It hasn't happened in a while, but we're about to play a game I've never heard of in my life up until this point. I guess you could say I've only ever heard of it as a... myth...
What happens when you take a real-time strategy game, strip out the resource gathering rubbish, slap in some fantasy warriors of all sizes and shapes, and plonk it inside a 3D world that soon fills up with many, many bloody remnants of the combatants?
The answer is Myth: The Fallen Lords.
Frustration
Myth: The Fallen Lords comes from the same brains behind previous entry Marathon Infinity and future entries damn near everything with 'Halo' in the title. Each of these series of games is rather diverse from the other, so it's admirable that so many genres can come out of the same place as not only successes, but 1001 Must Play successes.
What's not so great is that these days, Myth - for whatever reason - doesn't play too nicely with modern operating systems. That probably includes modern operating systems from the time of the 1001 book publishing too, because the game has spawned a strong enough fanbase to have been remade, map for map, inside of Myth II: Soulblighter by avid fans wanting to play a stable version of the game.
Naturally, I don't have that luxury, but I do have a demo for Myth from the Internet Archive, and so I got going with the tutorial.
Fun Times
Most of your time with Myth is spent manipulating the camera, swooping this way and that over the battlefield, zooming into the carnage and back out of it to give a slightly bigger but still not big enough picture of the proceedings.
Those proceedings are war of some kind. It's fantasy themed, and your honourable Legion are defenders of what is good and right against forces that most definitely aren't. It's clichéd when you simplify it, but there's plenty of flavour to dive into should you want to, as the levels are recalled by a journal of one of the soldiers.
This war is fought not with grand armies and military might, but with real-time tactics and on-the-fly planning. Each map comes with a different scenario that pits you against an invading enemy, and you'll only have a handful of troops to order around.
These guys are your standard sword and shield blokes, and they, like the rest of your forces, can be put into various formations as and when situations require. Select your units, click on a target and away they go, into a kill or be killed fight.
I was playing the demo on Normal difficulty, with two easier settings and two harder settings. Let's just say that normally, this game is punishing, and demands you respect the 'tactics' element of the genre, lest you end up as a meaty red stain on the landscape.
There are lots of meaty red stains in this game, especially if your dwarves - naturally armed with Molotov cocktails - are allowed to have some fun. This chap here found the centre of his target and absolutely destroyed the oppositions forces. It's a shame he didn't get more of them, however, as they then latched onto him, chasing him down until he could blow up no more - apart from one suicidal cocktail at the end.
It was at this point, the announcer spamming 'Casualty' again and again, that I knew Myth was not my kind of game, but that I was enjoying it thoroughly for the stories I could get out of it.
Somewhere in that mess of an image is a dead dwarf, and he was killed by a Molotov of the only other dwarf I had among my troops. It was friendly fire, with one of those words being literal.
I was gutted. I had high hopes that I could hide behind the massive rock in the middle of the level, wait for the enemy to draw near, then flank them with my barbarians and dwarves for one hell of a backstab.
Instead, I probably panicked, jumped the gun, sent my troops out with no real plan and watched them all die. Or mostly all die. There was one archer who didn't - not before running away at least.
Final Word
My record with Myth is abysmal. My tactics are none existent. It gives me hope for the likes of Total War when I get round to it. But damn, was it entertaining.
It was a little fiddly to control the camera as you would like it, but keys can be remapped and practice makes perfect. My main problem was that rushing into a fight is most definitely not the way to win. I need to channel Sun Tsu a little more and think as much, or more so than I act.
With fan-created custom maps and a few sequels to play too, you could spend a lot of time with this series, but the difficulty may put some players right off. It's tricky to balance gameplay against player competence, but if that was normal AI behaviour, I think I'll try dropping the difficulty a little next time.
I think there will be a next time. I don't know how big the demo is, but I'm sure I only stopped because I was slaughtered. It's disheartening to lose in such a fashion, but as I say, if you get a good story out of it, then bring it on.
Myth: The Fallen Lords is one of those forgotten titles that really does offer a good time, and is, at last, another game that I'm aware of and can actually make comments about. Not very useful ones, but we've all got opinions, eh?
Fun Facts
The plan was to make another first-person shooter until Quake loomed into view. The idea was shelved and another picked up, and Myth was the end result.
Myth: The Fallen Lords, developed by Bungie, first released in 1997.
Version played: Myth: The Fallen Lords Demo, PC, 1997.