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Genre: Role-playing game

Format: CD

Developer: Bioware

Mac Publisher: MacSoft

Minimum System Requirements: Full version of Neverwinter Nights, Mac OSX v10.2.8, 450MHz G4, 256MB RAM, video card with 32MB (NVIDIA GeForce 2/ATI Radeon recommended), 1.2GB free hard drive space, 8X CD-ROM drive,
local area network with TCP/IP protocol or established internet connection for multiplayer (56 Kbps modem or faster required).

Review Computers: 800MHz 15" iMac, 256MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX, Mac OS X v10.3.5

Network Feature: Yes

Price: $29.99

ESRB Rating: Teen (blood, violence)

Availability: Now

Official Website: nwn.bioware.com/shadows/

As an expansion pack for the hugely successful Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide will, no doubt, suffer by comparison on several points, starting with its name.

"Shadows," okay, that's good. Makes the game sound dark, possibly dangerous. All right. "Of," fine, fine, there's something casting a shadow, which is both threatening and logical. Good attributes for a computer game. "Shadows of." I like the way this game is shaping up, and I haven't even opened the box! Now what's this third word here..."Undrentide." Undrentide? What the heck is an "Undrentide?" "Tide," I understand, but I don't think "Undren" is even a word, although it is how people in my home town will tell you how to look beneath something. Undren thar.

In Neverwinter Nights, you played a lone hero on a quest to save the world in a richly detailed, nuanced world, interacting with sophisticated non-player characters, and struggling to discover the best way to act in a morally complex story with a plethora of side adventures and gigantic territories to explore.

Shadows of Undrentide (SoU) is kind of like that. Kind of. Oh, don't get me wrong. It's certainly fun enough to play, and it's got the great NWN engine underneath it. Plus, it adds a bunch of new rules and character development possibilities. But this expansion pack doesn't really expand on the original game all that much.

The story: You have gone to school to become a dungeon adventurer. Must be a Montessori. Of course, just as you're getting ready to graduate, the school is attacked, valuable objects are stolen, so you and you alone are sent out to recover them. Sound familiar? It should, as it was cribbed directly from Neverwinter Nights. Seriously. Adventurer schools, take note: spend less money on crepe paper and more on security for your graduation ceremonies.

So, the plot's as familiar as an old slipper: recover the artifacts, and along the way discover the Secret Force behind the attacks, and their nefarious scheme, etc. etc.

The problem with SoU is that, unlike NWN, it doesn't really bring anything new to the game in terms of depth, either. The latter game was simply breathtaking in terms of its scope (one of the few games on multiple CDs that felt like it deserved it). Also, the level of interaction with the PCs was richly nuanced, giving NWN a sense of urgency, a need to save these "people," that SoU is missing. Most of the game is combat, side quests are few and simple with easy solutions (to the few that don't involve killing). In this regards, in terms of a breakthrough role-playing experience, SoU actually feels like half a step back from games like NWN and Baldur's Gate.

A few other issues: when you travel with a companion (a computer-controlled player who aids you in combat), they'll still do very stupid things, like chase a fleeing enemy down a hall (right into an ambush). If you come across two traps at once (marked, once you discover them, on the floor in red), your companion can become confused about which one to disarm first, walking across one to get to the other. Also, you have the option of starting the game with a new character, or importing one from NWN. Starting with a new character, magical items for combat (i.e. swords) were rare. Kind of a pain for a game that focuses so much on combat. The game crashed twice during a solid week of gameplay, but was otherwise stable.

Yet, I'm still going to recommend this game for those who own NWN. For one thing, while the story may be hackneyed, some of the locations in which the story is set are striking: an elven tomb that's not as quiet as it should be, a lost desert city protected by golems. You can make a deal with a dragon (and come up with a unique way of reneging), and enter a kobold cave where they have the single most unique method of opening a door ever invented.

Plus, it's running off that great NWN engine, which does wonderful things like, you know, having people actually dodge when they're not hit by a weapon. Or having accurate representations of your armor and weapons when your character puts them on. And a decent expansion to Neverwinter Nights is still ten times better than most games out there. But if you're looking for more Neverwinter Nights from this expansion, what you're going to get is sort of a synopsis of Neverwinter Nights, a taste of the themes and depth of roleplay that made the original so good.

But, in its favor, SoU also contains no Nazis. Granted, it's set in a fantastic medieval world of magic and dragons, but if you follow computer gaming at all, you know that this is no guarantee of a Nazi-free enemy force. In addition to the fact that Shadows of Undrentide is a fun-to-play diversion, and an expansion to an incredible game, I urge you to purchase it simply to support game designers who take a chance and produce something that doesn't rely on transferred anger. Or bio-zombies crashing through windows.

Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.