Some combinations do untold good to the world: peanut butter and jelly, artificial cherry flavor and Coca-Cola, chocolate and just about anything. But a first person shooter merged with a role-playing game? Yes, many RPGs have elements of other genres in them while still maintaining the essential feel of an RPG. No, “Endless Ages” is not one of them.

The ideal reaction on the part of gamers would be that both fans of first person shooters and fans of RPGs would be able to get together and have a rollicking good time beating the tar out of things while learning all the while about the mysterious world around them. My reaction as a roleplaying geek was wondering if I would die often, and trepidation at the inevitable motion sickness I experience in first person shooter mode.

The motion sickness soon wore off, the dying, alas, did not. There are four races for players to choose from. The idea of the game is that when beings die, they are reincarnated on a world named IIa. If they were weak in their previous life, they can be strong in their new one, if they were lacking in brainpower, they can acquire wisdom. In short, they can realize their full potential. I chose a Human Female. Boring, I know. I already know what it’s like to be a Human Female, why play as one? But I don’t have an Uzi in real life, so there were differences.

The other choices are: Human Male, Bloblic and Amphibious. Apparently there is no need to distinguish between the Bloblic and Amphibious sexes. Maybe they don’t have sex. There’s actually no real use for different sexes on IIa anyway, because why would dead people need to mate? But I digress. The concept behind the races is that each race has special advantages. Humans have the advantage of both being able to use their brains and their bodies, a versatile combination. Bloblics, which are large creatures, rely more on strength of body. Amphibious beings, which resemble frogs, have strong wills and can control creature’s minds.

I was sadly disappointed by the “customization” available for the characters. A handful of hair color, eye options and poorly designed clothing were all I had to choose from. I tried out a little bikini bottom and thigh high boots number, only to discover when I started the game and saw myself from behind that I was wearing a thong. It’s hard to have respect for yourself when you’re running through the forest and all of a sudden all you can see on your screen is a butt, because the camera suddenly decides to zoom in on your posterior.

It was also depressing how heavily game play relied on combat. Each race has a leader who will send the player on a quest. When I went to see my leader, Celeste, she wanted me to kill things. I obediently ran off to do her bidding, a feat in itself, since if I accidentally moved my mouse too much, my bosoms would point heavenward and my spine would bend backwards in a position that no real human woman could accomplish. I hope against hope that in first person mode my character position was locked, because if not, I must have looked extremely silly.

But let’s get back to killing things. I went to the area outside the human city to find the creatures she specified, Flobs. Flobs are giant and blue, they look like a cross between pill bugs and shrimp, and they attack you by rolling at you. They are the weakest creatures in the game, and I died fighting them, many, many times. I finally conceived of a strategy in which I ran backwards while shooting, keeping a large distance between the target and myself. In spite of this impressive strategy that usually ended with me pinned against a tree or a mountain, I was eradicated with alarming regularity. For the first few days the message “You have been killed by (insert name of creature here)” flashed on my chat screen often.

It would probably help if there weren’t a pause between the actions that I could take. I had to wait a few seconds before downing another potion if I had just used one. I could not use a skill repeatedly. I could shoot as much as I wanted to, but if my health was failing, I had to use a really strong potion or else it wouldn’t help me very much. I don’t really see the point in not being able to say, swallow five potions in quick succession. The controls were somewhat standard, utilizing hot keys for certain actions. I could reconfigure the commands to any keys that I wanted, and there was even a function to adjust the mouse sensitivity. I think the main problem was the huge gap between my strength and that of the creatures.

After I grew in experience, it wasn’t so bad, but then I discovered something else. Even if you can kill a Flob, there are many other creatures out there that can still hand your thong-clad bottom to you. I grew too bold after completing the Flob quest and thought that Celeste’s other assignments were going to be easy. I was wrong. I discovered that in order to successfully complete quests I had to either kill the same creatures over and over for the experience, or find someone with a character much stronger than mine to act as a bodyguard.

The other players that I met were almost always very friendly. They shared interesting tips with me and helped me get to places that were too dangerous to reach on my own. They also gave me tidbits of information not mentioned in the manual, such as levels are usually measured by the weapon tech skill and that player killers could not target me unless one of my skills was level ten or higher. I never actually met any player killers, probably because I did not often venture beyond the safe zones outside of the human cities. I probably had the most fun when I teamed up with someone I met at the city and then went forth to kill something with them. Truly, a bonding experience was had by all.

I wish that the NPCs were as helpful as the real players. Aside from Celeste, there were other characters scattered throughout the area that I explored. These characters could supposedly send me on a fabulous quest with treasure as my reward but…none of them would talk to me. So I was a weakling. Did they have to snub me so? What is with the lack of beginner quests? I thought that I had found something to do when a secretary begged me to clear out a cave infested with Infant Diliriums, until something huge and unspeakably ugly lurched out the shadows and dispatched me with its tongue.

Not that the chatty NPCs were much better. Most of the NPCs talk like everyone who does not live in California thinks Californians talk. In other words, like Valley Girls. If they had actual voices they’d be high-pitched and bubbly. One guard chattered about how pretty she was, while another pined for her Amphibious boyfriend. A male guard near a shop asked me to fix him up with someone. Hello? We are dead and there are mysterious happenings afoot, can’t anyone rise to the occasion here? Alas, apparently not. Someone also took a unique approach to spelling when writing for the game. I can honestly say that I have never seen anyone spell “toungue” that way, nor did I think that I would ever have a “quanity” of something.

Besides the annoying speech tendencies, the NPCs were horribly unhelpful. I tried out the one newbie quest that the manual mentions, which is to check in with all of the guards. I found most of them, but the “I’m so pretty” guard told me that the next one was at the rock beyond hers. I never did find that rock. Why? When I went to find it, I suddenly found myself outside of the safe zone. I was told that all the guards are inside the safe zone. Either someone was lying, or I’m blind.

The game packaging offers other activities besides shooting things, such as riding pets and building a house. Those both sounded neat to me at first, but the pets weren’t that impressive and the houses cost a mint. Perhaps if I had any plans to play the game for a length of time I would try for a house, just because it is something to do, but it just didn’t fit in with my short-term plans. I tried my hand at alchemy and bartending for a while, but I stopped because I did not see the point. I had found a cache of healing potions, and I did not know what to do with the mixed drinks that I produced.

The lack of useful information was perhaps my biggest stumbling block. If I did manage to get an NPC to offer me a quest, they offered very little information about it. I was continually lost because there is no map inside the game to refer to, and it was tedious to keep pulling out the manual map each time. I tried browsing the message boards at the web site, but none of them really had the information that I needed, and most of the links to helpful web sites either did not work, or were not helpful.

Which was a pity, because I wanted to like the game, and have some fun playing it. The graphics are fairly nice, if you look beyond the homogenous character and creature modeling. The area that I most frequented went through a standard day so that I was treated to a spectacular moonrise followed by a sunrise a short period later. The caves that I explored were sufficiently dank and creepy. The music was unfortunately repetitive, but this was rarely a problem since it did not seem to play unless I was close to a city or a particularly creepy area. Most times all I heard was my gun and the occasional scream of a dying critter.

This game will last you a long time. You will have to spend hours leveling up just so that you will not be killed by Flobs and the other creatures who all look the same except for colors, until you find out that you just attacked the wrong one. If you don’t mind hunting down beasties and spending a good portion of your evening trying to blow them up without them reaching you, you have found your game.

However, if you want something deep and absorbing, that will keep you happily immersed and guessing, you have the wrong game. $39.99 is a hefty price, and with the $9.95 a month fee for playing, “Endless Ages” does not offer enough to keep me interested and paying. The web site does offer a five-day trial subscription. If you like what you see, you can open up a real account and keep the character that you created. As for me, my Uzi bikini girl will have to face the afterlife without me, I’ve had my share of Flobs.

Final Grade: 70%

Minimum System Requirements:

A monthly fee in addition to your usual internet fees applies, the first month is free with purchase of the game.

• Windows® 98, 2000, ME, XP (I have XP, it worked fine)
• 450 MHz Processor or faster
• 32 MB 3D Accelerated Video Card (must support latest version of DirectX)
• 4X CD-Rom Drive
• 128 MB RAM
• 700 MB Hard Drive Space
• Internet Connection at 56K or above

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