The popularity of games like Diablo and Baldurs Gate have made others stand up and take notice. Gas Powered Games is prepping their take on medieval mayhem with Dungeon Siege, a real time RPG/action hybrid that looks good enough to eat.

Scheduled for a fall release, Dungeon Siege is a true 3D game with 3D terrain and characters. A full particle engine gives realistic lighting effects from explosions and spells. In addition, the game features dynamic loading, which constantly updates the environment so you won't see any load screens when entering a new area.

Gamers start out simply as a male or female character, and slowly build up skills and acquire items. Carrying treasure and items in Diablo and Diablo II is limited by what you can carry, but Dungeon Siege will let gamers hire a helping hand to carry loot. Either a human or pack mule can hoist items for you when you're overburdened. Combat is in real time, but you can either let characters act for themselves when encountering beasts, or give them explicit orders to follow. If managing a whole party is too much in real time, gamers will be able to pause the game to issue combat commands. Characters can fight with weapons as well as use magic and there will be a slew of defensive and offensive spells in the game.

Gamers can use a single character to hack and slash through Dungeon Siege, but you know the saying: the more the merrier. In Dungeon Siege, you can build parties of up to eight different characters. Using multiple party members also involves a bit of strategy. You have a number of party formations available, and can set waypoints. Outflanking the enemy and using the terrain to your advantage can prove useful at times.

You can manage the whole party by yourself or team up with eight humans and play multiplayer games online. Multiplayer games vary from short and specific quests such as rescuing a certain individual or capturing a castle, to longer campaign-style games. When you're done with the single player adventure and have tired of multiplayer gaming, you can create your own unique characters, spells, and adventure environments, which should extend the game play even further.

Dungeon Siege looks to take the action RPG genre one step further with a host of graphical and game play features that should add up well. This monsters and magic game will venture forth on the PC in the fall.

Star Rating: HHIII

Producer: Microsoft

Required Spec:

Windows 95

32mb RAM

DX8

PII 266

6x CD-ROM 

Direct-X compatible sound card

Direct-X compatible 3D card