The Wheel of Time

aka: A Roda do Tempo, La Roue du Temps
Moby ID: 637
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Description official descriptions

For thousands of years the Dark One has been trapped, but now the four seals keeping him imprisoned have been lost. Four organization of opposing beliefs and principles were searching for these seals. The Aes Sedai sisterhood managed to recover three, but one of them was stolen, allegedly by members of a sect within their organization that worshipped the Dark One. Elayna Sedai, Keeper of the Chronicles of the White Tower, has been promoted to the leader of Aes Sedai, and must retrieve the lost seal at all costs.

The Wheel of Time is a fantasy-themed 3D shooter based on the novel series of the same name by Robert Jordan. Combat is ranged, but the player character doesn't use any weapons and instead relies on artifacts called "ter'angreal". There are 40 types of ter'angreal in the game, which can be used for offensive as well as defensive purposes, e.g. shoot lightning and fireball, heal or hide the protagonist in a cloak, etc.

There are three multiplayer game modes - Arena is a straight-ahead FPS type challenge, whilst Citadel and Team include the game's strategic elements.

Spellings

  • ウィール・オブ・タイム - Japanese spelling
  • 时空之轮 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

93 People (90 developers, 3 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 81% (based on 30 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 26 ratings with 3 reviews)

Recover the stolen seals through strategy and brute force.

The Good
Exquisite graphics and details make for a truly immersive game-you see and hear what your character would in almost frightening detail. The game was also very true to its' parent novels world, and is a lot of fum to play and explore.

The Bad
The controls were difficult in that there are forty artifacts which, in single player mode at least, are very cumbersome to access quickly. Add-ons and patches from the website help alleviate this. Also, the single player mode has a very anti-climatic finish-it's easier at the end than at the beginning, and the final death of your character's arch nemesis is not played by the gamer,but is resolved through a video scene automatically run at the end of the game! Perhaps the multi-player version is better-please respond if you've played!

The Bottom Line
Excellent graphics and details, and, up until the end of the single player game, an overall satisfying and challenging game. Great for people who want to play a first person shoot-em-up with a heavy dose of strategic thinking required.

Windows · by Lisa Wiklund (11) · 2000

Very refreshing shooter with a story (90/100)

The Good
This game was excellent. The graphics are top notch and moody. The soundtrack is kind of a mix of "medieval" with "new agish", but it does fit the atmosphere and I found myself wanting to listen again to some of the tracks. Voice acting is quite good, too, and the story is entertaining and well told (a world well set helps a lot with the background, I suppose). But the awards really go to gameplay and level design.

Level design seems to depict "real" places instead of "random arenas", but without ever getting you lost. Some levels are quite memorable (Shadar Logoth's creepy monsters and simple but moody soundtrack; the White Tower heights; the Black Wind levels are really creepy). Also, while most of the time you do just kill monsters to keep going, some levels are about defending places instead -- a very nice change of pace in an action game.

As gameplay goes, we are given 40 spells to try out and they do feel different from each other. While some of them do work as "guns" (dart, fireball, seeker, etc.), some others have interesting defensive and strategic uses (reflect, swap places, detect traps, etc.). Once you are through with the game, you will realize that you will have used all spells in different parts of the game. While I have only played the single-player campaign, this huge number of useful options suggests that multi-player must be a blast.

And finally, it is refreshing to play a woman character in an action game that is NOT half-naked NOR "cold as steel" (though there are plenty of fairly visible big bosoms for some other characters). :)

The Bad
The cutscenes' graphics are well drawn, with good dialogue and acting, but the physics of the models used in them is just horrible. Female characters have hair that looks like hard plastic; paper letters look like they are made of hard plastic; clothes often behave like hard plastic; the big bosoms I mentioned before... well, you get the idea. While I do appreciate the difficulty of making good physical models for cutscenes, these defects can be a bit distracting at times.

Some people might be put off by the fact that this is a HARD action game, while hardcore action gamers might be put off by the fact that there is a "slow" story unfolding and the main character is not a cigar-chewing Arnold Schwarzenegger look-alike. I particularly did not mind this first fact, and ENJOYED the second one for a change.

The Bottom Line
"Unreal" gameplay meets a "The Longest Journey" story. A very enjoyable game.

Windows · by Thexder0 (1931) · 2002

It's not bad

The Good
It's a pleasant change from the norm to play a FPS that involves magic rather than guns, and that's more or less the idea of this game. You have around forty spells to your disposal that fall into eight different catagories (attacks, shields, traps, etc.), and sooner or later, you will have used every one (or at least wish you had!)

The game uses the Unreal engine, and it works very well with the game. The graphics are quite good, and the textures are varied and numerous. Despite being on an (by today's standards) average machine, the game ran smooth as silk on higher detail/resolutions. Many levels - particularly the first level, the ancient destroyed city - are very eerie, complete with ghostly "worms" seeping out from the wall hissing at you as they chase you down the corridor. The audio - particularly of these types of levels - are very well done. The music score is very fitting, and the sounds that fill the battles sound very sincere. The monsters look nice (if you have time to get a good look before they're hacking away at you), and many of the structures both indoor and outside are very beautiful. Often times it's difficult to tell if the background mountains are polygon based or just the background render (that is to say, the backgrounds look very good.) There are plenty of non-static objects lying about that you can kick around with your spells, and dead soldiers often drop their weapons and shields, which detail the damage you had inflicted upon them.

The ability to use forty-or-so spells to defeat your foe gives you many a chance for some strategic thinking. Unlike nearly every FPS game, the run-and-gun method won't always work, and you'll have to resort to using that big wrinkly thing in your skull. Do you try and blow the monster away with fireballs before he can reach you, or do you set up traps and try and lure him into it? Do you want to risk trying to get away to a safer spot, or fight the enemy head on. Most (if not all) monsters are faster than you, so running isn't really an option, and they'll leap out of the way of your spells while others will either use a spell or their shield to reflect your attack right back at you.

Though most levels are your standard "run around, get the key, find the exit" cliche'd FPS level, some levels were very unique, both to the game and the FPS genre. Some levels allowed you to fight along allies, others even let you set up your own defensive perimeter, complete with traps, walls, and soldiers.

The cinematics are very lengthy, (no unecesarry split-second eye candy cutscenes) and the voice overs are done very well. The discussions between the characters in the cinematics fill you in on what lead up to where you are now and what you must do next, and if you miss that, thorough instructions are available at the start of the level.

The Bad
A parade of bugs and just plain bad programming and design kept me from enjoying this game to its full potential. While the levels look very nice, it's not hard to spot a "hall of mirrors" bug, if you look hard enough, and many levels allow you to reach areas that were never intended to be reached (which usually result in falling into a dark void in which you have to load back - don't save in there!) Many walls are too steep for you to climb, but a simple running jump can send you soaring to the clouds, like some Matrix up-the-wall jump. A few times I ran into strange invisible walls that neither allowed me to walk through nor fire spells through (and shooting a fireball into an invisible wall while standing next to it doesn't do you much good.)

The AI is awful. Once the monster sees you, his only desire is to destroy you at all costs...or at least, until he loses interest. Many (but not all) times, running behind a wall would cause the monster to stop chasing you and return to its guard post, allowing you to strike again without warning.

At first, you feel you have to conserve your spells, as only a few spells have infinite use, but if you take advantage of the sheer amounts of bugs in the game, the game is quite easy. Many, many, many times monsters would suddenly simply freeze in place, or in mid-air, and no longer be able to attack you or even care, and you can just whack at him with your air attack (which has infinite use) without worrying about a retaliation.

Many times, when you kill a human soldier, he'll drop his sword or shield, but you can't do anything more with it than kick it around with your air attack. Many times, you'll enter an armory, with shields and swords and crossbows are hanging up ready for use, but once again you can't do anything with it. Even if you are a witch and haven't the slightest clue how to use a sword, crossbow, or shield, I'd rather take my chances with that than resorting to your only inifite-use attack, your air spell, which roughly has the same effect on the enemy as blowing really hard at him through a straw.

There are a few bosses, which appear quite difficult to defeat at first, until for one reason or another, the boss simply stops attacking you, which completely takes the fun out of a strategic battle against a difficult boss, and the final boss is almost not a boss at all.

While the textures are varied and numerous, many of them seem very, very flat and dull. Much of the ground, particularly the walkways, seem to be just one dull shaded color. Fortunately, there are many polygonal objects scattered about the landscape that help distract you from it.

The cinematics aren't that great. The animation is bad, and the voices are greatly out of sync with the peoples' mouths. It looks as though it were rendered in-game, but they're not. In my opinion, they would have looked much better if they had been rendered in game. They're very long and often boring, with very change in the camera position and long drawn-out conversations. Often times, I wanted to skip it, but didn't in fear that I might miss something exciting (paying attention to the conversation did enhance the storyline, but since your instructions can be found at the start of the next level, they weren't good for much else.)

The Bottom Line
It's a change from the run-and-gun FPS genre, but the bugs and annoyances that fill the game make it a frustrating unenjoyable adventure - or maybe a cheater's paradise, not having to use cheat codes to clear through the game without much resistance.

Windows · by kbmb (415) · 2002

Trivia

German version

In the German version, all blood and gore effects as well as corpses found in the levels were removed.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 1999 – Action Game of the Year
    • 1999 – Outstanding Graphics Award (together with Nocturne and Quake III: Arena)
  • Power Play
    • Issue 02/2000 – Best Action Game in 1999

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Related Sites +

  • KinslayerMUD
    Another Wheel of Time Game - assume the role of your very own character in the world of Robert Jordan's "The Wheel of Time" series.
  • Planet Wheel of Time
    Page with resources relating to the game.
  • company web site
    Accolades/Infogrames web site of "The Wheel of Time"

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 637
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by robotriot.

Additional contributors: MAT, murlock, Apogee IV, chirinea, Matt Keller, Michael Mason, CaesarZX, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto.

Game added December 31, 1999. Last modified March 14, 2024.