I've played through something like 10 times now always with Tukram, I tried a few levels with each of the others but, to be honest, Tukram was done so perfectly for my play style / interests there was no need to play with the other characters.

Heh, I most certainly did purchase my copy the very day it was released here in the states. I will admit, however, to being one of the morons that complained about lack of strafing and how terrible that was *cough*, but I got over it rather quickly and now see it as hands down the best combat system of it's type ever done.

Severence will never leave my hard disk until it can no longer be played due to hardware issues. Unfortunately, Drakan has now slipped off into this catagory for me, it was another good one

This comment was edited on Jan 13, 11:32.

I've never had any problems runing it on XP, other than the intro movie not playing. I know some ppl have had problems, but if you make sure you've got the patch you should be ok. All the various localised patches are here: http://www.3dgamers.com/games/severance/

You guys can still play it? I thought it didnt work with XP or something. When i tried to play it not long ago it crashed repeatedly and it didnt react much with my mouse movements. Is there a patch or a tweak you use?

Always expect the worst and you will never be dissapointed

Hehe, great to see another big Severance\BoD fan. There's still something of a community, and a few people are still making new content.

I agree about Codemasters making a complete arse of the marketing for the game by focussing on the gore, and I'm sure it affected sales because people had no idea of the depth of the game. However it's interesting talking to people nowadays - I never hear a bad word said about the game now, but despite the great reviews it was criticized a lot by gamers when it was released. People just didn't have the patience for it ("what? I can't strafe?!"). Ask people now and it's a classic, unmatched in the genre.

It's a terrible shame that Rebel Act went bankrupt. OK the development took more than 5 years and a lot went wrong, but it deserved to be a huge success. In fact rampant piracy, particularly in their home country of Spain, has been partly blamed, but I think Codemasters are also guilty of undervaluing it and not marketing it well.

I wonder how many people who rate the game so highly now actually never paid for their copy, or didn't give it the time of day at release and picked it up on budget years later. It's sad to see a great development company go under when they made such a groundbreaking game. It's almost Looking Glass all over again.

I have a copy of the Spanish Special Edition of the game (thanks to Juan himself for helping me get hold of it long after I'd bought the game here in the UK) and it's a great piece of memorabilia - the art is far nicer than the international box art, which as you rightly say was very tacky.

Severance is a game that's always on my hard drive, and which every now and again I revisit with almost the same giddy excitement I had almost exactly 3 years ago

Btw, pay close attention to Starbreeze Studios - Knights of the Temple and Enclave 2 promise great things.

In Blade of Darkness I absolutely liked Sargon the most. I literally finished the game about 9 times with Sargon, 3 times with Tukaram, 2 times with Naglfar and once with Zoë. Zoë, the amazon, was just too simple to play with.

The great thing about Severance was the combat system, the great combo's, and the fact that in this game (and only in this game) about every enemy was a challange.
Too bad it didn't go right with the developers, Rebelact. Every single guy of Rebelact was very nice! Especialy Juan Diaz Bustamente, the head of Rebelact. I think it was Codemasters's fault. The front image of the gamebox was amateurish, most screens on the back were from early development, and the text on the back made it look like a game only made to show you how arms can fly and blood can flow. It said nothing about the great combat system, great level-up system, still goodlooking marvelous graphics (first game with such great shadows!), intense story and non-liniear levels!

Yeah guys.. you guessed right, I'm the biggest fan of Severance. The gamebox (although amateurish ) is nailed on my wall.

As David said it is a beta version, the controls will be fully customizable in the final, the fighting is simple due to the easiest difficulty setting in the full version you’ll be able to upgrade your attacks and weapons and choose the appropriate for each situation, you use the fist icon (also jump) by pushing the alt button.
This demo was to find out the compatibility with pixel – shader cards, now we are working on cards with less performance, controls, camera system,…

well i thought this looked promising back last year when i heard about it but god damn that blows rather hard..
graphics are ok, but the whole thing all around fairly well blows.
If this is even close to representing final code its pretty sad..
scuse me while i go jump from roof to roof making pitpat noises.

Graphics are nice, but the game wasn't great.

Ant @ The Ant Farm: http://antfarm.ma.cx

Worst run animation in a game, ever. Bar none.

Developers always drop this lame old line about how the demo / beta / leaked alpha "doesn't represent the final performance or quality".

Bull. I've NEVER seen a bad demo that turned into a good game, nor have I seen performance increase by more than a few percent in the final version.

Here's a tip. If you find yourself apologizing for the quality of your demo, just don't bother. You're better off trying to go for the extra sales to suckers who buy games based on the box art, rather than offering them the chance to see how bad your game is before they've already paid for it.

Absolutely right, Cygnus...but you gotta understand human nature here. The guys at the dev studio are probably kinda psyched about what they made, so they wanna show it to the world...even though it's an unpolished beta demo. Bad judgement, good idea, I'd say.
I've done the same thing with a model for JK2:JO...was so happy I actually made something, I wanted the world to see it...even though it was'nt properly tested. Took a revision or so to get it working properly.

Still, this shows real bad judgement on the publishers part...they shoulda demanded a more polished demo.

People say don't judge a game on its demo

No they don't. I have never heard anybody say that (except for a few developers trying to cover up 'leaked' versions). In fact, exactly the opposite is the case. If I shouldn't judge the game on it's demo, then what, exactly, is the purpose of producing a demo in the first place?

BTW, demo==demonstration - a showing of the merits of a product or service to a prospective consumer.

Besides one requiring you to get all the runes? A solid hit with the second attack (Ianna's Wrath or something like that, I can't remember off the top of my head) does about twice as much damage, and is unblockable, course if you just graze em with it, its pretty much the same effect. I always like Naglfar the best, yeah he sucked at jumping, but was damn good at dodging for so portly a fellow.

Ah blade of darkness. I have some fond memories of that game. Uh oh, bad guy, demon spear! RAWR! I also fondly remember throwing large blades of light at people and watching them splatter. Say anyone know how the two attacks of the ianna's sword are different?

The way Conan runs it looks like he needs some Metamucil.

Perhaps its even a little game called Enclave, came out 2 years back.

It hasn't been out that long, has it? I thought it came out last summer sometime.. huh

Edit: Just checked and it was actually summer 2002.. I was a bit off. heh

This comment was edited on Jan 12, 18:44.

Shwing!

thats was great;P;P

Perhaps its even a little game called Enclave, came out 2 years back. Though that wouldn't explain the sub par graphics..

I remember this game, only back then it was called Rune and came out on November 1, 2000...

http://www.runegame.com/

or maybe it was called Golden Axe back in '89.

http://www.klov.com/G/Golden_Axe.html

I'm getting old, and I forget things easily.

---------------------------------------------
"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?" -- Dick Cavett
mocking the TV-violence debate

Sargon is tha best!!!!!!!!!

Simply not so! Tukram rules all! :p

As the 'subject' says; the game didn't work on my Radeon 9800 XT! When I click "New Game" the game crashes back to windows with some error message about the Conan.exe :S

I don't expect much of it either, not 1 game has defeated the divine combat system of Severance: Blade of Darkness!
Sargon is tha best!!!!!!!!!