Genre: Action/RPG
Developer: Stormfront Studios
Publisher: Atari
Release Date: September 14, 2004

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Good idea. Botched execution.

Those four words, which might as well be hanging above Atari’s front door, describe Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone as well as anything else. Here, you’ll control a three-man party of adventurers as they, in the time-honored Advanced Dungeons & Dragons fashion, endanger their world, by accidentally letting a pair of immortal monsters out of the artifact that was imprisoning them, and then attempt to save the day.

It uses the same engine that powered the recent Lord of the Rings games, so it’s at least good-looking. This is not a game about plowing through an endless number of ten-by-ten rooms where orcs are guarding chests (that’s a little role-playing humor for ya; you don’t have to get it). Instead, this is the kind of adventure where dragons chase you down bridges with their fiery breath, or where entire armies are warring in the background.

One climactic battle takes place in the main room of a stone temple, the open wall letting in the fading rays of sunset as you fight the horrifying yuan-ti, which are half-man, half-snake, and all evil. Against the far wall, watching for its chance to strike, their man-eating lava god waits for its chance to devour you whole.

The music’s put together from the same heavy orchestral sounds that characterize most self-consciously epic film soundtracks, and the talented voice cast manages to wring layers of meaning and intensity out of some of the corniest lines that veteran Forgotten Realms writer R.A. Salvatore can produce. (That is, in fact, saying something, especially when the script slips into startlingly realistic gamer dialogue, with characters referring to each other by the names of their classes. “Sorcerer! Shoot the archers!”) Said cast includes an audibly slumming Patrick Stewart, doing double duty as the narrator and the archmage Khelben “Blackstaff” Arunsun.

It’s kind of cool to see how Stormfront’s adopted the lingua franca of AD&D to a beat-‘em-up. Feats and spells have become real-time combos or moves, with each character sporting a unique magical item that gives him or her an additional ability above and beyond whatever else they’re capable of. With each enemy you defeat, you’ll earn Hero Points, which can be cashed in for a single or team super move that’ll level everyone around your character(s).

All of this leads up to an interestingly presented game that has atmosphere and style to spare, but falls short when you’re actually playing it.

Demon Stone is a single-player game; you control Illius (the sorcerer), Zhai (the rogue and Salvatore’s token drow), and Rannek (the fighter) as a party, switching between them in real-time with the D-pad. Any character you’re not using will attack whatever’s in the area.

It’s at this point that Demon Stone starts to feel like you’re playing the singleplayer mode in a multiplayer game. When you’re just carving through yet another wave of orcs, trolls, bugbears, slaads, githyanki, or yuan-ti, this works great, but Demon Stone is packed to the gills with defensive and escort missions.

Some stages will require you to keep a target from being destroyed, while a couple of boss encounters involve keeping the monsters off of Illius so he can attack distant targets with his magic. Since all your CPU characters do is monomaniacally kill anything in their line of sight, they’re worse than useless for this kind of thing, leaving you holding the bag. This is particularly irritating when Illius needs to cast a spell, since he needs a couple of seconds to charge up, and he will not get those seconds if your CPU buddies have anything to say about it.

Your CPU characters also all use the same strategies, which can get them killed; Illius, for example, has no business being in melee, but if you’re not controlling him, he’ll charge right into the thick of the fray. Sometimes, they’ll run out of opponents and simply stand in place, since the AI can apparently only detect enemies within a certain range. There’s an entire boss fight where you can’t really move because the boss in question, a big fuzzy spider, is about a hundred yards away from you, so both your other characters will come stand next to you and pin you in a corner.

(As an aside, any one character dying in Demon Stone results in a game over. However, since each character’s unique contribution to the party involves a magical item – and in Rannek and Illius’s case, two magical items that essentially do the same thing – why can’t you just pick up a replacement character somewhere? I mean, it’s sad and all, but Rannek’s contributions to the group all revolve around his gauntlets, which aren’t exactly welded to him.)

You can defuse some of the problems here by picking the right equipment and skills. At the end of each stage, you can spend your earned money and experience to pick up new combos, armor, weapons, and magical items, and you’ll pick up a couple of unique artifacts along the way as well. Still, it’s irritating when you’re buying equipment to attempt to compensate for the AI’s stupidity, rather than trying to decide how best to kick ass.

I have a few simpler issues with Demon Stone. There’s no camera control whatsoever, so you’ll often be fighting blind or firing at targets who’re offscreen; one early level sets you in the background as monsters fight in the foreground, which is, of course, delightful. You also can’t skip cutscenes, so if you die or blow a mission objective – and you will – you’ll have to sit through the last movie all over again.

There’s nothing wrong with Demon Stone that couldn’t be fixed by better AI, camera controls, a multiplayer mode, and, while I’m thinking of it, better collision detection on Zhai’s jumps. This could’ve been a good game, but in its present state, it’s often an exercise in pointless frustration.

Score : 6.5/10