4

Gameplay: 5 Graphics: 5 Sound: 3 Lasting appeal: 3

Two worlds is not the Oblivion-killer Reality Pump would lead us to believe it would be. In fact, Two Worlds' only real accomplishment is reminding us of how great of a game Oblivion is.

Playing Two Worlds can be extremely painful at times, not only because it is mediocre at best on most levels - usually much lower - but also because it is ridden with performance problems, design flaws and bugs. It very well could be the absolute worst performing and presented game of all time for the Xbox 360. With so much wrong the game, it is quite difficult to decide just where to begin at dissecting this, often repulsive, toad that is disguised as a prince.

The story of Two Worlds is about as deep as its game-play, which is just a few drops, mind you. Of course, you might be thankful after not too long, because if it was much longer you'd have to endure more torment of actually playing it. I know, that's not much of a hook in getting you enticed into playing it, but I'm not trying to reel you in on this one, because you are quite likely to ask to be thrown back in.

To summarize, your hot sister has been kidnapped by a cult of gothic geezers in robes, who speak in deep voices, and it is your job to rescue the babe. The theme? Incest, I suppose. There's really not more to it then taking orders from these demon worshipers, thereby giving them what you want, in the hope that you may may it with your thankful sibling at the end. Two Worlds boasts all the cliche minions you'd expect in a text-book Diablo-esque RPG and many of those baddies you'd encounter in Oblivion, with pentagrams to boot. Oh, and it boasts some of the most frightening next-gen graphics I've ever seen, so I guess you could say it's part horror as well.

Within a minute of playing, your first observation will probably be the poor frame rate, coupled by constant hiccups and freezes. Get used to it, because it will be a constant hurdle to overcome if you intend to continue playing. If there are several enemies on screen the frame rate dips even further, and after slaying each of the enemies, the game usually freezes for a split second (possibly to think about where to place the body) and then resumes. It's a constant annoyance, and one you may not ever get used to. It has been a long time since a game suffered from such excessive pop-up, but Two Worlds definitely takes the cake. It isn't just scenery and buildings either. You can be walking along and all of the sudden enemies or people appear directly in front of you, as if to say "peek-a-boo"! While the more serious pop-up doesn't seem to occur too frequently, it's there and it's definitely a cause of annoyance. Two Worlds also suffers from a graphical phenomena that I have never seen before and can only refer to as "undrawing". Simply put, the game's engine renders objects in the distance, sometimes in inaccurate places, and then later, as you are approaching, undraws the object(s) if they shouldn't have been there, and then redraws them in different locations. It's quite a sad sight to see, since it does tend to happen fairly frequently, but many people may not even notice it is going on. I did, and I perceived it as another sign of poor planning on the part of the game engine. Even worse is that objects frequently become stuck in midair or move around in the air or inside of other objects. Then there is over-shininess which can be found on across all the coasts - the contrast gets so intense that sand becomes pure white. Character models and animals are very jagged and clumsy looking and could not possibly be mistaken for their life-like counterparts. If you go inside the few buildings that are actually accessible you will notice that there are only a few interiors that were designed and they have been cookie-cut repeatedly throughout the world of Two Worlds. Many textures are low resolution and extremely repetitive, and cities and environments tend to be very void and dull. All of this constitutes one of the poorest looking "next-gen" games released to date. One thing is certain - the screen shots are misleading.

The next thing you will notice, if you haven't noticed this already, is the absolutely dreadful voice-overs. Dreadful is maybe a compliment, because these voice-overs, and the dialog itself, are embarrassingly ridiculous. Not only does the tone very rarely fit the mood of the text, but it sounds so exaggerated and goofy that no one could possibly take it seriously. The game is also packed full of one-liners that are spoken by our "hero", which serve as constant reminders that you are playing one of the corniest games ever. And, I'm not just talking "poor" voice acting, but pathetic voice acting. These actors that were cast seriously have no idea how ridiculous they sound, and if they do it is beyond belief that they accepted the roles. Poor voice talents are not the only problem with how Two Worlds sounds though - the scripted dialog is terrible. It's littered with so many different old-English words and phrases, like "mayhap", "prithee", "verily" to name a few, that you can't help but wonder if the developers are only using such a dialect to create a sense of "culture" or atmosphere in order to hide a very shallow game premise. The music is generic and bland for the most part with nothing that will leave you entranced. The sound effects of the animals you battle don't sound accurate at all, and about the only good sound effect is that of the lightning. The sound does not create atmosphere as it should, but only gets on your nerves as your hands itch to toss the gaming control at the speakers or television set.

It is not just the graphics and sound of Two Worlds that hurt it, but also the way the developers have implemented both. For example, the weather in Two Worlds is quite comical. I like to compare it to a light switch, because that is often how it behaves. One second the sun is shining and it's day time, and then all of the sudden it is night time through little, if any transition. One moment it can be clear and a few seconds later it can be pouring rain. I guess the developers felt, if everything else is shoddy, why should the weather be any differently? Grass also tends to be over used, presumably to hide what appear to be otherwise jagged and sharply shaped terrain.

Like Oblivion, Two Worlds tries to be a free world with free choices that lead to consequences, but it fails miserably on so many levels. The main quest, while incredibly short, is extremely linear and does not provide any real sense of choice in how events are played out. In fact, the side quests also provide little, if any, choice into how a particular quest plays out. When you do have a choice, which is rarely, you will never feel that you are in a moral position to make a critical judgment call, as is the case with so many other open RPGs. With Two Worlds, everything is cut and dry with no room for ethical choices or real dilemmas. If a choice you make does yield a result, it is incredibly superficial and shoved in your face simply to show you what you picked made a difference. There are absolutely no subtleties to be found anywhere in the game, so the experience is then left feeling very unrealistic.

While under the cracks and crevices, one might be able to see the underlying potential in Two Worlds, more likely than not it is shrouded by a myriad of horrible design choices and flaws. To make matters worse, the game-play mechanics are broken well beyond repair. The game completely lacks any sense of balance - enemies go from being too hard to too easy way too quickly, although you still will encounter several foes that will kill you in a single hit, but most likely never encounter a foe that is of a moderate difficulty. There only exists a pseudo sense of free-will in Two Worlds, as you are constantly restrained from having any serious effect on the world around you. Most of the side quests you end up going on revolve around trivial little tasks that yield a feeble amount of gold, which often makes it hardly seem worth it. If it wasn't for the reputation earned and experience points gained from completing side missions, there really wouldn't be any incentive. Therein lies another problem with Two worlds; the complete lack of balance means that you can climb from a nobody in a specific faction to the most renowned member of the faction in a matter of mere minutes. It took me no more than 30 minutes to go from a renown level of 0 out of 10 to a level of 10 out of 10 in the Karga faction! Once again, Two Worlds demonstrates its absolute disregard for subtleties and evolution within the societies you interact with.

While putting another stone in the grave, Reality Pump decided it wasn't worth any of their effort at delivering a polished menu and navigation system. Instead, we are left with a horrible clunky and frustrating menu system which makes scrolling through items and potions a tedious chore. Instead of having the menus list your items, they are scattered around in a Diablo-like fashion. Only, unlike in Diablo, it is a pain in the ass to select new items in your inventory in Two Worlds. When you press up or down in your inventory, the game often chooses something you didn't want or wouldn't think should have been selected by your input. The poor menu system is a clear indication of a lack of refinement for the Xbox 360 version of this game, as it is very clear that the menus were designed solely for use with a mouse. At least, the developers could have let you use an analog stick like a mouse - it would have been far better than the current method of navigating your inventory that you have to cope with.

I also found it a bit odd, and illogical, that you seem to have two storage limits in terms of what you can carry. First there is the numerical weight limit, in which all items constitute a certain weight and you can only carry up to a certain number in weight, based on your strength and level. But then, there also seems to be an unmentioned restriction on the number of invisible tiles you can use in your inventory. This doesn't make any sense at all, considering you are already capable of scrolling to the right to see more tiles of items. My only thought then is to why they allow you to scroll in the first place if they are just going to limit how many you can use. If you're like me, and you like to hang onto all your gems, potions and plants, you will constantly encounter the problem with not being able to carry more, even though your storage capacity is far from being met. Most often I had not even reached half of the weight my strength permitted me to carry, but I still was unable to carry more items because I apparently didn't have any tiles left to place items. This is frustrating, because the game makes no mention of this, and doesn't even show you the boundary of allocated space, but just stops you once you reach that invisible limit.

Combat in Two Worlds consists of repetitive button smashing - only you are merely smashing a single attack button. There is no sense of timing or precision and fighting lacks any skill, challenge or thought. If you get knocked down, you will often have difficulty in getting back up, as the animation sequence your character takes at getting up is slow and allows for further attacks to keep you on the ground. This can be very frustrating because you often feel like you do not even have a chance when you spend much of your time fighting on the ground. Enemies also tend to kick dust into your face quite frequently, which prevents you from fighting or doing anything else other than a corny animation where you cover your eyes. While this cheesy animation is taking place, you are incapable of fighting back, casting magic or picking up items, but you are still free to move around. Moving around with dust in your face shows our character gliding around on the ground without moving his legs - a true wonder that would make even Michael Jackson jealous.

And then there is the problem with casting spells. You can't cast magic while moving, so anytime you try to you simply stop dead in your tracks, cast the spell, and remain stopped. Or you can think ahead and stop moving before casting the spell, then cast it, and continue to move; this way you won't suffer from as much of a delay, but nonetheless casting magic is very sloppy and poorly integrated into fluid movement.

When you do manage to defeat foes that are not keeping you on the ground or covering your eyes, you will notice how their body is almost always repositioned after they are dead. Instead of simply letting physics do its wonder and allowing the body to collapse in the position dies in, bodies are repositioned once killed - a truly last-gen sight to see.

AI, while very poor, is capable of doing things which you are not, such as running up steep cliffs you would never be able to pull off. This sometimes makes chasing an enemy down impossible, but it is definitely no worse than the other problems with AI in Two Worlds. If you are running away from enemies, they will always turn back and leave you alone once you reach a certain defined distance from them (which is not that far), so all you have to do is reach that limit and they will turn their back to you and start going in the other direction, so then all you have to do is start going after them again. It's very cheesy, and becomes a standard part of how you battle with some of the more fierce foes. The one and only original thing that exists in Two Worlds is quite possibly one of the poorest choices they made with the game. For some strange reason, the developers decided that horses should have their own AI, so when you are riding, and presumably controlling the horse, it often goes in completely different directions than you tell it to! I found myself walking the entire game, or simply using teleports, because riding horses wasn't worth the hassle of dealing with incredibly unresponsive and unrealistic AI. Its sad, but the one thing that Two Worlds didn't "borrow" from another game was a very bad idea and shouldn't have even been implemented in the first place.

Much like the horses of Two Worlds, humans are also just as unforgiving. If you ever manage to get on the bad side of the villagers, for whatever the reason, you will forever be incapable of making peace with them! I found this out after hitting the A button, to pick up the meat from an animal, which is also the button to pick a lock, since I happened to be in front of a door. Since the game interpreted my action as lock picking, I was immediately remarked to be seen "stealing" (apparently there is no distinction in Two Worlds from stealing and trespassing). Unfortunately, I didn't have the gold on hand to pay off the fine, so I had no choice but to be shunned from the village. The bad part is, once you have this notoriety in a specific region, you will never be able to pay off your debt and come in peace - any attempt at revisiting the city will result in every single villager chasing you around to butcher you. I find it to be rather incomprehensible that the development team did not add a method of paying off your debts or even serving time. Instead, you are never welcome in that location, which means if you have any pending quests for that region to complete you are out of luck. What a bummer.

Aside from poor design choices, and what seems to be pure laziness in coding, Two Worlds is also ridden with all sorts of bugs and quirks. For instance, when you receive achievements of receive private messages from your MSN account, the normal Xbox 360 notification that pops up informing you of the event often causes Two Worlds to become graphically distorted with graphical artifacts covering the screen for a few seconds. While it doesn't happen every time, it happened to me at least twice, which is still worth mentioning. Your character also has a constant tendency to move on his own, when you aren't even pushing on the controller. I tested this behavior with multiple controllers and different games and it only happens when playing Two Worlds. This can be very frustrating because casting spells requires your character to remain stationary, and when he runs off in some direction without you even telling him too this makes the task very difficult. And it doesn't happen just once an hour or less than that, it's very frequent and seems to occur at least once in every few minutes - I noticed it seemed to occur at certain times while controlling both analog sticks at the same time. The game also constantly has to load up new areas, which can interfere with the game place experience since it can freeze the game for even combat for up to 15 seconds. Most of the time, the game advertises that it is loading by displaying a spinning CD icon in the bottom corner, but a lot of the time this icon is no where to be seen which makes you wonder if the game crashed. And crashing it just may. Two Worlds crashed on me three separate occasions, which permanently froze the Xbox up and had to be rebooted. That's not very fun when you can lose a lot of progress, especially since the game does not contain an auto-save feature. Since I am played the game on a brand new Xbox 360 Elite system, I am forced to assume it was the solely the game's fault - especially since I have not had any other games crash for me yet. If you do play Two Worlds on the Xbox 360, you would be well-advised to save frequently to avoid the frustration I went through. There were also several points in the game where it thought that I had solved quests I am certain I did not. And then, while not necessarily a bug, it was humorous, and sad, to note that the developers even misspelled "ogre".

Not everything in Two Worlds is pure crap, though. Fortunately, there are loads of items to obtain, and even cooler is the ability to spice them up yourself by combining gems into them to give them elemental attributes. Mixing potions, while not all that original, is also a welcomed feature, though, unless your alchemy skill is maxed out, items are stronger in their pure forms than being in a potion, so one does wonder what point there is in making them.

Two Worlds feels like a collection of many of the most renowned western RPGs to date, or more specifically a little of Oblivion mixed with a little Diablo. The feel for beefing up your character is there and it is the main force that will keep you playing (if you do), but, unfortunately, the developers only manage to grasp certain superficial details of the formulas that many of us fell in love with, and don't really seem to comprehend the mechanics of an entertaining, rewarding and rememberable experience. It is a shame, because deep within, one may be able to see the potential that exists, but potential doesn't make good games, however, poor implementations do make poor games.

Within the first couple of hours of playing Two Worlds, I found myself asking how on Earth Microsoft licensed this game for their console. I truly believe it has the potential to give people the idea that there must be something wrong with the system because of this game's horrendous performance, which in reality is simply because this is one of the poorest ports of all time. If you are capable of giving it a chance, you may be able to appreciate some of the game-play aspects - particularly leveling up your character and trying to create the most powerful weapon - but when that is all said and done, the quests are a bore, the rewards are trivial and the mental pleasure of playing the game simply isn't there. This is definitely one game which is nothing more than a lot of fluff. Its aim is noble - creating an immersive and interactive environment superior to the best RPGs - but its implementation is shallow and shoddy, which leaves Two Worlds to be one of the most poorly executed ideas in games today. Instead of providing innovating ideas and concepts, Two Worlds consists of nothing but rehashed concepts that have been tweaked ever so slightly in an effort to pass them off as creative. In truth, Two Worlds is nothing but a sad attempt at being something big. Its lack of substance and ambition will show itself early on and leave you feeling cheated when its over.

Overall Score: 4

Gameplay: (5) Packed full of bugs, and performance related problems with a horribly dull story and bland world, you won't find much more than leveling your character up and modifying your weapon. Graphics: (5) Some of the screen shots are a beauty, but the game, in fluid motion, is a nightmare. The framerate is horrible, character models are clunky and jagged and the artistic style is below average. Sound: (3) Some of the worst voice acting in games ever. Mediocre, at best, sound effects with bland and unemotional music. Lasting appeal: (3) You can beat the main quest in a few hours tops, and it could probably be done in under an hour if it weren't for having to level up your character. Side quests are repetitive, bland and unrewarding. No reason to go back and play this stinker.

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