Two Worlds redux

What do you know? It isn't worthless. Worth: $15
based on 360 demo

Two Worlds was touted as a match for Oblivion, and it falls hilariously short of that. It got panned worse than any other major release I can remember, receiving a 4 from GameInformer. Two Worlds was heavily advertised in this magazine, so for them to bomb it like that means the game must have been truly disappointing.

I know I was disappointed. I had thought, "Wow, Oblivion with multiplayer. I can't wait!" But the videos looked bad, the users reviews were dreadful, and the official reviews were disastrous. I gave up on the game, and moved on to jonesing for Mass Effect.

Then the developer released a demo two months after the retail game was released. I've never seen this before, demos are always part of the run-up to the release. I downloaded it (what the hell, it's free). I fire up the demo, and two hours later I was still playing it. I was laughing at the art direction and writing (high school kids could have done a better job) but I was intrigued by the mechanics of the gameplay and the character advancement.

While I was playing it the GamerGal noted, "It looks kind of like Morrowind." She's right, if this had come out four years ago, it might have compared favorably to Morrowind. This is significant because Morrowind is one of my top 5 games ever. Like MW, Two Worlds has terrible looking characters, crappy music, and dreadfully stiff writing. But, it's a big open world to explore filled with lots of things to set on fire and chop up.

The creative in Two Worlds is really weak. The art looks like stuff I drew during math class back in middle school. The writing is so bad it makes me laugh out loud. The voice acting is terrible, but I solved it by going into Options and turning the voice sound all the way down. Problem solved.

The mechanics of combat, character advancement, magic and inventory are like any D&D-style RPG you've played, meaning "good". I can tell there's a lot of depth here. You can combine things into new things, make potions (I've only been able to make bad ones so far), and distribute skill points to build your character the way you like. The magic works well and is interestingly customizable.

Two World's isn't great, but the day I find it for $15, I'll pick it up.