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Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone Review - PS2

Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone is backed by a couple of big names. It's set in the Dungeons & Dragons world created by company Wizards of the Coast, and the storyline - written by author R.A. Salvatore - is part of the Forgotten Realms series of books. Franchise-based games have been improving recently, evident most notably by the success of Shrek 2 and the Harry Potter games. And, Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, a Hack 'n Slash game developed by the creators of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Stormfront Studios, is set to join the green ogre and the boy wizard at the top of the franchise-based ranks.

Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone is set in a land named Faerun, home to many fantasy races such as wood elves, trolls, orcs and dark elves - or drow, as they're called in the game. Two evil kings, who fought constantly and brought terror to the land, were trapped inside a demon stone where they could fight eternally without disturbing the peace of Faerun. However, in a terrible accident, the kings were released from the stone and have, ever since, been wreaking havoc and summoning all kinds of grotesque monsters to fight their war for them. Three heroes, brought together by the waves of war spreading across Faerun, set out to locate a new demon stone in order to put the land's evil back where it belongs.

Gameplay

If you've ever played The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers you'll be instilled with déjà vu while playing Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone. Since both games - which are from the same genre - were developed by Stormfront Studios, you have to expect to find a few similarities. In my opinion, though, they went a bit too far; a few things in the two games are simply too similar - though they don't subtract from the game's fun factor at all, of course.

The ten levels - or chapters as they're known - in Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone take place in all the kinds of places you'd expect to find in a lush fantasy land: temples, jungles, mountainside castles, villages and more. As in similar games such as The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance, you're fairly restricted as to where you can move, and most of the time the chapters are linear - although that's what the Hack 'n Slash genre is all about. The game features a fixed camera, meaning you have no control over it at all. Luckily, though, it does a good job of sitting where you'd like it to, but there are a few areas where it sits very far away from the action, making it hard to actually see what you're doing.

The developers have planned the chapters very well, giving them something other than general fighting and switch-pressing; you'll also have to respond to certain situations. One second you'll be cutting down grotesque (continued next page)