What is Dark Vengeance?

The long-awaited third-person Dark Vengeance is a hybrid of action, adventure, and role-playing at its finest. With its three character classes, over-the-shoulder action, and 3D environment, you could call Dark Vengeance a blend of the dungeon crawler Diablo and the action adventure Tomb Raider. But this game is much more: It has an engrossing story. You can play one of three characters — Jetrel the Warlock, Nanoc the Gladiator, and Kite the Trickster — in the fight against the evil Dark Elves and other powerful forces, which are taking over the land of Amagar firom the bowels up and plan to end all humankind. You can also play all three characters to enjoy three different single-player story lines.

As with any third-person game, controlling the character is more difficult than in a first-person shooter because the camera, which follows the character, tends to swing imprecisely, making navigation a more complicated task. Dark Vengeance is no exception: It’s not easy to navigate precisely in narrow tunnels and to negotiate sharp turns. Adding to that difficulty is the system of “chording,” which means using key combinations to perform movements. To sidestep, for example, you use the attack key (you program it yourself) and the keys for turning left and right. Using key combinations is bothersome, especially for those of us who sidestep left or right in other games with just one keystroke. We recommend that you either program a gamepad to handle chording or deprogram the feature altogether and set up your usual key commands.

Once you master all the controls, you’ll be swinging the battle-ax to drive those Dark Elves back into their labyrinthine lairs. Gameplay is super smooth, with the right mix of fighting, exploring, and puzzle solving. After trying Jetrel the Warlock and Kite the Trickster, we chose mainly to play Nanoc — Conan spelled backward — for this review because the robust gladiator excels in hand-to-hand combat. Nanoc isn’t as bright as the others, but he smashes and pounds much better! Magicians are weak at hand-to-hand combat, so Jetrel is pretty puny at first, but when he gets some magic weapons later in the game, he becomes a force to be reckoned with.

Dark Vengeance’s graphics are beautiful and its creatures are fantastical. Some of the truly cool graphics include stained-glass windows that break into pieces to form sword-wielding knights; lightning from the lightning stick; and evil cherubim that turn into heavenly angels when you “liberate” them. And the surprises don’t end there. Scripted cut scenes punctuate each level, keeping you involved with the unfolding plot. Dark Vengeance also gets superior marks for its mood music, which befits the sinister ambience, and for its awesome weapons.
Dark Vengeance is a blast, and after playing it we don’t want to play Diablo again — Dark Vengeance’s real-time 3D environment is far more engrossing. Also, the game’s hardware-accelerated visuals and dynamic lighting are stunning, so you don’t want to miss out. For spectacular results, we recommend playing on a G3 or at least a 604e. Dark Vengeance’s one minor shortcoming is its lack of Glide support, but the Voodoo family of chips handles RAVE games, too.

So what are you waiting for? Stop reading this review and go kick some elf butt — or your friends’ butts — in deathmatch mode.

Ho, Jennifer. (March 1999). Dark Vengeance. MacAddict. (pg. 52).

Download Dark Vengeance for Mac

Architecture

IBM PowerPC

System Requirements

From Mac OS 7.6

Compatibility notes

Emulating this? It could probably run under: SheepShaver