Games Convention: Harbinger Impressions (German)
Jaz, 2003-08-27

The Games Convention 2003 in Leipzig was significantly bigger than the first GC in 2002 - and what's more, this time a significantly larger amount of CRPGs (or games with RPG elements) were shown. Unfortunately, the two days I spent at the GC weren't enough to cover all of the RPG/like games - in fact, I was really glad I glimpsed as many games as I did, because sprinting from booth to booth, from award ceremony to press center and back while elbowing my way through hordes of gamers took a considerable amount of time.

Here is a short overview of Harbinger (PC German version).

Harbinger (DreamCatcher, PC German version)
Because of the low noise level in their booth, I stayed with DreamCatcher a bit longer. While waiting for the crashed XBox to reboot, I had the opportunity to get some insights into the soon-to-be-released German version of Harbinger. The story is simple - the Harbinger is a huge spaceship which lays waste to galactic civilizations, survivors are dragged aboard to be enslaved in work camps. The player takes the role of one of three different survivors, his or her goal: to destroy the Harbinger. ‘Harbinger' is an isometric, party-less, action-oriented CRPG which looks and feels a lot like Diablo, even though the game takes place in a Science Fiction setting. Graphics are a mix of 2D for characters/ backgrounds and 3D for effects and thus - one might say - not quite state-of-the-art, but neat nevertheless.

Sound and (German) speech are okay, nothing spectacular, but not bad either. Another Diablo-ism - controls are as simple as they come, point-and-click; I could play right away without having to think about the control scheme once. Gameplay is straight-forward, there's no mistaking items for something other than what they're supposed to be, the first few missions (at least) are not too complex. I wouldn't go as far as to call Harbinger a no-brainer, but it's definitely a game for manual-haters

First Impression
A decent hack'n'slash RPG for clickfest lovers.