Friday August 5, Crow's Bridge

After days of marching, our rest at Crow's Bridge has turned to boredom. The army passed through this village three days ago on our way to the city of Madrigal which is threatened by the armies of Shiver, one of the Fallen Lords. Soon the battle that may decide the fate of the Northern Lands will be joined there, but not for us.

A small force of warriors and archers, not to mention a particularly surly dwarf named Vnarvin have been left here under my command to guard the old stone bridge across the river. It seems to us all a waste of time. There hasn't been a sniff of the undead for days, but the peasants are genuinely worried. Rumours are spreading of the massacre by The Watcher at Avons Grove. Other rumours speak that our commanders have discovered a new weapon, the still-living head of one of Balor's ancient enemies buried in the ruins of old Muirthemne. But Balor crushed that city thirty years ago, and I have heard many unfounded rumours during in my lifetime.

Most of us were in the village when the attack came.

Shouts of fear from the two men stationed on the bridge. Twenty Thrall had crept underwater, along the line of the river. The first we knew of it was when they suddenly surfaced by the bridge, their chests distended by un-breathing lungs heavy with river water. At the same time a much larger force appeared in the distance on the other side of the river, approaching quickly up the road to secure their bridgehead and accompanied by Souless archers.

Quickly I ordered the men on the bridge over to the other side to engage the larger party of enemy. It was a delaying move, and a sacrificial one. Their screams echoed through the countryside as the rest of us ran to attack the Thrall on the bridge, but they bought us a few minutes of time to retake it.

I sent Vnarvin in close to the Thrall, throwing his chemical molotov cocktails that exploded amon

gst them. As he turned and fled their approach our arrows rained on them and by the time our warriors reached them they were wounded and in disarray. The melee was brutal and body parts and gore stained the grass before bridge red, but we took no further casualties.

I ordered Vnarvin up onto the bridge, and to start placing the satchel charges he had constructed during our wait. He had just finished laying them when a poisoned javelin cracked the stone by his foot. The undead reinforcements where almost to the bridge, and the filthy Souless were attacking. The air was thick with javelins as the Thrall set foot upon the bridge. In a moment they would be among the satchel charges, but only Vnarvin could detonate them, and in less than a moment he might be dead on a Souless' barb.

As fast as I could I ordered my archers to target the Souless in the hope of distracting them long enough. The Hollow Men responded to my arrows by returning fire and soon their javelins were ripping through our ranks, as Vnarvin readied himself to set off the explosives in the midst of the Thrall.

Then a new noise, and hope failed. Another contingent of Thrall and Souless had quietly crossed the river to my flank as we fought on the bridge, and were laying into my forces from behind. Men I had known were dying in the grass and archers were fleeing, desperately seeking enough distance to use their weapons. As I drew my sword and prepared to die a vision of Avon's Grove passed through my head, and of Crow's Bridge also aflame, its dead inhabitants swelling still further the unstoppable armies of the Fallen Lords...

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A comet hangs in the sky, growing brighter nightly and under its cold light the dead stir beneath the earth. Heroes of a bygone age have arisen as Fallen Lords and in thirty years they have reduced civilisation to dust. Only the cities west of the Cloudspine mountains fight on desperate
ly ag
ainst armies of the undead that grow stronger with each passing year.

Myth : The Fallen Lords is the story of the final resistance against the Dark, told through the journal entries kept by an ordinary soldier as he travels from the fields of the West to the very gates of Balor's fortress.

Developers Bungie have created a rich intricate story line for myth, based in a world where the rise of mankind is constrained by cycles of Light and Darkness, and the greatest saviours are doomed to be reborn to destroy what they had fought to protect. I have always believed that placing the events of a game in a wider historical framework adds an important dimension to the gameplay and makes for a richer experience.

OVERVIEW

Myth is a real-time warfare sim' from Bungie, one of the best software developers around. Bungie was recently bought by Microsoft to provide the killer application Halo for the X-box, but Bungie classics like Myth are still available on budget labels, or in compilations.

GAMEPLAY

The best known RTSs are probably Command and Conquer and Age of Empires, games in which you have to balance warfare with resource-collection and civilisation building. These games are usually won through building up your strength until you can crush your oponent by brute force.

Myth takes a very different approach, focusing on tactics rather than strategy. There are no resources to collect, you start each level with a small pre-set force and no way to replace lost units. You defeat your much stronger oponent through by making use of the terain and understanding the different abilities of your units. Because of this you have to make use of your forces very carefully, and protect them.

Myth simulates a fully three-dimensional battle field, then allows the player to rotate their view from different angles, and direct troops by clicking on them. Moving, rotating and zooming the camera view i
s done thr
ough the keyboard, which can be difficult at first but soon becomes second nature and there is an excellent tutorial that guides the new player through the controls.

You control your troops by clicking on individuals or selecting a group, then clicking on the destination to move to or the enemy to attack. How you array your troops in formations and make use of the landscape is a large part of Myth, and many of the challenges you'll be faced with are the same that would face a genuine commander in the field.

But don't think that Myth is a computerised version of table-top wargaming. There is no time for dice-rolling or model painting as you play Cat-and-mouse with lightning wielding Fetch amid the deserted buildings of Silvermines or your Beserks rush the final circle of Undead still protecting the crippled body of the Watcher, piling the bodies of the living and the dead. Myth is a real-time game that puts you right in the middle of the brutal reality of medieval combat with all the violence and unpredictability that that entails.

It's worth making a point about the level of violence present in Myth. In recent years there has been a trend towards gratuitous violence in computer-games, and at first sight Myth might seem to fit this pattern. As armies clash the ground is splattered with blood and weaponry send body parts flying across the landscape. Context is important though, and Myth is set in the framework of medieval reality and doesn't gloss over the fact. In the same way that violence is more acceptable in a Horrors-of-war film than a Slasher movie, the level of gore in Myth doesn't feel out of place. Having said that, there is an option to turn the Blood off.

The graphics are very good, though inevitably technology has moved on and they look a little dated compared to more recent offerings.

The sound is first class, from the thunder of an approaching Trow to the eerie deat
h-whistle of a
Souless, but it's the dialogue that impresses me most. The voice acting is spot-on, and drives home the grim atmosphere perfectly.

The solo player levels are terrific, but Myth really comes into its own when it comes to multi-player games. Bungie have developed their own portal, bungie.net which interfaces seamlessly with Myth to provide a feature-rich environment which includes different 'rooms' and a ranking system.

Netplay itself is a very different experience to single-player mode, because instead of facing a powerful but predictable computerised enemy, you'll be facing a thinking opponent capable of exploiting any gaps in your defenses and reacting accordingly.

It's worth noting that the Myth community has largely migrated to 'Myth 2 : Soulblighter' for netplay, so that game is a better platform for enjoying Bungie.Net nowadays.

CONCLUSION

Myth : The Fallen Lords is and remains one of my favourite computer games because it combines a mental challenge with action and an atmospheric storyline.

I would urge everybody to download the Demo from http://www.bungie.com and try it out for yourself. If you like it, Myth is on sale for a fiver or you can find the 'Total Codex' which bundles it with plenty of other Bungie goodies.