All video games tap into our obsessive compulsive nature to some degree, but few do it more ruthlessly than the loot-dropping dungeon crawl RPG. This is a genre for people who feel a deep sense of personal failure if they don't smash every barrel, open every chest and own an inventory groaning with Rare Inferno Pantaloons of Swiftness.

Jun 20, 2011  Dungeon Siege III is a good action RPG if we ignore the fact that it is the continuation of certain video game series. The link with its previous games is only evident in the sense of its atmosphere but it lacks many of the characteristics from other Dungeon Siege games. Katarina is another playable character available in Dungeon Siege 3, the role-playing video game developed by Obsidian Entertainment. Unlike Anjali, Katarina is a direct descendant of the 10th Legion, even if she is the illegitimate daughter of Hugh Montbarron.

It's also a genre that is making a comeback, with Torchlight stripping the formula down to its ruthless core components and Diablo III bringing back the sense of a blockbuster event to a game style that was once in danger of falling out of favour.

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Dungeon Siege slots into the space in between these two extremes. Never quite big enough to attract Diablo-level passion (the movie adaptation fell to Uwe Boll, after all), but too ambitious in scope to fit comfortably with the new download aesthetic.

As it turns out, Dungeon Siege III looks set to define the middle ground. In a good way. Based on ten hours of roaming around the latest preview build, it looks like a robust, well-paced and carefully balanced dungeon crawl with a decent storyline and a journey that takes you through dozens of varied environments.

The story picks up some time after Dungeon Siege II. The kingdom of Ehb is mired in civil war. The 10th Legion has been decimated, its few remaining soldiers scattered and hunted by the cruel Jeyne Kassynder. As one of those few, it's your job to rebuild the Legion and lead the rebellion against Kassynder's zealot army.

Four characters are waiting to take you on this journey. You choose one as your main character, with the other three popping in to join your team as you go along.

There's Lucas Montbarron, son of Hugh Mountbarron, last Grand Master of the Legion and your typical sword-and-armour melee fighter. Anjali is an Archon, a fire demon with no memory of how she came to Earth. Raised by the Venerable Odo to fight for good, she's basically Hellboy crossed with the Human Torch and a set of boobs.

Reinhart Manx is a Legion mage with a reputation for unusual spellcasting. Finally there's Katarina, a Lescanzi witch specialising in firearms and ranged attacks. She's the illegitimate daughter of Hugh Montbarron and therefore Lucas' half-sister.

Between them they cover all the class types made popular in the prior Dungeon Siege games. This time, however, you're only ever controlling your chosen character. Once recruited you can switch your companion at any time, but this is strictly a two-handed affair. No four-way Gauntlet-style monster mash-ups, unfortunately.

Controls have been intelligently streamlined for console play, with the d-pad offering shortcuts to the most useful menus. A prod left calls up your list of active quests, while right takes you to the equipment screen. Up conjures a Fable-style breadcrumb trail for whatever objective you're currently working towards. All interactions, from looting chests to initiating conversations, are carried out with the right bumper.

For combat, blocking is mapped to the left trigger and there's a simple one-button attack that's modified by two different stances. These are quickly alternated with the left shoulder bumper.

Lucas swaps from two-handed broadswords to a more traditional sword and shield combo, Katarina from ranged carbine to a dual-wielded shotgun and pistol combo. Anjali can choose from her agile human form and a more destructive fire form.

From there things unfold much as you'd expect for a top-down RPG, with giant spiders lurking in forests, travelling merchants offering a discount once you save them from bandits and rural wives sending you off to find their missing husband in the Gloomy Caves of Goblin Death.

But it's hard to be too cynical about the genre cliches Dungeon Siege deploys since it gets the mechanics so enjoyably right. While the game never matches Torchlight's manic pace, it certainly doesn't hang around. It's almost episodic in nature, introducing a new location, along with new enemies and fresh quests, every hour or so.

The story rattles along at an agreeable clip, never bogging you down with too many optional objectives, and your character evolution follows suit. In about seven hours of gameplay I'd managed to reach level 14 and the meat of the story was only just about to kick in. Companions level up alongside you, and as you tweak and enhance their various abilities and proficiencies you can exert a small amount of influence over their combat style.

Visually, the game does a good job of showcasing Obsidian's Onyx engine. Environments are rarely interactive, but they are lushly designed and boast some subtle lighting effects.

From gloomy forests to eerie abandoned mansions, quaint villages to urbane cities, there's an appealing feel to the world of Ehb. It all flows seamlessly as well, with no loading screens. Your jaunty trot simply slows to a walk while the game loads in the next area.

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It's a pity the same polish isn't evident in the characters populating the conversation scenes, where you pick responses with a Bioware-style chat wheel. Faces are stiff and the voice acting, while more than adequate, doesn't have enough personality to compensate.

Despite this, the game itself is surprisingly funny, with lots of pithy descriptions and sly in-jokes for fans. Most notably for those who loved the previous game and it's lovable roving inventory system, there's the 'pitiful corpse' of a mule left by the roadside, crushed by the weight of 'many suits of armor, sacks of gold and impractically large battleaxes'.

Elsewhere a mechanical constable, basically a steampunk Robocop, boasts of providing 'feline wrangling services' along with his violent law enforcement duties. In another particularly daft moment, you meet a character called Baron Barrenbaron.

Dungeon Siege III clearly isn't setting out to redefine its genre, but it has a finely balanced sense of its own strengths and seems to have nailed the addictive tug that all loot drop RPGs must possess. Quests unfurl into one another organically and there's always something new around the corner, offering a reason to play for another half hour, then another, and another..

And that's without access to the online co-operative mode, where players get to vote on conversation responses as well as battling side by side. Roll on next month, and a distinct lack of sleep.

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Legend speaks of an ancient blender far beyond the reach of mere mortals, and in it are blended the most fiendish of concoctions imaginable. It was in this blender that on a fabled and woebegone night a Blendtec wizard sought to create a dungeon crawler the likes of which Diablo and Torchlight had already seen, but with the dialog wheel and decision making of Dragon Age, the fisticuffs of an arcade beat-'em-up and just a few drops of blood from the master sequel crafters at Obsidian Entertainment. Into the wicked blender the ingredients went, and after the froth and bubbles and not a few screams, the wizard dispensed a mean little package and christened it Dungeon Siege III.Despite its borrowed trappings and engrossing decisions that are sure to make you stop and think, at its heart, DS3 is a co-op loot fest of old, and in that regard, it excels brilliantly. Rather than have you select a class, you select characters who each reflect familiar RPG qualities, such as DPS or healer, but who also come with back stories and allegiances that will flavor your path, and possibly color some of your decisions as you make your way through the land of Ehb. I choose Reinhart Manx, an older mage who specializes in magically assisted hand-to-hand combat and maniacal clockwork traps, and my partner selects Anjali, an archon capable of switching between a spear wielding human form, and a fire slinging elemental form.My favorite scenario is set deep in a shadowy forest, beyond the Lescanzi occupied town of Raven's Rill, where we must rid a haunted mansion of spectral terrors and deal with the trapped soul of a little girl that has been ensnared by an ancient artifact. Although there's quite a bit of narrative backdrop going on, DS3 doesn't allow that to get in the way of the fast-paced, narrative disinterested nature of co-op play. Cutscenes are skippable and almost every dialog sequence has an easy-out option.

When we enter the mansion, my partner and I are almost instantly engaged by hordes of skeleton warriors complemented by undead archers and spell casting wraiths—it's here that DS3 really shines.In human form, Anjali corrals melee units into tight clusters while I engage the ranged units with hard-hitting electrical blasts from across the room. Once my partner has gathered-up enough victims, I dart to the center and generate a circular clockwork trap on the floor.

Its magical gears tick-tock away the last few seconds of our enemies' lives before all within the trap's radius are engulfed by yellow and green magical discharge. At the same time, my partner summons a fire jackal to harass a new band of enemies that have appeared behind us while I drop a huge glyph beneath them that causes damage over time. Our combined assault provides a much needed distraction that allows us to cast healing spells and mop-up the ranged units on an overlooking balcony with close-combat. My partner gets the coup de grace by detonating Anjali's fire jackal like some sick Nazi war tactic. With the battle done, we get to the real fun—loot.The arena is littered with bits of armor and health and mana orbs (there are no health potions in DS3), and we quickly dart around the room to snap it all up.

We then spend several minutes each checking out our new gear and min/maxing with DS3's convenient equipment system. Categories with something new are marked as such, and highlighting a new piece automatically pulls up a comparison window with red and green arrows indicating the traits of the new piece compared to what you already have equipped. In most circumstances, you're safe just going with the most green arrows and moving on, which is a huge boon when your co-op buddy is waiting to get back to the action.Compared to Torchlight, there are some big differences in combat.

While Torchlight is action bar focused, DS3's combat is much more immediate—hit the punch key, and your wizard plants a lighting punch right in a zombie's face. But as I ventured around in co-op, I couldn't help but feel “this is so what Torchlight should have been.” Playing a narrative-optional, loot heavy game is way more fun with friends, Diablo made that clear years ago. That said, if I'm going to tolerate this game at all with a mouse and keyboard, Obsidian has got to get their controls wrangled in. PC controls on the build I played weren't final, but with a June release fast approaching, they still need a ton of work. Sometimes more so than monsters, I found the camera to be my greatest enemy, the controls of which are shared by the mouse pointer, middle mouse button, scroll wheel and the “A” and “D” keys—WTF!

My preview left me really wanting more, so I've got my fingers crossed that Obsidian is able to patch the control issue up before launch, especially now that the genre is finally starting to see fresh signs of life.