They’re calling the setting “dark fantasy”, which is mostly like regular fantasy, except people are complete and utter assholes to each other just like they can be in real life. Expect to have to deal with situations involving one or more of the following: slavery, racism, rape, social castes, homosexuality, cooking, prostitution, pet care, death, and poor personal hygiene. Demons and darkspawn ain’t got nothing on the horrors that all the humans, dwarves, and elves seem to enjoy perennially inflicting on each other. (In fact, all the demon archetypes are based on sins, which probably makes it our fault for them, too.) As a result of this new, darker, tone, choices in this game tend to be a bit murkier than in past games. Before, you’d pick the “good guy” choice or the “bad guy” choice. A lot of times now there is no choice that makes everybody happy except Team Evil, and you have to steal from Peter to pay Paul. Somebody gets the shaft, to one degree or another, even if you’re playing a good guy. So, while you will almost certainly love this game dearly, be advised you may want to save up money for a few sessions with a good therapist when it’s all over.

Well, presumably. I have not yet completed the game yet, though I am 40 hours into it already and I never want it to end. Ever. But of the parts I have played, please allow me to list a few of the things I liked (and *gasp* disliked).

Let’s start with the tips o’ the hat.

• TACTICS
  The new Tactics system for your computer-controlled allies is a step up from before, when they would mostly just act stupid and you did all the work. However, it does mean you will probably die if you don’t do this right. You need a good healer in this game, and you need a big brawny warrior-type to keep all the nasty ogres and darkspawn from squishing the mages between their toes. Finding good combinations of tactics is an integral part of this game, so if you’re dying repeatedly, look here first.
• WRITING
  Though you may find some scenarios familiar, the writing in this game has a way of making you look just a little differently at common fantasy stuff. The Elves are either second-class citizens or they’re like you’re used to except they’re always on the run because they’re persecuted like second-class citizens. Dwarves dress like you’re used to, but they’ve clearly been reading way too much Machiavelli and you could try to cut the politics with a knife (but someone would discredit the knife in the eyes of the people first, so nobody would ever pick it up in the first place). And let’s not forget the casteless dwarves, who it’s legal to murder and rape because they’re not real people because they’re not noble. Never thought that kind of stuff about dwarves before. (Not sure I wanted to!)  But it sure as hell breaks the jolly, ale-suckin’ Gimli clones we’ve all become used to over the years. Even so, it’s never stale, and it never seems just like they just changed things to get your attention like “HEY KIDS if you liked elves then you’re gonna love ELVES XTREME: SYLVAN BRONTOSAUROIDS!!!!!!“ This stuff is really well done. And with the absolutely mind-crushingly huge amount of stuff to read in the Codex as you gather information in the game, you’ll be glad they used a large font size because you won’t want to stop anytime soon.

There are a few things about Dragon Age: Origins I’m *gasp* not crazy about too.

• VISIBLE SPELL EFFECTS DURING CONVERSATION
  Is it really necessary to keep glowy spell effects going during conversations? I play a mage, which means I basically light people on fire all day long, which usually includes my party members since I’m playing normal mode where they don’t die when I do that.  The end result of this is that I frequently having myself in pleasant  conversation with all my immolated friends. And if the gatling gun of moral quandaries wasn’t going to put me in therapy, this will.
• WTF DRY HUMPING
  It’s no secret that there’s sex scenes. But when they’re doing it, they strip down only to their underwear. I can understand why this might be done in our weird puritanical society that doesn’t mind a firehose of blood spraying out of a nun’s decapitated corpse but freaks out over seeing a pixellated nipple. What I cannot understand is why said underwear consists of large strips of what appears to be burlap. It is approximately as sexy as a Golden Girls marathon. What’s worse, is that the regular everyday outfits worn by some characters show more and look less like some sort of abstinence-cultist diaper. I guess the good news is there won’t be any storylines about accidentally knocking Leliana up. But I guess my point is that Mass Effect’s nude scenes showed us that this whole business can be done tastefully, without getting too graphic, and with the basic premise intact that your characters are not dry humping. The game is not called Amish Age: Bundlings.

Okay, that’s all the bad stuff I can think of, except for maybe that I don’t like how forehead crinkling facial expressions look on Leliana’s face. In short: run – do not walk - and get yourself a copy of this game. But be ready not to sleep. There’s no time for that! There’s darkspawn to kill, stories to discover, and burlap-clad nubiles to seduce.

My Thoughts

I shared some preliminary thoughts on my game experience after my first weekend of game play, and most of those impressions were accurate through to the end.  My Dalish Rogue Elf was a lot of fun to play; I specialized as a Duelist, which gave me some great, front-line melee attack options.  The graphics throughout the entire game were beautiful, especially the ending sequence.  The story line did have some predictable moments, but there were still some crazy, unpredictable moments.

Advice Without Spoilers

For those of you embarking on your own DOA adventure, I offer this advice, free of spoilers.  Talk to your companions, especially while at camp.  They will periodically give you quests to complete.  If you earn a high enough influence score with a companion, s/he will gain stat bonuses.  If you’re so inclined, you can work your way up to a romantic relationship with some of them; there are even achievements for romantic relationships for the achievement-seekers out there.

Stock up on health potions, lyrium potions, and healing kits.  I recommend maxing out your (or one of your companion’s) Herbalism skill, which allows you to make your own potions.  I found that on occasion, I had bought up all available health potions in a region and couldn’t find any more; being able to craft your own will make things much easier.  Buy recipes when you can find them, even if you don’t have your skill high enough yet; you may not be able to find that recipe again.  Stock up on basic potion-crafting supplies when you can buy them.

Later this week, I’ll share thoughts on my specific game play, which will include some spoilers, but for now, here’s what I think: If you haven’t played Dragon Age: Origins, go now.  Play.  Play through to the end.  And then, play it all over again!

Character Generation

I opted for the Dalish Elf Rogue.  Then I went through the personalization options.  I have to admit, I was a little overwhelmed with all the personalization options.  Eye color, eye distance, eye shape, hair color, hair style, eye brow shape, eye brow color, etc, etc.  But I eventually managed to find a combination of all elements that looked okay to me, and then I was off.

Spoiler-Free Game Conversation

I promise not to ruin it for anyone, so this will be completely spoiler-free.  The game play is exceptional.  While some of the twists were a bit predictable, there were still moments where I sat flabbergasted at the turn of events.  So far, it’s been fun, it’s graphically beautiful, it’s entrancing, and I can’t wait to see what happens next.

There were a few little things that took me a bit to adjust to.  First, I was surprised that there wasn’t an option to adjust to amount of blood/gore.  It’s not overwhelming, but I was surprised that there wasn’t an option for it.

Second, it took me a bit to become accustomed to the camera angle.  I think part of this was because I’d been playing Fable 2, and I expected a certain level of camera control.  There really isn’t camera control available beyond the thumb stick control.  I adapted quickly, and it hasn’t been an issue for my experience.

I’m heading back in to the game now.  If you haven’t started playing it yourself, I recommend you get moving.

Thusly, I have been woefully negligent of posting all the Dragon Age stuff I’ve been sent lately. So here is a big frickin’ megaflood of it. ENJOY!

There’s a Character Creator app out for the PC version of Dragon Age out now, in case you want to hit the ground running when the game comes out.

Character Creator (English) – http://files.bioware.com/dragonage_cc_dl/DragonAgeOriginsCharacterCreator_en.exe

And a social network, too. Think of it as Dragon Agebook. Or Broodmotherbook. That’s where every time you throw up in your mouth a little bit, and it automatically posts when you did it and what you had for lunch.

Dragon Age Origins Social Network – http://social.bioware.com/home.php

This is where some lucky bastard gets flown out to London, England and FORCED to play Dragon Age at gunpoint in the hopes of winning $50,000. Informative PSA at the following link FOR YOUR PROTECTION.

Warden’s Quest Gaming Event – https://rcpt.yousendit.com/757914063/31dc24f8288e2a311ca27d6d6f813dad

And now, some screenshots and trailers for your viewing pleasure. File sizes may be fairly large. However, their awesome-to-size ratio is favorable.

Dungeons

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/755168573/fd80a0df7d413fe995774017ea900888

Character Creator

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/753924043/1c9d6d0c3525ee7bbf9a8a0a12e01c2e

Villages

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/757078567/8add3b4ebb4d5b5443e603adbb6d0ebc

OHGREN!

https://rcpt.yousendit.com/760203187/f467c059e90261ea30f7f389e1452968

Thus ends my flood. I cannot wait for this game to come out. WHY ARE YOU MAKING ME WAIT, BIOWARE? WHY???

General Information

Sacred 2 is designed to be an open-ended roleplaying game in a seamless world.  There is always someplace to go explore, there are always new quests to take.  You can follow the quests as they come up, or you can completely ignore what’s in your quest log and wander off around the countryside.  It is designed to be whatever kind of game you want it to be.

First Impressions

Sacred 2 is a very visual game, and the graphics are great, making it easy to become immersed in the game.  The other element that helped improve the immersive nature of the game was the fact that there were no loading screens; as you move between regions, there is only a little pause in the game play.  The most delay came in big town centers, but even that wasn’t intolerably long.

Characters & Campaigns

I have played two different characters of the six options.  First, I played a High Elf in a Campaign of Light.  The nature of the spell-caster nature was fun.  I particularly enjoyed the Blazing Tempest spell.  My only complaint with the High Elf was the clothing options; even though she was a female character, I didn’t expect to see such scanty clothing.  The second character I played as a Shadow Warrior in a Campaign of Shadow.  He was more fighter-y based, which was also fun to play; who doesn’t like to take a sword and bash the bad guys.

I didn’t play either campaign long enough to really get into the big Light vs Shadow differences, but there were minor differences throughout the campaigns.  Each starts as you make your way into larger settlements: some of the quests you complete are the same, but are different based on whether you are Light or Shadow.

Overall Thoughts

I found myself pulled into the game very easily, and before I realized it, I had been playing for several hours.  I was easily drawn into the game, and I enjoyed completing the quests; there was enough challenge to be interesting without being overwhelmingly difficult, and as I progressed, I did gain a sense of accomplishment.

However, after I had left the game, I found I wasn’t not particularly compelled to turn the game back on and continue to play.  So while it was fun, it wasn’t enough to make me want to devote entire weeks of my life to the game.

Dante’s Footnotes

I got to watch Stupid Ranger play Sacred 2 quite a bit, and visually it reminds me very much of a third person Diablo II style gameplay.  I thought that some of the visual features were nice, specifically like the in-game map showing the percentage of completed area.  Tasha liked the unobtrusive health and experience meters, but I found them a bit hard to keep track of and the little experience numbers that popped up above dispatched enemies seemed a bit cluttered.

Aside from those minor issues, this game was visually very appealing.  The spells that Stupid Ranger had earned during her time playing the game were increasingly visually interesting, several times she’d call me over to show me the cool effect that she had just gained.  I am looking forward to diving deeper into Sacred 2 myself once my Real Life workload eases up a bit.  The game is certainly worth a look if you enjoy third person fantasy styled excellence!

Back in July of 2008 I was practically floored by the announcement that Capcom was putting out a new Mega Man game, most importantly that they were calling it Mega Man 9 and it was going to use the same graphics as the original NES games. I was really excited by the prospect of a new retro-Mega Man game that would perfectly recreate the feelings I had when I was younger but with totally new content. The game was released in September 2008 as a download for the Wii, X-Box 360, and the PS3 and has since gotten numerous excellent reviews and been nominated for several awards including ‘Best WiiWare Game’ and ‘Best Platforming Game’. I think all of that is complete, and utter, bull shit.

Admittedly I did not play Mega Man 9 for very long, the first level alone was enough to make me want to kill babies. I read some reviews that praised its retro look and claimed it was every bit as difficult as the original games, these are damned lies. The game may be “as difficult” as the old games, but it’s not the right kind of difficulty. I’m sure some of you are thinking it, and believe me I cringed at the very hint of it, that I have simply gotten rusty and that this game was punishing me like a pimply freshman in gym class. Nay, I say to you, that is not the case.

My wife, angelic messenger that she is, has purchased for me a great number of gaming fineries in our time together. Possibly the best of which was the port of Mega Man X (the first one for the Super Nintendo) for the PSP, titled Maverick Hunter X, which is almost an exact recreation of the SNES game. Let me tell you, I may have been able to play the guitar or the recorder in middle school at some point but those skills might as well be gone to some cave in north korea, however when I found myself at the helm of the blue bomber on the PSP, the muscle-memory had only been sharpened with age like the razor sharp edge of an sharp executioner’s sharp axe. Possibly even as much so as a picture of said witty executioner printed from a Sharp printer, covered in vicious razor blades!

Suffice to say, my skills had not dulled, so something had to be wrong with the game. What I ended up pondering was the difference between a game that’s artfully difficult and a game that is simply painfully difficult. An excellent example of artful difficulty is the classic disappearing block timing puzzles that appeared predominately in the first two Mega Man games. When you entered the room you were initially shocked by seemingly random blocks appearing and disappearing in mid-air with some super sweet sound effects accompanying them, but after a few moments you began to notice the pattern of jumping that the blocks were spelling out to you. As you progressed, you no doubt fell a couple of times, but you knew the secret to the puzzle and with a little bit of time and determination you could get passed it relatively easily.

In contrast, an example of painful difficulty is when something is just plain hard and there is no real secret to figuring it out. You can spend five minutes trying it or three hours and it’s still just as hard. Mega Man 9 is pretty much infected with this kind of difficulty, right from the very beginning you can see a certain lack of polish that the other games had is missing from this one. I even played the game a couple of times, spread out over a few months each time, to see if my opinion changed and it hasn’t so far. I’ll probably go back and try to play it again, this time trying really hard to not suck and die a thousand times over.

I actually feel that many of the classic NES games I listed above dance precariously close to the edge between these two types of difficulty. Contra, BattleToads, TMNT, and Ghosts’n'Goblins in particular are all exceedingly hard and can pretty quickly become less fun than they are painful. Ninja Gaiden, Metroid, and Mega Man all top my list as well balanced games that provide challenge while still remaining quite fun. Then again, I could just be a pansy…

For the first couple levels, I was happy as a clam — a clam set free riding a warm breeze in the spring! I’d seen this sort of gameplay before. It wasn’t rocket science. You activate things by running over them, they activate, and something happens (usually involving some sort of land-rejuvenation like dead grass turning green). It’s not a real complex puzzle game at all. But you don’t play Flower because you want challenging gameplay. You play Flower because you want to go WHEEEEEE I CAN FLY WHEEE GRASS ON A SUNNY DAY WHEEEEEEEE. I’m recall thinking that the first couple levels of this game are the cure for Seasonal Affective Disorder, and that I would play this game every time I get stressed out. It was like being four years old again, and running through a field full of rolling hills and dandelions. It felt great.

After that, things changed.

The nighttime level started off much as the daytime ones, except the grass that the wind touched glowed, and would power these little lightposts everywhere. It was quiet, and pretty, and tranquil. Kind of like a dream, which was not a big surprise since I’d heard the developer referred to each level as a “dream”. What the bastards forgot to tell us is that they also included nightmares.

After clearing part of the level and lighting something up, all of a sudden the soothing music darkens noticeably and the camera pans over to a dark place on the horizon. Something cracks and pops, and small dark red lights hang menacingly from powerlines I can’t see. Oh, and darkness started creeping over the ground, seemingly led by some malevolent force. And that’s where I have to go next. No problem, I think, I’d find some flowers and light that shit right up. But as I go deeper into the darkness, there’s no flowers. Matter of fact, I can barely see where I’m going aside from those red lights. And it’s getting narrower. And those lights look like they’re watching me. And I’m going so fast, I can’t stop, everything’s in the way. Is it reaching for me? I’m going to trip and something’s going to get me! My pulse quickens and my breath is gone. I almost want to cry a little.

Then, as quickly as it started, it’s over. I’d cleared the level somehow. The previous levels had some goal, like revitalizing a tree or activating a bunch of windmills, and you got a nice little set of cutscenes at the end where you could just watch and relax. This dumped me out to the stage selection menu, sitting on the couch trying to catch my breath, wondering what the hell had just happened.

Then it hit me. This was completely intentional, and brilliant. The reason I was so scared is they managed to activate my inner 4 year old, and keep me in that mindset for awhile, and then throw in exactly what scares the crap out of him. And when I’d have a nightmare as a kid, it almost always was me doing something fun, and then something changes subtly, and then I’m running for my life from something, and I don’t know what it is but it’s scary, and things are going way too fast for me to process and I’d want to cry and then suddenly I’m awake and everything is OK again but I don’t know how I got here or if any of this is real and I’m still scared out of my mind. (I briefly considered phoning my parents to see if they’d let me sleep in their bed that night, but I think Efreak might have objected.)

Imagine if you could harness that kind of fear in your campaign. While I struggle to think of ways to do it as effectively in D&D as it’s done in Flower, the idea of something dark, malevolent, and most importantly nameless seems like a very good place to start. If you plop an enemy down and the players sort of know its stats and you announce all its abilities (with stats) as they happen, it breaks the spell. Now, granted, you can’t really get around that in D&D — when they take damage, you have to tell the players what happened to them in a way that they can record on their character sheet. But that doesn’t mean you have to say “the wight uses its Drain Level ability on the farmer”. You could, instead, talk about the NPC farmer suddenly being grabbed by a clawed hand from the shadows, his face suddenly growing gaunter and paler. Make sure to mention his attempts to cry for aid instead producing a dry rattle. You don’t have to tell the PC’s everything all the time!

…….OK, I admit it. I wrote that last part about D&D because I wanted to distract everyone from the fact that a game about flowers scared the hell out of me. It’s not the first time flowers have scared me so. There was also that time when I was 3 that my older brother told me there was a new kind of killer bee that looked just like floating dandelion seeds……

Then I got the opportunity to run through an instance of Ragefire Chasm with some more experienced players. I understand that each person plays the game in their own way, and often the raids are about efficiency. My experience of actually engaging in the storyline was pretty well shattered by “talk to this guy, get this quest, then get back down there and more killing.”

So I ask you, loyal readers… has anyone had a satisfactory roleplay experience using a packaged video game (such as WoW, Neverwinter, etc) as a medium? Granted, we weren’t trying to replicate D&D style roleplay in our World of Warcraft efforts, but it was a bit amazing how quickly things devolved into hack and slash, efficiency gaming once a group came into the mix.

So let’s hear it from you… does video game facilitated roleplay actually exist? Can it be done?

However, as part of the launch of their new Wrath of the Lich King expansion, zombies have started to appear everywhere in the game (especially near major population centers). And, like most zombies, they kill people, who in turn also become zombies. Sort of. When a player gets turned into a zombie, they can still control their character, and they can’t use their old skills but they get a new set of skills revolving around the eating of brains and infecting others. Sometimes you get infected but you haven’t turned yet, and it’s a race against time to find someone who can cure disease.

It’s a very cool idea, and a great thing to do during their Hallow’s End celebration. It’s a lot of fun for everyone — well, except low-level players like myself. You see, the problem is that when a level 70 player gets turned into a zombie, he’s still strong enough to kill my poor little level 24 shaman in one hit. Sometimes I turn into a zombie, other times I just die outright. Now imagine being me, just trying to turn in some quests so I can keep levelling for the first time. I go into any major city, and a group of at least 10 level 70 zombies is waiting for me. After dying/getting zombified 5 times trying to get away I try to escape this madness by questing in the Barrens, which is basically a field that contains nothing but grass and deadly velociraptors, and there are frickin’ zombies roaming around killing low level characters.

I’m really not enjoying this. This makes levelling insanely hard (which makes me even angrier since I am on a limited-time Refer-A-Friend, and I want to try to get a couple characters to lvl 60 before it ends). I’d really be mad if I wasn’t playing on a PvP server, those poor bastards on PvE and RP servers are getting PvP they didn’t sign up for.

You’d think Blizzard would have learned from what happened in the Corrupted Blood incident a couple years ago that it’s a giant pain in the ass when all your major cities are infected and the vast majority of the NPCs you need to talk to are dead (or trying to eat your brains). But that was a little different. That was a bug that people exploited and it spiraled out of control. This is Blizzard basically giving the greenlight for mass griefing. When you get zombified, you’re really not able to do much aside from walking around, infecting others, or killing others. So we’ve got hundreds of players who are basically now bored and have one option available to them. Oh yeah, plus this is an MMO so the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory is in full effect, so not only are they going to kill everybody they see, they’re going to stand around with 50 of their friends and camp your corpse too. If the zombies couldn’t all one-shot-kill me, it would help. And I can’t play the game I wanted to play, and most of the time I can’t play with the zombies infecting others because I’m either dead or one of the level 60 guards kills my weak little level 24 zombie ass (in one shot). I can walk back to my corpse. Over and over again. Which, frankly, is not worth $15/month. What I wish they’d do is make all the zombies weak and slow. You know, like zombies. God knows there are enough of them, and you could even spawn more that weren’t players to make it feel like a real live zombie invasion.

Making this worse for me is that the roleplayer in me finds this whole zombie scenario completely amazing. If I didn’t have to level and I had to help defend the last bastion of civilization from wave after wave of the undead, trying desperately not to join their ranks, this would be AMAZING. But the execution leaves something to be desired. And by that, I mean if the zombies are here to stay, I’m going to cancel my account. Especially since Blizzard appears to be trying to get more new players and for existing players to make new characters with their triple XP referral program, this is a completely terrible idea. This thought keeps me thinking this is temporary and for effect, so that you take the Lich King seriously as a world-threatening villain. But if they really expect brand new players to hang in there not having fun and never getting anything done for a month while they’re ruthlessly repeatedly murdered by members of their own faction “having fun”, I hope it comes back to bite them in the ass. Turning it, obviously, into an ass-zombie.