Dark Sun: Shattered Lands

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Dark Sun: Shattered Lands
Single-player

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands is a

MMORPG taking place in the same setting, Dark Sun Online: Crimson Sands, was released in 1996 and hosted on the Total Entertainment Network
.

Plot

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands takes place in the fictional land of

Athas, a dying and hostile desert world. The locale is Draj, a city-state ruled by a powerful sorcerer-king.[2] Nearby are several "free cities", surviving in the desert thanks to the hard work of their citizens. Upon the completion of the pyramid in Draj, the Sorcerer-King desires to make a great sacrifice of blood by sweeping the desert and destroying the inhabitants of the cities not under his control. The player controls a party of up to four gladiators, condemned to fight in Draj's arena until they die, so naturally the first order of business is escape. Upon escape, the party must unite the free cities to resist Draj's army.[2]

Gameplay

Shattered Lands does not use SSI's older

Ultima series. Much of the game involves interaction with other characters, giving the Dark Sun series more emphasis on role-playing and less on dungeon crawling than in the Gold Box games.[3]

The game uses a variant of

Thri-kreen) and extensive use of psionics
.

Release

Shattered Lands was released in a somewhat unfinished state in 1993,

Windows, macOS, and Linux
.

Reception

Sales

Shattered Lands debuted at #17 on PC Data's computer games sales chart for the month of September 1993.[7] It climbed to third place in October.[8]

Critical reviews

Writing for CD-ROM Today, T. Liam McDonald called Shattered Lands "a refreshing new twist on familiar AD&D games", and noted its "vastly improved interface" compared to SSI's previous products.[10] Peter Olafson of Electronic Entertainment found Shattered Lands to be flawed, but he concluded that it was still "a very good game".[11]

Scorpia of Computer Gaming World in 1993 assured readers that Dark Sun "is about as far from [the Gold Box series] as you can get ... SSI is taking their role-playing line in a new direction, which is good to see". While criticizing the "inanity" of the AD&D 2nd edition rules, and insufficient documentation, she concluded that "my impression of Dark Sun is favorable. SSI is moving to a more mature form of CRPG [with] much promise for the future, and promises a good game to play right now".[3] The game was reviewed in 1994 in Dragon #205 by Sandy Petersen in the "Eye of the Monitor" column, who gave the game 3 out of 5 stars.[9] John Terra of Computer Shopper mostly praised the game.[2] He called the controls "instinctive" and "easy to master".[2] He went on to compliment the audio and visuals, saying the graphics are "extremely detailed" and that the sound effects "stand out, with various combat noises that enhance the atmosphere during melee".[2] He did have negative remarks about the map feature, noting that it does not automap and that it displays the positions of enemies, eliminating some of the suspense.[2]

Dark Sun was a runner-up for Computer Gaming World's Role-Playing Game of the Year award in June 1994, which ultimately went to Betrayal at Krondor. The editors wrote that Dark Sun "managed to capture the uniqueness of the magic system and 'scorched earth' look of Troy Denning's Prism Pentad series of novels".[12]

According to GameSpy, "Dark Sun was TSR's "post-magical apocalypse" world of brutality, blood, and incredibly violent death. Dark Sun: Shattered Lands' graphics, on the other hand, were rather cutesy—not the violent, mature affair fans were hoping for".[13]

References

  1. ^ "PC Zone Magazine". PC Zone. No. 1. April 1993. p. 11. Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Terra, John (March 1, 1994). "AD&D Dark Sun: Shattered Lands Review". Computer Shopper. Archived from the original on April 13, 2016. Retrieved September 21, 2012.
  3. ^ a b c Scorpia (December 1993). "Good-bye Gold Box!". Computer Gaming World. pp. 124–126. Retrieved 29 March 2016.
  4. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7
    .
  5. ^ Butcher, Andy (January 1996). "Games Reviews". Arcane (2). Future Publishing: 80.
  6. ^ "Role Players' Realm". GamePro. No. 73. IDG. August 1995. p. 85.
  7. ^ Staff (January 1994). "What's Hot; PC Data Hits List of Top-Selling Software". Computer Gaming World. No. 114. p. 240.
  8. ^ Staff (March 1994). "Leaderboard". Electronic Entertainment (3): 20.
  9. ^ a b Petersen, Sandy (May 1994). "Eye of the Monitor". Dragon (205): 59–62.
  10. ^ a b McDonald, T. Liam (January 1995). "Dark Sun: Shattered Lands". CD-ROM Today (11): 106.
  11. ^ a b Olafson, Peter (January 1994). "Dark Sun: Shattered Sun". Electronic Entertainment (1): 94, 95.
  12. ^ "Announcing The New Premier Awards". Computer Gaming World. June 1994. pp. 51–58.
  13. ^ Rausch, Allen (2004-08-17). "A History of D&D Video Games - Part III". Game Spy. Retrieved November 17, 2012.

External links

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