Knights of the Temple 2

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They say first impressions last. And what is true for job interviews and meeting the parents for the first time is also true for games. Developers Cauldron would have done well not to forget this maxim as it only took me 15 seconds of playing Knights of the Temple II before I had come to the firm conclusion I was dealing with an absolute stinker. Not only was its presentation lacking but its manners were quite poor and its attempts at communication were derisible.

After my epic-length review for Civilisation IV I'm quite tempted to leave it there and treat you readers to something a little more concise than you usually expect from me. But my editor likes reviews to at least make it past the 100 word mark so I'll have to give a little more explanation as to why Knights of the Temple II is the poorest game I've played all year. Let's start with the camera.

Sure, no one has yet managed to implement a perfect camera system for third person action games but many advances have been made since Tomb Raider first burst on to the scene all those lunar cycles ago. KotT2 brazenly ignores every single lesson learned. The camera gets stuck behind walls or the many stacks of crates. It accelerates and slows down like a ping-pong ball while stoically creating the illusion that it is always traversing the inside of a goldfish bowl. Frankly it's a disgrace and should never have been allowed past the alpha stage. With one hand clutching on to the mouse in a desperate attempt not to be sick the player then has to contend with the insane default key settings. Sure, it's not too hard to remap them all but it would have been even easier to position the jump key below the movement keys as opposed to clumping it together with all the action buttons over on the keypad. For crying out loud, the mouse buttons are initially as devoid of function as Paris Hilton's brain. In most other games the horrendous font used for all the text displays would have been brushed aside as a minor quibble but in KotT2 it is yet another example of a game which has been developed with all the love you'd find in Fred Phelps' heart for Boy George.

Doing my best to gloss over these initial impressions I tried to get stuck into playing the game. In essence KotT2 is a third person hack and slash with the most rudimentary RPG elements. There are combos to collect and buckets of inane dialogue to prise out of the otherwise totally static inhabitants of the barren gameworld. The prospect of trudging through background story or even quest text quickly filled me with an urge to make excuses to my editor about a dead PC or some other get out. Apparently you are some knight who must save the world from some danger or some such other. As the developers couldn't care less about making my experience as pleasurable as possible I couldn't care less what sort of sub-high school drivel had been banged out to create the 'story'. I tried to concentrate on playing the action part of the game. Which I soon realised meant doing little more then pushing an enemy into a corner and spamming the left mouse button with an occasional foray over to the right one to alleviate the tedium which settled over me quicker than accusations of impropriety around Gary Glitter.

Quickly bored of my initial choice of mission I went back to sample one of the other two. The graphics looked a little nicer in the daytime and to give them their due, they are the least unimpressive aspect of the game. While the animation is clunky and the crate plague seems to have gone back in time from the modern day FPS to infect the medieval setting of KotT2, there's enough buffed up cityscape to at least give the optical part of the brain some relief from the diatribe the rest of the grey matter is enduring. The maps are non-linear in so much as it's easy to get lost and they are also incredibly small. Mercifully the loading times of this game are next to non-existent so I didn't have to waste too much time staring at loading screens before I came to the conclusion that KotT is an unmitigated piece of crap.

I could continue. I could tell you more about the dated combat, broken tutorial, utterly vacant multiplayer lobbies and risible voice acting. I could yet I decline. As you should if anyone offers you this title. Even at its bargain basement RRP.

23%

By Sam Gibson