Kingdom Under Fire: Heroes (Xbox)

Animations

Here’s where I am caught between a rock and a hard place, you’d think that having been told about the lack of lip synching from the previous game they’d have redressed the problem with the new one. You’d have thought that wouldn’t you? Well, sadly they left things as they are – minor gripe really but one that draws you away from the characters and leaves certain ones looking like Camels chewing or preparing to spit.

The rest of the animations, movement and combat are spotless and flawless. The new combat moves that add to the heroes’ arsenal are excellent, especially where Morene uses her blood tendrils to whack an enemy trooper around the battlefield and slap them into the ground.

So on the plus side, great movement and battle animations, on the bad side cud-chewing in cut-scenes leads to much hilarity and commenting by the Peanut Gallery.

AI

The pathfinding in the first game has been tweaked and overall the AI is a lot better, it’s still a run-and-smackdown style of game and the enemy don’t seem to use much in the way of advanced tactics at all – they don’t really need to when they often outnumber you 4-1. What’s there of the AI does its job well and that’s all we really want in this kind of game.

Sound

There are no complaints here at all, the sound is solid and the clash of steel mixed with the screams of battle works perfectly. It brings the fantasy fight to life and when the battles are not raging there are often light ambient sounds to draw the player in. The rustle of armour as your troops move or the clamour of horse-hooves as your cavalry hammers across the battlefield.

Voice

It varies from good to terrible but that happens to be par for the course again in games like this. The emphasis isn’t really on the story or the voice; it’s on the hammering of the enemy into the ground and not worrying that the hard looking Paladin sounds like he’s really a flounce-fairy armed with a dishmop.

Music

Ok. Now I have to take serious issue with the music in the game, there should be some nice stirring orchestral pieces to gird the armour and sharpen the sword of battle. Not this grinding heavy clamour that sounds like ten-thousand cats being strangled with piano-wire. Instead of Lord of the Rings, we get Clamour of the Bins...

Bad developers! No biscuit!

If it’s not vocal it’s instrumental and I use that term loosely, while some might love the modern industrial or almost ‘Death Metal’ music style in the game it totally turned me off and I usually like this kind of thing.