Wheel of Time

Rating:
Summary: The game is all it was promised to be and more!
Review: It doesnt matter if you are a Wheel of Time aficianado or a no-reading game freak! The Wheel of Time game is for everyone who wants to play a great game based on one of the best book series ever. The single player game focuses around an Aes Sedai who is sent on a special mission by the white tower. You have 40 Ter'Angreal at your disposal and can use them also in the multiplayer game. Ill explain more about the multiplayer game later but for now its really fun and the single player game revolves around an Aes Sedai and you learn how a whitecloak (a magic hater) can stand to use a magic tool...and you learn about the hound an evil creature from shadar logoth and also about the Forsaken a super powerful magic user. Well I dont know about you guys but I sure eagerly awaited the Wheel of Time game and as I sit here writing in Seattle (im on vacation) I just cant help but think about the great multiplayer game as well as the advanced singleplayer game. The architecture is truly awesome in a game and the scope of the textures and Ter'Angreals is awesome. I can faithfully recommend this game to anyone who likes first person shooters with a little bit of strategy and roleplaying mixed in. Naturally the story line is set in the world of Jordan's Wheel of Time, but it does not follow the same story line because the game wouldave been over 50 discs just to include everything Jordan would want to make an accurate repersentation of the books, its not a parallel either but rather set some 500 years before the present books story line. The multiplayer game has two modes: Citadel and Arena. Citadel is a game where you set up your forces in your own fortress and play one of the 4 characters (Hound, Forsaken, White Cloak, Aes Sedai) and attempt to steal at least 2 other seals from the other characters so they can control whether or not to keep the dark one locked away in his seals or free him. The second type of multiplayer is arena is your standard deathmatch you against the world style where you attempt to destroy your other combatants using the 40 ter angreal at your disposal.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing Multiplayer Game
Review: This is a truely amazing first person shooter -- especially, but not solely, for Jordan fans. The various combinations of offensive and defensive weaponry (ter'angreals) allow for a mind-splitting variety of strategies and tactics in the Arena (deathmatch) and Citadel (capture the flag) play modes. (And I am generally NOT a fan of first person shooters). The graphics are also exceptional, if you have a powerful graphics card and a lot of RAM. I have barely scratched the surface of the single player game despite owning the title for over three months -- the multiplayer is just so good that I never get around to the singleplayer! There is also a very active online fan community -- with an array of clans you can try out for (see www.wotgame.com), which makes an enjoyable experience that much better. Stop dawdling -- click that button and buy this game!

Rating:
Summary: Scary
Review: I played the demo before I played the game.. and let me tell you WHOA! I was impressed by the graphics, and it literally scared the geebies outta me. This game's awesome if you want your blood to pump!

Rating:
Summary: Timeless...
Review: As of now, this game has been out about 3 years. This will lead a lot of people to believe it feels dated. Not the case. It , more so, feels like a classic. The atmosphere is very fitting of the layout of the book (s). Very intense fighting with a proper soundtrack flowing in the background. Nice particle effects for an early 2000 game. Overall, the atmosphere overtakes the graphics and music. That is what makes this timeless. You feel exactly what the author wanted you to feel .Immersed in his world. Very long program with incredible cutscenes. If you are not a fan of cutscenes do NOT get this. This baby is chock-full of very well crafted,and acted, cutscenes that add even more reasonance to the world you will never want to leave. I had no trouble getting this to swap from my old windows 98 system to my new windows xp system. That's a huge plus. I still have the honor of playing one of the top 5 pc games ever made. In my opinion. And, no ,MYST is not on my list.

Rating:
Summary: WE SHOULD ALL CONTACT SQUARESOFT
Review: Being a big Wot fan, I couldn't wait for this game came out. But I only had a 386 PC! Then I got a much better PC, which left me with nearly nothing moneywise. Or I simply couldn't find the game. So I downloaded the demo--as one person said here, the demo is a horrible representation of the game, I'll take their word for it. But from what I did play, I was most impressed at first, playing it often, then there was a several-month period when I didn't play that game at all. The architecture is FANTASTIC in this game. Not exactly how I visualized it in the books, but pretty close. Multiplayer is Okay, but not great. The battle system, I think, is kinda clunky. When you need a certain ter-angreal right NOW it's hard to get to it without accidentally skipping over it. There isn't much of a variety of bad guys from what I've seen. Where's the Draghkar? Myrddraal? Darkhounds? Gray Men? etc. The atmosphere is nice in this game, though. Very dark at times. I'll probably still buy this game--hence the 3 stars. But if you want my real opinion, I feel that Robert Jordan's Wot series should be made by SQUARESOFT (the company that makes the Final Fantasy series). Squaresoft has EXPERIENCE with RPG's and if anyone could do justice to RJ's masterpiece, Squaresoft can. Like many of you have said, there isn't much of a quest element in this game. Anyway, I don't know about you, but I'm going to e-mail Squaresoft now and see if I can convince them to make something that will be what this game should have been.

Rating:
Summary: No it is NOT the books, BUT
Review: This is a review of a game, not the books. Yes this is loosely based on the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan. Yes it supposedly takes place before the books begin and yes, the idea of an Aes Sedai using only ter'angreal instead of using her ability to channel is far-fetched. The game, however, is good. The Unreal engine is used here, with some modifications. I thought the scenery was tremendous and the level with Shadar Logoth is outstanding. If you like first-person shooters this is a great game, with enough differences in weapons and story from such notables as Quake and Half-Life to make it worth your while. If you are looking for an RPG based on the Wheel of Time books this is not it and you will be disappointed. I agree with another reviewer to download the demo if you are unsure. It covers two levels in depth and gives an excellent taste of the finished product. Its a big one so make sure you have a stable connection before you download it.

Rating:
Summary: A Nice Try, But No Dice
Review: "Wheel of Time" by Atari is based off of Robert Jordan's ongoing (interminable) series by the same name. It is a FPS with both Single Player and Multiplayer modes.

As far as its actual graphics goes, they are pretty good for the time . Sound, also, was done reasonably well.

However, gameplay was horrible. While the missions themselves did make some vague amount of sense, the devil is in the details, and this is just one of the places the game failed. There were many instances where I was able to trick the computerized enemies (MOBs) into standing in places where I could hit it at my leisure and it would just stand there and take it. I also was able to use certain spells through walls when it made no sense for it to do so.

Another problem was the control system. Movement worked fine, and I never found myself stuck anywhere. But the selection of items (all "spells" in the game are derived from items which you collect and in some cases use up) for use, particularly in combat, is problematic to say the least.

The plot is in many cases highly dubious if one knows much about the series it is based from. In fact, it borders on absurd. Also, I found the ending to be highly anti-climatic, to say the least.

In all, this is a game that tried hard to be something great, but fell far short. Like the author of the series, it appears that SquareSoft bit off more than they could chew.

Rating:
Summary: A good game that could have been great...
Review: Let me start out by saying that I have never read any of the books, so I didn't have any expectations. The cutscenes do a fairly good job of explaining things to the "uninitiated," and I quickly found myself being drawn into the story. This game moves along very quickly and is unbelievably fun to play, despite being a bit short. Although I listed quite a few negative points, they are all relatively minor.

The pros: Indoor areas are absolutely gorgeous (rivals even Q3A), quality cinematics and music, all the spells are useful and have nifty effects, very challenging (a plus for us "elite gamers" :P)

The cons: Spell selection is cumbersome (an option to bind keys to spells would have been nice), too few character models, Direct3D is sluggish, multiplayer is laggy (even on a 100Mbps switched LAN! )

Bottom line: A sound buy for adventure game fans, although hardcore Robert Jordan fans will likely be disappointed. With a little tweaking to the Direct3D and multiplayer code, this game could easily have been 5 stars.

Rating:
Summary: A Nice Try, But No Dice
Review: "Wheel of Time" by Atari is based off of Robert Jordan's ongoing (interminable) series by the same name. It is a FPS with both Single Player and Multiplayer modes.

As far as its actual graphics goes, they are pretty good for the time . Sound, also, was done reasonably well.

However, gameplay was horrible. While the missions themselves did make some vague amount of sense, the devil is in the details, and this is just one of the places the game failed. There were many instances where I was able to trick the computerized enemies (MOBs) into standing in places where I could hit it at my leisure and it would just stand there and take it. I also was able to use certain spells through walls when it made no sense for it to do so.

Another problem was the control system. Movement worked fine, and I never found myself stuck anywhere. But the selection of items (all "spells" in the game are derived from items which you collect and in some cases use up) for use, particularly in combat, is problematic to say the least.

The plot is in many cases highly dubious if one knows much about the series it is based from. In fact, it borders on absurd. Also, I found the ending to be highly anti-climatic, to say the least.

In all, this is a game that tried hard to be something great, but fell far short. Like the author of the series, it appears that SquareSoft bit off more than they could chew.

Rating:
Summary: One of the Great Games
Review: I always wanted to give this game a try but never did purchase the game. It always had very good reviews and perked my interest as a WoT fan. Gamespy recently put it in their top 25 underrated games, it was in the top 10, so I tried to hunt down a copy. Atari still sells it directly from their site.

This is an awesome FPS game, one of the best I've played and I've played them all. Great story, and great graphics given the game's age. Better game then Half Life in my opinion.

Game play is awesome and very strategic. You need to conserve your resources and use them wisely and you are given many options for getting through the levels. The level design is another awesome aspect of the game, the levels are extemely well designed and beautiful.

I was surprised how good the AI was. There are quirks and expolitable situations but I don't remember playing a game recently that had AI as good as WoT. The enemies are very agressive.

For the price you can get the game for from Atari, its a steal.

I was almost surprised to see the few negative reviews here, but none of them really give an indepth review of the game. Of course its expected that some WoT fans would be disappointed but as a fan myself I feel Legend did the right thing. They did not try to adapt the existing books to the game, they merely used the world Jordan created and did a great job of it.

This is an FPS, through and through. Its not an RP game, though it does a great job in story telling. Piece of advice, keep CD2 in the drive while playing the game or you will miss the movies that explain much of the plot and add a lot of atmosphere. I noticed a few reviewers seemed to miss the thread of the story and most likely its because they missed the movies. You need to have QuickTime installed to see the movies, provided on the game's cd though its an old version. Movies ran fine with QT6 on my machine. You can also run a setup from CD2 and install the music and movies to your hard drive. (Yes, this means you can run the game without having the cd in the drive, this feature really dates the game.)

What can I say, I thoroughly enjoyed this game and I'm kicking myself for not having playing it in 1999/2000. On a P4 3ghz, ATI Radeon 9700 Pro on WinXP the game runs perfectly. The version available from Atari does not need any patching, they're already applied.