Dragon Age 2 Done

(Meant to post this several months ago)

Having completed Dragon Age 2, I wanted to jot down likes/dislikes.

Ok, I understand they wanted to reduce the budget as compared to DA1 and that they wanted to make it more console friendly. I won't gripe too much. I'm going to just live with these two items as a consequence of cheaper and console friendly:

1. Area reuse: obviously a cost control measure where every area gets used for 10+ quests
2. RPG Lite: Eased porting to console and making it more controller friendly. Perhaps this also widened their player base.

Things I liked:
Varric
Merrill
Isabela


Things that bugged me about DA2:
Minor Annoyances
No Autorun key
Show item/people names isn't a toggle
Golden mask: Best helm I found. Completely dominates the look of your character... ruins some cutscenes, IMO.
Locked chests in the middle of the street.

Medium Annoyances
Shallow mana/stamina pools: It feels like you only get 1 or 2 abilities until you're down to basics. Makes combats either a grind or a potion fest.
Weak item differentiation: I feel like their item randomizer is a d6 table that 90% of the items use:
1- +xx Attack/defense
2- +xx mana/stamina
3- +xx% magic, physical, crit damage
4- +xx% damage resistance
5- +xx% attack speed
6- roll on special table (immunity to stun, crits, knockback + maybe 4-5 others)

No real healing character (assume hawke isn't mage):
Anders- Recast timer on the heal is like 30-60 seconds and his panacena doesn't make a dent
Merrill- No heal
Bethany- Not around
Potions- Yep, there is your healer


Major Annoyances
"Funny" Item Names: Near the end nearly every magic has a name that tries to be cute:
Belt- Seven Deadly Cinch
Ring- Three Wolf Boon
Shield- Lord Bearing's Shield
... and many more.
This is a bit of a staple now a days where every MMORPG has a quest called "Pulp Friction" or "Unusual Suspects."

Blood magic, blood magic, blood magic: In DA1 blood magic was referenced sparingly and was spooky powerful stuff. In DA2, it seems all mages are blood mages.

Demons, demons, demons: Again, in DA1 fighting a single rage demon was scary stuff, they were tough fights. Now there are fights with several rage demons, abominations, etc all working together. I guess the Champion of Kirkwall is way tougher than the Champion of Fereldan?


Only characters I could keep up were tanks. My mages and rogues always died nearly every decently hard fight. A new, better taunt mechanic would be nice for tanks.

Spoiler-free Dragon Age 2 demo

The new PC demo for Dragon Age 2 unlocks some items for the main game. The problem is that the demo seems to have a sampling of scenes from the real game. SPOILERS!

Want to get those items and mostly have a spoiler-free experience?

One thing to keep in mind is that you can skip all cut scenes and blow through most conversation trees by spamming your mouse. So, hit ESC every chance you can.

BTW, it looks like they did to Dragon Age 2 what they did with Mass Effect 2. Dumbed down the RPG aspects a bit and made it more action oriented.

Hat design inspired by last D&D game

Make custom t-shirts at CustomInk.com

Tactial RPGS

Trying to muddle my way through some tactical RPGs I think my number one thing is that they be responsive and fast... very quick resolution of standard actions and skippable animations for the fancy attacks. I wonder if I should try Disgaea 3 again?

August Video Game Update

Moving interrupted all of my game activities... sitting in a Motel for 10 days while you moved all of your stuff in to storage, found a new place to live, filled out rental agreements, rented trucks, and moved everything in did in fact break me down enough that I bought a DS XL. Sigh. Like I need another gaming platform.

I played a bit of Dragon Quest on the DS and was hoping that the co-op would be really fun. Unfortunately for the co-op you have to get 5 hours in to the game, which ended up making it so I never tried it. I also picked up Final Fantasy IV, haven't opened it. Add it to the ever growing backlog. Also picked up Tactics A2, got 1/3rd through it (my guess.)

Then I got Internet and real computers setup again. DS XL gathering dust now for the last 2 weeks.

So, let's see where I'm at:

Playing:
Deciding...

Finished:
- (new) Alien Swarm: Awesome co-op alien game free on Steam. Only one campaign, but top notch co-op experience from the team behind L4D.
- (new) Lara Croft Guardian of Light: This was an awesome co-op experience. It's a $15 game on Xbox. Two player co-op same screen, the best part is how well balanced it was. There were a couple of frustrating parts, but not bad enough we quit. Highly recommend.
- (new) Starcraft 2 (SPC): Was cool. Good balance of difficulty on normal. May do a comp-stomp or two, but no way I'm doing competitive.

Played some and on hold:
- (new)Trinity Universe (PS3): Meh, kind of interesting GUST/Atlus kind of JRPG
- Monster Hunter Tri (Wii)
- Sakura Wars (Wii)
- Record of Agarest War (360/PS3): Played a bit, was annoyed by the load times, bought the PS3 version... played some more. Put on hold.
- (new) FEAR (PC): Played through the first FEAR game, got maybe 2/3rds way through so far. Kind of repetitive but there are some nice creepy parts in it.
- (new) Transformers: War for Cybertron (PC): Up to three people co-op action shooter kind of game. Pretty fun, not a super strong co-op experience, but still pretty to look at it and it's great imitating Megatron.
- (new) Final Fantasy Tactics A2 (DS): Cute. Wish it was on a real platform though

Unlikely to finish:
- Kane and Lynch 2 via OnLive: Love OnLive, but K&L2 wasn't my kind of game. Free game coupon though made it totally worth it!
- (new) Two Worlds: Read on http://www.co-optimus.com/ that it might be worth $20 for co-op. It's barely worth it.
- Vandal Hearts: FoJ
- Shiren the Wanderer


Not going to finish:
- Star Ocean: Last Hope
- (new) Murky Horizons: Like 80 pts on xbox arcade, interesting but only for about 30 minutes.
- Resonance of Fate
- FFXIII
- Red Steel 2

Queue:
- (new) Mafia 2 (OnLive): This is supposed to be pretty killer
- Dawn of War II: Chaos expansion
- Penny Arcade: Rain Slick blah blah
- Modern Warfare
- Modern Warfare 2
- Mana Khemia
- Prince of Persia: Sands of time
- Supreme Commander 2
- Final Fantasy IV(DS)

Haven't bought yet, but probably will and add to queue:
- Dragon Age: Awakenings
- Ogre Battle 64

John Rogers!

So I'm reading this new DnD book "Player's Strategy Guide" which WOTC cunningly marketed in some fashion as to make me buy it. I start reading a sidebar about helping to create a background for your character (I've probably read 100s of similar ones.) It's a pretty cool take on it, but it's not a pragmatic approach... the author is describing something that obviously takes some writing talent. So I get to the end of the article and it says "John Rogers is a film and television writer. He created the show Leverage, the story of a party of 10th-level rogues who take on corporate bad guys."

That is so awesome! I love Leverage and it's always struck me as a series I liked only because it felt like an RPG, not like a real model of the world.

Then I look a little farther in to John Rogers (who apparently all the famous geeks like Wheaton hang out with) and it turns out he he also did writing for Jackie Chan Adventures, another one of my favorite RPG-style shows!

John Rogers is the man!

Games Played Update

I gotta stop buying games... I'm so deep in the gameplay hole.

Playing:
- Monster Hunter Tri

Played some and on hold:
- Sakura Wars
- Vandal Hearts: FoJ
- Shiren the Wanderer

Unlikely to finish:
- Star Ocean: Last Hope

Not going to finish:
- Resonance of Fate
- FFXIII
- Red Steel 2

Queue:
- Dawn of War II: Chaos expansion
- Penny Arcade: Rain Slick blah blah
- Modern Warfare
- Modern Warfare 2
- Mana Khemia

Haven't bought yet, but probably will and add to queue:
- Dragon Age: Awakenings
- Ogre Battle 64
- Record of Agarest War

Yay, another tactical RPG

Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber on the Wii virtual console.

Yay! Tactical RPG!

Record of Agarest War!

Gotta get that thing...

Did I mention I'm mostly playing Monster Hunter Tri now? I've slipped in to the Indian Buffet mode of gaming. It's expensive, yet tasty.

Wait, buffet's aren't generally expensive. Maybe it's the ummm... well I guess it's like paying $15 to see a movie then walking out after the first 20 minutes if it's not the most awesome thing ever.

April Game Update

About four weeks ago I was considering what games I wanted to spend my gaming time on. Here is what I ended up playing:

* FF XIII for the PS3
- Bought it, didn't finish it
- Played about 30 hours of it, got to near the end, game got hard, fingers got tired

* Battlfield: Bad Company 2 (PC)
- Bought it, finished single player campaign, didn't try multiplayer

* Dawn of War II: Chaos expansion
- Bought it, waiting for Matt to free up time to play the co-op with me

* Resonance of Fate for the 360
- Bought it, 50 hours in to single player campaign (there apparently may be another 30 hours to go)
- Probably not going to finish it

* Red Steel 2 for the Wii
- Bought it, played about 10 hours of it, was amused by the combat
- Not amused by the frequent door opening scenes that hide the levels loading
- Also, it's hard. I needed like the "global slowdown" feature that makes everything in the game run about 80% as fast in fights.

New "on deck" titles:
* Sakura Wars (JRPG)
* Monster Hunter Tri (Action RPG)
* Vandal Hearts: Flames of Judgement (tacticl RPG)
* Star Ocean: The last hope international (JRPG)
* Shiren the Wanderer (dungeon bash JRPG)
* Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy (JRPG)


In denial titles:
I'd love to play these games but realistically I'll probably never get around to picking them up
* God of War Collection (never played them)
* God of War III
* Bayonetta
* Uncharted 2
* Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (unlikely since I don't like the DS)
* 3D Dot Game Heroes (unlikely but looks cool)
* Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce



No chance of me buying soon (caveat is amazing price discounts)
* Supreme Commander 2
* Stalker Pripyat
* Assassin's Creed 1/2
* Heavy Rain

Books from (somewhat) long ago...

It seems to me that great books from the past decades often get buried. I realized that in talking to the new gen of college grads the odds of them coming across any of the below series was mighty slim, so I figured I'd post a list of classic sci-fi/fantasy that really shouldn't be missed that might escape other "greatest of all time" lists. Most of these are not necessarily great literature, but really fun and interesting reads none the less.

Lensmen series- Starts with Triplanetary by EE "Doc" Smith
OMG, this is a crazy awesome space opera. This series was started in 1934. That's pre-WW2. The series blows away Star Wars in every aspect. Cooler tech, cooler psionics, way better plot, way better characters. Did I mention it was written in 1934-1948???
I don't reread series, but I've reread this series at least 3 times...
Chronicles of the Lensmen, Volume 1 (Triplanetary, First Lensman, Galactic Patrol )

Amber series- Starts with Nine Princes in Amber by Roger Zelazny
Amber is a mind-blowing universe of interesting worlds, magic, intrigue and action.
The Great Book of Amber: The Complete Amber Chronicles, 1-10 (Chronicles of Amber)

Elric series- Starts with Elric of Melnibone by Michael Moorcock
Elric was goth before it was a cool. Super good swords and sorcery series. At least two Blue Oyster Cult songs are based off this fiction.
Elric: The Stealer of Souls (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 1)
Elric: To Rescue Tanelorn (Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 2)

Vlad Taltos series- Starts with Jhereg from 1983 (series) by Steven Brust
This one is still ongoing, and it's awesome... but you might have missed it since it started so long ago.
The Book of Jhereg

Black Company series- Starts with The Black Company from 1984 by Glen Cook
Again another long running series that you might have missed since it started before you might have been born.
Super awesome tale told from the perspective a mercenary company caught in the middle of a sword and sorcery epic.
Dark, gritty, and magic.
The Black Company (Chronicles of The Black Company #1)

Xanth series (Don't read past the third!)- Starts with a Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony
Ok, it's pretty embarrassing to put this up here... but the early Piers Anthony had a certain silly charm. It's probably too juvenile for most people but
Three Complete Xanth Novels: A Spell for Chameleon; The Source of Magic; Castle Roogna

I'm sure I'll think of more...

Borderlands: DLC

I've Been playing Borderlands DLC with Liz. I loved Borderlands. I love the DLC.

General Knox got really good reviews so I talked Liz in to trying it with me. Had a great opening movie, looked a lot of fun, but it was apparently for level 50+. Our highest characters were 38, so we took those characters and went and did the other DLC we had.

We started with "The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned." It was fun, but a bit grindy. There are LOTs of zombies and they take awhile to kill. Near the end we ended up blitzing the missions instead of stopping to kill all the waves.

After (mostly) doing Dr. Ned (250 brains will have to wait) and getting to level 47 we had to choose between the single player campaign to get the last couple of levels to do General Knox or do Mad Moxxi. The reviews for Mad Moxxi were terrible, getting a ~50ish on MetaCritic.

Liz talked me in to risking the $10, mostly because it has a bank you can store stuff in.

We both ended up really liking Mad Moxxi. It's not for the faint of heart though, it took us like 3 hours to "conquer" one area. It was like 5 rounds of 5 waves each. It was long enough we had to take breaks while holed up in a corner or hard to reach spot while the enemies roamed looking for us.

The loot in Mad Moxxi was pretty kicking, but no exp (which was fine.) The map was really, really cool and you didn't understand the neatness until you really had been playing on it for an hour. The music is awesome and Mad Moxxi's voice is great to.

Mad Moxxi also requires tactics. You can lose and have to restart if all players die... and dead players only come back at the end of a wave. The neat thing is that dead players can still help... they get put in a crows nest sort of "penalty box" that you can shoot out but you can't leave.

I'm looking forward to trying the next maps/rounds. I'm wondering if it saves any of your progress though. Those rounds were long.

I think I would have rated Mad Moxxi a lot higher. I think what people were frustrated by is that they wanted a full campaign like Dr. Ned, and overlooked the interesting bits of Mad Moxxi.  I suspect if they had released Mad Moxxi after General Knox people would have been more interested having been sated in their appetite for more campaign content.

The evil Speck

"Since I was small I had heard tales of the mysterious and elusive Specks, the dappled people who could only live happily in the shadows of their native forest."

"The very name of the people had crept in to our language as a synonym for inattentive: to do a Speck's day of work meant to do almost nothing at all. If I was caught day dreaming over my books, my tutor might ask if I was Speck-touched."

The above passages unchanged from Robin Hobb's book Shaman's Crossing. This goes on and on talking about the evil Speck threat. Who payed her to pick that name?

Finished- Battlefield: Bad Company 2

The Battlefield: Bad Company 2 single player campaign started strong and ended in mediocrity. I never touched the multiplayer (which I hear is awesome) since I got my fill of being circle/jump/porpoise strafed about a decade ago.

The story was pretty interesting until the very, very end where the MacGuffin is shown. It had a lot of potential as a mercs + lost tv show story. They would have been better off with a cliff hanger and maybe pick it up in a future expansion then ending it how they did.

I should write up good old books

Battlefield: Bad Company 2

I bought BC2 on Steam.

So far about 2 hours in to it I like it... it's a generic shooter, but so far the story is cool. It's obviously heavily influenced by Lost, but I like Lost. It also reminds me of the Shaftoe stuff from Cryptonomicon ever so slightly.

Radio

I have electrical problems with my car. I suspect that the connection of the cables to the battery are very flakey.

Anyways, my radio has reset occasionally upon starting the car resulting in unexpected station changes.

The "normal" rotation is supposed to be NPR and AM sfbayarea talk radio. Now when I hit my normal cycle button, I cycle between some sort of odd pop station, NPR, a religious station, and my AM sfbayarea talk radio.

This morning I got hit with: http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=_j_HYMUakpk&feature=related
Some sort of reggae/rap/pop hybrid of "Angel of the Morning."
Of course, anyone with a modern clue will tell me that this is an old song from 3 years ago by Shaggy. Video here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=ZJNfAJlFcz8&feature=fvw

In any case, I liked the song.

And occasionally, I find myself liking hearing the preaching of the religious station. It makes me feel like I'm giving the other side a chance to convince me.


So, I sort of like the new, weird, radio rotation.

New game...

I think I'd like a new game. The challenges are finding something I can have fun with. My habits are in general:

• Don't care about multiplayer competitive
• Love cooperative multiplayer
• Love Turn Based Tactical RPGs
• Ok with shooters, RTS, action games

Here is what I have my eyes on:

• FF XIII (I think the PS 3 version...)
• Battlfield: Bad Company 2 (PC)
• Supreme Commander 2
• Stalker Pripyat (unlikely)
• God of War Collection (never played them)
• God of War III
• Bayonetta
• Assassin's Creed 1/2
• Heavy Rain (unlikely)
• Uncharted 2

 The "for sure when available" list is:

• Dawn of War II: Chaos expansion
• Dragon Age: Awakenings

Bioshock 2

One of the titles I recently bought in my search for a new game was Bioshock 2.

It's just not engaging me.

My issues with it are:
* Story isn't engaging me
* I seem to suck at it, I'm always out of ammo, health, and money
* I lowered the difficulty to easy, and I still suck
* The constant spawning enemies feel like a nuisance, it's like the JRPG deal of random world battles
* The UI and game menus are all very clunky on the PC. You can't easily remap weapons or plasmids. Bringing up the menus has weird pauses in it where the game seems to freeze for a second.
* Bioshock 2 comes mapped with F11 to quick load and F12 to quick save. This is so painful. The first time I hit F11 and lost 20 minutes of progress I went to the clunky menu to check to remap this. You cannot remap this from within the game. I had to do some searching to find out that you can only change that mapping by editing the .ini config file. Ugh.

It does have pretty graphics though, and the trap aspects are fun... but that's about it.

I'm 7 or 8 hours in and the only thing making me want to finish is my OCD.

Gaming

This past couple of months has been pretty good for video games that I like.

* Borderlands
* L4D 2
* Dragon Age
* Mass Effect 2
* Star Trek OnLine

Those I've mostly all finished, although I'm still hunting around for someone to do the Borderlands DLC with. Liz says she will, but we keep ending up playing Star Trek Online. We're around level 35 in STO and content is starting to become pretty thin.

So what do I move on to next?