Dungeon Siege is the latest creation from Chris Taylor and the newly formed Gas Powered Games. In fact, DS is the first game from the Microsoft-invested game studio. Dungeon Siege tries really hard to bring something more to the table than your standard hack and slash, item-collecting fest, but in the end that is really all it is. Not to say you won’t have fun in between, because, and you may quote me, Dungeon Siege may just be one of the best games of the year. And it’s only May.

Starting off as a humble farmer, of your design and name using the game’s built-in character editor, you are given your first quest by your dying friend, Norick, who has been struck down by the Krug (an seemingly dumb race of neanderthals that some how manage to develop necromancy and other magic skills). After Norick delivers his quest to you, you set out on your mission to bring peace back to the land of Ehb. Starting off as a lone ranger with nothing more than a hunting knife, you will eventually come to number up to eight adventuring travelers and have access to hundreds upon hundreds of items, imbued or not.

This is where half of the fun of Dungeon Siege comes into play. You have the opportunity to collect so much, and advance your characters equally. As I stated before in my review of Throne of Darkness, the micromanagement required to distribute the items isn’t anywhere as bad. Dungeon Siege allows for you to have all of your characters selected at once, so when you click on an enemy, they all respond to destroy them. This leads to an equal amount of distribution of experience, something that plagued Throne. This also alleviates the need to spread the items to the other members of your group mainly because the closest character to the item — who has enough room in their inventory — will pick up the item. The only hard part is when you have more than five characters and choose to see their entire inventory at once. The icon windows become so small they are almost impossible to see.

This, as well as your ever filling inventory, can be solved buy purchasing a pack-mule (which counts as one of your eight controllable characters). The mule is just what it refers to; much like mule characters in Asheron’s Call and EverQuest, the mule’s sole purpose is to carry items that you would like to keep but don’t want to keep on your playable characters so as to leave room for more worthy items. This character is not by any means required. I managed to get almost three-fours through the game before I ran into some inventory problems.

The real advantage to Dungeon Siege over Diablo II (see I’m starting it now) is the fact that DS is entirely in 3D. From the farmlands set ablaze by the Krug to the depths of the mysterious northern ice caves, Dungeon Siege’s world is boom with life and danger to destroy you. With clever use of fogging techniques, water effects, particle effects and environmental manipulation the world of Ehb comes to be with vibrant colors and amazing sound.

Not all is safe in the Kingdom of Ehb. A variety of monsters lurk in the dungeons, as well as different wild animals. Anything from bears to wolves and giant mutated scorpions to not so giant mutated Krug dogs — there is a wide variety of monsters and enemies for your characters to battle with. You will even run into some human opponents along the way, such as a band of raiders in the latter part of the game. With the different races of characters, each has different sects. Krug range from lowly 8 HP run of the mill monsters to super powered commanders with magical powers.

The only problem with Dungeon Siege is the linear standard of gameplay. There are side quests and side dungeons to explore and collect the magical items that are hidden within, but when all is said and done, you further the story and progress through the chapters by following the game’s arc. Not all quests need completion — in fact, you could blow through the entire game without undertaking any of them — but you will miss out on some of the higher rated items and the valuable experience you would have gained.

So is there a way to reinvent the hack and slash that Diablo made famous by making us purchase a new mouse ever couple of months after long sessions on Battle.Net? Maybe reinvent is too strong of a word in this circumstance, but whatever Dungeon Siege does to the genre, it does it well and should be enjoyed by all. If you can stand a purely linear game that offers you the chance to collect hundreds of items and control a mule then DS is right up your gaming alley, if not you are missing out on one of the few games that can offer you so much fun in such a little box (and it did come in one of those tiny, tiny boxes too).