At times we all wish we could be someone else. Whether it's through envy or awe, maybe to add a little ka-blamm to the conjugal bed or even just out of sheer escapism, we all indulge in a little role-play every now and then. It's a basic human need to place ourselves in someone else's shoes just for a couple of minutes a week and let our secret alter-egos go wild in the playground of imagination. This, of course, is the main appeal of the RPG; these games allow us to sink into another world and immerse ourselves in the make-believe 'life' of a self-created avatar, affording us the opportunity to be someone else just for a few hours at a time and escape the humdrum grind of life in the Real World. Unfortunately, due to said appeal, we now live in a world inhabited by literally hundreds of RPGs and, by a strange twist of fate, every single one is attempting to be something other than it is - unique.

Silverfall, the new action RPG from developers Monte Cristo, tries very hard to make itself stand out in a crowded genre. The problem is it couldn't have tried much harder without strapping on a day-glow orange Wonderbra and singing Sinatra's My Way at the front door of every die-hard RPG fan out there. The problem is that no matter what you call it, a rose by any other name is never going to be anything other than a rose.

The game is set in the magical kingdom of Nelwë (whose name wins the prize for Most Pointless Use Of An Ümlaut Ever), which is split in twain by the warring forces of Science and Nature. Threatened by the Order of Nothingness (no, really), the world prepares to undergo a test that could see it torn apart by the fallout of this terrible conflict. But wait! Could this be a hero on the misty horizon? A young, untried and unskilled nobody who will somehow become the deadliest warrior who ever lived just by continuously smacking the daylights out of wave after wave of off-the-peg Tolkien cast-offs? Of course it is, or it wouldn't be an RPG, would it?

Said hero, as you've already guessed, is you. You pick your character from a choice of four races, three of which are RPG stalwarts - the Humans, Elves and Trolls. The fourth, however, is a sneaky attempt at originality. Monte Cristo let you play as - wait for it - a goblin! It's original and yet, at the same time, not. You pick the sex of your character, as is the industry standard these days, as well as the usual hairstyle and colour combination and then you're off to save the world, one random quest at a time.

Where Silverfall stalls almost straight away, is in its belief that people are won't spot that calling mana 'power' and health 'life' is not originality. Putting a coat of red paint on a blue car is only changing its appearance and the same goes for videogames. Anyone who's played their fare share of RPGs will recognise every gimmick the game uses, even the main gameplay choice between Science and Nature, which feels like another way of choosing between good and evil. Basically the premise is that if you perform side quests that lean towards Science then your loyalty (represented by a slide bar on the attribute screen) will tip that way and you can use technology to your advantage, add guns to your arsenal and recruit mechanical companions. If you work for the agents of Nature, however, you can use the environment to thwart your foes and - eventually - morph into a beast. The main downside of this shifting loyalty dynamic is that at the beginning of the game it's easy to swing either way at the drop of a quest and items you acquired that can only be used by characters of one leaning are suddenly useless to you. It can get frustrating and expensive early on.

Thankfully, your choices influence more than just your wardrobe; they also have an impact on the world around you, in the quests you can receive and the aid you can expect in the form of your companions. These are AI controlled party members that are recruited by completing various quests and being of the correct persuasion in the great Science or Nature debate. Once you've won them over they fight beside you to the death for the duration of the game and can really make a difference to how you play. You can take two with you at a time (with any others you've met waiting in the nearest village) and it's best to choose characters that compliment your own in-game personification. For example, if you're the type who likes to tank like a maniac then you may want to take a healer and an archer with you, or if you're a spell caster you might prefer a heavy-set swordsman to soak up the damage in your stead. Whichever way you play, once again these characters are just another coat of paint on a familiar vehicle.

Other RPGs have done the party system much better (Baldur's Gate and Dungeon Siege to name two) and the lack of any direct control over your companions can be frustrating. Sure, you can dress them up in whatever they're allowed to wear and your actions influence their alignment, but the only control you really get is telling them to defend or attack by way of out-of-combat conversation, when what you really want is some kind of quick-key to control the action mid-combat. Couple this with the superior manner in which your character addresses them and it makes your companions feel more like automated slaves than loyal sword-brothers.

The combat could be smoother too; although you can assign actions to hot keys, pressing the key won't actually perform the manoeuvre - you have to push the hot-key then right-click on the desired target. During a real-time fight with three or more enemies hacking at your delicates this can waste valuable seconds and lead to frustration and death, which while a drag in real life is an absolute headache in Silverfall. Not only does death rob you of your equipped outfit but it also returns you to the town you're currently bound to and leaves the aforementioned outfit at the place you died, meaning that unless you keep a spare set of equipment on you then you're often forced to make a long run back to your gravestone in nothing but your skimpies. The solution to this is to buy Life Insurance from a goblin banker in the town, meaning that when you snuff it you're reincarnated in town with your outfit intact. But this costs money and even after your fully equipped resurrection it's still an exhausting jaunt back to where you were.

This might sound like it's all negative but it's a sad fact that Silverfall stumbles more often than it soars. For example, the omission of the industry-standard class system initially seems like a good thing - no restraints to stunt your character development, no strict rules to live and play by and a more freeform way forward. On closer inspection however, cracks are visible in the façade. With no restrictions, the ability to generalise becomes too hard to resist and it takes self-discipline to mould a champion archer, powerful mage or lethal swordsman when it's simpler just to lob your skill points into a general selection of talents. Even if you do make a choice you don't like, you can always buy all your skill points back from a Wise Man and reallocate them without so much as the threat of consequence, meaning that no choices are ever permanent, making it possible to see a lot of the game in just one run through, severely hamstringing the replay value. There's also little but personal choice to stop you from dual-wielding weapons or using bows from the outset, which are often saved as rewards in other games.

But is it all bad? No, not really. Technically speaking there are a lot of flaws in the gameplay and nearly every original idea is simply a slightly different version of what we've seen before, but at least it's not a complete rehash of some other game - Silverfall tries to be different. Graphically it's nice-looking, if not as groundbreaking as the developers may have hoped. The light and shadow effects add a level of detail to the surroundings that bring an extra edge to the otherwise flat atmosphere, but the characters are brightly-lit, almost as though cel-shaded and appear super-imposed onto the landscape, making them stand out rather than seem like part of a living world. The sound, too, does little for the atmosphere; the effects are the usual wind, rain and birdsong affair, the musical score could have been lifted from any fantasy adventure and what little spoken dialogue is present is delivered competently - though not fantastically - by the actors.

Online gaming is available in Silverfall with players able to indulge in co-operative play or PvP (Player versus Player) combat. To be honest there's little here to keep even a dedicated online gamer coming back, even with no fees to pay. While not really suffering from any lag or slowdown, it still fails to deliver anything near to the experience of an MMORPG like World of Warcraft or Guild Wars, games you should really stick to if you want an online RPG experience.

So, a fundamentally flawed yet charming creation, Silverfall is an enjoyable enough RPG that tries so hard at times to be unique that the efforts of the developers really have to be called valiant. Unfortunately for them, it's not the little things that need addressing in the genre but rather the broader picture. If developers want to produce something truly new then it'll take a big risk, much like we saw a few years back with the emergence of Fable. I that fear newcomers to the genre won't find Silverfall accessible enough, while genre-fans will be expecting a bit more bang for their buck. RPGs are, frankly speaking, a niche market and like any well-established niche market, developers will always find themselves preaching to the converted when it comes to selling the product. We - that is, us RPG fans out here - already know we like the genre, so don't sell that, sell the game itself, sell us something new. We're a snobbish bunch at the best of times and we'll always see through any attempts to hide unoriginality behind a translucent sheet of half-spun ideas and lazy name changing.

There's nothing tragically wrong with Silverfall, but nothing incredible about it either. If it's escapism you want, a way to immerse yourself in another world and let the cares and worries of real life drift away, then perhaps Silverfall will be found wanting. However, if you're looking for an enjoyable hack-and-slash epic to relieve a little tension running quests for idle NPCs and nailing Zombie Trolls with a 90lb Mechanical Warhammer for an ultimately fairly hollow reward then this may just be the game you're looking for.

Reviewed by Mick Fraser for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).