The Chosen: Well of Souls

Rating Teen Genre action Publisher Meridian4 External Links Official Meridian4

After having a violent, blood filled time at the gwar show earlier this evening I sit here at my laptop while still being completely dyed blue and green. It was amazing. But I digress. Let us see what my good friends at Static Multimedia have left on my digital doorstep. What’s this? Ah, its The Chosen: Well of Souls. Seems cool from the cover and what not. But as we all know never judge a game by its cover or even by its story before playing it. Anyone who has played Virtual Fighter 2 for the Sega Genesis can feel my pain. Horrible, non-3d crap! Completely conned! Ugh.

< In this third-person, 3D hack ‘n slash, you are in search of the Emerald Tablet, a powerful artifact that holds the power of life and death. A power so strong that even the most pure of heart falter in the Tablet’s powerful wake. One was chosen to stand vigil for one thousand years to harness and protect this power, but alas this protector and the Tablet have been usurped. It is your duty to find both! The sanctity of earth is in your hands. Kind of an overdone plot to the most epic level, (can we say Lord of the Rings? If you haven’t seen it, go see it) but everything has been done before, right? So, lets give this baby a whirl.

In search of this Emerald Tablet you have three classes to choose from: Frater the monk, Elena the Siberian werewolf hunter, and Khan the marital artist from the Tien – Szan Mountains. Slim pickings I know, but that’s what expansions are for right? This game is one of your standard Diablo clones with a few differences, such as the full 3D aspect of camera control, which I thought was great. Well of Souls reintroduces old Diablo favorites, such as monster generators that you have to kill or else he/she will keep raising the lesser monsters of like power, a similar inventory screen layout, which in this game by the way is huge, and monsters that have no need for what they are carrying, such as a goblin dropping a great sword, 5 gold and a musket with some sort of mystical ability.

Something that did blow my mind was the free town portal that you carry with you, the Eye of Osiris, which takes you to the laboratory, a place that you will frequent often to buy and sell things (talk about convenient). To top it off, once you get into the lab you will find that the area is very cluttered and almost impossible to navigate through. Never fear, the heads that have appeared at the top right of the screen are the merchants in this area. Just click on one of them and your character will go to the desired merchant automatically. Wow, no more getting lost in the city. But I must admit this is not the first time I was happy to see floating heads in my laboratory.

When you do play this game, do not, and I repeat, do not try to multi - class your character. You will fail miserably. If you choose the hunter, which you no doubt will since you cannot resist that cute Siberian accent, stick with what she’s best at and try not to venture off elsewhere unless you want monsters to have a field day with your insides.

The controls are your basic WASD controls for the camera whilst you use the mouse to point your avatar along its way, letting you utilize the full 3D environment. Graphically this game was on par with most modern games. There was no clipping points or creatures randomly disappearing, which I found to be refreshing. The overall sounds of this game were great, except for the horrible voice acting, which seems totally misplaced. It was as if the goofiest people on the planet were chosen to portray these epic characters. But you know what? The game play makes up for that small mishap.

General game play is great, replay value is great, the monsters stay plentiful and the rewards for killing them are likewise plentiful. I had a blast running through game and I felt that it got its point across as to what it’s supposed to be: a true “hack n slash adventure”. It was not an overdone, glitchy waste of my time and for that I will say this is a decent game and worth the time to kill. And plus, it’s cheap as hell! I mean, $20 is a steal for a game that can hold your attention for hours.