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Harbinger is the debut offering from Silverback Entertainment; Published by Dreamcatcher. The ‘Harbinger’ is actually an enormous ship. It’s home to a number of different species who live together in relative peace in a surreal sort of atmosphere. Essentially, it’s a mobile planet. By siphoning resources and slaves from the planets it encounters, the Harbinger has grown into what you now call home, sweet home. Ruled by a mysterious Overlord, you will play one of three characters in a spotty story that will eventually lead you towards a revolution of sorts, as you save the ship from a new enemy that threatens to destroy the Harbinger.

The game is a cross between Diablo and Fallout. The gameplay more resembles Diablo while the setting is definitely reminiscent of the later Fallout games. Just because I used two great games to give you an example of THIS game, doesn’t mean Harbinger is as well done as either of those games, however. You’re given the option of playing one of three characters. You can choose between the Human, Gladiator and Culibine. The Human is the weakest physically of the three, and has to rely more on technology to give him the edge he needs. The Gladiator reminds me a lot of the Kane robot in Robocop 2. The Gladiator is a resurrected ‘soul’ that’s been given a new form of a robotic killing machine. His tactics involve controlling other robotic devices such as cameras used for scouting and a few other machines used for assault purposes. The last character is the Culibine. She is the “last of her species”, so if you pick her to play and end up dieing, you won’t be able to sleep at night knowing you’re responsible for the extinction of an endangered race (hah!). The Culibine manipulates energy and can form it into devastating attacks. She has a self-healing ability but it also the most costly character to play. Each character has slightly different dialogue options, but as a whole, the story plays out the same. It’s very linear and dialogue options are limited.

The game plays nearly identical to Diablo. It’s an isometric (top down) perspective utilizing a point and click interface. There are a very limited number of keys that you will need to use, all of which are re-mappable. Typical gameplay consists of running from enemies while stopping to fire a few shots, or simply dodging their slow, incoming projectiles. There are less than a dozen enemy types, and it gets sort of boring fighting the same damn thing over and over. To alleviate this (a little bit), you will need to make sure you are using the correct weapon type versus the appropriate enemy. You have two main weapon types (with a couple other minor ones): Plasma and EMP. Robotic enemies are supposed to be more vulnerable to EMP, while more ‘organic’ life forms are susceptible to plasma. The ironic thing is, nearly EVERYTHING looks robotic, but isn’t necessarily weak versus the emp weapons. Your weapons and armor also have slots that you can use to chip in upgrades. Higher level armor and weapons have more slots so you can chip in more upgrades. These upgrades include adding additional damage types for weapons, or adding resistances to certain damage types for armor. Placed throughout the levels are ‘EZ-Stash’ machines. These let you stash your loot and have it handily appear next to the merchant in Torvus Junction, your base of operations. The entire ship also has an elaborate network for umbilical cords (portals) that connect the levels together. As you progress through the game, you’ll be given access codes to these umbilical cords, which will allow you to travel between the levels.

My biggest gripe about the gameplay is the fact that we really don’t see much we haven’t already seen in other games. Not to mention sometimes the level difficulty seems a bit off as the game progresses. Some level are extremely easy while others introduce certain situations (like not being able to go back to the Junction to re-equip) that make them inconsistently difficult with the rest of the game. As your character levels up, you receive a few points that you can put into one of four skills. Each character has a melee, ranged and life (health) skill, then a specific fourth skill dependent on which character you play. Sometimes it felt like my character was just too damn weak and ill-equipped to be playing on the current mission I was on. This was no fault of my own either. I killed everything humanly (or robotically) possible and had plenty of Uan (money). There just wasn’t proper equipment available at the merchant and I kept feeling overpowered by the enemies in the mission. Sometimes it was a struggle, to say the least.

There aren’t a lot of graphical tweaks you can do to the game. You get two resolutions, 800x600 and 1024x768 plus an option for Light Mapping. You can also specify how you want your sound setup and how many speakers your setup uses. Oddly though, I found that after I installed Harbinger, my sound drivers tweaked out. The next time I went to play normal music, it sounded very reverberated and all screwed up. Reinstalling my sound drivers resolved the problem. I’m still curious if it was Harbinger that caused this, as it was the only thing I’ve installed recently and the problem occurred right at the same time I started playing the game. This is just something to keep an eye on, folks. Despite the fact that most games now-a-days employ fancy 3D polygon graphics, Harbinger does OK in this department with the isometric view. The system requirements are lower than most games so you won't need a monster PC to play. Everything is pretty sharp and crisp. The level of detail is sufficient and I have no legitimate complaints. It reminds of a lot of a sharpened up version of Fallout Tactics. There aren’t any annoying sound tracks and the weapon effects sound all right. No real complaints in that department either. Thankfully, I wasn’t subjected to any sort of catchy, stupid tune that gets stuck in your head like so many other games have.

The most unforgivable fault of Harbinger is the lack of multiplayer support. It’s rare that games like this don’t have a multiplayer option. In Harbingers case, it may have been because of a rush job to get the game out the door. This theory is supplemented by the fact that when you insert the CD into the drive, it starts the install process, regardless of the game already being installed! There are also a few bugs with the initial release, most of which have been patched already. All in all, for a budget title (and a budget price tag), Harbinger is a decent game if your into the Diablo style of gameplay, especially in a sci-fi setting. I won’t say it’s relatively deep, or the story is engrossing because it really isn’t. If all you desire is hack-n-slash robot, with simplistic gameplay and no multiplayer support, then give it a go.