STARSEEKER: Astroneer Expeditions is just that! Massively co-operative and not an MMO! When you first run the game you are instantly into the tutorial...
Sometimes when you are browsing the internet for information on how to do something, you stumble upon ideas or projects or even games that people might be working on...
What a meow-gnificent evening it is to send your paw-rcels out to those family and friends! Are mew looking to pick up an item or send something out? Well at Cat Mail Co. we can send and receive all your deliveries!
Have you ever grown up feeling like you don't belong? For our Heroine, that's the feeling she lives with everyday in her small farming village. But it's not her only secret...
Today we’re looking at what has rapidly become an absolute favorite in the open-world RPG genre for me. An interesting story, memorable NPCs, stunning visuals, and a setting absolutely dripping with flavor, Dread Delusion sets its tone immediately and sticks with it.
I enjoy simulation-type games, and I enjoyed the original release of House Flipper, but I never got around to getting the DLC. When the remastered version of the game was released, I figured it would be the best way to experience the DLC while checking out how the base game was upgraded.
GranBlue Fantasy: ReLink released in 2024 bringing the GranBlue universe to an action adventure JRPG format. With a party of up to four members, this band of skyfarers set out for new skies, adventures, and dangers. Two years later, Endless Ragnarok...
70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a mouthful of a title, but you know what? It’s quite the challenging game to describe as well. At its core, 70s-Style Robot Anime Geppy-X is a shooter...
Net.Attack() is dangerously fun. From thinking that I could dip my toe into the tutorial during a lunch break to having put more hours into the game on my first day with it than I did my full-time job, Net.Attack() smoothly pulled me into a ‘just one more level’ mindset.
No? Oh... well, I do. They're quick, they're concise and if enough people read them, they always lead to some sort of debate/conversation/name-calling...
I think my break from the blog was good for me. Now in my ongoing effort to burn myself out on posting video game thoughts, I figured I would add a few more 'conversational' pieces now and then. Here's my first one. Background: the other day one of my buddies and I were discussing a game we played on the NES, and it got me to think about some of the more surprising moments I ran into while playing NES games.
10. I tried the Contra/Konami code on Lifeforce on a whim - and got 30 lives instead of 3.
9. Kid Icarus was a tough game, combining platforming with adventure/rpg elements. So imagine my surprise when in the last level the entire game play has become a side-scrolling shooter. I had never had a game change its core play that much on me so far along before.
8. Beating Ghosts n Goblins... only to realize I didn't beat what was one of the hardest games I had actually played in my life, and that in fact I had to go through it again to get to the real boss.
7. The hundreds of lives trick in Super Mario Bros. using a turtle and steps. Took me a lot of tries to get it to work, but the goofy symbols for lives was totally worth it.
6. Ending of Super Mario Bros 2 - really? It was a dream...?
5. On the endings theme: I just beat Dracula in Castlevania 2: Simon's quest. I had spent a ton of time scouring over that game, and enjoyed it thoroughly. And now I'm reading the ending and... I died of fatal wounds? I just killed Dracula, and I die anyway?
4. Sticking to endings of games: did you know that at the end of Dragon Warrior, the final boss gives you a choice to join him? Did you know that if you agree, your screen blanks out and your character gets deleted? I didn't know that going into it - I just wanted to see the different ending...
3. River City Ransom. Loved that game. Loved beat 'em ups like Double Dragon as well. So imagine my surprise when I heard the Double Dragon music and Billy and Jimmy came out to fight me! Don't recall ever seeing a cross game item like that previously.
2. Beating Contra on a single life. I know I couldn't do it today, but I had my patterns down to something sick back then...
1. Speaking of beating hard games, I remember Mike Tyson kicking my butt over and over again in Punch Out! But when I finally beat him, he never laid a glove of me.
Honorable Mention: The arcade version of Double Dragon, when my buddy and I finally beat the gang only to realize that now - we had to fight it out for the girl between one another.
Dishonorable Mention: Metroid. I was not an early adopter of the game so I had already long but known that Samus was a woman by the time she took off her helmet and armor - so in a sense even though I loved the game, the ending was sort of ruined for me
I got an email earlier from EA about being eligible to download Mass Effect 2 to my CPU for free since I bought Dragon Age 2. They've got a link for the promotion here. I was an early adopter of Mass Effect 2 (been meaning to post about it and part 1 for awhile now - I will eventually!), but still the idea of being able to toss it on my laptop for some gaming on the go, especially since it's easily one of my favorite games, is a pretty cool little promotion in my opinion. So, I figured I'd share it here.
Thanks to gamers like you, Dragon Age II is off to a great start – breaking the one million mark in less than two weeks and faster than Dragon Age: Origins. We appreciate your support. As a special thank you for helping with the game's early success, BioWare would like to present you with a download code for 2010's Game of the Year, Mass Effect 2 on PC. As always, we sincerely appreciate your support and passion as we remain focused on delivering quality interactive experiences now and in the future. Look for more exciting things coming from Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Star Wars: The Old Republic in the future, including our recent launch of Mass Effect 2 Arrival DLC.
I'm sort of cheating on this one - I don't have Neverwinter Nights anymore. It got lost at some point between moves and changing machines. Good old Games (gog.com) has it for $10 though, and I've been considering picking it up again on principle, but I have too many other games on my backlog to pick that one up right now. So, how is am I going to review this? Well, about 4 years ago I wrote a review on Neverwinter Nights on another site, including a few pictures I had captured at the time. If you want to see the original review, it was on a sight called Gather.
The reason I'm choosing this for my Retro Reflection? Well, for those who have been paying visits to my blog over the last several days, you know I was doing a large Dragon Age blowout. I thoroughly enjoy those games, and they are made by one of my favorite game studios, Bioware. Neverwinter Nights was the first game of theirs I had played, and I can see a lot of parallels between that game, and the Neverwinter Night series. Here is how I reviewed Neverwinter Nights back then. For me this was also interesting because I have not read through this review in a long time, and yet it seems my style of review was similar then than it is now, even though I took a few years off from writing game reviews in any form (I published this Sept 22, 2007). Anyway, here it is:
I have always been a fan of role-playing games. I got hooked on the Final Fantasy series after I had experienced Dragon Warrior, which had been preceded by Ultima: Exodus. Most of these games borrowed heavily from the rules of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, so when I heard about Neverwinter Nights - a game based on the Dungeons & Dragons rule set.
To begin there is a great deal of flexibility when creating your character. You can also advance in a great variety of ways as you gain levels. There is a ton of gear to be found, and some lively monsters to use these findings against. The story itself is fairly long, but there are plenty of things to do along the way in the form of side quests. There are nowhere near as many as say, Oblivion or even some of the final fantasy games, but your decisions can make an impact on things down the road and help you establish the character to your liking.
There were also some expansion packs to be bought for the game. There is also a very large community that has been fueled by other players. Modules, artwork, music packs and more have been created by Neverwinter Nights players, for Neverwinter Nights players. I suspect this has a great deal to do with the game's continued success, even though years passed since its release.
Graphics: Decent, but could have been better. Even considering the game's release date, the Aurora engine that fueled it seemed dated at the time. Still, they were functional graphics and the camera angles were very adjustable, which helped to prevent things from getting lost in the somewhat frantic combat that would take place.
Sound and music: Excllent. The voice acting was a bit spotty in places, but with so much of it one can hardly nitpick since most of it was solid. The music was incredibly memorable as well, with stirring battle songs and soft melodies depending on the scene and time. Creature and spell sound effects are also quite solid, and the way sounds move in and out depending on your proximity is also quite nice. For example if you stand next to a fireplace it will crackle loudly, but step away from it and it begins to fade out.
Game play: About as good as could be expected. The point and click interface made movement easy, menus painless enough to navigate, hotkeys to simply the matter even further and I seldom had difficulty in selecting the enemies or friendly characters I wanted to interact with.
Intangibles: The abound. Want to play a noble knight? Feel free. Rogue interested in only his or her own welfare? That works as well. Customization? Check - this game has it in spades. Replay value? It's actually quite high due to the different classes, races and choices that can be made along the way. The final success? The Neverwinter Nights community that has provided so much quality content over the years has really done a spectacular job of extending the life of this game.
Score: I will score this game a 9. I really want to rate it higher. I played through it and the expansions twice, played several of the modules and could pick it up today and whittle away the hours again. Still, the graphics did prove lacking at times, there were bugs in the game at times, the AI can be exploited and the dialog is sometimes weak, especially in the base story.
This will be a pretty light game review, but amidst all of these Dragon Age reviews over the last few days, I decided I would review Dragon Age Legends as well. What is Dragon Age Legends? Well, it's a Facebook game of all things - something I've never played before now. EA did an interesting marketing campaign with the release of Dragon Age 2, allowing for unlockable content based on owning and registering some of their other games - Dead Space 2 and Mass Effect 2. They also offered in-game items for Dragon Age 2 based on things like registering with the Bioware community or signing up for the Dragon Age newsletter. If you're interested, you can find it here.
Perhaps their biggest and most daring tie-in though, was the Dragon Age Legends app for Facebook, which has a very loose story based on the Dragon Age world, and uses some of the sames themes, but is a very different kind of experience. For starters, it's not meant to be played right through in a single Mt. Dew consuming grind - you have something called stamina that gets used up by visiting new spaces on the overhead map. Stamina replenishes over time and allows you to move on.
Now, I'm not going to break this down by graphics and music or anything like that. I haven't played any other Facebook games, I don't have much to compare it to. Gameplay's spotty to judge - you simply click here and there so things like responsiveness aren't an issue. So, I'll give some info about it and share my impressions to date. And I say 'to date' because it's listed as Beta, but then most live-games like this are ever-changing (at least, they are if they want to be and remain successful)
The game itself is more of a turn-based strategy game than an RPG. You create a character from one of three classes (fighter, rogue and mage) and can take people into battle with you (up to 2), so you want to find a blend of abilities that work well. These people can only be used once and then need a break as well before they can be called on again. There are several factors that contribute to how long it takes for them to be usable again. This is one of the reasons it's good to have friends on Facebook who play it. There are a handful of generic characters that you can use, but if you have friends on Facebook playing, their characters are added to your roster of available combatants. Every time you use one of your Facebook friends' characters (or if they use yours) - they can get 20 gold from it (or you can gain 20 gold).
there are two columns of combat for you and your enemies. Back line people are better protected if they have someone in front of them. These are usually ranged damage dealers like mages and archers. Front liners tend to have more hps and better defense, but fewer direct attack options. You can use items for combat or for healing/boosting your own characters. Each class has access to different skills and you earn skill and attribute points as you level up. The current cap is level 40, I'm tied for the highest on my friends list as of writing this at level 21. 1 or 2 visits a day can keep you going pretty well, and use up your stamina reserves.
As for items, you can make bombs that do various things like a low level of damage to all enemies, or do damage plus drain their mana, or poison them, and so on. Speaking of mana, your special abilities will require mana - whether you're a warrior who hits multiple targets or an archer who gets a super-powerful single shot or a mage who summons a drake. You can find items or gold after every fight, as well as gain experience. Some items are the one-time use variety like I've described above, others are equipment that are often restricted by class type and level.
Gold is used on your castle. That's right, while you will spend a lot of time wandering the map and getting into preset encounters, you will spend some time in a castle where you can create first aid kits, potions, bombs and more. You can buy things like furnaces to increase productivity, and you need to have workers to manage all of these various shops. The pieces come in different sizes and there are benefits to having some types adjacent to other types, giving the castle section of the game a sort of Tetris-like feel.
If it sounds like there is a lot going on - that's because there is. For what seemed like a mindless sort of point and click game, there's actually quite a bit to manage. You can't play it for four straight hours, but you can have a pretty full 20 minutes as you check in on things. I don't know how this compares to other Facebook games because I haven't played any, but there is definitely an addictive formula to checking in to see if your shops have finished producing your next batch of shock bombs or seeing if you have enough stamina to move onto the next map space as you try to get to that next level.
The game, as I mentioned before, is still being worked on. Graphics have steadily improved and they keep adding new things to it. I've already beaten all of the available maps, but EA assures us that there are more coming. The game itself is free to play - you just need a Facebook account to access it. While the game is a tie-in to the Dragon Age 2 release, and the freebies I got as a result of playing it during the closed beta were cool, EA is not just doing this for fun. You can buy crowns (another form of currency that you can use in a specific shop, or to unlock upgrades for your castle) and gold from EA. You certainly don't have to - I haven't yet and I'm under the impression that most of the people I play with haven't either. However, some of the gear is pretty cool, as a few of my friends have some very potent weapons and I love it when their characters become available to use again.
It's just a Flash game, with point and click mechanics, but if you have any interest in this sort of thing, the tutorial does a good if not great job of laying out the basics and the game itself is completely free so even if you don't like it, you're not out anything but a bit of time. All in all, I plan to keep poking at it and see where it goes from here.
The last couple of days, I've gone over what I consider the first 2 entries to the series, though I suppose Awakening could be seen as Dragon Age 1.5. There was a lot to like about the Origins games, and I will admit I was both excited and a bit concerned when I heard Dragon Age 2 would be coming out so soon after those other ones. The first games were huge, and there was a lot of extra content produced for them. While I looked forward to another romp through Bioware's excellently realized fantasy world, I was concerned that there would be some corners cut in getting a true sequel out there so quickly. Some of my fears were perhaps realized, but overall I'm happy to report that my time playing Dragon Age 2 was enjoyed quite a bit.
This game is one that runs a bit parallel to the first game, at least to start. The events of the first game revolve around something called The Blight. In the first game, you are tasked with stopping it. In Awakening you are a different character, and again faced with a related task. In this one, the events of the Blight shape your character's predicament, but is not your primary objective.
Dragon Age 2 is broken up into 3 segments, each one separated by a passage of time that allows the story to span several years instead of taking place as one successive event right after another. It's an interesting plot mechanic that works pretty well I think overall. There are references made to both Origins and Awakening, and for those of us who played the Origins game, you can import your choices and they do have some effect on Dragon Age 2. If you don't have one, they also give you 3 sort of pre-scripted situations that allow you to decide how earlier events panned out. This is great for adding some variety to the replay of Dragon Age 2, but it is a bit disappointing that more of your decisions from the first game did not play a bigger role in the second. This is the same company responsible for Mass Effects 1 & 2, and in Mass Effect these 'hooks' seemed a much bigger deal in the sequel than they are here in Dragon Age 2.
Graphics - 8:
The graphics look better here than they did in the original. The colors are more vibrant, facial expressions are good (thought not as good as Mass Effect 2's) and there are some pretty detailed environments to tromp through. Characters are still a bit stiffer in their movements during cutscenes than I would like, but they animate pretty well while in battle. The uneven framerates during more intense battles still plague this title, as they did the first game as well. Perhaps the biggest gripe I have about the graphics is not the quality, but the quantity. You spend a lot of your time going through the same areas over and over again. It fits with the story but lacks the scope of the original, and as a result you just don't get as much variety in landscape as I would like in a fantasy world.
Sound & Music - 9:
I think the voice acting in this game is even better than the first, which was pretty solid. Some of the characters like Anders and Varric are particularly entertaining, and giving your character voice in this sequel was a very good design choice. The music is as good if not better than Origins as well, often feeling grander and imbuing a sense of epic scale that the story itself might be lacking in fact. The sound effects are good, but I think the combat sound effects were a bit more repetitive than in Origins. There were times that the characters repeated things over, and over and over... and I thought my wife might be getting a bit annoyed by it. The first Dragon Age had some excellent moments where characters bantered back and forth as you walked around, and the same holds true in Dragon Age 2. In fact I found many of the conversations even more entertaining here than in the original, even if the characters themselves were not always quite as interesting to me.
Gameplay - 8:
The new method of making conversation choices is nice. It's very similar to the circular menu/wheel used in Mass Effect's dialogs, and it does a good job of letting you see how your comments are viewed. There are a lot of options when you converse with people, ranging from kind, to angry to sarcastic - and you can sometimes unlock additional options that might not always have been available depending on who you have in your party at the time or prior actions/choices you may have made in the story. It's good stuff that really lends itself to the branching type of storyline the Dragon Age series is known for.
The menu is a bit easier to get around than in the original, but it feels like some of the customizations for character skills and equipment are more limited. I don't necessarily mind this, the developers had a specific appearance in mind for your party members and instead of changing out their armor you can find upgrades that improve upon it without altering their aesthetics.
One big problem for me this time around was bugs. There were some in Origins as well - in fact one of the glitches used to get unlimited money can be used here as well - so it's a bit disappointing that such a well-known bug wasn't fixed between the original and the sequel. That strikes me as either lazy or out of touch with the players - neither one of which is ideal. Those are optional exploits that a person may or may not want to use, and they don't bug me nearly as much as some of the broken side quests. There is one that when I looked it up (to rescue a woman along the Wounded Coast) - it looks like no one has managed to complete yet. You can see a person I presume you are supposed to interact with, but they simply stand there. There are a few others to that if you approach them out of order, you can get the quests into a state where they can't be completed. Luckily these are side quests, but it's annoying all the same - I spent quite a while on the rescue one before I looked it up, only to realize I couldn't complete it. I imagine some patches will be forthcoming soon to fix these, but having encountered them already, I figured I would mention them.
Another annoying glitch occurred at the end of the game. I won't list any spoilers, but similar to Origins some of your choices affect how things play out in the ending narrative. One of the big choices in-game is whether or not your character is going to pursue a romantic relationship, and there's an opportunity to hop in the sack with a couple of different people (consider this the warning that the game, while not graphic, has themes not real appropriate to younger children) - and in the end of the game when your ending is being told, it messes up. I had been with both Isabela and Merril and in the end picked Merril as my character's love interest. However, the ending narrative showed Isabela's name and actually verbally said both Merril's and Isabela's at the same time in overlapping audio. It was a big jarring and makes me wonder that if/when there is a Dragon Age 3, if we can import our data, if this will have any affect on it or not.
That said, the other big change in how the game handles is the combat. The first game felt a bit tactical in nature - Dragon Age 2 makes it apparent right away that the emphasis is on action in this game. You still build up stats and skills like an rpg, but combat is much faster and more fluid, and both my son and I immediately noticed that and both thought it was much better suited to the game. A risky choice, but one that I thought paid off. You can still pause and assign tasks to your party members if needed, but I only did this a couple of dozen times total in my play through of Dragon Age 2, and I was doing it constantly in Origins.
Intangibles - 9:
I will get my biggest complaint out of the way immediately: there is not enough variety in your locales. The city of Kirkwall is impressively realized and it looks great visually, but you spend at least 80% of your game time in this one city. It may be a bit cliche, but if I'm playing a fantasy swords & sorcery game, I expect some fantastic environments along the way, and that really doesn't happen here. I'm also not usually a big fan of backtracking, but in this game they use the assets over and over again. I probably went into the same mountain in Sundermount at least 5 times over the course of my adventure. I think that this is probably the biggest area where my corner-cutting fears were realized.
Okay, now that the locales and glitches have been properly talked about above, let's talk about what Dragon Age 2 does right - and there's a lot to talk about there. For one, I liked the overall story. I know some people complained that it was not nearly as 'epic' as the first one. True, you're not saving the entire world from The Blight, but the fate of Kirkwall city eventually falls into your hands, and your choices do an amazing job of shaping that fate. As much as I wanted to play the earlier versions of Dragon Age over again, I think I want to replay this one even more. Sure, the lack of fresh scenarios is a bummer, but I'm in it for the storyline and here there are some remarkable changes to storyline that can be had here. Once I beat the game, I did a lot of looking around online at what some of my choices might have done, and I was thrilled to see how several of my choices made such a difference to how things played out. Some of your party members may not make it through the story - in fact most likely you will lose at least 1 or 2 along the way. The potential for this to carry over into later content or Dragon Age 3 is awesome, and something I hope Bioware realizes as well (if not better) than they did with Mass Effect 2.
There are a lot of side quests along the way - and my first game took me about 40 hours to complete everything. Some of those corner-cutting concerns can be understood when you consider how many cinematics and storyline changes Bioware had to account for in giving players so much flexibility in their choices. I've already rolled up two more characters and am looking forward to more play throughs.
For people who enjoy achievements, you can get most of them on a single play, but not all. I got about 2/3 of them on my one play through. Annoyingly, 2 of the achievements can only be had if you have one of the DLC's - which was given to players for free if they had pre-ordered this game by a certain date (that I missed by all of a week), or if you want to pony up some Microsoft points/PSN dollars (I think it's 560 microsoft points). I haven't done this yet, but I probably will later. there's another DLC I did get called the Black Emporium - think of it as a rare black market. It's got some okay gear in it, but it doesn't add anything particularly interesting to the story itself. Also, there are several unlockable items you can get by doing certain things like playing the Dragon Age Legends Facebook game, signing up for the Dragon Age newsletter and so on. Bioware's tie-in with these other media hubs, and other games like Mass Effect and Dead Space are neat, and I'll be curious to see if it's something we see more of in the future.
Overall - 8.5:
The overall game is better than Origins and Awakening, especially on a technical level. I enjoyed the story and how it was presented quite a bit, but that plus some of the lacking party customization options has proven to be a bit of a sore spot for some players. Overall though, if you liked the first Dragon Age game, this one has enough of the same characteristics that it will probably be very appealing to you. I've already logged a good deal of time with it, and like many other Bioware games, it is a title that I've beaten and will hold on to - most of the time if I beat a game, it gets traded in shortly afterward. I am hopeful some of the bugs will be fixed in a patch soon, and I'm really looking forward to what else gets released in DLC - not that I need any extra excuses to play through the game again.
Dragon Age: Origins was one of my favorite games when it came out. The game presented a huge, detailed world with plenty of lore and branching story line based on choices your character made. There was a good deal of replay value to it and it was one of the more entertaining titles to come out in a long time. There were several pieces of downloadable content you could purchase for Dragon Age: Origins that helped add a bit more to the game. One of the more interesting offerings however was Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening.
It's more of the same - so if you enjoy an action rpg with weighty decisions and an interesting storyline, you're in luck with this game. What made this game a bit different than most of the other DLC is how it was completely standalone (though some of your actions from the original game could be seen here and there). Is it worth picking up?
Graphics - 7:
Similar in almost every way to Origins, the graphics get the job done in Awakening, but they are hardly going to blow anyone away. It's basically the same engine with a bit less stuttering. There were not quite as many areas to visit, so the landscapes are not quite as varied as in Origins either.
Sound & Music - 8:
Again, comparable to the original. The voice work is generally good, the same basic sound effects were put to use and the music still helps to set the tone for this game.
Gameplay - 8:
They were working with the same engine as Origins when they made this game. As such it controls just like the original. I would give it a slight nod to the fact that I found fewer bugs in Awakenings as opposed to those I found in Origins.
.
Intangibles - 7:
It probably felt like I was doing an Origins re-review up until this point, huh? Well, that's because the framework was the same, but this is where the primary differences are at. The same basic rules apply - you make choices and they can have a serious impact on how things play out. The storyline is still an epic one - but the overall game is much shorter. There are also nowhere near as many side quests. Like Origins, there's a desire to replay again just to see how some decisions might have played out differently, yet I never felt quite as compelled to play over and over again. There's some tie-in to the first game, but this feels more like Origins - B. It's not really a sequel and it never tries to be, but it's disappointing that for those of us who played Origins, there were not more direct tie-ins to what you do in Awakenings.
Overall - 7.5:
Not quite as good as Origins. There is not as much overall content, and to me the storyline was not quite as engaging either. When it came out, Awakening was at a lower price point. Now it can be had as part of the newly released Origins that contains all of the extra content (I believe) and in that sense it would be a good deal. It was a nice extension to the original game for fans like myself who enjoyed it, but set your expectations just a bit lower than you might have for the original game.
When this game was first announced, I was very excited. Bioware has a great rpg pedigree, ranging from Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic back in 2003, Jade Empire back in 2005, Neverwinter Nights, which was my first serious brush with the company back in 2002 and the Baldur's Gate series that got its start back in 1998 and is to this day one of my friend's all-time favorite game series. Given their more recent successes such as Mass Effect, War Hammer and the Dragon Age series, I feel it's safe to say they know their way around the genre.
They began to advertise the game as a 'dark fantasy' with videos that showed plenty of blood and some pretty mature themes. I believe the first Neverwinter Nights game was the first rpg I had played where your choices made a noticeable impact on events and characters around you, as well as potential 'love interests' for your character. I'm sure there were others before, but Neverwinter is the first I can really remember. These elements are carried over and expanded upon in the Dragon Age: Origins game, which gives you a good deal of customization to start. You can choose from multiple races and classes as well as a gender and appearance. Each of these race and class combinations give you an Origins story (hence the subtitle) that you get to play through that sets the stage for the overall storyline that comes along later as the story bottlenecks to a specific plot point and then opens up again quite a bit to allow you a good deal of exploration and freedom.
The game has been out for awhile, and I've played through it twice and started it a few other times. I have a very Dragon Age heavy review theme coming up this weekend though now that I completed part 2 last night, so here is stage one of this weekend's theme.
Graphics - 7:
The graphics don't really hold up great, and honestly that's kind of been a theme for some of Bioware's games in the past. For all their game-depth, some of their graphics engines are a bit underwheling and that is the case here as well. Colors are a bit dreary at time, and getting odd tears when the framerate struggles to keep up with some of the more intense action. Character animations are okay, but not great. The variety of landscapes is nice however, as you venture from one location to another. That said, there is a rather nice style to things, with the blood splatters on characters post-combat, and splash of red on the maps - things like that.
Sounds & Music - 8:
There is a lot of voice acting here, and most of it is pretty solid. There's pretty good variety to the sound effects as well. My favorite part however was the music - something that Bioware usually hits on the head with its games, and this one was no different.
Gameplay - 8:
Characters control fairly well, and the menus are pretty easy to navigate. The ability to map common items and skills to specific keys is handy and a real time saver, and I thought the radial menu was a nice way to handle the menu options on a console game like this. There are some interesting glitches from time to time, but seldom are they a real issue - none ever prevented me from finishing the game in any way. There are plenty of conversations that take place automatically, and lots of loot if gathering it is your sort of thing, though I'm not real fond of the 'gifting' mechanic used to help raise your party members' opinion of you.
The combat is something of an odd blend though, and worth mentioning. It's probably a bit more action-oriented than PC gamers are used to from their rpgs, and a bit more tactical on the console than it 'looks' to be at first glance. I found myself pausing and assigning duties fairly often in fights, and not all classes are created equally. You pretty much need a mage in your group for healing, but I didn't really care for playing one as opposed to the more entertaining (in my opinion) warriors and rogues.
Intangibles - 9:
There are choices you make throughout your adventure that leave you going: What if I had... I cannot oversell how much that helps this game's replay value. Some of the Origins stories are more interesting than others, but they too help add some variety to what is generally the most boring part of a roleplaying game - the early hours as you get your feet wet. It's a unique way of getting you engaged all over again. Add to it that you can wind up with different combinations of party members (I completely missed one on my first play through), and that your choices will often cause them to react accordingly (some will leave your party for good or even fight you if their approval drops too low or you make a choice they really can't abide by). There's a variety of endings handled in much the same way other games like Fallout 3 does where certain choices or characters are commented on at the end, giving it sort of a customized and satisfactory feeling. There is replay value aplenty.
There are also quite a few downloads for this game. These can add to your adventures and are generally well-done, but it's up to you to decide if you think they're worth buying - everyone's mileage may differ a bit (or you can acquire the recently released ultimate edition which includes all of this original content as part of the package).
Overall - 8:
I've played this game a ton. I'll probably play it again. I trade in about 80% of the games I buy, and put them toward new games. Bioware however, tends to make games I hold onto. Mass Effect and Dragon Age are going nowhere. A few technical problems with graphics and bugs can hold this game back with some players I'm sure - but if you enjoy roleplaying games where you actually feel like you are playing a role and your decisions have real weight to them, the experience is a lot of fun and one I have to recommend.
As a footnote, the content may not be real suitable for younger kids. A lot of roleplaying games are pretty kid-friendly, but this isn't one I'd like my youngest play. There's some language and some themes that are a bit more mature than most rpgs out there.
Been a bit since I did one of these, so here goes:
Mortal Kombat may be requiring Online Pass? My disliked of this practice is pretty well-documented by this point, and sure - I have it on reserve and will be buying it free. There's some speculation that it won't be for just 1 system, but 1 user per system. I'll let you know...
Resistance 3 will be supporting both the Move and 3D when it comes to the PS3.
I signed up for the PlayStation Rewards program, but it sounds like it may be getting nixed.
The same studio that brought us SOCOM is getting ready to work on Resident Evil: Operating Raccoon City.
There's been a lot of speculation for some time about what the Wii successor will and won't have, but Nintendo put to rest the likelihood that 3D will be part of the equation.
Super Street Fighter IV coming to the 360? Looks like it. It'll be interesting to see if yet another release of this game will generate sales or not, but given the recent resurgence of fighting game popularity, it could pay big dividends.
Last but not least, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning has been a project that caught my eye awhile back. IGN has had some articles about it, including this one, which also has a trailer. It looks like an action RPg, but the list of people involved is pretty impressive: Ken Ralston (Elder Scrolls III & IV), Todd McFarlane (Spawn) and probably most exciting for me is writer R.A. Salvatore, who has a ton of great books to his credit, but is probably best known for his work in Forgotten Realms for the D&D franchise. This game is a precursor to what will be an MMO follow-up from 38 Studios and I am very excited to see how this comes along.
So, part of what I've been spending some time on over the last week was a demo of RPG Maker XP. I had mentioned this before earlier in the week. Now mind you, most of the code is in place, and graphically I'm using basic RTP graphic assets, but I think the 'attract' or demo mode turned out okay on it.
Basically, the storyline bouncing around in my head is a spin-off of my Kingdoms of the Lost MUD that I run with my wife. The premise is basically people dabbling in a kind of magic they don't know much about. Nothing too deep, but I get on these creative kicks where I want to not just play something, but make something (I do a lot of writing and already have the MUD) - this was just another outlet to help with that particular itch. Hopefully I'll regain some steam on it soon and do something with the gameplay - I have some stuff mapped out and implemented - probably about the first 10 minutes or so of the game. I may go ahead and try to get an hour or so of it out there and playable before too long. Anywho - thanks for taking a look and I'll add some posts here and there as I add things, especially if people show any interest in it. Basically though, it's a throwback the old 16 bit RPG era of gaming - one of my favorite times in gaming history.
This is an interesting one - I only discovered this game due to an ad actually on my blog at one time. For those who follow my blog, you no doubt noticed I had a string of reviews involving collectible card game titles. Usually these tie into some sort of an RPG or strategy game - two of my favorite genres. Well, the mixing of a strategy title and my favorite all time collectible card game in real-life seemed like a no-brain winner. What were my thoughts? Well...
So what is the game? Well, the idea of Magic: The Gathering for those who haven't played it is fairly simple. You start the game with 20 hit points, and you build a deck out of cards that fall into a few basic categories: creatures, spells, enchantments and mana. Mana is the fuel for these other 3 types of cards, and mana comes in four basic types: red, blue, white, black and green (fire, water, plains, swamps and forest). There are costs to casting the creature, spell and enchantment cards, and the goal is to take your opponent down to 0 hps. There is a huge variety of ways to do this.
So what is the tactics game? It builds on this premise using larger numbers (200 hps per mage, and creatures who are generally 1 hp and 1 power are now 10 hps and 10 power) - so basically they tacked a 0 onto almost everything. Mana cards are replaced by a mana pool that generates an additional mana point each turn, streamlining the process and deck building a bit. Many of the maps and all of the actual player vs. player battles are built around the premise of knocking the other spell caster to 0 hps. There is a story mode though that gives you alternate goals as well, for better or worse.
Graphics - 6:
This is a grade based on not only aesthetics, but performance as well. Most of the characters move around okay, and some of the particle effects look good on spells or creatures of fiery origins, things like that. It's fun seeing cards like Lord of the Pit brought to life. Now for the reality of things. First off, I have a pretty fast computer and this game can sometimes chug horribly. It won't even run on my kids' computer, which is an older one to be sure, but it technically meets the system requirements and I keep the drivers all up to date, and even then it usually crashes. If I shut down everything else on my computer, it goes more smoothly, but I think of an online game like this as something lightweight, and instead it sort of takes everything over.
Sound and Music - 7:
There's some okay background music, and while the voice actors are nothing amazing, there is a fair amount of voice over between scenarios. There's some cool sound effects too, like when fire spells erupt or when one of my imps cackles after attacking someone. All in all, this is pretty decent.
Gameplay - 5:
Some of this could be linked to the system performance visually, but when things get choppy, I often find myself having to click multiple times to get something to work - like targeting a spell or moving to a square. I also can't count the number of times I've found myself having to zoom in a lot just to click on a particular square, because when you don't you run the risk of clicking the wrong one and wasting a turn - some sort of a confirm/cancel to your movements would have been a life-saver. It ca also sometimes be tough to click on a target in general. What I mean is, if you are trying to click on someone's flying bird, well - it bobs up and down. This effect looks nice, but if it bobs downward as you try to click it, you may wind up clicking on something else behind it. It's odd, like it doesn't fully realize its vertical space.
Additionally, it doesn't let you save mid-battle. Huge oversight in my opinion. I realize this was probably done to keep someone from getting to a point in the map where they can save/quicksave out and come back in - try a few things, and if it goes badly, re-load it. Still, some of these battles can take a very long time, and the inability to save during can be frustrating. Worse, the single-player campaign mode requires you to be online, which means if the servers hiccup or your own ISP drops momentarily, you can be forced out of a match that you just spent 30+ minutes on, with no way to recover it. You just have to do it over again.
Intangibles - 6:
The game itself is free. From that standpoint, it's a good investment if you have some time to kill and want to give it a try. There's a few modes too - campaign, duels against other players, tournaments against other players and an auction house. Tournaments have a small entrance fee (usually 1 coin), and the auction house allows you to build your deck by purchasing cards using coins. How are coins acquired? Well, you get some right off from the campaign mode, and there are daily quests (like what you'd see from 'dailies' in World of Warcraft), and these yield experience and coins. Experience can be used to build your character up down some skill charts, adding another layer of strategy to the proceedings, and the coins can be used for the auction house or tournaments.
The catch to the auction house is that the cards can't be from the campaign mode. This encourages you to either buy packs of cards from the game using real-life money, or resell cards you have previously purchased through the auction house. This is one of the two ways Sony makes their money off of the game - card pack purchases and campaigns. When you play, you have access to chapter 1 of the campaign, which is pretty easy. You win a new card and experience with each map you beat. Problem is, the cards are not necessarily of any use to you - I had a red/black deck, so those white and green cards did me no good really. I would say out of the campaign mode, I won maybe 5 cards in total that made their way into my deck. The rest were purchased from the auction house after doing daily quests. and I did buy the campaign mode's other 4 chapters. I had enjoyed the first chapter quite a bit, and they had a nice sale going over Presidents' Day where you could get the 4 pack of levels half-off, so I bought it.
It was fun, I don't regret the purchase in and of itself, but some of the later chapters were poorly designed. The last stage of chapter five was particularly aggravating - it was clearly built with specific types of decks in mind, and I spent several hours on that one map, because my deck did not have the requisite types of cards to complete its objectives. Sometimes there objective-based maps work well, other times they do not.
It was far from all bad though. I enjoyed the overall tactics of the game, and while there were a few bugs here and there that crept up on the maps, they weren't very common and seldom created a bad gaming experience in and of themselves. Of particular note also is that you can actually build a real deck the way you like. That is something the Xbox Live version of the game has needed, and it gives you so much more power when trying to decide what you want to do with yours cards.
Overall - 6:
There's some decent value here. You don't have to pay a dime to play an okay strategy game, based on a tried-and-true fantasy world. Most of the mechanics are pretty sound, and I have run into very little downtime while playing. But, in a way, you do get what you pay for - there's some serious issues with the interface and performance, and it's definitely designed to try and get you to spend more money. Not exactly unheard of - the industry is of course trying to make money, but the experience still feels like it needs polish to make it worth further monetary investment at this point. I played pretty much daily for about a month, and it was fun, but about 2 weeks ago I just quit playing, and really haven't missed it yet. I'll no doubt poke in at a later date and see what improvements have been made, but right now it's just not drawing me back to the game and that to me is a pretty telling sign.
I made 2 videos of gameplay on the fly - obviously processing video for playback and recording at the same time can stress a machine, but this is much worse than just about any other game I've recorded as you'll see.
I've mentioned before that I would try to get some comments/reviews from the other gamers in my house - here's the first one, courtesy of my son and the biggest video game fan in this house (other than me). So, here's his first ever review - let him (and me) know what you think if you get a chance to leave some comments. I'm hoping he had a lot of fun with it!
----
Today I shall be talking about Pokemon White. I am Chris-not your lovely Chalgyr/Nick-I am his son. So, onto the Pokemon game!
In this game, there is a whole new region! It's the 5th generation game...I think. I don't really want to check online to see if I'm right. Now then, the game starts out with a new Game Freak logo when you start it up. There's also a kind of intro movie and then it shows a video that's like an in-game ad for it...weird, right? I know. Anyways, then after that you get to the title screen which looks a lot different than the other DS games. For starters, it has the legendary Pokemon-Zekrom, for this version-in 3D from different angles. Then it's time to start up. When you start up, there's a short movie which shows the professor-named Prof. Juniper-of this game. The first girl professor of the series! Anyways, that part is almost exactly like the beginning of all the other Pokemon games where it talks about what Pokemon are and the works.
So after you do the whole name setup and stuff it's onto the game! The beginning shows a picture of the starting town and professor Juniper walking into your house and then back out of it with the words "Made by Game Freak" I think, but I haven't seen the beginning of it for a while. So after that it shows a scene with you, Cheren(Rival/Friend, mostly rival), and Bianca(Same as Cheren but you fight her a lot less) in your room and there's a gift box on your table so after a scene of talking you get to choose from one of three starter Pokemon, like usual. The three starters are Oshawatt(An otter Pokemon), Tepig(A pig Pokemon, obviously), and Snivy(A something Pokemon, I dunno but it looks cool and it's what I chose). Oshawatt is a water Pokemon, Tepig is a fire Pokemon, and Snivy is a grass Pokemon.
So after you pick your Pokemon the others will pick theirs. Bianca will choose the Pokemon that has a weakness to your Pokemon, Cheren will obviously pick the one strong to your because you fight him more often. Then you will fight Bianca, and the result of the battle will be a close level up if won and a trashed room. Then Cheren will heal yours and Bianca's Pokemon and then battle you(without messing the room up even more). If you win you should level up. So then he'll heal you up and then you guys have to go downstairs and as usual, they won't follow you. So after that and a chat with your mother(she's not mad about the room!) you have to go to the professors lab and talk with her or something. But when you get there Bianca has to go to her house and Cheren wants you to go see how she is. So when you get there she's fighting with her dad about if she's allowed to go on the journey. so then she sees you and says something and leaves.
So hen you go to the professor's lab again and she talks about some stuff when you go in there and then she gives you and your friends Pokedexes and you go off on your journey. For the rest of the story, go play the game!
Now, for the features, some new things in this game for battles are the addition of triple battles which are like double battles but have three Pokemon on each side. There are two others that are online-only. Well, I dunno if they're online-only but I haven't seen them offline, not counting wireless. One of them is rotation battle which is where you bring in 4 to 6 Pokemon in is and you pick 4 of them. Anyways, in the rotation battle you use 3 at a time in a rotation circle thingy and you have 1 in the front and the other two in the back and they are inactive. So when one dies or you use the switch option, it will change which Pokemon is in the front. The other type of online only battle is a launcher battle in which you can have no hold items on your Pokemon and you get these points each turn (1 point a turn) and when you use the launcher option you can use your built up points on different items from the launcher and use them on your Pokemon.
There's also the game sync stuff which, at the time of typing is sadly down. But it's supposed to be up March 30, 2011. All I know about it right now is that there are features like the dream world and a ranked battle option for online battles. I can't say anything about the game sync features because I haven't been able to use them yet. Finally, for the last part of this review and features, I will talk about the trading. They have a new trading feature called GTS negotiations in which you don't need to have seen a Pokemon to get it. You and the other person can pick 1 to 3 Pokemon to choose from to trade to the other person. The GTS is practically the same except for the design.
So there's my review, I hoped you liked it.....or else. Now go eat a cookie or something. SIGNATURE~~~~ DX
There's been a bunch of good RPG games for the PSP over the last year or so, including Persona, a bunch of of Final Fantasy titles and Tactics Ogre - almost none of which I own or have had a chance to play yet unfortunately. Of my systems, I think my PSP gets neglected the most - but there's still some pretty good games for it. My wife picked me up Kingdom of Paradise quite some time ago, and it can be had used for a pretty good price as it has been out a few years now. It's an unusual RPG game, as it has action combat with RPG elements such as leveling and gaining new skills, all thrown against a sort of Eastern/martial arts backdrop.
Graphics - 7:
There's a lot to like here, whether it's how the attacks and spells animate and how good the overall backgrounds are. The actual character graphics seem a bit weak after playing games like Final Fantasy: Crisis Core though. Also it felt like a lot of the background assets were reused several times in different places, giving a feeling of 'been here and done that' a few times. There were a handful of times the camera got in my way/on my nerves as well, and is worth mentioning.
Sound & Music 9:
I actually liked this quite a bit. The music really fit the unique locale and helped set the mood for me much more effectively than the graphics did. There was also a surprisingly wide range of sound effects in both the combat and the surrounding environment that did a good job of keeping me engaged in what was happening.
Gameplay - 6:
I'm going to have to pick on it a bit here. The camera got on my nerves at times, as mentioned above, and while I could appreciate the unique style to combat, the control schemes were not to my liking. I also had a tough time with some of the intricacies of the various systems that were in place. There were some neat ones, like the elemental system - but there were times I thought that they could have been explained better. For me though, the biggest issue is the combat - things like blocking and attacking are handled with the same button (the PSP has a ton of buttons - couldn't they have figured out something different for that?) but attacking worked far better for me than defending did due to the timing and controls.
Intangibles -6:
There's some online stuff - but I didn't get to take much advantage of it. Where I was playing this game, I didn't have internet access until the very end. The main quest was engaging, but I think I beat the game in about 17 hours - which seems like a very short time for an RPG game. I also never really had much interest in another play through - once I had seen the story, it lacked the sort of variety in choices that games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect have that encourage you to play it a second time through for a different experience.
Overall - 7:
The game is being graded on something of a scale by me here. It's not as good as some of the newer RPG's out there, but like an Xbox Live or PSN game - Kingdom of Paradise can be had at a very low price (I saw it at Disc Traders in town for $3 used about a month ago). That's pretty good value if you're looking for a somewhat different type of RPG game and aren't too worried about getting more than 20 hours of play out of it. Still, from a pure quality standpoint, if price is not a factor, I preferred games like Crisis Core overall.
So I figured I'd go ahead and toss in a fairly short review for a Playstation Network game I picked up somewhat recently. Space Invaders Infinity Gene was one of several games on sale awhile back when I had a bit of extra room on my credit card, so I picked it up as I recalled it having pretty solid reviews. Now, it's kind of funny, but I've only ever played Space Invaders a handful of times. I did not have an Atari as a kid, but a TI 99/4a - it was a cartridge-based game console by Texas Instruments that had a keyboard and access to the BASIC programing language. As a result, I got to play a lot of knock-off versions of popular games like TI Invaders (yup - Space Invaders close), Munchman (Pacman anyone?) and so on. It was never really one of my favorite games though, as I found the premise of back and forth and shoot somewhat limiting (I was never a huge Centipede fan either).
Still, when I picked it up, the game was like half off, so I was out like $4 if I didn't like it. Here's my thoughts on it:
Graphics - 7:
I like the backdrops more than the foreground characters. Sometimes there is so much happening on the screen that it can be a bit tough to know where you should or should not be going. That said, the game has a nice retro look about it with updated effects and interesting geometric backgrounds that are constantly moving around.
Sound & Music - 7:
The sound effects are pretty solid, with different types of sounds for different events taking place on screen. Considering how little actual variety there is in the gameplay mechanics themselves, I thought the sound arrangement did a pretty good job. Music wasn't bad, but wasn't great. It fit the theme and 'mood' of the game, which has touched-up-retro all over the place, including the very basic menu designs.
Gameplay - 7:
The game seldom feels cheap, at least due to gameplay. There's a variety of weapons that you can use and there's usually several tactics that will work on any given map thrown at you. That said, sometimes the frantic graphics do you in simply due to how much is going on at once. Menus are easy to navigate, and you're always building toward new unlockables (new weapons, extra lives, making the points you earn feel like they're actually good for something other than high score comparisons). Your ship moves pretty well, and they break the horizontal plane, giving you vertical movement as well that really livens up the experience compared to the classic inspiration. That said, the mechanic is pretty simple - dodge, shoot, dodge, shoot, dodge badly, die, come back, shoot more.
Intangibles - 7:
There's a lot of stages, and the swarms of enemies are brought to you in a variety of patterns and waves. It's a big improvement over the arcade classic. The ability to unlock things and make your earned points feel like they are giving you some tangible reward is pretty cool too. I've spent probably 10 hours playing the game, and at the price I paid, I feel like that's a pretty decent deal. I've played full on $60 games that took me far less time to beat - though I believe the regular price is $10. Also, it sure felt like some of the loading screens took a very, very long time to load.
Overall - 7:
Yeah, this was a hard average to come up with in my head. Solid, even good at times, but far from consistently delivering a great time for me personally. The frantic gameplay style has benefited from its modern makeover, though following up bouts of hectic shooting and dodging makes the somewhat long load screens a bit more irksome in my opinion. The game is not that advanced graphically or with sound, so the reason for the load screens does baffle me a bit. Basically, if you are a fan of the original game you know what you're getting overall and that may be enough to sell you on it. I don't suffer buyer's remorse, but it's not a game I see myself playing a lot more of in the future either.
Note: The loading screen image is from Mobygames here.
