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The graphics are not exactly revolutionary, BW3 runs on terminal reality’s nocturne engine. Basically you will see 3D models moving around in 2D space, 2D as in perspectively static. Models look appealing but lifeless; there is no lip-syncing, not even in the cinematic scene. There are some nice effects and lighting but that’s as far as it goes. Beside the characters being 3D models, BW3 looks no different from role-playing games of years previous.

The AI is interesting beside the minions or zombies there are a few bosses who exhibit different levels and form of intelligence. The minions have pretty much one instruction and that would be “walk towards human, eat brains”. The bosses on the other hand, are quite intelligent, it is obvious that Ritual worked hard to make these enemies challenging and for the most part they have done a good job. One small detail that I noticed, though minor, is still distracting is when the characters enter cinematic scenes. Because the cinematics are not pre-rendered, scenes transition from gameplay to movie mode. If your player is in a strange location the computer attempts to bring the actor to his correct location for the scene. What ends up happening though is while a serious scene is elaborating around you, your character is spinning in circles trying to locate its spot. A minor detail but something that shows carelessness.

The installation was something that really bothered me. You were required to install 1 gig of files to your hard drive. Also on top of the immense space the game consumed BW3 requires a minimum of 64 megs of ram to even run, and that is still sometimes not enough. Don’t be surprised if you receive a warning message before the game loads. Even on the most current hardware the load times are a little too long and the game itself seemed to be a bit unstable. Getting Thrown out of the game every once and a while really became annoying, especially when you forget to save a crucial part of the game.

BW3 was definitely better than I was expecting, it’s pretty scary sometimes. The odd shadow in the corner or attack from the undead may cause you to jump. Also the voice of the devil himself is guarantied to send shivers down your spine. Ritual is a strong team of developers but unfortunately the love wasn’t there. Because this title is based on such a gimmicky, flash in the pan movie it is obvious that Ritual didn’t have the drive to make the game exceptional, and of course, I don’t blame them.

Overall Score: 70%