Legend of Grimrock
Overall: 3.0
Nostalgia: 3.5
Graphics: 2.5
Gameplay: 2.8
Welcome to Legend of Grimrock, the game that can only tout how nostalgic it is. Legend of Grimrock is intended to be a nod to the dungeon crawlers of old. A modern Hexen, taking the indie sphere by storm with dungeon crawling goodness in the form of an Elder's Scrolls format. At this point one might think that this game sounds perfect. Hexen and Morrowind combined into one game? Those were both excellent games, so this must have been a great game. Well, not really. Legend of Grimrock certainly has a lot of potential and it feels like the dungeon crawlers of old, but it doesn't play modern. And that is the biggest issue. Why would I play Legend of Grimrock for nostalgia if I could easily just pop in my version of Hexen and indulge in the nostalgia of actually reliving the past. For Legend of Grimrock to be successful, it needed to have a modern flare that took the old school gameplay I used to love and made it more accessible for younger gamers. Let's pick apart why it doesn't feel modern.
What went wrong
The Legend of Grimrock gameplay is your typical dungeon crawler affair. Kill monsters, explore rooms, solve puzzles, repeat. However, the monsters you kill are actually quite boring. When the first monster you fight is a slug, the intensity of a battle kind of dies out. This is when an epic opening boss battle could serve to really frame the entire journey or set the mood for the player. Also, using a keyboard for the methodical left, right, up, down, while making camera angles dictated by the keyboard as well, makes the game play very mechanical. This is frustrating because the game makes allusions to games like Morrowind and I can't help but make the unfair comparison between the two when playing. While playing I find myself asking, "would I be having more fun playing this in 3-d with a wider variety of items and better controls?" The answer is always yes, and then I proceed to put in my Morrowind disc. I know it's completely unfair to expect Grimrock to match up to the likes of Morrowind, but Grimrock doesn't do anything to differentiate itself from Morrowind. The stories are near exactly the same, barring the dungeon and the expansive world and the gameplay is very similar. The game makers should have realized how similar they were and asked themselves, "how are we going to make this gameplay experience unique to Grimrock?" I feel the developers accepted that this was a game that was simply going to play on the nostalgic tendencies of the indie community and didn't even bother to add anything to the genre.
Conclusion
When working in an old genre, the line between homage and plagiarism is a grey one. A developer needs to either improve or innovate. Sure, Grimrock isn't a carbon copy of Morrowind, but when a game feels identical to another game and it doesn't significantly improve anything then one begins to question the purpose of playing the game in the first place. I'm sure dungeon crawler junkies out there would really enjoy Grimrock, but for everyone else who is just looking for a nostalgia trip, I'd suggest you pop in your favorite old dungeon crawler and play that instead.
