The Best of the Rest 2011: Dungeon Siege III

2011 had some huge games, you already know that — hell odds are you’re slowly playing through one of them right now, and just about every other gaming blog out there is counting down their favorite heavy hitters of the year… but what about the rest?

There were some pretty damn decent games that got overshadowed this year, and the best part is that they’ve firmly hit the bargain bin. Let’s face it, if you’re not a big name franchise your odds of financial gold are slim in the gaming market. So here’s our countdown of the best of the rest of 2011; starting off with Square-Enix and Obsidian Entertainments Dungeon Siege III. 

Dungeon Siege III plays out like the old-school overhead action RPG games of old. Fans of Diablo and the PS2/Xbox Baldur’s Gate franchise will now exactly what to expect. 

While Dungeon Siege III isn’t any where near as deep on the loot or combat mechanics as Diablo (then again what is?), it does an admirable job of spinning a competent yarn that actually makes you want to keep slashing away at baddies and keep collecting mountains of loot. 

It’s also the first title to use Obsidian’s in-house engine, which produces some impressive lighting effects on consoles and looks amazing on PC. I really enjoyed my time with Dungeon Siege III, so much so that I re-bought the PC version this Christmas in Amazon’s digital sale. If you look around, you can find a copy for around 10 to 20 bucks. It’s a good first effort from Obsidian with the dungeon crawler genre and one that I hope was at least successful enough to see a sequel from Obsidian. I really wasn’t too keen on dropping the full $60 on the title back in early 2011 but it’s a title that packs a good amount of fun and the added bonus of local co-op for gamers looking for a quality dungeon crawler. 

By: Mike