The Scourge of Worlds: A Dungeons & Dragons Adventure

The concept of this DVD is particularly appealing. As a fan of both fantasy films and the long-dormant gamebook genre of the 1980's (Choose Your Own Adventure, Endless Quest, etc.), I saw this title as a potential test project in a whole new generation of "gamebooks." I'm not a big fan of computer animation. I think that most of the time, CG characters look a little too much like something out of a local Tech school commercial rather than a fantasy world. However, the animation here is pretty decent and, although not particularly atmospheric, it is reminiscent of cinematic portions of Computer RPGs.

The biggest disappointment is in the plot itself. I was expecting something much more epic than what was given. What we do get is a plot more like an episode of the old "D&D" cartoon show than "Lord of the Rings" or other high fantasy. I won't go into specifics, but the "big twist" is relatively transparent, and the various finales are extremely lackluster.

It's an interesting idea, and I hope more of these are made, so we can have a DVD gamebook worthy of this great concept.

This movie/game tells the story of a party of adventurers sent to capture a rogue Cleric of Pholtus and bring him back to his temple. The situation gets complicated though when the party meets another group intent on stopping him more permanently...

The movie plays for segments lasting up to 3 minutes, before presenting the viewer with a choice of which way the characters should progress the story. After selecting a choice, the movie continues along that path, presenting another choice every couple of minutes through the movie. A full 'viewing' of the film takes about 40 minutes.

As one other viewer noted, it is not possible to fast-forward through scenes that you have seen before, BUT you CAN use the chapter skip button on your DVD to skip to the end of the scene and straight to the next choice. This means that the absence of a fast forward is a very minor annoyance.

The story changes quite significantly depending on the choices made, though these different arcs will tend to rejoin later in the film. Some choices can result in death, though if these are midway through the film an option to restart at the last choice made is given. There are 4 different endings, each with differing amounts of success.

Dungeons and Dragons players (especially 3rd Edition) will see many aspects of the game faithfully reproduced in the movie. Spells, creatures and even some of the standard characters appear. I was pleased to see that this is not a 'kiddy' film, covering everything with cotton wool the way that the Dungeons and Dragons film did.

While the animation won't win any awards, it does the job and looks pretty good. My major gripe is the wooden animation in many fight sequences.

My rating of 7 assumes that the viewer will be at least familiar with the Dungeons and Dragons setting. Casual viewers may find it rates closer to a 6. I look forward to seeing more of these movies released in the future.

An excellent adventure. I can only hope they will make more. This DVD is the coolest thing I seen in my nine lives. This should be made part of Dungeons & Dragons 101. The different personalities and a story that shows, even the good guys can be deceived to fight each other. No guts or carnage. For an hack-n-slash gamer, that is a bummer, but just to have this DVD, more than makes up for it.

You will love the halfling, she is funny, witty, greedy, and looks pretty hot. As opposed to the female elf. Lara Croft she is not. Don't worry, any prudes reading this, it is totally nude free. Nothing at all naughty. And for the gamers out there, one fun thing to do is figure the action sequences to gaming moves. Casts bless spell, she made her save, ooohh he didn't....ouch.

This is a must have. Like I said bro', Very wicked cool.

Scourge of Worlds is an interactive DVD adventure. You watch the action for a few minutes, and then decide what the characters will do next based on a few choices.

It isn't a perfect system - the choices ARE rather limited, and the producers made the mad decision to remove chapter stops and the ability to fast-forward through scenes you've watched over and over. This makes for a bit of a trying gaming and viewing experience.

But as a movie, Scourge of Worlds holds up quite well. The computer animation is marvelous to behold, although it's obvious the production team had neither the time nor the budget that the makers of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within had. As a result, the animation looks a bit clunky from time to time, and on occasion there are obvious errors especially with regards to the characters' teeth. There are also times where the characters move their arms when they talk for no real reason, almost as if they have St. Vitus Dance.

The voice acting ranges from the moving to the hilarious. The voice actors for the three main characters (Regdar, Lidda and Mialee) come off best, with Lidda in particular being a quite appealing smart-ass of a character. Mialee, the elf wizard, isn't as unconsciously erotic as she is in the D&D rulebook and novels, but her brassiness sets her apart from the etherial elves we have come to expect from D&D and Lord of the Rings. Regdar, the fighter, comes off as a goofball at times, but he also gets some of the funniest lines in the film, depending on which direction you take the story.

But the makers goofed when they chose the voice actor for the villain (who I won't name here and spoil the surprise). Nothing against the actor, who does a good job, but it's hard to take a villain seriously who sounds like someone who has OD'd on helium.

Scourge of Worlds is a noble experiment, and entertaining if you don't mind repetition. I look forward to seeing more productions like this, as the technology improves.

For those of us who grew up in the early 1980's with some cable companies promising interactive movies this is a dream come true. The interactive part is great and somewhat logical as to what you can do. That said there are a few minor problems.

First while the CG animation is great there are still problems with faces especially in terms of hair or teeth.

Second the lighting of the night scenes varied a great deal. It was like watching one of those old 'B' grade films where the director either had little knowledge on night shots or not enough money to do them right: ie in one scene you can clearly see the characters and in the next you can't see much of anything.

Finally and more annoyingly while there is a way to skip to 6 of the choices (it is 'hidden' in the help section) they are not set up logically. In fact the order of the first two are reversed! Worse yet three of these choices (the middle one of the top three and the last two of the bottom three) have alternative versions and so choosing one of them can cause confusion if you went another path. IMHO it is a good idea to avoid this part of the disk until you have played the adventure several times.

All in all though this is a good first attempt in making use of CG and DVDn technology.