100% Procrastination

What's the Dilly Now?: Graphics in Gaming

2011-11-29T17:10:00.001-08:00

Welcome to the début of a little series I'm calling 'What's the Dilly Now?'

A segment inspired by things I read or see on the internet or things I just think about sometimes.
Todays topic:

Graphics in gaming!

A look at graphics and realism and how they're potentially doing more harm than good.

(Be fore-warned, this is going to be heavily opinionated)

Let it not go without being said that I like my cartoons. Being an aspiring internet cartoonist it's just a given, so it's also a given that I'm not too hung up on realism or a realistic look in my entertainment, that would only be part right...

You see, despite how much I do love cartoons, I can appreciate the work and love that goes into creating something that looks stunningly realistic, it is a real chore and one that I'm woefully incapable of.

Now, let's step away from the cartoon portion of the discussion and move directly into the main focus, gaming.

Gaming as a culture has been pushing towards realism for well over a decade (possibly longer) now and it's an admirable goal. Considering where gaming started with true gems like Pacman and Pong it's no wonder that given the opportunity, money and technology to do what it has, gaming has developed in massive bounds in what is a relatively shot amount of time, hell! We were still running on pixel sprites when I was 7 and that was only 16 years ago.

Saying all this though, you know what I do miss? Creativity, gaming has seen a lot of change, I know I just wrote the above paragraph talking about it, but it's also started to see is a heaping helping of stagnation.

See, it's my opinion that with all these incredibly pretty, high-end, realistic graphics we've hit a pinnacle, I don't think gaming hardware or software is likely to see a significant rise in quality too soon at least not to the standard that we've seen in the last 10 years and with the current development costs put into mainstream titles people are taking fewer risks

This has been said buy a great many people, who're all more articulate than me and it's true. A current triple A title sees a development cost of around $10,000,000 upwards(with some reaching as far as $100 million upwards), so a company has to make 'safe' bets with their titles (it's also the main reason we're seeing so many sequels lately).

Gaming companies are companies first and companies have to worry about their profit income, it's understandable and I don't begrudge any company for it, it's not their only focus, a gaming companies ultimate goal is to create top quality entertainment for their audience and for the most part they succeed, whether it's because that certain title is enjoyable or because their audience will happily pay full retail price for anything with a certain name on it.

Unfortunately though, the first goal, guaranteeing stable income, gets in the way of innovation and creativity, something that made gaming unique and interesting a short decade ago.

If you look back to the PS1 and N64 era you'd notice that a lot of the games don't look overly great.

There were a handful that scratched the surface of pretty but due to hardware limitations they were never going to make it, which is OK, because back then no one was expecting them to.

I should state here that I'm not going to turn this into a 'my era of gaming was better than this new fangled rubbish' rant, because that's not entirely true. Gaming was still very new to the world in this era (well new-er) and hadn't really blossomed as a culture, which it most certainly has today.

Mistakes were plentiful back then, but I think that was the beauty of it, gaming had room to be experimental in those earlier years, we were still trying to touch base on what we could achieve with what we had, some results pleasing, some not so much.

Granted we have plenty of examples of this in the current generation of gaming, A prominent example in my head is Mirror's Edge, certainly not the first 1st person parkour game, but definitely one that stood out for being something different and daring in a market becoming gradually more saturated in a majority copy-paste realism simulators.

It didn't do all too well from what I hear, but was at least given acknowledgement for trying something different (as well as giving multiple people motion sickness).

Back to the 90's for a second, like I said, gaming was all over this experimentation stuff, many existing franchises were entering into the polygonal world with varying degrees of success and failure, games like Mario, Sonic and Final Fantasy.

That last one is what sparked off this whole segment for me. Recently a Square Enix statement was released to just reiterate that 'Re-making Final Fantasy VII would take too long to be worth doing to current standards' and it made me wonder...

Who said it has to be made to current standards? Also what exactly is the current standard?

Are we talking about Final Fantasy XIII standards? I'll admit it was a gorgeous-looking game, but beyond that there wasn't much in the way of innovation, in fact a lot of that game seemed like a step backwards by PS1 standards...

Or are we talking about the highest standards presented in XBLA titles? Because sure, they're not graphically amazing (all the time) but what they lack in that department they tend to make up for in spades regarding story and game play, which is what the fans of FFVII really care about.

What I think is going on is that a lot of developers are guilty (Square Enix especially so) of thinking that their graphics are the only reason people buy their games and as such it's become their main focus. Sueenix's profits recently looked terrible but they're seemingly so insistent that we'll love FFXIII so much that a direct sequel is being made.

Now I'm not going to sit here and cry about how they can seemingly justify giving one of their worst games a direct sequel while their most fan-appreciated game isn't worth the time, money or effort to re-make.

It's a tough choice for them, they seem to want to do it, but they know they'll never please everyone who's anticipating it, which is uncharacteristically smart of them at the moment and I appreciate their honesty there, but regarding the modern standard thing, I don't want that.

I'd more than happily play an FFVII re-make with polished Kingdom Hearts visuals. That would make me happy.

And from a financial stand-point Squeenix have nothing to lose from it, their fan-base is so established and hardened towards the company that regardless of graphical style they'll still pay full retails price for a graphical (and possibly mechanical) update to what is regarded as Square's sole success in the industry*

*Which they're wrong about, sure it was the first Final Fantasy to move away from pixels, but it wasn't their greatest.

Let's move away from Final Fantasy now and get back onto general creativity, as an example I'm going to choose a company that has made a really odd transition, Naughty Dog currently known for the Uncharted games, previously known for the Jak and Daxter games, further back known for Crash Bandicoot.

Now, Crash Bandicoot was an odd one, It was a platforming game which was released, generally alongside the Playstation (I know I got my copy bundled with my playstation). It received pretty decent reviews and made the whole world wonder what the hell a Bandicoot was.

The basic story is a mad scientist, hell bent on taking over the world genetically evolves two bandicoots, one gets away and decides to stop the evil dudes plans while trying to rescue his girlfriend, the other evolved bandicoot.

You don't often see that kind of story coming out of anything that isn't an Arcade or indie title...

Crash still makes an occasional appearance today in awful gimmick games.

Jak and Daxter was released for the for the PS2 and was highly praised as being one of the first games to boast a world where you can move freely between areas without any noticeable loading, it practically invented the seamless world in videogames.

It's story was about some mute kid call Jak and his friend Daxter who gets turned into some kind of talking ginger weasel and are sent off on a quest by a guy with a tree trunk stuck in his hair to save the world and it's energies (eco) from an a couple of evil guys using dark eco to fuel some kind of doomsday robot, I guess.

The Jak and Daxter games went through the same trauma that Final Fantasy did when they eventually allowed their lead protagonists to speak...

The last game I saw released about them was a spin off on the PSP involving only one of them.

Then there's Uncharted, a game that as far as I've heard is about a male Lara Croft shooting people and raiding tombs with no intention of giving the artefacts to museums.

This is Naughty Dog's current most popular franchise and to me it sounds boring as shit.

I don't doubt that maybe the story or the gameplay make it stand out better than that little blurb I just wrote, but as is it's not really catching my attention.

It's creativity and intrigue that draw me towards a title, Dark Void, even though I never ended up buying it drew me in enough to at least try the demo because it was a dude fighting alien robots with a jetpack, that sounds really awesome.

I looked stuff like 'Splosion Man, Half Minute Hero, Orcs Must Die!, IloMilo and countless other arcade titles because, sure they're not realistic, they're not sporting the highest grade UI's or mechanics, they just have what they've got and they're working brilliantly with.

The sky is the limit for the modern gaming industry and I think that's the problem, so much has been done to ensure that we can do just about everything we expect to be able to do with our games now that it is all we're doing. We've hit the graphical pinnacle and we're not making any attempts to come back down again.

I mean Halo was supposedly a revolution in FPS gaming, but has it gone anywhere since? It's come to the point where it has literally been made again but with shinier graphics.

Which is an issue in and of itself, that part where I said we're not attempting to move away from the pinnacle, this is what I mean instead of trying to tread the experimental ground that got us where we were, we're trying to bring the ground to us and make it conform to current standards.

This is only going to further the stagnation of gaming. That also goes for these HD remasters I keep seeing. I can understand wanting to bring the good old days to the modern generation but you shouldn't be allowed to cash in on it. You added some shininess to the character models, congrats, I can do the same with the plastic wrap filter in photoshop. It's something that needs to stop and stop really soon.

Because I think if we're ever to see another 'golden age' of gaming we're going to have to sit back and really truly look inside ourselves and ask 'Is what we're getting right now really all that we'll ever want?'

I hope it's not just me that thinks maybe it isn't.

G wrote this whole thing while itching to play 'Baby Monkey' on his iPad, a game with only two buttons and more fun factor than most current-gen titles.

Review - Deus Ex: Human Revolution

2011-10-15T11:54:00.000-07:00

Initializing critical optics and readying

augmented ultra typo fingers!

I know, I know! I said I couldn't quite get my thoughts together on this one and for the most part it's still true. It's difficult for me to really focus my thoughts concerning Deus Ex: Human Revolution into words because for the first time in a long while I found myself playing a game and really thinking about what I was doing in it. So as a result I wasn't looking at it overly critically.

One could argue that in my previous review of Orcs Must Die by Robot Entertainment I may have made mention that there are practically limitless combinations of traps and tactics, meaning that I would have to have been thinking good and hard there too, they'd be right but the end result in Orcs Must Die will always be the hilariously fulfilling slaughter of x amount of Orcs, Kobolds and Ogres in progressively larger and convoluted rooms.

So The strategy boils less down to varied and intricate combinations as it does to quick and effective methods (since you need to shave off any time in play to get that much sought after fifth skull).

But enough about that, let's get back onto the subject at hand.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a first person action adventure stealth shooter developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix Just like bloody everything nowadays.

You start out as security manager, Adam Jensen working for leading augment specialist mega-corporation Sariff industries.

What are Augments? Well they're mechanical implants that people can have surgically attached to them for... Pretty much any reason they want. In the opening in-game cut-scene you're given a tour of the research section of the facility which shows you several ranges of augments to mechanical legs to a machine that launches deadly projectiles in all directions at the first sign of provocation (you know in case you lost your ink gland in a war or something, we have those, right?)

So as is evident, all the bases are covered as far as Augmentation goes.

It seems like a typical day at the office until a terrorist group (whose name I've either forgotten or it's not been established yet) storms the building in search of the above mentioned self defence day ruining projectile launcher.

You try your hardest to force back the invading force to be met with a cut-scene of poor old Adam being flung through what looks like a fairly solid foot-thick wall.

Your day and roughly 85% of your body ruined your boss decides it's high time you got some intense augment therapy, even going as far as to augment sunglasses into you face, upping the coolness factor by about 20%.

About a month or two after the incident you're sent off onto your first mission, you're given four options before going in, which boils down to whether you stealth in and if you do it in a non-lethal fashion.

I personally opted for lethal stealth, not because I wanted to kill enemies but because I had a previous play through whereby traditional stealth had failed me and the hacking minigame (which I will get to) infuriates me to no end.

But since the whole world plays Deus Ex: Human Revolution as a stealth character and does well enough to get through it I guess I'm just doing it wrong, which I'm willing to admit.

It has been a while since I played a game that has handled stealth seriously.

Hacking, since I mentioned it there is considered a key element of stealth game play in Deus Ex and it shows, what with how many times it's thrown in as an annoying little challenge.

I've been informed by my friend and proven hardcore game enthusiast, Gary Hudston who you might recognise as the man who won the internet a short while ago by proposing to his fiancé via custom Portal 2 maps and genuine custom Ellen Mclain (GLaDOS) dialogue that the hacking minigames in the PC release of the game are a damn sight better and more intuitive, so maybe choosing to play this on a console was a bad idea on my part?

Often I'd find myself in a situation that required what looked like a very easy level of hacking taking me anywhere upwards of half an hour.

Granted I didn't pay much attention to levelling my hacking, due to my disliking for the mechanic but I shouldn't be punished in a game boasting ultimate choice because I made a choice that wasn't in keeping with the quests design.

A perfect example of this was one time when I was in china I was helping the helicopter pilot get a confession from the man who she thinks killed her best friend.

Sure enough he confesses, it's recorded via... My eyes, I guess and all that's left is to play it on the giant monitor that make up pretty much all of the buildings outside wall.

Fair enough, but in order to do so I had to hack a terminal, having a feeble level 2 hacking ability because I plunged all my praxis points (levelling credits) into true stealth mechanics like turning invisible and silent running and the ability to break more than one neck at a time, I had endless difficulty in hacking this terminal, I felt like I was being punished for doing so well at the rest of what was just a side-quest by being given a challenge I couldn't complete.

To the game's credit there are in-game items that provide major advantage in hacking for those time where you can't avoid it, whether you've upgraded your hacking or not. But I was flat out of those.

So I was forced to either sit there and keep plugging until I got lucky enough or just carry on with the proper story mission and hope I came across some helpful items.

Fortunately I did and the quest was later completed but I couldn't help but think it was a too much of a chore for something that would only give me an achievement and not much else.

All right, with that out of the way, you might have read there that I mentioned upgraded abilities beside hacking.

Well it's true you can upgrade all sorts of stuff.

Being the true stealth-nut I am I opted for things I thought would give me greater advantage in espionage and assassination, like the ability to jump three times higher, turn invisible, see people and important objects through walls and the ability to lift heavy objects like fridges and dumpsters...

That last one isn't very stealthy...

It's all handled through Praxis points which I fleetingly mentioned a few paragraphs ago, you earn these via XP, granted from reading emails, completing quests or killing dudes. Once you have enough XP you earn a praxis point.

You can also just buy praxis points, as well as just find them laying about but the cost and availability is well balanced so you can't just overpower yourself from the get-go.

It's decent system, albeit a slight bit lacking in any real explanation as to why any of these upgrades are useful.

To go back to my friend Gary for a second, he obviously played it very stealthy too, so he spent a lot of his time avoiding direct confrontation all together, so when it came time to upgrade his shield for EMP resistance he decided it'd be better spent on another hacking upgrade.

This came back to bite him on the arse during a later boss fight whereby a solid tactic is to fry them with electricity.

Electricity is a harsh mistress, especially when using it in a room filled with coolant fluid all over the floor. For those not keeping up, when Gary would utilize EMP he'd die as a result, due to improper shielding.

He beat it eventually, as did I but I struggled for entirely different reasons.

Now fair enough EMP and electric hazards don't crop up often enough to warrant an upgrade against them and the game is hardly going to tell us 'you'll need it for a boss later on'.

But what is really peculiar is that the games boss fights don't seem to offer much in the way of variety.

I'm not going to sit here and type up what everyone has already heard about the games boss fights, but suffice it to say that they weren't noticeably in-keeping with the spirit of the game they were taking part in.

Almost as if they were made by a completely different company... Oh dear...

It's the games biggest fall point and no one in this situation is blameless, Eidos Montreal upon hearing that their fantastic game had incredibly meh boss fights that seemed they were lifted from an entirely different game were quick to point the finger of blame at another company who were sourced to create the boss fights separately from the rest of the game.

This doesn't absolve you of stupidity or laziness, Eidos... When have you ever heard of a good instance of a games company not making the boss fights for their own game?

For a consistent and finely-tuned boss fight in your 'any action can be taken' style game you should maybe make them yourself, not foist them off on someone else who seemingly wasn't allowed in your building during development.

In closing, yes Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a terrific example of exactly what current gen games should be striving to be, it's sleek, it's finely tuned it's executed beautifully. granted the hacking is poorly ported for consoles and the boss fights feel like a different game all together, but didn't you hear? It's not Eidos' fault.

I know I didn't touch any of the dialogue in this review, and through no fault of the games, it's brilliantly handled, I just figured I'd leave that for a later write up dedicated to the mechanic across several games. So look forward to that, or dread it, it's all the same to me.

G will surely be surprised when he realised his augmented fingers typed this up while he was asleep at his desk again...

Review - Orcs Must Die!

2011-10-14T12:53:00.000-07:00

Let the gristle and blood mist fly!

So I recently acquired Orcs Must Die from the XBLA marketplace and played through the campaign on War Mage difficulty (no where near as easy as this sentence makes it sound).

Admittedly I am not one to shy away from a challenge, for example where some might have found Elizabeth Greene from Prototype to be easy, I found it much more akin to having the winner of worlds strongest man try and break five steak tenderisers using only my buttocks, despite this however I went back to it two years later and iced the bitch.

But back to what I was talking about.

Orcs Must Die is a fun little 3rd person shooter/hack and slash/tower defence game by Robot Entertainment, although in fairness, the larger emphasis is put on that tower defence part.

You play as a character which as far as I'm aware is known solely as 'Apprentice'. You're a War Mage (winner of the 'best title in the world' award) of the 'Order' whose sole duty is to defend the Rifts from the Orcs.

This is literally the back-story going in, I'm not trying to simplify it or leave anything out for fear of spoiling anything (because let's face it, I'm awful at it) I will admit that later on it becomes slightly more fleshed out, but pretty much until the end-game it's a basic 'Orcs want our rifts, they're our Rifts and we don't want them touching them, so we kill the Orcs' story.

It stays well in line with the games sense of humour which is evident from the start, I'll not spoil anything but it is a very funny game.

Combat is well-balanced, ranged attacks from your fully auto rapid-fire lightning crossbow (oh yeah) deal reasonable damage and support tactics like picking off Orcs with head-shots for high (often times one-hit kill) damage or just unloading shots into crowds and hoping for the best, a popular and effective choice.

Melee combat, although not my style of choice does larger damage with the handicap of your squishy 'sure it's the war type but it's still a mage' body. Giving excellent advantage for clearing Orcs when needed but likely to cost you rift points when you're inevitably brought down by a mob of 20-30 Orcs.

Where the majority of the game-play takes place is the traps, you might even say they're the central theme of Orcs Must Die (you know, besides Orcs dying a lot) as a War Mage your main powers are conjuration of mechanical torture/murder devices.

Traps that send Orcs flying through the air, flying off of platforms, fill them with arrows, shoot spikes through their shins, mash them in to fine paste or sear their flesh (all good choices when it comes to Orcs) the possibilities for combination are endless, especially since after they're unlocked you can re-visit any previous levels to achieve higher scores and rewards.

Trap upgrades are handled through those above mentioned rewards, Skulls are given depending on player performance during levels, reaching a limit of four, with a fifth awarded for beating levels under a certain time limit, which is hard and I'm sure it's not just me thinking it, the traps get more exotic and wonderful, sure, but the tactics you need to put into action in order to properly utilize these marvellous giblitizers( a word pretty much invented for this game) get more convoluted to help ramp up the very evident difficulty at hand.

At time of writing I've managed five skulls on every level up to 'The Tower' on War Mage difficulty, which is respectable, later levels are just difficult for the sake of it, I swear.

Especially that finale level, Whoa! I mean when they put you right in that thing and Orcs are pouring out from all those other things, Man!... Spoilers...

All in all, I went into Orcs Must Die not necessarily expecting anything, besides the obvious kind of fun a person can find in the mutilation, humiliation and conflagration that it provides, what I came out of it all realising is that challenge truly the element that I've been missing in modern titles lately.

I'm sure there are other, much harder games out there (I'm coming for you, Dark Souls!) but for now I feel entertained at a level I've not felt in years and equal parts challenged and I'm sure at least one of those feelings will continue whilst I gun for five stars in every level on War Mage.

G, as much as he enjoyed Orcs Must Die feels a little let down that slipping in Kobold blood was never a legitimate hazard whilst playing.

Review - The Sims Medieval

2011-10-06T15:17:00.000-07:00

Hark! For I doth verily invite thee to read

some pointless ramblings about a game from seven months ago!

Much as I endeavour to be more up-to-date with these reviews, I've found it a little hard to really put anything solid into words regarding more recent titles (such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution) so unfortunately you get The Sims Medieval.

So, let's open this up with the basics, is this a typical Sims title?

Simply, no. Sure there are plenty of pre-existing elements that are staples of the franchise, needs bars admittedly trimmed down to their barest essentials are still around, although it's only the energy and hunger bars, which you'd think would be enough to make the game easy, but funnily enough they are the things that will most intrude on your in-game progress.

You have the option to bathe and entertain your Sims but only for the slight increase to the newly named 'focus' bar (Just think the 'mood' bar from previous titles and you've got the idea). The focus bar brings with it an obvious need to fill it and keep it that way by way of buffs and de-buffs, much like in previous titles where your Sims would be affected by in-game affects, like the 'bad smell' de-buff for not bathing, or the 'entertained' buff for watching TV.

It works very much the same for Medieval, except it is, in my experience much more of a chore to keep these things maintained. and when it's no longer the mood being affected and instead it is your Sims focus you'll find it hard to get anything done, since they need reasonable focus in order to complete even simple tasks.

Much unlike the typical Sims formula is the quest system, some-what more of a staple of typical fantasy games than the Sims, but it does work, if only for the fact you're not allowed to play any given character without first taking a quest.

It's a standard affair, you take your quest, whatever it is, you choose a role to play through it as, this is normally dictated by the theme of the quest, if it was something to do with the maintaining of your kingdom, then you'll likely be choosing between the Monarch or the Knight, if it's something to do with fighting witches or making a simalcrum (think Frankenstein's monster) then it'll be a job for the Wizard or the Physician.

This isn't always the case, you can occasionally come across open quests, available to all character types.

Some classic examples of really good quests that I've come across so far are as follows:

Fiding someone in town who's willing to kiss a highly toxic, talking frog.

Building a man-servant from salvaged animal parts using magic.

Assassinating the Monarch because it turns out they're an imposter wearing the still-warm face of the real Monarch.

Stuff like this is the standard of humour that's come to be expected from the franchise and it's good to see that even with a change of setting they can still apply it.

As far as actual gameplay goes I can't shake the overwhelming sadness that this instalment seems to have taken a large step backwards.

Don't get me wrong it's really good execution of an idea, but compared to much more robust iterations of the game, for example The Sims 3, you can't help but feel that so much more could have been with the idea.

You're seemingly not allowed to build any of the buildings or community locations in-game, the only available options for furnishings seem to be locked to specific character classes, which when paired with the fact that you can only have one character to a particular house makes diversifying your accomodation pointless as well as unrewarding.

Clothing is also themed towards classes, you can only dress a monarch in monarch clothing, much like you can only dress a wizard in wizard clothes, which destroys any reasonable necessicity for having a 'plan outfit' option on dressers, which are even more pointless because of that fact.

Fortunately the options for clothing in this game are very well handled and crafted by the dev team and I've not yet come across a cothing option I wouldn't put my characters in.

Hopping back to a few paragraphs ago, I mentioned that you couldn't play unless on a quest and when on a quest you have to chose a character to play through it as, this is of course implying that you can't play any character you want, you have to play the character you've chosen for a quest to the end, no ducking out.

After a while you start to work through this system and learn to accept it, but I can't help but think that it's still just a little backward. Maybe I'm just over-thinking it?

All in all, it seems like a pretty fun game, I'm barely a few hours into so maybe things will open up as I go further into it, who knows? I don't, not fully anyway.

So my recommendation?

Well, obviously, since this came out in March this year the fans of the series have likely bought it, played it and enjoyed it for the brilliant step away from the norm that it is.

But for non-fans and even just the people who've only played a Sims game in passing, this is not your standard Sims experience, I'd suggest giving it a look, sure it's a PC game and you're not likely to find a demo for it (and I'll never advocate pirating on this blog even for demoing purposes) but I went out and picked up my copy, limited edition for £14.99 So, even if you're not dedicated to the idea, you're not left too out of pocket.

Really, I'm just saying try it out, there are far worse games out there with a premise that no where near as well executed as The Sims Medieval.

G was trying desperately hard to think of something witty to close on, but he's busy assassinating a guy wearing a kings face...

Organ Trail - Tales From The Road - Part 3

2011-09-04T16:52:00.000-07:00

If they made a movie about us it would probably

be called 4 guys an infected and dysentery...

Literally just after leaving Pittsburgh Quam is hit by the green flu, fearing it's only a matter of time until he turns, we elect to put him down, we did it as humanely as possible.

We left him in the desert while he took a piss.

While speeding away from Quam, hoping he'll be more accepted amongst the zombies we pass by a gravestone, beyond our better judgement during such, ravenous times we stop to take a look.

"I don't get it?"

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!"

We shoot down what we can only assume is Andy, climb back in the station wagon and drive away towards Memphis.

When we arrive at Memphis, we decide that leaving as quickly as possible would be best, the less time we spend resting the quicker we get to the Safe Haven, that and who knows how much of what we did Zombie Quam is going to remember as he hungers for our revenge flesh...

So we try to hit the trail out of Memphis, only to be held up by a horde of Zombies, our getting out quick plan not working too well at this point.

Sneaking by them didn't work quite as well this time as it seems Jebediah was bitten, he hid it for a good few miles, but eventually the blood starts to show.

He holds out well enough for us to eventually hit Dallas, besides some quick trading and scavenging for food, we're quickly back on the road, headed for Albuquerque

About 90 miles out of Dallas Cleeb is acting funny, seems he managed to break his arm and leg during the food hunt, fair play though, kept it quiet long enough., while we were tending to Cleeb it seems a thief stole one of our replacement car mufflers, that's fine we had three, but then he set fire to some of our ammo in the car, was lucky we didn't lose the car... After gathering our stuff up and hiding it a little better in the car, seems Hamish managed to catch a mild case of cholera, lord knows from where, although it could have been that hospital we stopped at for rest...

He seems like he'll pull through.

We rest up in Albuquerque until Hamish's cholera clears up a bit, heading out straight for a strip club that's about 600 miles away...

"What? Don't look at me like that, it's on the route!"

While taking a break on what is now the longest stretch between checkpoints on our journey Hamish, while taking a piss, managed to get mauled and bit by not just one but two zombies.

Damnit, Hamish! You gloriously well-named wonderman you!

I'd be worried, but that means Hamish took on two at once without his gun... I think he can handle it.

And to top it off, just after Hamish's untimely bout with cholera, now Jebediah has the fever...

At least it's not the green kind.

We make it to the strip club, which is a marvel considering I have Cleeb with two broken limbs, which I've started to notice don't look as healthy they perhaps could do, Jeb's fever is getting worse and Hamish is looking a little more grey-skinned by the hour...

We stay the night, hoping that some decent rest outside of the wagon will do us all some good, Hamish decides it's a good night to stand out and look at the moon, I recall just how far we've come.

At the end of the road is the nearest in-game strip club to Washington DC...

The following morning Jeb' and Cleeb are dead in their make-shift beds. Me and Hamish bury them as best we can and move on.

You'd think what with Hamish's shining example I'd be able to steer clear of zombies while I take a piss, I even took my gun, what I didn't anticipate is zombies being quiet.

I took a few teeth to the shoulder while my back was turned, I'm losing a lot of blood.

"Ah, shit, there goes the designated driver!"

So here I am, bleeding out of the shoulder, a friend turning as I think this, we're low on food and fuel, high on bullets... Then... I black out just two miles short of Vegas.

"Except for Hamish, who presumably ate your corpse..."

Well, that's been Organ Trail - Tales From The Road and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed playing/writing it!

I should probably mention that this was a failed run-through, on previous, 'not-for-the-blog' runs I've made it to the safe haven and got in, sometimes even with a survivor or two. But this time around I just wasn't successful enough.

I really urge people to at least try this game out, for all of it's simple, text adventure game-play and retro style it manages to have an ever-changing and robust style of play that has honestly had me coming back again and again, because it's constantly different.

All manner of crazy shit can happen on the road in Organ Trail, most of it I didn't get a chance to cover in this write up, so go try it for yourselves!

G highly recommends Organ Trail to all, if only because he doesn't believe anyone can make it to the end with all survivors.

Organ Trail - Tales From The Road - Part 2

2011-09-04T15:30:00.000-07:00

So we've been accosted by a mysterious 'stranga'

and he's giving us looting tips.

Turns out there's not much looting you can get done in 16 hours. As is painfully clear of this thought out loot schedule I cooked up between instalments.

The calculated process of a professional apocalypse survivor.

You might be wondering why I left out money? Well, to me it just doesn't sound at all useful, everyone is going to be looting shit, society has gone to hell what use is legal tender? The world is falling back on the handy and reliable bartering system anyway, so anything I wind up having surplus of I'll trade for money.

Thank you suspicious, creepy and possibly foul-smelling stranger

We set off on our way at long last, leaving the ruins of Washington DC behind us, it's 230 miles to Pittsburgh, our first stop on the way to safety, to save you seeing a lot of screens of a car against different backgrounds, I'm going to try and write down as much info as I can.

Upon leaving, I realise that our food is a little lower than is comfortable, so I ration us all down to meagre rations, it'll leave us all hungrier than we'd like, but at least we'll get by. Our driving pace is steady, making an average 30 miles an hour, eating about 10 ounces of food every 30 miles when we stop to rest, take our nature calls or scavenge for food.

All was looking well until 50 miles from Pittsburgh while taking a piss.

Damnit, Quam!

This is the brutal nature of this game, I'm not even 5 minutes into it and one my survivors has been bitten, I have options to combat this situation I can leave him be, it's rumoured that infected survivors fetch a good price at the Safe Haven, or I can sacrifice some ammo to put him down.

I'm going to hold back and weigh out my options, you never know, he might make it to Safety...

Although it's not looking good...

We make it to Pittsburgh, Quam is looking all right, albeit slightly twitchy, I figure our food reserves aren't looking too bad, especially since we followed those vultures to a pretty good food source before arriving. So we set out again straight away.

We're greeted by a large group of restless zombies, we decide to wait a while to see if they calm down.

Two hours later, we've managed to drive through a much calmer zombie horde without getting noticed.

240 miles to our next location, one infected person in the car with us, I'm feeling worried, but I know we can make it if we just soldier on, if only I didn't get lost on that country road for an hour and losing that can of fuel wasn't exactly fortuitous... Regardless we make it to the next check point.

And reach the end of part 2

Continued in Part 3

Organ Trail - Tales From The Road - Part 1

2011-09-04T09:22:00.001-07:00

Greetings one and all!
Let me tell you a story about zombies.

So I've found myself with a lot of spare time lately, what with planning the return of PTG, figuring out how to get back on track with MiniGames, etc.
So I've been wasting a lot of time, I mean, what sense is having a blog called '100% Procrastination' If I can't get a little guilty of it from time-to-time?

How have I been wasting my time lately? Well I'll tell you.

(Above: A game for manly men, ladies and aliens)

Organ Trail, a brilliant little flash-game by the fine folks at HatsProductions.com otherwise known as 'the men who wear many hats'.

It's a stylish retro text adventure game based on a modern-day, zombie-infested retelling of the Oregon Trail. You play as one of 5 survivors in a heavily infected Washington DC, preparing to flee the city, you're allowed to name your survivors, so let's see how well I do at this...

Oh...
Well it seems before I can go anywhere I have to decide who I am... Which I guess makes sense.
Whoever you choose at this point determines how much time you have at the start to scrounge up supplies before heading across the country for the Safe Haven, think of it as easy, medium and hard mode.


Clearly someone thinks lawyers aren't cut out for the apocalypse.

Well, I'm not one to make things too easy for myself, so I'll be the Clerk from Jersey City.

With that important lifestyle decision made, I'm ready to meet and name my squad who are comprised of this rag-tag bunch, the game never indicates which one is you, but I think we all know which one we all want to be...

(Hint: the one with the cricket bat.)

Just so it'll make it easier for everyone reading when I start throwing around names and connecting them to typhoid or dysentery, here's a screen of what I named them.

Names, I can give 'em.

Decide amongst yourselves who's who.

All right! Formalities dispensed, this is what I'm greeted to.

Freaking Government, ruining our apocalypse fun...

Even more incentive to GTFO I guess, I start assessing the situation when I'm confronted by this guy...

WHAT ARE YOU?!

All right, so this is our supplier, he informs us that we haven't got much time and we should probably spend any and all spare time finding supplies, he even knows exactly how much we can grab of certain things per hour. Turns out, it's not a lot.

Continued in part two.

Review - Duke Nukem Forever.

2011-06-19T10:21:00.000-07:00

Howdy! Today we'll be talking about history.
History and tits.
Titstory...

So, by now I'd assume that those of us who give a damn about Duke Nukem have likely played or heard the news about it.

It's been received in a some-what negative light, a sizeable portion of 'professional games critics*' have slated it as 'exactly what the world was expecting'.
A smaller portion have enjoyed whilst the rest have meh'd it down.

(*Although, quite how you become a professional in giving out your opinion. I don't know.)

Fortunately for some, I'm no pro at this. hence why I don't do it very often.

I'll say now that I've not completed Duke Nukem, I intend to, but I've been busy.
So what you'll get will be what I've gathered thus far.

To open the game you're greeted to what's been considered a lengthy sequence of nothing happening.

'Nothing happening' in this instance being professional critic speak for 'nothing gets shot.'

Personally, I enjoyed this opening sequence. Sure! Nothing gets shot for a good majority of it but it's a fun way for people to get a full feel for the interactivity of the game-world. Something that is useful for a game wherein upgrades to Ego (shield/health) are acquired through game-world interaction.

So what some have slated as 20 minutes of nothing happening is in fact just a small, interactive tutorial.

Sure, 20 minutes might be a long time for a Duke Nukem game to go without a bullet being fired, but let's face it the gaming industry has done a lot worse with Tutorials.

I'm looking at you Final Fantasy XIII...

Now, I'm not sure if this is just me being an 'FPS noob' but I found that the actual learning curve for the game once shooting had commenced was tilted some-what in the AI's favour.

Duke starts with a very small amount of Ego, anything that can upgrade it gives very slim amounts at best and There's not very many places to hide in order to regain any of it.

I'm choosing to put it down to Duke Nukem being the only FPS I've been interested in years.
Either that or it's an accurate portrayal of Duke suffering with 'caught with his pants down' syndrome.

It's been 12 years since anything alien invasion related happened to Duke, all of a sudden he's caught in the middle of a planet-wide female abduction plot.

Now tell me you'd have been fully prepared and not at all rusty after 12 years...

Thought so... Moving on!

Using a Melee move often times misses since despite what setting I put the axis' on they moved incredibly slowly, mixed in with the AI's affinity for dodging anything larger than a pin head makes the game feel like it penalises you for lack of precognitive ability. Making you constantly fumble away ammo because you didn't choose the right direction to swing your aim to when the enemies almost certainly stepped to avoid fire.

Pig enemies when introduced are capable of flooring the Duke in two solid hits.
(I know because it happened to me on my first try).
Forcing you in the early stages to rely heavily on beer and 'roid power-ups which serve as handy boosts to endurance and melee power but bring with them massive vision handicaps and in the case of 'roids removes your guns, making it impossible to hit anyone unless they're within melee range.

Making you more susceptible to being brutally murdered by their mates who're still far away enough to squeeze off some free shots on you.

I won't argue that when used properly these power-ups are incredibly useful, but in later sections I never really touched them. Mostly because after a certain point weapons you find are much more capable of destroying enemies, who're carrying the same weapons since you looted them from their dead mates.

And of course because these power-ups have to be collected in the field. And they do not show up very often.

I'll argue in Dukes favour that not everyone in Vegas is on 'roids, making their availability limited, but Beer? Come on... If there's anything we're not running out of, it's that.

So using these power-ups is really a case of 'what if I need them later on, because I'm not likely to find them again for a while.'

Which I suppose is an admirable quality in a game. It wouldn't be anywhere near as challenging a game if Duke had a rechargeable supply of beer and drugs.

I've heard what I can only hope were unoriginal attempts at irony, people who've reviewed Duke Nukem and slated it for it's 'juvenile humour'.

Congratulations! You just played a Duke Nukem game!

People playing Duke Nukem for good writing over cheesy 90's quips and over-flowing amounts of machismo and brainless trigger-happy fun are clearly not in the right position to tell me that what they think is is a the deal breaker in my purchase of electronic entertainment.

I won't say that the game is without it's issues, hell I just spent about 30 minutes typing most of them up, there's aiming problems, unfair AI advantages, Power ups that provide more handicaps then help, guns and ammo, although mostly dropped and looted by enemies are in short supply if you want decent guns.

There's constant loading screens which even when installed on your console I'm sure it has to show you a minimum of three hints before it'll move you on, couple with the small health bar and slightly overpowered enemies early on this makes it a bit of a chore to stay interested. Definitely a game best handled in short bursts.

Duke also seems to be suffering with serious balance issues in this game since anything heftier than a paperweight being thrown at him will topple him over.

And to top it off, there's a forced vehicle section where you have to stop for gas every 10 minutes.

It's graphics are by far not the prettiest in the world and it's spoken dialogue is lacking in any real human essence (just look at the twins for evidence there)

But personally, I've chosen to accept that that was entirely the point.

We didn't buy a Duke Nukem game for pretty graphics or a pulitzer price-winning story.

We bought it because we all remember a time when shit like Duke Nukem made us laugh are arses off. (and of course we liked the tits)

Buying a game that openly admits to it's audience that it's protagonist is a relic of the 90's and expecting him to have evolved into the modern age with the rest of us just makes any opinion you might have moot in my eyes.

But in saying that, assuming or hoping that Duke hasn't evolved at all is ridiculous.
He has, in a very small, but still very noticeable way.

I've recently looked into the old Duke Games I remember playing/seeing back in the day and honestly beyond Forever looking like a graphical upgrade to 3D, I didn't really see much of a character in the Duke back then, I saw funny one-liners, guns, blood and tits.

And that's exactly what I've seen Gearbox bring to the modern-age, just with slightly more character.

Would I recommend Duke? If you've thought any of that sounded good, then it's probably a decent investment. Maybe consider renting before buying, to be sure. Form your own opinion.

Rating? A solid 'sod off' out of 'I don't do numbers.'

G is feeling pretty damn 'professional' now that he's voiced his opinion on the internet.

Fable 3: Extra Consideration.

2011-05-18T13:17:00.001-07:00

Now, it's not that I like ragging on Fable games...

Ok, I guess I kind of do like it...

But there are some glaringly flawed aspects that very rarely ever get addressed by the company behind it all, Lionhead Studios.
How is that? I would have thought being a rather standard developer of games, having a forum for which the opinions and thoughts of fellow gamers like myself can be heard would have been something they at least check up on.

Unless the Lionhead forums have some unreasonably strict standards on opinions...

I'm rambling.

Basically what I'm saying is this.
We've all been on a gaming forum at some point in our internet lives, we've seen how very, VERY opinionated we can all be, so why are Lionhead still obliviously making games that include or take away things that we didn't ask for?

Now I know it's not the job of a developer to take every little suggestion from their fans as if it were a concrete plan for development.
If developers implemented everything the fans wanted then the result would always be shit.

But still, it goes a long way to at least listen to us guys...

I mean, I don't know about anyone else, but I'm definitely not one of the people who at the end of Fable 2 said something along the lines of:

'You know what? This game wasn't what I was expecting, if only there was some kind of hand-holding mechanic!'

Or even something along the lines of:

'This whole interacting with the populace of Albion is a rather impersonal affair, if only I could do a quest for every individual* NPC in Albion!'

(*Individual being a very, very , VERY loose term for any of the hive-minded NPCs throughout the Fable series.)

So I've decided that today, whilst I've not really been concentrating hard enough on the games I've played recently and with Fable 3's release on Steam bringing it back in to the public eye and therefore making it relevant again, I'm going to revisit the entire Fable series to lay down a list of let's say 5 of the things I personally never asked for going in order of the ones I found least irritating...

Number 1:

Doing away with the Mana bar in Fable 2... (And as a result any consequence of magic use)

Now, it's understandable why we'd have no mana bar, since Magic-users are considered masters of potentially limitless energy, but at the same time it's not the caster that is limitless...

It's the power he wields. I'll accept that never in any great fantasy-literature has there ever been a moment when the mighty wizard needed to down a mana potion before he could continue being a badass...

Although saying that, Lord of the Rings would've been a damn sight more amusing to watch had Gandalf's mana bar run dry during the Balrog scene...

As far as my memory serves, the Mana bar was only removed because it was considered 'unnecessary clutter' by the Devs.

Unnecessary in this case meaning 'indicative of useful information'.

It might have been 'in the way' up there in the top corner of the screen, guys. But it was entirely necessary.

Besides, getting rid of the mana bar just gave players an infinite pool of magic to use...

'How is that a downside?' I hear the voices asking...
Well, I'm an odd variety of gamer that likes a little consequence and I don't think I'm alone here either.

I'm willing to wager that I wasn't the only person suckered into using Magic in Fable 1 because Molyneux told us that over-using magic would cause your characters body to wither and his hair to turn white and fall out...

I like no, slash that! LOVE that idea and I want to know what happened to it!

I'll tell you...

It was swapped out for glowing hands and painted on 'mystical runes' We got to keep the white hair though, so yeah!

Having a mana bar is a very basic means of creating consequence in games, you use too much magic too quickly, or over-use high-level spells , your mana pool will run dry, forcing you to retreat, plan ahead and carry potions or adopt an entirely different strategy all together.

Hell most of my characters in Fable only carry a sword as a back-up when the magic isn't doing the job.

Wizards for life!

In Fable 2 the most planning we had to think about was what order our spells should be cast in.

Which I wager for most people didn't go any further than level 2 slow time, level 5 fire.

And the only consequence available was misjudging an enemy's distance from you in relation to cast times.
Which leads me to my next point.

Number 2:

Doing away with any significant consequence for death:

Now, being a Fable veteran (which sounded less lame in my head) I'm familiar with the fact that it's very hard to die in this series. I guess the boys at Lionhead are so desperate for the series to continue that they just slowly phased death out all together (I'm looking at you Fable 3...)

In Fable 1, death wasn't exactly relevant, It was your standard affair of 'you're knocked down in combat, suffer a scar and an experience deduction!' The only way to combat the experience deduction was to have a full supply of Resurrection phials, which I'm assuming must be kept inside the body and activated by your heart stopping...

But I'm not here to talk about the mechanics of drinking potions when you're dead...

You could only carry 9 around with you and they were not cheap... Easy to find though, so it works out fine.

In Fable 2, they kept the phials, but they made it much harder to die, same cosmetic consequence to dying as Fable 1, just a lot harder to get to it to happen. The experience deduction was an annoyance at best, since it never took away enough to really cause a sweat.

All in all, it felt like they were left in so Heroes would have an extra way to pad out their coin-purse.

But even then, you didn't die anyway, so the relevance of having a resurrection phial is naught.

Making death in Fable 2 less of a punishment and more of a rag-doll showcase in slow motion for 10 seconds in black and white like we're playing a racing game and we just fucked up on a corner...

Fable 3 rid the world of many things and phials were one of them, alongside them was any consequence for death. I've amassed maybe two scars over 5 characters and they were only gained when I stopped paying attention.

It might also have been because the last time I'd touched Fable 3 was Understone... So I was a bit rusty when it came to the prison bum-rape that was Traitor's Keep.

Now, I know a lot of games have this unwarranted obsession at the moment for dumbing things down so they everyone can get in on the fun, and I respect that kind of thinking...

The letting everyone play thing, that is. Dumbing down games is not helping in any significant way. Sure you're pleasing the crowds, but without at least a decent challenge, what's to keep them playing?

Death is an aspect that most fantasy games have embraced, it's why the quick-save feature was invented.

But with the Fable games it seems they might have looked at fantasy, which is routinely unforgiving, decided it's not for them and opted more for fairy tale. Forgetting that the fairy tale crowd like a good gory murder as much as the next guy...

(Have you ever really looked into Little Red Riding Hood? Some grim stuff in there...)

Number 3:

Assigning different aspects of combat to one button each.

Now, this is an aspect that hasn't changed too much since it's original release and again, I appreciate that they're trying to make it simpler for those who would otherwise not play a game.

But the rest of us are very aware of one certain fact.

Button mashing is not Innovation.

Now like I said, Fable 1 wasn't exactly technical in it's combat execution, you pushed a button to draw your sword, you hit things with the sword. You push another button to draw your bow, you hit things with the bow and you had to hold down a trigger button to cast spells.

It was slightly more intricate than the current Fables, but it was by no stretch confusing or unintuitive.

I personally kind of miss having button presses connected to physically drawing your weapon, it gave you much more of a strategic aspect to game-play and it just made sense.

If you've got your sword out, but all the enemies are at a distance, then you had to draw your bow, because you're not going to get any arrows to fly out while pushing the attack button with your sword out now are you?

You had to plan around where your enemies were, what kind of enemies were they? Bandits are fairly easy to hit at a distance, but if you're fighting wasps, that's a smaller target, you're liable to hit a civilian (which could happen in Fable 1 because there was NO SAFETY)

Even your spells had a much more varied strategic element to them, since you could have 4 of them assigned to any menu at a time, not to mention that the catalogue of spells at your disposal was much more varied.

Hell you even had healing spells and spells that swapped your health bar around for your mana bar, bringing in even more consequence for magic-use.

Do you sacrifice your mana or potions for invulnerability or do you just go in for an all out assault on the enemy? It's up to you.

In Fable 2 they opted for an easier set up. Every element of combat is assigned to it's own button.

Making it much easier to switch between combat styles.
It was even colour corresponded, the melee, which was blue EXP was the X button, ranged was yellow so it was thr Y button and magic was red, so it was the B button, it made a clever and subliminal kind of sense.

I also can't argue that being able to use magic while you're holding a sword is entirely possible,
but being able to switch between sword fighting to gun-play within the blink of an eye is unrealistic.

'But it's Fable, why the hell would it be realistic?' You ask?

You're right, I mean we're talking about a game made by a team of developers who agreed that Molyneux was onto something when he said that teleporting to a room every time you hit start is a much more innovative and realistic means of handling menu systems...

So yeah, it's not like they're trying to make it realistic in anyway...

Oh wait... Yes they are....

Whoops.

Fable 3's combat is essentially CTRL+C'd and CTRL+V'd from Fable 2 with the exception being the magic, but only in a very minor sense. (e.g. Spell weaving.)

Number 4:

Needless Mechanics that don't serve to further the story or character:

We know which I'm talking about, because most of us really hate them.

No, not the marrying of NPCs, that is actually OK in my book, granted no one NPC is better or more important than the other, unless we're talking about Lady Grey... No I'm talking about the incredibly unnecessary mechanics like property buying , jobs, hand holding and stuff like that.

Why are they unnecessary? Well it's right up there in the title, they don't do anything to further the story or develop the character.

If, just once someone in-game had said something like:

'I've heard of him/her, they're a well respected blacksmith in this town, his weapons are considered to be that of legends!'

Then yeah, that'd be awesome, that would validate the time I wasted making the same damn sword for three hours.
At the current moment the most I can hope to get out of it is a small pay-check and maybe some new property to buy.

Property which if handled right, negates the reason to get a job...
And I highly doubt any bard has ever written a legendary song about a mute real estate agent...

Now, these things don't go completely without story to back them up.

These things were both implemented because story-wise the guild no longer exists, as a result no one is willing to pay you to save their children or defeat a great troll or anything of the like.

But this raises a big question in my mind...

'Why the hell not?' In Fable 1, sure I'll accept that a heroes services are akin to calling the exterminator when you have a nasty case of wasps or hobbes. Since there are practically hundreds of you.

In Fable 2 however, it's 500 years since then, heroes are damn-near extinct besides you and your two mates plus Reaver. Your services are much more rare.

I doubt anyone else in the land can hand out business cards with 'Professional ROCK TROLL slayer/Serious badass.'

Or boast name-tags that say 'Hello, my name is, Sparrow. I bend the very elements to my will to crush my enemies.'

I don't think it's too unreasonable to at least ask for payment... Or even just being given the option to.

Which brings me to my final point...

Number 5:

Where exactly is the freedom I've been promised since Fable 1?

As I just mentioned, being paid for killing rock trolls would be super awesome. But nowhere near as awesome as being given the CHOICE to ask for payment or not, without some forced morality meter keeping tabs on how much of an arsehole I am because I want money for risking my arse.

You wouldn't consider a fire fighter evil just because he likes to get his pay-check, would you?

In the Fable series, choice has always been laid out in most black and white of forms, you can't have a morally grey area to hide in when you don't want make a life-altering decision.
Which I think is something the series has been lacking.

In a previous post I mused on the potential of a Fable-like game where if provided with an enemy like Lord Lucien (Fable 2) you should be given the option to either, barter passage to the spire and take him out there and then, or wait and go through the games trials waiting to take him out when you've gained some world perspective and levelled your spells to a respectable standard (for what reason since Lucien can be taken out with a single bullet I don't know...)

Or, in my ideal Fable game, you'd be allowed to either ignore him altogether, or befriend him/usurp his power and take control of his forces for your own ends.

Every Fable game is guilty of boasting that it's full of choice, but when you get right into them, you realise that there's nothing there to work with.

More so in the latest instalment, Fable 3. The inclusion of a voice for your character constantly portrays you as the good guy, no effort is made to facilitate an evil character in this story.
You're forced to fight for the welfare of your kingdom, make promises that you personally might not have even thought about making to characters you might not even give a toss about.

You might think that being a tyrannical despot is a good idea and want to join your brother's side in Fable 3, then when he reveals he's doing it all to save his kingdom you can take his power and call him a closet peace loving pansy.

This all something that can be implemented, seeing as how robust and intricate games can be nowadays, Lionhead take a fairly substantial amount of time between games, why can't they be working on a more branched out style of story telling?

Hell, why not get rid of the story as a whole, plop in some key characters, villains and factions and just let the characters figure out for themselves how and why to interact with them all.

That way they can say that the meaning of Fable is to literally create your own Fable.
You'd be creating a story about your character.

Do away with this 'bloodline' nonsense, just make it so that any ordinary guy can use a sword and gun (y'know like they totally can) and since you're so insistent that magic needs no consequence, why not just make it so anyone with a big enough book can learn magic.

That way the world becomes so much more interesting and the effort involved is put solely into game-play where a lot of trouble is coming from.

It all works out, you get the time you want to develop and implement innovative new ideas, and players finally get to play the game you've been trying to make since Project Ego.

If there's one thing G knows it's that 'La la la! Lionhead's not listening!'

Review - Fable 3

2011-01-30T08:38:00.000-08:00

How's about something about a game likely no one here

gives a damn about?

Damn, you guys are lucky!

Fable 3:

So, anyone who has paid any attention to Molyneux in last few years knows that yet again he's promised just a little too much.

I'll say it again that despite what the Fable games are like I tend to enjoy them, I honestly wish I could say the same for Fable 3...

Fable and Fable: The Lost Chapters were both brilliant (albeit the same) games.
With a coherent story, solid game-play and a decent amount of customization with amazing end-game content (in TLC).

Fable 2 was pretty much a graphical upgrade that sacrificed some of the more useful elements, a decent menu system, armour that has more protective value than the foil you wrap around roast chicken and fulfilling end-game content that made use of all the time you spent levelling abilities

All for things like: The ability to play as a woman*, the ability to dye your clothes, a glowing trail that removes the need for a mini-map by giving you something else to look at besides the scenery, an unlimited but somehow incredibly restricted magic system and of course, a dog.

(*Women were a very welcome addition to the formula, in my opinion. Although saying that, the dog was occasionally useful too).

However, despite all the things that were taken away from the sequel, Fable 2 was more than able to hold itself up as a decent game that was at least worth trying and the effort that went into was definitely noticeable.

I only wish I could say the same for Fable 3...

It seems that in the short amount of time it took to make Fable 3* that people at Lionhead have started to lose touch with what people actually want games to be like.

Don't get me wrong, I am one of those people that is thankful that Molyneux is at least trying to be innovative in a market that is bogged down with the realistic shooter at the moment, at least until Duke Nukem Forever hopefully wipes that slate clean.

And while I suppose their is no failure in experimentation as you'll likely learn from any short-comings I feel that the innovation here has become the major ingredient in the downfall of quality that unfortunately the Fable series has become known for.

*In regards to Fable development times: Fable took from project ego status to completion around 6 years to make if I remember rightly, Fable 2 took 4 years to make, Fable 3 was put into development shortly after the release of Fable 2's first lot of DLC and took 2 years to make, some would argue that this is because the games are getting easier to make for the studio and that an increase in game-play quality can be sure to follow.

Unfortunately there is a video that describes that everything in Fable 3 is just an upgraded and re-animated version of what was put into Fable 2.

'With the tools in place from Fable 2, we had a everything we needed already, we simply expanded upon it'

This to me says that Fable 3 is nothing more than a sub-par expansion pack which puts in a couple of new features while sacrificing most of the other ones that worked fine.

Anyway, back to the 'innovation'.

The two prominent new features are the 'touch' system a new way of interacting with the people of Albion which varies from handshakes to dancing.

You might think that sounds like a limited amount of option of interaction, well this is because in my experience, dancing and shaking hands is all the hero ever wants to do.

'What's that? The hero decides what expressions to use?'

That's right, your input in how to interact with villagers is limited to simply holding a button when you want to interact, everything past that is just pressing the corresponding button on-screen to the option the game has given you.

So yeah, you can do a LOT more than shaking hands and dancing, but lord knows how you get the hero to want to do those things... Because you sure as hell can't tell them to...

Another aspect of the touch system is the ability to hold hands with any villager you like.
Regardless how well they know you. It's supposedly context sensitive, but because the game failed to enlighten me on how or where exactly you drag people to force them into manual labour the only example I ever saw was during 'law enforcement' minigames.

A simple premise, a guard has lost a convict from one of the nearby prisons and wants you to help find them.

This is achieved by following the glowing trail to the perp, stopping him in his tracks which is as easy as outrunning him, holding his hand and without any sign of resistance, walk them politely back to the guard.

Where's the context sensitivity? Oh! that's right, it only kicks in when you've got the perp within 10 in-game feet of the guard...

So far, I'm uninspired.

Innovation number 2 is the Sanctuary.

Molyneux had this startlingly brilliant idea concerning something called GUI (Graphical User Interface) basically anything that is indicative of statistics, like a health/mana bar, mini-map or even a menu system.

He thought that having a menu system distracted the player too much from the game-world which he is striving to make feel as real and immersive as possible.
So instead of a menu system when the player hits the start button they're instantly transported to a room, in this room is a giant map table, that can transport you to any of the predetermined areas of Albion and then there are three doors: Wardrobe, Armoury and Online Shop.

All fairly explanatory, but for the sake of some here's a basic run-down.

Wardrobe: Where your clothes, dyes, hairstyles, tattoos and make-up hang out.

Armoury: Where you can find the full assortment of ranged and melee weapons you've accumulated as well as your spell gauntlets*.

Online Shop: It's basically the in-game version of the XBL Marketplace.

*Spells have been all out replaced with gauntlets that provide you the power to use the corresponding magic spell, with the gauntlets system comes a new addition, spell-weaving.
Spell-weaving allows you the ability to mix two spells together for more devastating affect.

I honestly never saw it worthwhile to go beyond fire+lightning.

You can navigate your way through the Sanctuary by either running through it or by pushing the appropriate button on the D-pad.

But the novelty of the sanctuary very quickly runs out as you begin to realise just how damn useful those typical, antiquated menu systems really were.

The thing is, for me Fable: TLC had a brilliant in-game menu system, at least the console version did, I've never seen the PC version.

Basically, as the character's movement was controlled by the analog stick, the D-pad was free for in-game item management.

With a few presses of the D-pad you can sort through your items and expressions over the top of game-play, you can assign certain items to D-pad presses for extra convenience. All while never entering a menu, to top of how great it was, you could use more than one item at a time in this menu.

Fable 2 did away with the core of this system, context sensitive items and expressions would react to D-pad presses but they could never be assigned, and the ability to sort items over game-play was removed in favour of a terribly designed menu system that allowed only one item to used at a time.

Fable 3 rid the game of menus all together and opted for a system that not only takes more time, it was even more fiddly and didn't allow us to even see how many items we had, let alone use more than one at a time...

So far, that's the two main innovations of the title at they both only serve to ruin the experience.

To, Molyneux, in regards to the touch system, I can see how it looked like a good idea, but getting rid of player input was a terrible decision, with just that much more implementation the idea would have been solid. And as for the Sanctuary, there's a reason people insist on menus and GUI's.

They're useful and they work. No other reason, some of the best games in the world have had GUI's and menus and I bet no one has ever said 'the games would have been that tiny bit better if it wasn't for the Menus'.

Maybe people complained about Fable 2's menu system, but that's only because the original Fable had a brilliant menu system, it didn't need to be changed, but it happened anyway.

Considering Combat, the dog, real estate and job minigames are pretty much exactly the same, there's not much else I can say on the game.

In closing, I really wanted to like Fable 3 going into it, as much as I've wanted to like all the Fable games. But unfortunately Fable 3 has stopped itself from getting anywhere by essentially chopping off it's own legs as a means of giving itself an extra hand and poor sorting skills.

G hopes that one day, Molyneux will decide the next big step for Fable will take place entirely in the menus.

Review - Final Fantasy XIII

2010-03-19T12:39:00.001-07:00

AKA: What wasn't great, but definitely not as

bad as others make it out to be.

Ok, So I'm going to talk about Final Fantasy XIII.

I'm going to say now that despite my usual writing style for these "reviews" I'm going to try and hold back as much as I can on spoilers...

And the Bold button...

That being said, let me begin...

It was a typical night where I couldn't sleep for lord only knows what reason I couldn't comprehend, I'm playing Sonic 2 on XBLA because I figured being 21 years of age and never legitimately completing a Sonic game is pretty ridiculous.
So I do that (Complete it I mean) later in the night my brother arrives home from work, we get into a conversation about how hard games from our childhood were, I was of the mind that classic games were still just as difficult as they always were and presented exactly the same amount of pre-set challenge that they always have. Whereas games in this generation of consoles are dumbed down to suit a wide variety of play-levels.

I could probably have been proving my point more if I hadn't breezed through three zones of Sonic 2 in the time it took me to write that paragraph.

My Brother is of the other mind wherein he believes that with age classic games present less and less challenge and in his own words:

"Games like Sonic are fucking piss-easy now."

Granted he has a point, but I'd argue it's more to do with improved hand-eye coordination then anything else.

Both points are valid and as such neither are wrong. Classic games are easier now because the people playing them are used to much more sophisticated play-styles regardless of how easy the games they're presented in... Well are.

But the games themselves have not changed, we can't say we've gotten better at sonic because we cranked up the difficulty because games like Mario or Sonic didn't have a difficulty setting.
We've had to improve ourselves, in my case over the course of over a decade to be able to finally get through the first zone without really thinking about it.

But saying that, the later zones still kick my arse from time-to-time, you can ask Arko, she's witnessed it herself.

So what exactly am I getting at with all this talk of "New or Old, which one is harder?"

Well, It's because while me and my brother were talking about this he got fed up of watching me play Sonic and reached into a carrier-bag, bringing his hand back out, clutching an Xbox version of Final Fantasy XIII.

(It should be stated that I was chuffed about this because he has the PS3 and I have the Xbox... our mum has the Wii but that's not important for this.)

So there I was, presented with a game I'd eagerly been anticipating for well over a year by this point and it was just handed straight to me, well it goes without saying I was back at the Dashboard within seconds and already tearing that protective plastic off the game-case.

So by now the attentive reader will have noticed I said I got the Xbox version.
I've also heard what's been said about the pre-rendered cut-scenes in the Xbox version but honestly I've been playing this game on my downstairs HD TV as often as I can and I've not noticed a single issue with it so far...
Some would lay that down to my lack of comparison, or maybe they'd accuse me of just not being fussed enough about prettiness.

They'd probably have me on those (Although I love prettiness.)
The quality, I'll go ahead and say, is outstanding.
And I'm not aiming that specifically at the pre-rendered stuff, Squeenix have taken some serious care to ensure that this game looks... for lack of a better word, Beautiful all the time.

I've found myself asking anyone I know who's played it this same question everytime:

"Did you find yourself getting confused about whether the in-game cut-scenes were really pre-rendered?"

A lot of people I've asked have replied "yes."
Because honestly, like I said the game is breath-taking in it's graphical quality, something you'd expect from a Squeenix game, to be certain...

I've found myself running through what I've recently heard described as the "corridors covered in pretty things" and just suddenly stopping because the camera zoomed in a bit and I noticed that the detail in the in-game character models are so fine that you wonder if they didn't just predict every move you'd make in this game and pre-render it.

More on that Corridor thing.
It's in relation to the overall map/environment layout style, It's a lot like Final Fantasy X especially for the earlier more tutorial-heavy sections of the game where it's more or less essential that your characters move on a set path to stay parallel to the story the first few chapters (which is how the game's story is handled now) are handled in a very real-time fashion, the progression of in-game time feels like it follows along with how your time playing the game is going along. You're joining them for the story.

But as the Game moves on (I'm approaching my 30th hour myself) you start to find more and more areas where you can explore or deviate from the set path, you often find forks in the path where on one it's the next cut-scene or scripted encounter and the other is an item, which you'll likely have to fight for.
In the sections I've just literally gotten through there were path sections which take you around the obvious route and behind the enemies, which works more in your favour for pre-emptive strikes.

But you're inevitably going to end up going in one direction regardless of what detours you take on the way, which some would have an issue with, but those who're long-time fans of the Franchise will understand, that's how Final Fantasy games have always worked.

I've also heard some complaint that the game seems like it plays like this in the early section:

You run, you fight, you run, you fight, you have a cut-scene, you run , you have another cut-scene, you fight and So on...

I agree that is entirely what the game is like, and for the earlier sections when you're only options in battle are to attack that is pretty tedious. Other people have had odd reactions to the re-spawning enemy groups.

I first had a problem with this when I noticed it was happening after I'd saved and then reloaded to see all the hard work I put in had been removed, but then I remembered something.

Final Fantasy games, previous to this one had random encounters for a good portion of the old games you were just fighting, running, talking , running fighting some more...
Nothing has changed for this instalment.

It's actually a worthwhile sacrifice to have large amounts of re-spawning enemy groups in a given area in my opinion because without the system of random encounters how else would you have the same experience playing this one?
Agreed, having enemies in narrow linear map sections placed in such a way that it's virtually impossible to avoid them is annoying at first, but eventually you come to realise that had this been Final Fantasy X downwards you'd be having the same experience.

Another thing that saves this style of game-play is the combat itself, like I said, in the earlier chapters is mostly tutorials so you can forgive the occasional sense of easiness about the game, every enemy in the beginning takes a maximum of about 5-6 hits to kill, some of them much much less. and the battles serve as more of a introduction to the overall speed and style of battle.

Unlike previous Final Fantasy games this one has you only controlling one pre-determined character (determined either by you or the story) There's no switching between in-battle or any
'if you die then you go to the next character down' which is very annoying for those occasional moments when an enemy suddenly thinks you face would make a good sword-rack.

If the character you're controlling dies, then your team dies. although it's not even dying in this game.

In previous games you could argue that the characters die in battle, they'd fall to the ground and look... Well, dead.

But in XIII they simply take a knee in exhaustion...
No death, no passing out they just get tired.
So why is it game over? I could understand if it was during a fight where the enemy is very eager to kill you, but really that accounts for boss fights and when the military are involved, which admittedly takes up a fair sized chunk but for the rest it makes no sense.
They've included a 'retry' option on game over screens which allows you to... Retry from the field just before you engaged the enemy, allowing you another chance to fight them.

Which I suppose is handy for the way your team can be downed if YOU slip up. But honestly I think I would have preferred a system for switching to the next character much better.

Another aspect of battle in this game is the rating system, which to be seems incredibly needless.
You're issuing commands to one of three character, the other two do what they like and you're only allowed pre-set pre-animated moves so you're likely going to be seeing the same tactics and attack animations over and over in this game, but then when you're done you're rated for it out of five stars. As far as I'm told it's determined by how quickly you fight an enemy and the only thing the stars do is figure out how many technique points you regain (provided you use them at all)

Tech Points are used to cast skills like Libra(Scan), Quake (which I don't get why it's considered NOT magic) or a character specific summon.

The summons in this game are interesting, they're essentially transformers they're big robots (which makes little sense) and they for the most part transform into modes of transport (which again, makes little sense) and when they're in transport-- Gestalt mode, I mean they can then do their moves, until then they're AI driven team mates that just attack a whole bunch.

I got no complaints on the summons as something you use, but obtaining the summons for me personally the biggest pain in the arse.

You have to fight them, fair enough, not the first FF game to handle it like that, I know. but it's the way you have to fight them that annoys me.

They have a Gestalt bar that you have to fill by fulfilling certain requirements in battle like amassing large chain bonuses, or healing/buffing a team-mate to defending yourself.
the bar fills ridiculously slowly, which at first doesn't sound too bad it just sounds like a long and boring fight.

But you're on a timer.
That's the most annoying part.
The timer lasts about 5 or so minutes? (It's a doom timer as in doom the in-game spell) at the end of the timer your character dies. and it's game over, try again.
as I mentioned the bar moves stupidly slow and for the first few seconds you have to cast a spell to find out what the summon expects you to do...
After that though it's just a case of spam what it wants from you.

The only other complaint I have summon wise is that Hope (otherwise know as the most annoying character in the game) gets Alexander*, my all time favourite summon.
(*that's the only spoiler I'm allowing.)

The Story for the game which I feel I haven't touched on yet is... Well it's a little bit confusing.
I was made to understand that I have to read the datalogs in game or the game manual to understand this fully but...

16 hours in, I had no idea what a l'Cie was...
I now know after 20 hours or so of playing
That doesn't change the fact that I felt embarrassed about how often the l'Cie and fal'Cie and pulse and cocoon were being brought up and I had no idea what any of those things really were.

But in my defence, no one in game ever felt the need to really explain.
To me, the fact that the whole player party has become Pulse l'Cie, enemies of the very city they wish to protect is a huge part of the story...

So why do they just babble on about l'Cie as if I know exactly what it is already?
I mean there's babbling to fill us in and there's babbling under the assumption that we read about it prior to entering the game. Somehow, XIII does the latter.

So now I'm 30 hours in and I've only just brought myself up to speed with what's really going on.
Which I suppose is a coincidence seeing as the characters themselves have only just figured out what they're doing too...

As far as the characters are concerned, there are only two I'm not into yet, and that's Hope and Vanille although Vanille is now growing on me, unlike Hope who I've grown tired of listening to...
But damn him he's such an effective healer...

It's really been the characters I didn't think I'd grow attached to that have surprised me in this game.
When still waiting for the game to arrive in this country I thought for sure that Snow was going to be an arsehole and that Sazh would be a typical return to stereotyping for Squeenix.

I was pleasantly surprised, all the characters are selfless in their individual ways, but Snow, for me rises above them, he's determined to be a hero and prove himself to everyone you'd argue at first that it's for glory, but later on you just begin to realise that he genuinely just wants to protect everyone, simply because he cares.

Sazh on the other hand, while starting out just like I thought he would, a seemingly ageing black pilot with an afro and a tendency for liking chicken-like creatures (you do know he has a chocobo in his hair, right?) spouting out such cleverly delivered lines like "I'm too old for this".
I instantly thought he was going to follow up with "five days to retirement..." followed by some saxophone.

But he's actually the deepest character in the team. His whole story is just brilliantly relayed to the person playing that towards a certain part of the game you really feel for the guy...

Vanille like I said I hated at the beginning but that was more the voice-acting then the character, she was played off as a bouncy, happy-go-lucky moron who was enitrely oblivious to her situation or the people around her, but it's later revealed that-- uh oh! spoilers!
You'll have to see for yourself if you haven't already.

Lightning arguably the lead Protagonist in this story I feel undergoes way too much development way to quickly, she's a stoic loner to start then about two hours later she's an outspoken person and then a few more hours she's smiling..
It's like Cloud or Squall's character development... On cassette.

The other characters I've not really bothered to focus on considering they're Hope and an amnesiac .

Hope's a whiny-bitch through the great majority of what I've seen even when he grows a pair and accepts his fate he's a whiny-bitch.

And Fang, well like I said, she's an amnesiac who's out for nothing more than to help her friend.
And in her own words "She'd tear down the sky to do it".

Overall thoughts on this one? sure it's lacking in some respects and in others it's got things in place it really doesn't need, and it may well be linear and filled to the brim with nothing but cut-scenes and fighting but that's the Final Fantasy formula, if you're not used to it by now then why did you even buy the game?

Would I recommend it?
Sure, I would, only to like-minded people though.
It's definitely a story-heavy game that requires an ass-ton of patience, which if you haven't got you're better off with something else.
I'd also recommend it to people who think that challenge is dead in today's games because I thought that...

Then I met Barthandilus...

Well, there you go, I've managed a pretty good review with only one spoiler and only the occasional push of the bold button.

Some of you may have noticed I left out something, that something being the Crystarium and the Paradigm shift.
I left those out because beyond whether or not I approve of them (which I totally do) I know me, and it would have descended into a huge list of different tactics and to be honest, if you want Paradigm/Crystarium tactics or walkthroughs then go to Gamefaqs.

I feel like I deserve a trophy or something.

Hope you enjoy it, I enjoyed writing it.

Stay Sexy!
(or so help me I'll get the Donkey out...)

Dragon Age: Origins - Part 5

2010-02-24T14:03:00.001-08:00

OK! So it's time again for!
The Adventures of Grosni in, Dragon Age: Origins!
(The review that's more like a shit, spoiler-filled story!)

Right, So when I left this in January Grosni had just returned to Redcliffe with the Ashes of Andraste and freed the King from his now weeks long 'illness/coma' and was beginning preparations for the Landsmeet.

A Gathering of all the governing bodies of Fereldan in Denerim, which I guess implies that Denerim is the capital of Fereldan... Makes sense since the only character referred to as king lives there...

Speaking of the king. I acquired the DLC recently, 'Return to Ostagar'.
I was underwhelmed by it.
Not because I feel it wasn't worth the time or money, no no. I think it was definitely worth the £5 I had to borrow for it (I'm that poor).

It's just in a game like Dragon Age where seemingly after you've left Ostagar any quests can be completed in any order...
(Which I realised when I started a new character and did Andraste's Ashes before I even touched the DLC...)

So of course, what sense does it make to return to Ostagar, once you've just left it?
Which is what you can do...
I mean sure it's good to go back straight away and get those pretty items that you wanted from the start, ready for when you can eventually use them...

It's a petty gripe to have with a decent piece of DLC, but story-wise it just sort of bugged me.

Although not enough to stop me from doing it early.

So anyway, back on track, we headed for Denerim to have the Landsmeet, in order to kick Loghain from the throne and restore power to someone more deserving, like the still-living queen, or the next-in-line which through a some-what amazing story-twist, is Allistair.

That's right, somewhere down the line you discover that Allistair is the result of forbidden passion between the old king of Ferelden and his serving wench, or something, I never really listened.

So really, that's a foot in the door for us, we have the rightful heir to the throne in our party, and pretty much anyone we've met thinks Loghain's an arsehole.

But, when we arrive it doesn't seem like it'll be that easy, we need to shift votes in our favour by finding incriminating evidence of Loghains human/Elf Trafficking.

So we head to the Alienage, which is like a slum that only elves live in and find that the Tevinter mages are telling them that a plague or some shit is going through and that they have to quarantine people, we break in by way of bribing a guard with 50 silvers (which by this point is almost like peanuts) and fighting some mages, we find the guy in charge, he informs us that for fifty gold coins he will work for us making people into slaves.

I'll be honest, the major factor in this was... I didn't have 50 gold.
Grosni could have taken that offer, I mean, getting a cut of slavery profits? sounds pretty damn good.

But yeah, we killed him and took the papers that all henchman seem to be carrying, just in case wandering adventurers want to prove an authority figures wrong-doings...

I won't get into it, otherwise that'll be another four paragraphs of rambling...

So we come back, we've proven he's a dick, like anyone needed telling but...

I hate the buts...

It would seem the Queen has been abducted... What? Seriously?
The Queen has gone missing? The person you'd think would be most crucial in this whole Landsmeet plan just suddenly goes missing because all of a sudden we need her for something?

So Grosni sets out to the tip off he needs to find the Queen, it's none other then her handmaiden, Generica Elfii.

She tells us to put on disguises and sneak into the Arl's house, I think it's the Arl's house, I mean since we got here we've killed him so I don't know if it's really his house any more...

The only problem I've seen with this plan, is that I don't actually RECIEVE disguises to put on...

That's right, the biggest part of making this whole "Get disguised" plan work is for some reason absent.

So I Kill the guards at the main door anyway, only to find that the disguises automatically come on when I enter the building...

That's just sort of terrible, right? I'm not the only one who thinks that? I mean possibly hundreds of thousands of dialogue options, Changeable suits of armour, I would have thought that maybe putting on similar looking armour, a helmet and simply talking your way in would have been good, not, kill everyone until you get in, that would raise suspicion before you've even set foot in the place...

Rambling...

So I'm in, none of the entirely human guards inside seem at all phased by the group of four guards wandering aimlessly while being lead around by the only dwarf on staff... But hey, if he's wearing the armour, what can you do?

We eventually find the Queen and she tells us to do...
Uhm...
Something...

I got to come clean at this point, I have no idea what she was expecting me to do, but whatever it was, didn't happen...

I think her plan was to get the disguises back on and follow her lead...
Well since I didn't have actual disguises to interact with and for some reason took them off the moment I found her, I COULDN'T put my disguises back on...
So when the guards eventually caught us, I was left with no option but to come clean.

"The Queen was kidnapped, we came to find and save her, by the way you're all idiots for falling for the disguises we had on... y'know I'm a DWARF, right?"

But while I'm handling everything the fucking Queen decides, no, this isn't working.

"They kidnapped me! Guards, help!"
"What!? No! That's not why we're here, don't be a dick?"
"Guards! Seize them!"
"What?! Oh fuck this!"

So I killed as many guards as I could, but it was a 'supposed to lose' fight.
Me and Allistair wake up in a Denerim Jail cell...

Wait?...

Where'd Leliana and Morrigan go?
Seems the Queen managed to have them freed, or spared, or the Captain of the Guard is sexist... I don't know...

But only two of the four people involved here got sent to jail.
We break out, quite how I don't know, I think we strangled a guard through the bars...

I'm not sure why, but Grosni unintentionally took a dark turn somewhere down the line... He used to be a paragon of virtue and aspired to do the right thing to make oup for his previous life as a casteless criminal on the streets of Orzammar but since he set foot in Denerim it's almost like he's really started to adopt the 'do whatever it takes' style of fighting the evils of the world.

But after some bumbling around and doing errands for guards who yet again can't tell that I'm a dwarf in a matching suit of armour I escape...

And no one seems at all fussed about it... I mean I was charged with kidnapping the Queen of Denerim... And when I break out they just treat it as if I never did it.

So we go back to the place where all our characters are hanging out, I try to convince Allistair to marry the Queen, I mean sure she's a douche... But Allistair is really annoying... So it works out.

He doesn't want to for some reason, I mean you'd think he'd just met her and she'd just locked him up for the wrongful charge of abduction...

Picky or what?

So now it's time for the Landsmeet, this all plays out fairly automatically, you only occasionally have to say anything, like who you think should be the ruler of Ferelden, which I chose the Queen, simply because I don't think Allistair could hack it and it looks like Favouritism that way.

I also get to decide what to do with Loghain when he's kicked out of power.
I could kill him, exile him, or rather surprisingly conscript him into the Grey Wardens...

Wait what?! Why would I spend all this time chasing him down seeking mostly revenge just so I could have him as a team mate?

Then it occurred to me...
The Joining ritual killed two guys when I did it... Maybe we could kill him off with the Joining while making it look like we cared about his atonement? That's a brilliant plan!

Just too bad Allistair wasn't quite on my wave-length...

"What? you're going to make him one of us after what he's done?!"

"Well it's pretty clever actually you see the joi--"

"I won't be part of this! I'm leaving!"

"... What? Don't be fucking stupid, you're carrying some of my equipment..."

"I'm leaving, have Loghain to fight the Darkspawn if you want, but I'll have no part of this!"

*Pissy-emo huff away*

"... Fucking idiot..."

So yeah, Loghain goes through the Joining, he lives, Allistair is never seen again...
Not quite how I planned, and Loghain knows it...

"So, thought your little Joining ritual would kill me huh?"

"That's what I was banking on..."

"Well, tough luck, you're stuck with me..."

"Don't remind me..."

*Awkward silence*

"So that Allistair guy was a serious tool, huh?"

"Major tool..."

I mean seriously now, how could Loghain know what my plan was, and Allistair not?
Allistair went through the Joining, he witnessed mine! He knows what happens most of the time...
So he should surely know that I intended for Loghain to die during his...
UGH.

Some more rather distressing matters come to light on just how exactly we rid the land of the Blight...

We go for the Archdemon. Which is basically a giant Dragon that controls the hordes of Darkspawn, it's supposed to be a corrupted God spirit manifest into the body of a dragon.

Or something.

And apparently the only way to truly kill one is to be a Grey Warden, well, awesome, until Allistair left we had two of those in the party at all times, so is that it?

Not by a long shot, the Grey Warden that kills the Dragon then absorbs the spirit of the corrupted God into him/herself, Normally when the Dragon dies it's soul will move to the nearest Darkspawn and just come back through that, but because Grey Wardens submitted themselves to the Taint by going through the Joining they can receive the soul, and by not being completely Darkspawned the soul becomes void and dies entirely.

"Oh, awesome so there's really no bad side to this then?"

"That Grey Warden then also dies..."

"... Oh."

That's right, whoever slays the dragon dies with it...
And now the choices are Narrowed down to me, Loghain and some other character who doesn't look like he'll make it that far... (which is why I've left him out of this entirely)

Well, at least I have another shot at killing Loghain now!

I have to admit this part is pretty clever, because it's literally a case of "This has always been the way, you were just never told about it".

I always had to choose who dies at the end of the game, but because no one told me I happily worked hard to get to that part.

I mean don't get me wrong playing my mage it's not the first time I've decided who get's to live or die...

Hell even playing as Grosni it isn't the first time.
But those people weren't my team mates (+1 greatest enemy) So I suppose the choices weren't quite as personal...

But still it's a good way of getting you to go "Oh shit, I'm losing someone here whether I like it or not...".

Morrigan somehow knew of all this... Never bothered to tell me, thanks.
And she has a proposition for me.

"I want you to get me pregnant..."

"Uhm..."

"Get me pregnant before battle with the Dragon and it's soul can be absorbed by the child, it'll have your taint, but not die in the womb, but instead cleanse the God's corruption, granting the child the power of the God..."

"That makes no sense..."

"You wanna fuck me or not?"

"Sorry, Tall chicks don't do it for me... and besides, you're a bit of a dick..."

"Fine I'm leaving..."

"What, you too?! FUCK! She was actually useful..."

Grosni's team-mates lost in the last half hour: 2

(I should mention that at some point before this, I told Sten to take a bounding leap off a cliff, because I just didn't like him, at all...)

So Now that we've got all this out of the way, what now?

OH SHIT! Darkspawn invasion of Denerim! And the Dragon's been spotted!
This is it! (literally)

We set off in small groups to reclaim and protect parts of the City while the main force takes on the dragon, The main force now consisting of:
Grosni.
Wynne (instead of the Morrigan)
Loghain (instead of the Allistair)
and Leliana (who was gracious enough to not find fault with something I'd done and piss off).

Thank you, Leliana...
We storm into the Prison, because despite having a royal palace the Prison is the highest point in the City... In order to fight the Dragon...
While we do that, we're treated to playing as the Characters we don't care about while they protect parts of the city that have already burned to the ground....

Also that guy I mentioned, the third Grey Warden that wouldn't make it to the Dragon slaying bit, yeah kind of fell off of something high... He's dead.

If you'd join me in a moment of Silence for that character that was introduced mere minutes ago and we didn't have enough time to know or care about...

*Ahem*

So yeah, we're now fighting the Dragon, which I was honestly dreading, because the last couple of times I tried to fight a dragon, I ended having my party torn to shreds by rows of teeth larger than my fist... BOTH times.

But this Dragon doesn't seem to know how to chew on us and is much more concerned with breathing fire where-ever we're not standing...

We take him out, although I'm the only one alive during almost all of this encounter...
Seriously, my entire party died leaving me to fight it by myself...
I'm astonished I managed it, although by that point I was maxed out in shield skills and wearing the best armour, holding the best shield and wielding the best sword...

So it's not TOO surprising that my team built up of people I never normally use bit the big one.

So... When I'd whacked down all it's health I got to choose, do I kill it, or does Loghain do it?

"Ok, Dwarf! I suppose this is where I die for the sake of Ferelden, restoring my honour and gaining me glory..."

"Whoa! Let's not get any funny ideas, who said you were going to get glory and honour from this? Saving Ferelden, yeah, I'll grant you, but that other stuff... Nooo... No, no, no... This is your fucking death sentence, remember that!"

"Yeah, but If I do this, I'll be forever remembered as a hero who sacrificed himself to right his wrongs and bring peace to the land..."

"... Yeah, no. I don't like that plan any more... I'm killing it..."

"But that leaves me alive and you end up dying?"

"I know, but I'd rather you live as a despicable criminal who betrayed the Queens husband and almost doomed us all then steal an easy kill off me and get all the glory, so no sir, fuck you."

So Grosni ran in for the kill, sinking his blade straight into the Dragons head.
Causing them both to explode....

For some reason.

Bet Morrigan's happy she didn't chance making the baby take the hit, huh?

So yeah Grosni died for the sake of Ferelden, he's taken back to Redcliffe, in one whole, totally unharmed piece where he has a touching ceremony before being taken back to Orzammar to be returned to the Stone, his sister who is now the King's bitch gives a nice little speech about how their mother stopped drinking because of Grosni and that he's now been made a Paragon, making it possible to create a Dwarven house in his name.
He was posthumously made a living legend... Yeah I didn't get it either.

So that's Grosni's story, there were some little paragraphs you get to read about how the choices you made played out, but I don't fully remember them all, The only one I really remember was that the temple of Andraste collapsed on itself before anyone else got to visit it, so that worked out well for me...

Well it's been a fun game, and it's refreshing to actually say that, as opposed to the Fable 2 reviw where was hate all the way through.

I'm curently playing through Dragon Age on the my other characters, but don't worry, I won't bore you with their stories....

Not until the Expansion anyway...

Stay Sexy!

(Unless sexy really isn't your thing.)

Dragon Age: Origins - Part 4

2010-01-25T17:34:00.001-08:00

Every-so-often a man must sacrifice something he loves

in order to write stuff no one will read, G is one of those men.

Sleep, is what he loves.

It's a good life I lead...

So anyway, unfortunately for me, this marks the end for my Mages journey because... I got lazy and stopped the playing the game... But! luckily my Dwarf, Grosni (Y'know that seemingly tiresome goody-goody that was supposed to be the main focus) got all the way through the story! Yay!

So anyway, I was just getting onto the topic of Andraste's Ashes...
That's right a holy relic which is said to be an urn containing a living religious figure's physical charred remains...

Well at least that's more proof than realities religions have...
(I'm just saying.)
They're said to be able to heal any injury or ailment...
Awesome! let's get to finding--
Yeah, they're supposedly only a myth... Bit awkward to find.

Riiiight... So let's track down some people who might know where to at least start looking.
This first takes us into Denerim, the City where the late King Cailin used to live before he was left for dead about four quests ago...
Loghain, being the father of the queen has usurped the throne from under his son-in-law's still warm corpse and assumed the role of King of Denerim.

Well won't I be welcome there then! :D

Funnily enough you get little to no hassle from being there, the guards tell you you're not allowed in certain parts of the City, but that's it, as far as getting into the city is concerned you can just walk in...

So I did, I enter the market square and depending on whether you've killed a drake yet you can hand them into the smithy to get some fancy armour possibly made by the time you've completed the game...
(I never got to see if he ever actually finishes the armour...)

We track down the guy we're looking for... or at least his assistant who tells us his master is at a tavern near the Mage tower... we walk for days to get there only to have pompous fuck-wad of a bar-tender tell us he's certain he's not heard of the droids we're looking for...

We leave, we get ambushed, I go back to Denerim(Still with no Guard intervention...), we kill the assistant..
That whole chestnut.

So here we are, we've killed the only guy who could've been our lead, until I do the usual RPG thing...
I get bored and search the house for loot.
Now Bioware games are good for this, and if it wasn't for their games I wouldn't do this, but looking at books gives you EXP.
So when I saw a book laying on a table I decided to look at it, lucky I did because it was the master's journal and we now know where to find him!

We walk to the other side of the fucking country and up some mountains.
Just to emphasise my point, here's a map:

Like I said, whole country plus mountains...

Now let's remember why I'm doing this whole quest here...
There's a sick and presumably dying King in Redcliffe who's been in such a state for days already, not including the fact that I've already used up roughly (looking at the map) six days walking from Denerim to the Mage tower, back to Denerim and now from Denerim to the other side of the section of world they give you...

I'm sorry if he was ill enough to warrant a search for ashes that no one is even certain exists...
He's dead by now, don't you think?

Anyway, I arrive at the town of Not-important-enough-to-rememberia and I'm greeted with utter disdain the moment I arrive, finally! some people who react to wandering weapon carrying strangers in the rational way...

Funnily enough the reason they don't like me hanging about and want me to leave right away isn't because my group looks shifty, although, with Morrigan around how can it be helped?
No! It's because the entire town is a cult that worships a dragon that they're certain is the reincarnation of that aforementioned God, Andraste!

Riiiight... So they've gotten it into their heads that I'm here to steal the ashes and what-have-you, nice to see that at least the crazies are on the ball here and they decide to attack me.

One slaughtered village later you've found that guy you were originally looking for back in Denerim, it seems they'd broken his legs with magic that repairs them the moment I step into the room...
He tells you that he knows where the ruins of Andraste are and will lead you to them.
Obviously you'll accept that offer and head there, some more walking up mountains later you arrive at a cave that leads to the ruins...
So I had to leave the town, enter the map screen, watch the little blood trickle move about half an inch to the left just so I could do all the walking myself anyway?
Thanks, Game.

So you encounter quite a few drakes in this tunnel in addition to the now armoured cultists looking to decorate their lovely cave walls with your eyeball juices, grab plenty of scales from the drakes which are handy for that armour that guy in Denerim is hard at work TAKING FOREVER TO BUILD.
You'll eventually be welcomed by the first Cultist that actually wants to ask why you're there.

he'll give you a choice, stop looking for the ashes and help them do... something with the dragon... I forgot what that was.
Or carry on looking for the Ashes and kill the guy...

Well Grosni needs those ashes, and like fuck is he messing with any dragons, so Mr. Cultist, you die... and Allistair gets to wear your armour.

So now you're on the home stretch for the ruins, the Dragon that everyone's been talking about is... sunbathing I guess on a nearby mountain top...
Here's some important advice.

Just run for the ruins! Ignore the fucking gong!

I didn't ignore the gong and paid the price by way of dragon to the most of me...

So now I'm in the ruins, as you'd imagine it's ruined and old looking and full to the brim with cultists and undead monsters.
So I get started, I eventually find a chamber that has a guardian, he tells me that there's a bunch of tests that I must undergo to see the ashes, I accept these terms, Grosni not being one to shy from a challenge.

These challenges are varied there's one where you have to figure out a system of buttons to make a bridges sections return to physical space.
There's a part where you have to answer 8 riddles in a row
(or get them all wrong and fight 8 enemies, either way the door opens)
And one of the last ones, taking off all your armour and walking through fire.
I'm not kidding.

After all that you get to the ashes, you take some with you in a leather pouch and head back to the entrance, not once even thinking about testing it to see if it really heals you or not...
This is a fantasy game after all, blind faith works best.
You talk to the guy who lead you here about whether people should know about the temple, I opted to let the guy tell people, because regardless of how many people come they'll have to face the shit I just did to get to it...
So really, only deserving people will get to use it.

After all this, I head back to Redcliffe and administer the ashes, unsurprisingly, they work!
The King is cured!
After a while of talking to him and waiting for him to fully recover he tells you that the best course of action is to first hold a landsmeet which is essentially a meeting of the governing bodies in Ferelden to see whether they could punt Loghain out from the position of power.
This also takes place in Denerim!

it's also in Part 5, which will probably be the last part!
So heads up for that, yeah?

End of part 4

Continued in part 5

Dragon Age: Origins - Part 3

2010-01-25T16:00:00.000-08:00

Some people don't know when to stop typing.

This is their story.

After leaving Lothering, awaking a 30 year sleeping Golem and even ridding a long forgotten mountain fortress from demons and Blood Mages, I was finally ready to perform the Grey Warden duty of forming an army of mages, dwarves and elves to fight the Darkspawn Blight.

Now this is not the order I did this in but for sake of helping someone else out with it.
This is the order I'd suggest doing this in.
(It's also a lazy way I can clear these parts in this review/story and save time, thank me later.)

Brecillian Forest - The Elves.
Mainly because it's the easiest. It's a short quest line very little hassle involved occasionally you will come across a couple of enemies that'll give more grief than you wanted (If you haven't done the DLC first). and it'll be useful for gaining the incredibly useful EXP and skills you'll need later on. The occasional bit of decent equipment can be found during this point too.

Mage Tower - The Mages (duh).
Honestly, not the longest of the four places you'll have to go to find troops for your army but certainly the most annoying... Seriously, by the time I'd done this I never wanted to hear "The fade" mentioned ever again... I spent literal hours in a sodding dream sequence... No dream sequence should last hours... The reason it's good to get this out of the way immediately is because another quest will require you to return, and since this quest is beneficial to the story you can't avoid it, it's better to have a mage tower that you don't have to fight to the top of by that point and honestly, makes the story make more sense.

Orzammar - The Dwarves (That's right I know the name of it now...).
Really, it doesn't much matter when you do this one, in fact I think I did it second to last on my first play through, afterwards doing the elves, because I don't like them enough to see them before the dwarves, it also made sense for Grosni to want to go back and see his family.
This one takes the longest as far as I can remember, well out of the basic "We need to use the treaties" quests, you have to help the royals decide who's going to be king (Wish I'd gotten to this bit as Duran.)
And basically that involves you hunting down some crazy woman who's looking for Golems in the deep roads...
('Cos that's what crazy people do).
Lots of wandering through caves, lots of fighting...
And honestly, do this one last out of the treaty quests... Hell do it after Redcliffe.
The Golems at the end of this quest can and WILL spank the shit out of you multiple times.

Redcliffe - Humans of nondescript skills!
Basically, Redcliffe is all Allistairs idea, he knows the arl of Redcliffe because he raised Allistair like he was his own son, y'know before him pushing off to become a Templar...
So really, regardless of the lies that Loghain is spreading about us we know this guy is going to have our backs.
Unfortunately he's fallen deathly ill... or comatose... It's hard to really tell between the two in this game apparently. And beyond that his son has been possessed by a demon that he summoned himself because he's a fresh minded mage!

Yeah, it's all going on in Redcliffe it seems...

Even more on top of that! There's undead attacking the village every night!
Good, God! Have you ever heard of a town with worse luck? I mean honestly?
King's poisoned/ill/comatose/dead already as far as the town knows, no one can get to the castle, the queens stuck inside the castle, the Heir to the throne is possessed by a demon and now the town get's attacked nightly by the legions of the undead...

Redcliffe has truly fallen on shitty times...
So what else can you do but help them out?

Much to the Games credit you can refuse to help the village...
It does however mean you can't progress through the story, which makes the option of refusing so very, very pointless really.

I mean I came up to this point as my mage and said "I'd like to help, but really... not my fight, is it?" And they said "Oh that's sad, OK we'll deal with this ourselves..."

And did nothing. I stood there waiting for them to make preparations or something.
'Cos funnily enough, when you refuse to help someone they don't often just stand there for days waiting for you to change your fucking mind...
Especially when they're expecting battle at nightfall that day...
So there I was with a bunch of quests now blocked off to me for as long as my character felt like being an arsehole.
So I did the noble thing and told them I'd help them, they asked me to then make the preparations for them...

..Lazy fuckers...

So I half-heartedly went and tried to make preparations, I asked the sisters at the chantry to bless the warriors before battle, they refused, I threatened them with violence...
I found a house that was locked I kicked the door down to find an able bodied warrior Dwarf with two henchman, I called them lazy sacks of shit and proceeded to kill them, like lazy melon-farmers would be useful in battle?
I was asked to try and bring the smithy to his senses... I killed him...
So yeah the battle ahead was looking good in our favour I guess...

This is of course on my Mage...
Who is a fucking bastard as you've no doubt guessed by now...
My Dwarf, Grosni on the other hand, uses his firm diplomacy and natural leadership to get the lazy dwarf and his friends to fight along side the rest of the soldiers, convinced the sisters that blessing the soldiers would at least boost morale and even got the smithy to snap out of being a drunk idiot... He even gave me some gear he had stashed away.

Like I've been saying the way you can play this game is so varied that it's worth hearing the same dialogue options again just to see how differently things end up.

By nightfall we were ready for battle.

This was also an interesting part, the fight as far as I can tell lasts the same amount of time regardless of how many randomly spawned undead you kill, although I'm certain in the earlier parts they come in calculated hordes.
But it seems my action before the battle with setting things up determines how well the soldiers of Redcliffe do at surviving the night.

With Grosni at the helm of battle and preparations at their fullest efficiency I saw to it that all the soldiers that went into that battle came out alive.
And I was hailed as a hero.
(Got a fancy helmet out of it too.)

Archemetis (My mage, I'm fed up of not referring to him by name now) Of course didn't help at all in fact if anything, things were running smoother when he wasn't involved and as such, Him and his team were the only people who lasted to the end.
He was also hailed as a hero...
The Mayor f the town was fighting along side us, he was killed, numerous soldiers died at our side as I was frazzling anything that moved with lightning... I was actually responsible for more deaths then the horde was.
I didn't even want to help the town... And I'm still hailed as a hero?

I won't fight it.
And with that it was fast becoming time to enter the castle and find the king and his family.
This was handled by way of me going in with just my team through a secret passage that we could have been using the entire time...
These townsfolk are sneaky little buggers...
Anyway, we encounter the Mage that poisoned the King. It's none other than Jowan (You're friend from the Mage tower if you picked to play a Mage, he escaped after he became a Blood Mage).

So basically he's escaped and found himself poisoning kings for Loghain, Not looking good so far, and if you're a Mage like Archemetis is he's also lied to you in the past, you have no reason to trust him.
However it's advised that you do trust him, because he's genuinely being honest when he tells you he wants to make things right.
You can kill him but that's only if you're a vengeful twat..
Your not one of those right?

What you do with Jowan only really seems to affect two things, what your team mates think of you and how you resolve the whole "Kings sons possession" issue.

Which I'll fast forward to, you find the king's son and his mother, he's all power-trippin' up in your grill and then he gets huffy and runs away to another room...
(I'm not kidding)

So here are you options:

You can kill the child, after all he's possessed by a demon.

You can enter the fade to fight the demon directly (This requires mages, hope you've cleared that tower ahead of time, huh?).

You can save a lot of time and walking by having Jowan(provided you asked him to help) perform blood magic to put a mage in your party intot he fade to fight the demon.
However, doing this requires a sacrifice, which is the boys mother.

Or you could always refuse to help, right? (Ha! Yeah as if, now get to helping you slut.)

So basically I've never killed the child, I've thought about it a couple of times, but I've never encountered a character that I've made that would willingly kill a child because they're too lazy for the other options... I have sacrificed the mother, on several occasions now.
And I have gone to the Mage tower for more legit help.

Hell, Archemetis sacrificed the mother, went into the fade himself and then bargained with the demon to get blood magic himself... He coincidently forgot to slay the demon...

Grosni as you'd imagine did everything the 'right' way, he got the mages from the tower to perform the actual harmless ritual, he sent in Morrigan to deal with the demon, she killed it everyone came out fine. Heroes of the land, etc.

So after all that is dealt with, it seems the undead invasion ends, so they were connected to the demon somehow I guess? It's never really explained in detail.
Jowan depending on how you dealt with him is either locked up in the dungeon again waiting for the say of the king to bring judgement on him or he's escaped and seeking attonement...

Or you killed him, but only if you're a vengeful twat.

But oh no! The King's still in a coma!
What's that only the inexplicable ashes of some God will heal him?
They're said to only be a myth? A wild goose chase you say?!
Well that's what my fucking quest is all about right?!

But what about the Blight?
Ah fuck it! can't be important or it would have happened already, right Lothering?

:D

End of part 3

Continued in Part 4

Dragon Age: Origins - Part 2

2010-01-24T11:50:00.000-08:00

Only in the dark recesses of internet do stories like this

genuinely get read...

Grosni was gearing up to take on the dwarven nobility at the Proving by wearing the disguise of another champions armour, all was going well, he'd taken down at least three nobles and no one was wise to his true, casteless identity. That is until the guy who owned the armour came stumbling in drunk and ruined the whole thing.

At this point in the game you're then swarmed by guards and taken to a nondescript prison cell, turns out this is a cartel cell, seems Beraht wasn't too pleased that you faked being a champion, luckily he's had a bigger lapse in judgement than normal and decided to leave perfect lock-picking items strewn across the cell. So with your quick escape you fight your way to Beraht who's quickly dispatched and make way to a secret entrance which is built into the side of some hapless sod's shop.

It's there where you bump into the Leader of the Grey Wardens, Duncan.

Having been at the Proving waiting to see if any of these violent, drink-loving arseholes would be worth conscripting he's become pretty interested in you, since you not only fought noble champions but also just single-handedly took out a whole crime syndicate, before the authorities can do away with you, he's signed you up, you leave for Ostagar immediately.

When you get to Ostagar, there's really not much to do, it mostly consists of doing a couple errands to help with the war effort against the Blight, you'll be given two important quests here, one is find a cure for an illness that's infected the mabari hounds, giant war hounds, one of which can become a team-mate. and then there's collecting Darkspawn blood for the 'joining ritual'. once complete it turns out two of the new characters you've collected have to die, since the ritual is fatal.

To save time here's a list of the survivors:

Morrigan

Allistair

Grosni

Fairfax (the war hound)

While you're here you meet a couple of interesting characters, such as the King Cailan and his military advisor, Loghain, I'll let you guess who betrays who and who dies as a result.

Think of it in Disney Movie logic and it gets so much clearer.

The battle that I mentioned is eventually lost, you're forced to retreat, you and Allistair being the only Grey Wardens to survive decide that they should assemble a force to fight the Blight. So they head fro Lothering.

Arriving at the fine slum of Lothering, that Darkpsawn have ransacked I couldn't help notice the sudden influx of refugees from neighbouring areas coming through.

Now, this bugs me... Refugees from neighbouring areas... I'm going to just assume that most people who're not reading this blog have seen the map in Dragon Age...They'll know where Lothering is and they'll know the surrounding area...

Surrounding area meaning in this case being "Darkspawn infested woodland".
The only people who live in these woods are Flemmeth (Witch of the Wastes, Morrigans mother) Morrigan (who comes with you anyway.) And the Chasind (Barbarians who no one gives a shit about)

Beyond that there is Ostagar...
Which was recently destroyed by a Darkspawn invasion and before that was a set of RUINS that the Grey Wardens and the King's Army were using as a camp...

Besides those two areas... There are no neighbouring areas...
So where have all the refugees come from?
Lothering, itself consists of a tavern, a chantry(church), one farm, a refugee camp and about seven dilapidated houses...
The only issue is, you bump into enough people to fill about two thirds of the town...
So where are all the refugees? And honestly, where did they even come from?
No one but barbarians and witches live in the woods, Ostagar was a bunch of ruins and any other place would require you to walk in the direction of danger to get to Lothering...
So there would be no reason for people come to Lothering...
Since the breeding point of the Darkspawn is just a little ways south of the Town...

It's not an important detail since you never go back to that town (It's taken over about an hour after you leave).
But it still bugs me...

Beyond that, you meet what I'm really hoping is just an optional character, because I hate Sten...
I've heard a lot of people sing his praises, but I honestly hated the guy. He's in a cage for the crime of murdering a whole family, so it's sketchy at best as my motives for wanting to bring him along with me, but after bartering with the chantry I was allowed to bring him with me.
And I never used him.

Leaving Lothering to its fate I set up the party Camp. Which is something I love, anywhere you are on the map you can select "Party Camp" in the top corner and be there in seconds presumably because you'll set up camp next to where ever you are.

However, there's a problem!

You can only use Party Camp when on the Map screen, and you can only enter the map screen when moving from place to place, and you can only move from place to place when leaving a town or City...

Wouldn't it therefore make more sense to find an inn? Or ask the town or settlement you're in for shelter for the night? No matter what, you're at a town already... So why would you go just outside the town to set up... A camp fire and two tents...

That is all your camp consists of...
I've had as many as 11 unique characters in my camp at once...

And I put up two tents and a camp fire.
When I could walk back into a town and ask the local Chantry for shelter...

The only time this is more ridiculous to me is if you've just visited the Warden's Keep in the DLC and you select Party Camp...

Why? You just left a freshly exercised Grey Warden FORTRESS behind you...
Why not make use of it?
Hell, you're not even allowed back into the fortress after you've cleared out the demons...
That doesn't make sense.
Really the only reason a person would do that bit of DLC is for the armour, the sword and the Blood talents*

(*Although slitting your wrists for faster run speed is a bit pointless...)

Don't get me wrong, I love the Party Camp.
It's like the Normandy from Mass Effect but easier to get around and navigate through.

Just remembered while I'm on the topic of DLC.
Allow me a second to derail the story for the Stone Warden.you find a man standing around in the woods, he gives you a control rod for a Golem.
You go find the Golem it doesn't work, you find the guy who has the answers, he needs you find his daughter...

I love the idea that if you find his daughter and she dies because you're too lazy to do a puzzle-- I mean not persuasive enough when it came to the talking cat...

On second thought I think the lazy one had more merit...
Anyway, you have the option to bargain with a demon, which typically in the game-world is frowned upon but really it tends to work out for the best.

In Warden's Keep(also DLC) siding with the demon gives you a helping hand defeating an old Blood Mage (who're tricky bastards) And then you can close the crack in the veil that stops demons from flooding into the tower, and then kill the demon you originally sided with and get some sweet-ass armour.

When saving the son of the Arl of Redcliffe you can bargain with the demon to get Blood Mage powers, you actually have to be a MAGE to get this to happen though.

This demon(which has taken the form of a cat to ensnare the child) however just wants to possess the child she's grown attached to and leave...
I saw no gain in this for me and I kinda wanted the child to be safe, 'cos that's how Grosni rolls...

Unfortunately, in the time it takes to kill a cat with a sword 8 times over the demon possesses the child and she's gone forever...
Because the child completely disappears...

(That's more devouring than possessing... but eh.)
This of course only happened to me once, The other times I did the puzzle, pretending to help the demon out and then double-crossed them.
Grosni likes to provide Demons with false hope, it's like a "I heard that's what they do to normal people" kind of thing. He has no remorse, but he's incredibly persuasive and people and demons seem to believe a lot of what he says.

The child died during one play-through I was doing with my Mage and instead of saying "I'm sorry she's dead" or "I'm sorry she turned into a demon and I was forced to stab her to death... several times..." I came back and told the guy I just couldn't find her... And he believed me, gave me the words I needed to activate the Golem which by this point I'd bet you'd forgotten you were reading about.

And I got the character.

I like Shale, The Golem, he (Or rather *Spoiler* SHE *Spoiler*) is a a great character, By this point I was swimming in warriors and had no use for them.

This was my roster of Warrior characters by this point.

Grosni(Me),
Allistair,
Sten,
The Dog (To an extent)
And now, Shale.

I was later joined by a berserker warrior dwarf, who's name wasn't important enough to remember.
So six warriors in all at the end..

So my group was shaping up well.
I had:
Grosni.
Allistair.
Leliana.
Morrigan.
The Dog.
Sten.
Shale.

One hell of a group considering I'd not even set foot on the story yet...

Basically after leaving Lothering it was decided that maybe we should use some ancient treaties to gain the aid of the elves, dwarves and we also wanted to go Redcliffe to get some human help (This build up to be the majority of the story quests.) So as to end the Blight and take on Loghain.

I'll probably hit up those areas in future parts to this review, so with that.

End of part 2.

Continued in part 3

Dragon Age: Origins - Part 1

2010-01-24T08:21:00.000-08:00

In a land where people will read anything you put on the internet

one man, writes his story...

Don't worry, I'm scared too...

Unlike a review I've decided that I'll be trying to mix this up as if I'm telling the story of my Dwarf, Grosni.

I warn you, If there's one thing I'm not, it's attentive to details, so likely, I'll miss a lot of stuff out.
Bare with me.

So, the decent place to start would be the character creation, I was under the impression that it was going to be fairly robust in choice of what you could be, how they would look, etc.

Unfortunately, like a lot of Bioware games I found myself horribly underwhelmed.
[Just for understanding I am playing the Xbox version]
Mostly because it seems that regardless of how I moved the sliders, my characters all looked the same.

My Arsehole Mage, Archemetis just looks like Jowan with a huge beard.
My City Elf Rogue, Syl looks almost every elf I meet in-game but with a face tattoo.
My Human Warrior, Tahlrym... OK Admittedly looks all right...

So really, with almost every race option looking bland and uninspiring I was left with the Dwarves. Which is honestly not as bad as perhaps I just made it sound.
Because the Dwarves are AWESOME.

My Dwarven Noble, Duran* was appropriately aware of his status in the dwarven caste-driven society (which I love!) But at the same time loved the thrill of battle enough to forget about it all while fighting in the proving grounds.
Even after he's been framed for the death of his brother and exiled in to the deep roads to fight until he can't any longer, he still has a great sense of honour and moral integrity, without losing sight of his birth-right.
(*Duran is a pre-set name I got even when I'd chosen a name for my character, it's a reoccurring glitch I've noticed)

All this, is pretty much true of my main character, Grosni. My much beloved Dwarf commoner.
He's also a warrior, but he's predominantly sword and shield, which is pretty much the 'easy-mode' of the game.
Creating him at first was an endeavour of:
'How could I make him look more like a cartoon dwarf?'
I managed this by moving all the nose sliders to near-maximum.
not surprisingly, it was a look that worked.

Once he was created I was actually kind of amazed by the amount of dialogue options available although that was overshadowed by how much my character could get away with.
I was constantly trying to piss off my 'boss' the Cartel-leader by the name of Beraht.
Scum-bag was 'helping' my family by whoring out my sister to the Dwarven nobility (A plan that amazingly works better once Beraht is gone...) and he was making damn sure that the point was driven home that my sister was just a baby-maker for the royals...
Funnily enough it's in the room over where I discovered my first part of dialogue that can actually alter how people react to you, your mother is a drunkard and depending on what you say to her you can make her angry and ask you to leave or upset and cry for you not to go...
I was amazed when I got the latter on a second run-through because I was under the impression I was doing everything the same..
Obviously I wasn't.

I hit up my first 'job' hunting down some guy who was making profits selling lyrium (A magical ore used for spells by the Mages) And keeping the money for himself as opposed to using it to pay for protection.

So we're sent in to kill him, this is where the dialogue options get even more in-depth.

You can actually choose to either:

Kill him there and then and search his bags after.

Search his bags, have a chat then kill him.

Search his bags, have a chat then negotiate his release.

Search his bags, have a chat, negotiate his release, then say 'just kidding' and and kill him.

At the end of the day there's a number of different options which can all be handled in different ways, they don't affect a morality counter or alignment bar or any of that other tiresome 'THIS IS A MATHEMATICAL RE-TELLING OF HOW MUCH OF A BASTARD YOU ARE('NT)' rubbish that you encounter in most modern RPG's.
And it's refreshing to see, and it's the main reason I tend to invest so much love and time into Bioware games, regardless of the lack of character building options you get in them.

Because they have moral choice in place, but they know there's a plot that the game is strictly following and an outcome it's all inevitably leading to.
Which let's the moral choices boil down to more of a 'method of achievement' system.

You can be brutal and heartless in your method of saving the world, killing any poor shmuck that trips up in your path holding a sword (Or not holding a sword, it doesn't matter).

Or you can be heroic and political in the whole thing.
Much like how my Dwarf was throughout a lot of the game.
Besides the occasional time when I didn't have points in Coercion. (Basically my ability to persuade or intimidate) So I was basically left with no choice but rend some heads from their beloved necks.
Often times I'd find myself on the second run-through being.. actually kind of amazed by how little choice I had in some sections, they're typically little parts of the game that serve no purpose than maybe introducing you to the fact that you're allowed to choose certain options.
But ultimately always end up the same.
Like the bandits you encounter while entering a place called Lothering later in the story.
You can say whatever you like to them, but when it's all said and done, you'll be killing them.
Just hope and pray that you asked them to turn over their loot first.

Anyway, while dealing with this guy for Beraht I let him go, taking some of the lyrium dust for myself to make a tidy profit, my friend at the time didn't want any part of it, but my coercion soon saw him in my camp. We report back to Beraht, he's suspicious, his other goons report seeing that chump I let go free running towards the surface, I talk my way out by pretending that I killed him before he got there and that he had nothing on value.
He takes the bait.

Beraht then tells us what our next job is, entering the proving grounds and poisoning a dwarven champion so that our guy wins. Sure, sounds easy enough until you remember that regardless of where you see them, Dwarves are almost always drunk, our guys out cold...

I guess it's up to me to suit up and go in his place, my friend wants to know if he should still poison the other champion.

'Sod that' I say.

'Poisoning the opposition is cheaters and pussies.'

End of Part 1

Continued in part 2

Review - Fable 2 - Part 2

2009-03-15T16:16:00.000-07:00

All right! So, Fable 2 Part 2, a new hope.

OK, so I've covered the lacking story, the some-what stupid NPCs, as well as other aspects.
Now let's get straight onto combat before I strike hard at the point that Molyneux has placed the most love, the relationships in game and the Dog.

I feel a need to say that combat is actually gratifying, it's basic, easy to grasp and it looks quite awesome from time to time. Admittedly though, I preferred combat from Fable 1

Also I have to say that having block and flourish on the same type of button press was a rubbish decision
Say I want to block, I'll instinctively think to press a different button to the one that makes me hit things, but in Fable 2 it's not like that, I have to hold down the button for hitting to block, but of course I also have to do that to flourish (special hit) as well, so I'm constantly finding myself attempting a finisher instead of blocking, causing me to take damage anyway.

But that's Melee, it's basic, it's really only for button-mashing thickies anyway, which is why I preoccupy myself with the ranged combat.
I'll admit, coming from a background of being the "sword over guns any day" type, I felt a bit odd eagerly awaiting the day I would be able to use a pistol in Fable. But surprisingly it is pretty fun, I don't much like some of the weapons, but really, once you've found the one that suits you, it's easy and efficient for killing.

The only problem I've found is it's a bit hard to take out a lot of the end game enemies with guns, because they can mostly all survive three or more shots to the head before keeling over and accepting that I'm the hero and I will not be denied.
Lastly, Magic.

Magic was honestly better in the first game. That's really all I'm going to say on the matter.

OK, Combat is done, now onto marriage, you can marry anyone* in the world of Albion as long as they can become interested in you.
(*My lead girl married a hooker called "Gemma the Whore", no joke.)

Right, you got the spouse, you've set your regular income to over 20 gold because no one really ever wants more then that and you're set on your path to play the rest of the game in the good knowledge that if you want your character to get laid he/she only has to go "Home" and ask his/her spouse. Then it's back to adventure!
That's how easy marriage is.

And depending on the kind of character you marry you could be swarmed with gifts which vary from two levels I devised "slightly useful" and "I'm giving this back to you as a gift tomorrow".
Because, I realise it's supposed to be 'real' and your spouse would buy you this crap, but what actual use to my hero is a necklace I can't wear?
Also, getting married is the quickest reminder that NPCs are dialogue repeating fiends.
Because any spouse will have about five phrases and they will use them all the time.

After you've mistakenly clicked on "unprotected sex" and you've landed yourself with a son* or daughter it's now time to take up responsibility for your actions and take that legendary hammer to her face.
(*Although in my experience it is NEVER a son)

OK, I'm joking (maybe) but really, you're going to end up with a small family at some point, and half an hour of using emotes on a crib you'll have a nine year old child (and they'll tell you their age at every given opportunity) quite realistic I'm sure you'll agree, but of course there's no fun in waiting an actual nine years for your kid to grow up.

I'm going to mention a little issue that's only ever happened on my copy of the game (which is limited edition) and that is my child ALWAYS glitches, in a way where they are unresponsive and they don't do anything, they stand outside your house and do NOTHING. so really I've always avoided having kids since that started happening, I don't know if it happens to more people then just me but it still sucks.
So that leaves me genuinely unable to really make mention of anything to do with kids so I'll move on to...

The Dog.

Molyneux made certain during the hype that we were all aware the dog was going be there and that it acted like a dog "People will look at that and say, that is a dog."

Well, yes, I did do that.
He also dared players to not fall in love with the dog.
Admittedly I loved little Fairfax (I named my dog after the castle) on my first run through because he was genuinely useful and I thought he was adorable in his little "I'mma find things because I LOVE YOU!!!" way of living his life.

Unfortunately come about the second or third play-through it just lost all charm, I was eventually cursing the dog for either barking at things I knew were there or NOT barking at things I knew were there* .
But yes, the dog is the most obvious example of why Fable 2 can't be played more then a few times, because what Molyneux and Lionhead tried to achieve can only be done once in games and then after that it's stale and repetitive.
Sorry Lil' Fairfax...
(and I KNEW they were there because after the first run through I bought a strategy guide (I'll get onto that little gem in a bit)

Right, since I've mentioned it I'll move onto it, the strategy guide.

We all know what a strategy guide is for,It's a useful little thing to have around, but I don't need to tell anyone that.
In a way I feel I got the most for my money out of the guide book, because it comes with an art book and we know how much I love those. But it gets better, there are five unique covers you can get for your art book, my one came with the sign for the Cow and Corset (the in-game pub in Bowerstone)
So that's something kind of special.
As far as guides go, it's a little confusing before you realise that some of the stuff it's mentioning isn't until later sections so you'll occasionally find yourself wondering how there's 6 gargoyles in a certain map and a whole area you can't get to. But the pictures are pretty.

G would listen to the whines of games developers defending the mistakes in games, but he too busy with pretty pictures.

Review - Fable 2

2009-03-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

I figured I'd get a chance to write what I feel/hope will be an in-depth look at the latest instalment in the world of Albion by Lionhead Studios.

Molyneux, as great a man as he is often finds his many tremendous achievements in the gaming industry often being crushed or overlooked in light of his grossly understated ability to sing too many praises and make too many promises about his games while they're in development, Fable 2 was no exception.

As with the original game and Lost Chapters, I feel we as a public have been led on by some hype, admittedly the level and severity of this hype has been toned down for this title, so maybe old Molyneux has finally started to learn something? One can only hope.

Fable 2, like it's predecessor (Fable 1), is a terrific game...
When looked at from an open perspective.

Take my approach to games like Fable 2, I tend to ignore the story all together, I ignore the NPCs and I ignore the the more story defining quests for as long as I possibly can, I want the story to be mine, not the developers, which is an unfortunate measure to take in a game boasting endless freedom.

However the preferred method for playing "free-roam" or "sand-box" games is to make it entirely your own, make your own agenda, make your own story, make the characters ideals and goals into yours, that way the game becomes so much more personal and as such enjoyable, so maybe it's not so much of a damning method for playing games...

But enough with my excuses as to why I find Fable 2 fun and no one else I know does... Besides maybe my girlfriend.

As mentioned by a number of different reviews you start off this textbook adventure pretty much the same as Fable 1, as a street urchin doing tedious little "chores" (if you could dare call the childhood quests in Fable 2 that...) by, retrieving warrants, posing for photos, saving dogs, killing beetles and defending a grown man's choice to love a woman who is noticeably much younger than himself.

Everything veterans of the original will find extremely familiar, because this is almost exactly what we had to do last time, I realise that since Hero from Fable 1 is supposed to be some form of direct ancestor to the hero for this title, I suppose it just seems like Genetic heritage that they also embark on the same kind of bullshit tedium as well.

Speaking of heritage, here comes the DRAMA!

After you're done either making yourself out to be some kind of virtuous, loving child who's every action is meant to steer the shit-hole city you live in up into better times, or the opposite, which is... contribute nothing towards the changing ways of the city for your financial gain...

I wouldn't of minded that last option if it carried any kind of weight behind it.
I mean the town goes through a "complete*" transformation to something that resembles a place you actually want to live in if you've done the right thing in childhood, why can I not have an adequate reaction to doing the wrong thing?

I guess evil just gets more of the same with swords thrown in, huh?

*by complete transformation I of course mean that that PART of the City is transformed, everything else looks the same no matter what, some-what disappointing...

So, where was I?
Oh yeah! Tragedy strikes, you're only living relative is killed in front of you and you're shot out of a window (Mythbusters might and probably already have had something to say about that one...)

You manage to survive the hundred story plummet face-planting a house on the way down before eventually slamming yourself into the cold, snow-covered cobbled street below...

Some how you live, and the game makes very sure you understand exactly why as the first loading screen hint you get is something along the lines of:
"Heroes can survive falls that would shatter the bones of ordinary citizens"

Just in case you forgot you're playing a fantasy game and that the lead protagonist is special...

supposedly ten years go by, you're all healed up within that time and I'm assuming you're taught how to shoot and use a sword, because besides the rather lacking excuse for a tutorial you get during childhood you've really had no chance to practise any combat, I understand that 500 years have passed, I've read the games lore and back-story. I know the guild was destroyed and all heroes were rumoured to have been killed, but seriously, in a world where weapons still play a key role in society you'd think there would have been at least a camp somewhere you could learn to use them?

I suppose the gypsies in your particular camp didn't need weapons to protect themselves from the surrounding bandit and beetle infested woodland...
No wonder the poor sods are always getting sold as slaves...

Oh! while I'm on the subject of society and weapons in this game, I find it rather suspect that even when I'm fighting something/one to PROTECT the citizenry, they still react like I only pulled my sword out to scare/mug them?

racking up hate points for saving someone isn't my idea of how an intelligent NPC works...

Right, back on topic, you're healed, you're about ready to start your adventure, you've got the option to name your dog, fortunately if you've had experience with games and animals you'll figure out that if you get a dog collar, it's not you that's going to be wearing it.

Although realistically anything that could boost the incredibly small amount of clothing you get in the game would be a bonus.

I mean yeah, I know the option to mix and match things from different outfits is something Fable games have been known for, but in Fable 2 it's really not an option, because most of the outfits look utterly fucking ridiculous*! some of these things you can wear, look horrible even with the right combination of dyes.

(*Yeah, Yeah! I know that's just my opinion...)

Speaking of which, Lionhead, I realise you're never going to read this, but please! When it comes to Fable 3, please, use a more user-friendly item system, or at the very least, go back to the items system from the first one, that was good, the one in Fable 2... Well it didn't really even exist, there are games that are at least 10 years old with more user-friendly item systems it's one of the most basic things to create, they've almost always been there, how did you manage to screw it up so badly?

Skipping ahead in the story so as to not spoil anything for anyone who hasn't gotten that far* in the game.
(*To those of which I say, hurry the hell up!)

Molyneux, again I realise you won't be reading, you told people during an interview that the game-world of Fable 2 was going to be 10x as big as fable 1. Yes I can see that in the maps, and the world as a whole, unfortunately when you said this I think a few of us were expecting the story to be led by the same example...

Unfortunately, it wasn't, Sure I realise that I not long ago admitted to ignoring the story in favour of making my character into myself (although I play a woman most times*)So it shouldn't be an issue.

Well not entirely true, see I went through the game once after I got it, a complete play-through, to try and see what was there, how to do it, what affects it had, and all that.

Unfortunately I was finished with the story within two days, not a bad improvement considering I could complete the original (by that I mean Fable Lost Chapters) in an afternoon, so really by my standard, it IS 10x as big, but really, that's only including the side quests (which, by the way I don't appreciate becoming mandatory for the sake of padding...) not to mention the mind-numbingly boring jobs...
Getting to be a 5 star barmaid is not easy, nor is it a short endeavour... 3 hours of time I could of been spending fighting trolls I instead sat behind a bar to work up the 56k gold I needed to buy the pub I was working in, and what for?

For a 500 gold increase in my property profits...

56k for 500?
Hardly seem fair, sure I realise I could have just set my 360's clock forward a year and got it all back, but at the time I didn't feel like exploiting the system... Literally.

So excluding the hours I put into buying property, getting married, doing side quests and overall just trying to make my character seem like a real person by having live a life, the game probably took me, about an afternoon, if not less.

I mean the longest quests in this game last about 30 minutes at the least.

Not long enough, especially during the tattered spire quest, if you were really there for ten years, it should feel like it. Granted you can't have a quest over-stay it's welcome, but some relevant length would have been nice. It coincidentally took me 30 minutes to walk to the Crucible. Think of that what you will.

Your character doesn't noticeably age in the 10 years they're supposed to have been at the spire.

I entered the spire as a smoulderingly evil woman with greyed skin, lava veins, tattooed up to my eye balls (since legs and torsos were out of bounds this time?) and by the end of the first cut-scene in that place I was back to having ordinary skin and a dumb looking smile, not to mention my characters, all of them, have crossed eyes, all of the time.
Worst of all the female characters.

Coupled with that silly leaning in stance they seem to have which looks like an animation fault more then it does an actual stance, it's all rather dis-heartening as well as ironic when these characters eventually become sex symbols.

Not that G's implying that cross-eyed, grinning mutes with one leg much longer than the other won't one day we trundling down the cat walk before stumbling over at the end because they weren't programmed to stand up straight, in fact G finds that kind of hot.