Dungeon Diving

John Carmack is a living legend in the gaming industry. He pioneered the First Person Shooter genre with engines for seminal games such as Wolfenstein 3D and Doom with id Software. Carmack has recently moved to making games for mobiles and Orcs & Elves represents the second offering from his own Fountainhead Entertainment and id Software's first intellectual property since 1996's Quake.

Orcs & Elves is a mobile port and this fact doesn't initially bode well for a DS game. But when you hear that it's been developed by John Carmack, there becomes a reason to prick up your ears, especially considering their first mobile game Doom RPG was surprisingly decent. However, inevitably what is surprisingly innovative game for a mobile format becomes rather underwhelming when ported to the DS.

Immediately when playing Orcs & Elves you'll feel a huge wave of nostalgia washing over you. Anyone that ever played dungeon crawlers like Might and Magic or Eye of the Beholder will be right at home here, with twisting torch-lit corridors and strong colour schemes or red, blue, purple and green.

The DS version displays its capabilities with cut scenes that showcase 3D animations of spiral staircases and 3D text. However, when you're dumped into the game, you're limited to moving in a turn-based format, moving forward or backward one-square at a time on a virtual grid and only able to turn in a 90 degree arc. In a mobile game, this wouldn't be so much of a problem; you don't expect more, but when you've just been shown a few decent cut scenes, this is like rubbing your face in it. Animations are choppy and basic, but the graphics are bright and entertaining.

The story has you playing a half-elf, investigating the Dwarven stronghold of Zharrkarag where everyone's been mysteriously killed. “Investigating” is a rather loose term though as most of the story will have you talking to the ghost of a recently departed Dwarf and then killing everything in sight whilst searching for the colour coded door combination that unlocks a deeper part of the castle.