T Interactive's The Wheel of Time is set in the world of Robert Jordan's immensely popular fantasy series of the same name, although its creators stress that players don't have to be familiar with the novels to understand the game.
The single-player game is set just before the tales told in the books. Here's the backstory. Long ago, there was a Dark One. The forces of light imprisoned him with magical seals, and those seals have almost all been lost. The powerful Aes Sedai sisterhood helps guard these seals. As the story opens, sister Elayna Sedai is doing research when a "channeling" assassin attacks. Elayna is the only Aes Sedai to survive. The story kicks into gear as she sets out to bring the criminal to justice.
In Jordan's world, characters create magical effects by channeling "the One power" (read "the Force"), although characters not connected to the power can still channel it through certain artifacts known as ter'angreal. Elayna is a weak channeler, so she's studied the ter'angreal extensively while serving as Keeper of Chronicles for the White Tower. Throughout the game, Elayna collects and uses ter'angreal in many different ways: as weapons, as teleporters, as trap detectors and occasionally as a flashlight.
The game's interface is like that of most first-person shooters, but in a fantasy setting. Multiplayer play consists of the typical death-match games and a "citadel" game that's designed for team play: Each team controls one of four citadels connected by a central teleporter. Teams set traps and barriers while protecting their seals from capture.
Great looks, quadruple weapons
The Wheel of Time's single-player story--told through cut scenes that occasionally lapse into almost comically gratuitous Aes Sedai cleavage--is gripping and well paced. This is not a role-playing game, however. Although Elayna grows in her learning of ter'angreal, this translates to simply giving her more and more ter'angreal powerups to find. That's what really separates this game from the flock of similar first-person action titles--the variety of "guns" at the player's disposal. Rather than the standard 10 variations on pistol, rail gun, rocket launcher and so on, Elayna can blast Trollocs with a meteoric fireball, decay the very flesh of a Whitecloak Archer, or freeze a teleporting Mydrall before finishing it off with a dose of chain lightning. The ter'angreal also have more benevolent uses, such as healing, levitation, and protection from physical and magical attack.
Legend Entertainment put a lot of effort into making this game very, very pretty. Every magical effect created by the bevy of ter'angreal is spectacular to watch, especially with a good 3-D accelerator card. Managing 40 different guns might seem challenging, but the controls handle smoothly. Each artifact has a keyboard number (from 1 to 10) associated with it. The trick is that each number "holds" four different ter'angreal, and the weapons bar along the bottom of the screen shows which number to hit for which artifact.
Sometimes, though, magical gizmos aren't enough to defend a citadel. Placing traps is the bread and butter of the citadel team game. When all is said and done, the game is like most shooters in that the multiplayer experience will be what keeps The Wheel of Time going beyond its initial appeal to Jordan fans. The citadel game is a fun and different experience that deserves to be played.
