Nethack Review

By CosmicGerbil


The object of the game is to find the mysterious Amulet of Yendor and escape with it from the Dungeons of Doom.

There are five races to choose from in NetHack: humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and orcs. There are some really interesting classes, such as archaeologist, caveman (or cavewoman) and tourist (think Discworld). The only annoying thing is you can't be a generic warrior. You can be a barbarian or a knight, but not a normal warrior.


Gameplay

You explore dungeons, going lower and lower in search of the amulet. You will find lots of treasures and objects and also encounter lots of monsters, including elementals, dragons, orcs, golems and trolls. Depending on your race and alignment, some monsters will be neutral towards you, but most of them will try to kill you.

However, NetHack is quite a difficult game. Even in explore mode I have never been able to win; the deepest in the dungeon I have got is level 34.

However this is just a small complaint, because there is so much to do in NetHack, that you will become addicted quickly. Some of the coolest features include: riding dragons, polymorphing objects, taming monsters to be your pets, magical horns and cornuthaums and oh yes, if you find a wand of wishing, try wishing for the Amulet of Yendor and see what happens…

Graphics

There are three graphics modes available in NetHack: traditional ASCII mode, 16*16 tiles and 32*32 tiles. The 32*32 tiles in NetHack are mega cute...some of the monsters look so sweet, you just want to charm them as soon as possible.


Sound N/A

Stability

NetHack is a stable game. It has never crashed on me.


Controls


You control your character by using the keyboard. There are lots of different commands to learn, but there are menus to help you.


Appropriateness


There is lots of killing in NetHack, but you don’t see any blood. The corpses do not look realistic and if you don’t like them, you can play in ASCII mode.

There are very mild sexual references with a couple of the monsters and if you play in 32*32 graphics mode, one monster is naked but you cannot see anything inappropriate because the monster has long hair.

NetHack contains harmless, fantasy based magic.

NetHack contains good moral lessons. There are class based quests where you have to save your friends from evil. NetHack encourages kindness to animals, as in caring for your pets well. Also you are discouraged from killing creatures that are neutral or friendly towards you.

Conclusion

NetHack is one of the most original and coolest roguelike games ever written. It is very playable, with so many things to do and new things to discover, that it will keep you playing for months.