Knightmare.com

Bonjour toute personne, bonne annee!

Theres my french out the way, time to get down to business... Just downloaded and watched the sample episode, its pretty good, but IMO not as good as our original. If you see how quickly the first team member dies theres not really any emphasis on survival because they can always replace the dungeoneer with another person... Our version needs skill and not luck to get across the rooms...

I like the opening credits to the show, and the team all entering at once (Series 8 ). Apart from that though, i dont like the sitting in the chair to get into the dungeon or the standing on the balcony -

Was nice to watch to see what went on, but id choose Knightmare anyday...

Surprisingly enough, with my long record of hard-to-please cynicism, I found I really enjoyed that (mind you, I was watching it at 3 am). It's like a nicely modified episode from S3, with some great variations of Dave Rowe's best work. The enhanced hand-paintings are far better than the superimposed photos used in S4-7 of KM. I was also impressed with some of the animation, although less so with the colour schemes of some of the outfits.

To my amazement I rather liked the Dungeon Master (although the jury's still out on that pre-quest set piece with the jester  -  but even that's no worse than some of Treguard's exchanges with Pickle), who made up for his excessive niceness with some hectoring energy.

The different rules worked a lot better in practice than I feared when I first read them on the site a couple of years back. The single-episode-per-quest nature and the allowance for up to three dungeoneers in a team does lessen the tension a lot though.

Interestingly, the team kept using English terms for quick commands, like stop or go. Understandable, as it's easier than saying "Allez-vous!" or  "Arretes-toi!" but it suggests that the teams may have watched a few episodes of KM in their time. Good taste.

On the downside, the puzzles weren't all that varied, and the team were a bit daft to lose their first dungeoneer in the first room (but, hey, a certain team in S4 of KM got away with an identical early mistake didn't they? Not the makers' fault).

Overall, well worth a look.

theres not really any emphasis on survival because they can always replace the dungeoneer with another person...

In fact, they can't ALWAYS replace the dungeoneer, but they can do so three times. Remember also that each succeeding dungeoneer will have fewer advisors, potentially making life more difficult.

Also, the reduced finality gives the producers the chance to be harsher with teams who make mistakes  -  Dunstan would have been cut up on the Corridor of Blades, Mark would have fallen to his death when he stepped over the edge of the path in the stained glass room etc, 'cos the quest wouldn't necessarily end there. There were numerous occasions in KM when the producers were clearly reluctant to bring the axe down because that would've been it.

The real problem is that because the quest can't last more than one episode, they're likely to run out of dungeon before they run out of dungeoneers. I suspect that that would be almost as big a problem as it is in Labyrinthe if the KM dungeon were that small.

I should take a look at this...

You certainly should. Need RealPlayer, but even if you haven't got it, it's worth downloading it to see Labyrinthe.

So where I can download this from please, I would love to have a look

Well, naturally enough Nic uploaded it to http://www.Knightmare.com itself last night.

I am downloading it now to take a look at, it sounds very good though.

I watched it last knight and I did somewhat enjoy it. It made me feel somewhat 'homesick half expecting certain things, which I missed including the lifeforce, putting food in the knapsack, spells and levels. But then I think it's because I am so used to watching our version. I did think that the difficulty of the rooms were varied but I think that they were easier that the UK version ones, even though the first dungeoneer died in the first room. They were basically level 1 rooms. The graphics were great with some series 2/3 rooms with a slight twist. Even the 'Block and Tackle' room (with a twist was there). I felt that their dungeon Master helpful than Treguard. I am so glad that the clip included subtitles (are they included or were they added), and so it also helps us learn and or brush up on our french. I also think that it's worth a try on Challenge and has potential in the rating amongst KM fans. I also liked the idea that the team Le Chevalier du Labrinthe tops, which I think may have been a good idea for the team members on our version to wear KM t-shirts.

Challenge should definitely be asked to do Le Chevalier du Labyrinthe and Knightmare- and maybe the Spanish one aswell. Then it could be a non-stop  Euro-Knightmare fest! Is there a Chevalier website- I unfortunately don't know French, but it would be cool just to look at the pictures. How long does it take to download the episode- I guess a long time; downloading just a three minute music-video on my computer takes four hours.

It took my computer about 5 minutes to download it but then again that's through broadband. So it depends whether you are on broadband or not (which I suppose you're not) and what speed modem you are using. I think mine's a 150k modem, but a 1mb modem will be much faster at downloading!

I'm on 56k usually. It took me about 16 minutes to download it.

I found it rather insteresting.  The 'Monster Bash; was an odd puzzle...I feel our version called upon a lot more skill, but just seeing it in another version is...Intresting to say the least.

Enjoyed it an awful lot, would love for it be be shown over here.,...But I personally prefer to keep trying for the remaining UK Knightmare eps to go out before they do!

Well I watched it and liked it, the team lost a dungeoneer in room one which made me laugh a lot, I think it definatly involved less skill than ours puzzle-wise as Kieran said, but as a show it was worth watching.

Well I downloaded it last night and checked it out. I have to say it was very interesting to watch and compare to our version so here are my thoughts

One thing I found which was unique is that when a dungioneer died, another team member came in to replace him and carry on, I wonder if this is actually normal in the series though or they done it because the stupid dungioneer died in he first room and so they thought they would give them another chance?? Certaintly worth a thought

The Rooms - I quite liked the look of some of the rooms, some very nice graphics and good to see some rooms like what we had in the english version with some new twists to them.

The Puzzles - The Puzzles clearly required not much skill whereas compared to the english version, a lot of them required quite a lot of skill and judgement, However I'm not saying it was that bad as there was still quite a bit of balance between easy and hard puzzles, The Monster Ballroom scene was probably the hardest the team had but even that didnt seem incredibly hard, The show also seem to suggest if they answered all the questions for riddles wrong, they would die there and then which I think is a better solution compared to the UK Knightmare as if a team done bad in the questions on our version, they could still continue but would just die later because they didnt have the information/items needed.

Dungion Master - I think he was quite good, He was very helpful to the team and always telling them what to do and always really got involved in the adventure, Nice to see.

Main Differences - So it seems to suggest all quests fit into 1 episode, again this is quite unique and certaintly gives all the teams a much better chance of winning and fits more teams into each series but does this make it incredibly easy for the teams to win?? Lets say that second dungioneer died, would they have still been given another chance or would that have been it after 2 goes, seems to me if they had been given yet another chance if a second dungioneer died, then surely teams would find it literally impossible to actually lose.

No Lifeforce either I see, but prehaps they feel if all quests are in 1 episode, It is simply not needed as it would rather be pointless for just a handful of rooms to complete

Overall Opinion - Very enjoyable to watch and certaintly interesting to finally see the chances to their version compared to ours, However I have to say I think I prefer our version better though, there is just a much better variety of everything and quests are much longer too to actually enjoy them better. Of course I'm really only saying this as I'm just so used to seeing/enjoying our version, but no dought if more episodes were to surface on the net, I may get used to seeing it and likeing it a lot more