that go towards various skills. Some elements suggest that "Barbarian" could have been a potentially enjoyable game: it is a multi-player effort (1-4) and, instead of having simple battlefields, the action often expands to lower levels (one match in particular starts off in a castle tower and then continues on the ground below). There's also a fair amount of objects that players can swing or throw at each other. Some of the matches have various goals instead of just basic fighting - one example had the first player to get 50 hits winnning. Unfortunately, several aspects keep the game from becoming very interesting: there's little story to pull along the interest and what story there is is presented through boring texts that have to be clicked through. Additional filling-out of character backgrounds and some attempts at better joining the characters and locations together in the overall story may have helped a bit. The computer AI can be essentially summed up in one word: nuts. While some characters are a bit better than others, the computer players simply all-out attack from the start, leading to little strategy, quite a bit of defense and a lot of repetition. Rating: 6.5/10 The DVD Graphics: The graphics of "Barbarian" are actually quite nice. The character models are crisply rendered and detailed, while their various animations are actually quite smooth. While the characters appear largely as generic "types", the backgrounds/settings are actually quite enjoyable looking and fun to move around in. No stuttering or other problems occured during the action. Rating: 8.6/10 Sound: While the sound isn't terrible, there's als nothing at all exceptional about it. The announcer provides the basic calls for the action, while the sound effects included are pretty standard. Rating: 7.5/10 Gameplay: "Barbarian"'s controls took a little while to get used to. The basic fighting moves are easily accomplished, but some of the spells, fighting combinations and other attacks took a bit of time to learn and weren't always easily to pull off smoothly, especially when the computer's attack wasn't allowing a second to try and plan how to best approach the attack. Rating: 7.3/10 Rating Issues: "Barbarian" gets an appropriate "T"(Teen) due to the violence in the game. Final Thoughts: "Barbarian" had the potential to be a fun Role Playing/Fighting combination, but it's mainly a tiring fighting game with characters of little interest. Not recommended. |