Another mainstream D&D reference

[Olgar Shiverstone]

TIME magazine rated Temple of Elemental Evil one of its top ten video games of 2003 (#6, to be precise) in its November 17th issue:

A vintage adventure game gets its computerized revival -- no dice necessary

Remember Dungeons & Dragons, that game for anyone who was too smart for his own good in high school and didn't have a date on Friday night? Time was, you needed a pencil, books of character information, a sturdy imagination, similarly afflicted friends, and the ever-present 20-sided dice to play the game.

Not anymore. Temple of Elemental Evil (PC, $45, Atari) is a computerized homage to one of the best-loved adventure games of all time, enhanced with up-to-date graphics. As with the original, loading up your character (and up to four fellow adventurers) with your choice of spells and skills is almost as fun as the action itself. Your goal for the game depends on these choices: make yourself morally good, and you must rescue a missing elf princess from the eponymous temple; choose the path of the evildoers, and you may end up taking over the place. If Dungeons & Dragons had been this much fun, the geeks would have had a lot more dates.

Good press, certainly, if a bit dismisssive of PnP. One wonders where they were for Baldur's Gate (though I note that NWN didn't receive this sort of recognition last year).

 

[Dark Jezter]

Kinda surprises me that Time liked the game so much. Since ToEE is such a faithful adaptation of the D&D rules, I figured it would appeal mostly to hardcore computer gamers and PnP gamers.

Oh well, I consider Time's review of the game to be a good thing; if the game gets a lot of attention and sells a lot of copies, then it's likely we'll be seeing more games that use the ToEE engine... and hopefully they'll raise the level cap to 20 and include things like prestige classes and subraces.

 

[Mark]

Looks like someone at the number two toy maker in the world was instructed from on high to make a few calls to their media friends. Bout time the lobbying started more heavily. Despite the adversarily tone, note how they manage to mention D&D right at the beginning...and right at the end. Quite clever...

 

[Byrons_Ghost]

I don't really keep up with these things, is the computer game out now? And just when I had a ton of new books to buy...

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Yeah, it's been out for maybe a month now. It's strangely addicting, though there are quite a few bugs. It looks like many of those were resolved by the patch that recently came out, but I haven't installed the patch yet.