Ah, November. A time for giving thanks, getting deals, stepping on people who fall in front of you at Wal-Mart, and buying Christmas decorations. Because FUCK December, right? This year also saw a large quantity of AAA games come out, back to back to back. Being employed and able I saw fit to buy most of these games, the remaining two coming out at midnight tonight, and I got them all for the low, low price of...
Jesus Christ, I've spent over 500 dollars on games in the last month.
Let me show you how I've reached this point.
First off, Brutal Legend came out back in Rocktober, the first of my "must haves" for this year. Tim Schafer is one of my favorite game developers/writers and I've been playing his games for a long time, so I had to go out and pick it up. Schafer on this generation with Jack Black in a heavy metal world? Do want. Got it, beat it, still messing around with the world. I really dug it even if it was a bit on the short side, as the world and characters are so well developed that I'll probably play through it again just to re-experience everything again. So, game one at sixty five with tax.
The next game I got was the large impulse purchase that really did me in. DJ Hero, in all it's awesome glory, was a large, random investment. I'm really glad I got it, though, as I can see plugging it in a playing around with it for a long time, much like I do with Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Thankfully I'm not completely retarded and only got the basic set, which saved me eighty dollars for a cd and a "table". Still, one hundred and twenty bucks swirled away like a record.
For around a week after I bought DJ Hero, while I dutifully learned the nuances of the platter and worked my way through mix after mash-up, I watched as EVERYONE ELSE on my friends list played Borderlands. I didn't know if I wanted it, as with a busy game schedule coming out who would still be playing it two weeks later? Besides, why not wait until it drops in price in a few months and pick it up then, when I can find other people who waited and we could all play it together? Because, I'm a whore. So, on the breathless recommendation of most of the people playing it, I picked it up. Not a bad purchase either, as multiplayer is a blast, and single player isn't too bad itself. Still, I only have one, maybe two people playing it, and I finished it up myself last night.
The next game was one of my most looked forward to games of the year, Dragon Age. I picked it up day one, took it home, hooked myself up to it, and lost myself for a few days. Unfortunately, it got pushed off of my rotation by me wanting to finish up a few more games so I had time to play it, and now it's been relegated to backburner. Which sucks, because it's a really awesome game, and I really want to finish it, but it's looooong and I don't have time for long right now. Except for Pew.
Modern Warfare 2 came out next and, as much as I wanted to relegate it to a "later" buy date, with the "controversy" surrounding the release, I knew if I wanted to play through it spoiler free I'd need to get it day one. That, with a few recent games of multiplayer on the first game, convinced me to roll out and get it at the midnight release, maybe be a part of probably the biggest game release of all time. So, with two hundred plus other people I stood outside of the busiest Gamestop midnight release I'd been to, and picked it up. Not regretting it at all, as the single player is good enough to play through Normal and now Veteran, and the multiplayer is crack.
Finally we come to the last two games I wanted this year, oddly enough coming out on the same day. Left 4 Dead 2 is the follow-up to my most played game of the year this last year, and Assassin's Creed 2 is the sequel to one of the better second look games I've played. I say second look, because to be honest I didn't really like Assassin's Creed the first time I tried to play through it. I got about one third of the way into it and just set it down, but, after several, several months of inactivity and seeing that a sequel was right down the bend, I gave it another try. And I loved it. Left 4 Dead didn't get a break, as I've played at least once a week for a solid year. Love it, can't wait for more.
So five hundred dollars later, is it worth it? For me, yes. I don't need to even pay attention to new releases until next year, I've got my multiplayer needs fully taken care of, as if no one is playing MW2 they'll be playing L4D2, and vice versa, and with Dragon Age sitting in the wings I've got my single player fix as well. Do I regret some of the purchases? Yes, I do. I wish I'd waited to pick up a few of the games, but having them now doesn't dissuade me any from switching out every so often, keeping them fresh in my mind. Would I do it again? You bet your sweet ass I would.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Gaming as a Legitimate Medium
A lot of people have expressed the notion that games need to move on to that next plateau of critical acceptance to become a more legitimate medium in the eyes of the masses. Games as "art" is a common argument that is pushed as how this is supposed to be accomplished. Games that are supposed to be meaningful on several levels, games that are supposed to make you think, games that are supposed to make you feel, these are popular examples of how the entirety of the genre is supposed to clear that hurdle. But with games in all the aforementioned categories existing, what is it that needs to be done to help with popular critical acceptance?
One of the problems with this subject is that with different mediums comes different methods of drawing in the audience to experiencing what is being told or shown to them. With movies there's a lot of subtlety and nuance in what is being shown, what is being expressed in the scene or the whole. There is a compassion from the audience that is being drawn out, a feeling of familiarity with the problems being shown and, in most cases, overcome. Even when the problems are unfamiliar, and even when those problems cannot be overcome, the audience in most cases can relate to the feeling of insurmountable objectives ahead of them and form a sympathy to the characters, helping them to develop attachments to the story and overall arc of the film. With art proper there is what the artist means, as well as what the viewer takes out of it, regardless of if that was the artist's original intention or not. Even when designed for a single purpose, to evoke a single emotion, that emotion may or may not be what the artist had in mind when viewed from a different perspective by a different person. With books or short stories the author may present a version that they believe, or want those who read it to believe, and those that read that story will take from it what they know from experience and what they perceive as the meaning. So even with the architect of all those trying to express and evoke what they want the subject audience to take out of those experiences, it all rests in the hands of those being subjected to take what they will and process it to something they can understand.
So gaming should have an upper hand in this argument, right? Video games take something from all the aforementioned mediums and combine it into something tangible that those that play them can actually control and have a say in the process of the journey through the story. They now have the cinematic control of showing the audience what the creator wants them to see, they have control over the art style to try and evoke feelings throughout, and they have the ability to tell a story that can rival even the greatest stories from literature. However even with all of these advantages something is missing from video games that all those other groups have; something is holding them back from being truly meaningful.
That's not saying that some games aren't well and truly great, and mean something deeper than most of the mindless hack, slash, and shoot drivel that exists, but there are some things that just can't truly be expressed by this digital form of story telling. Problems such as addiction, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, or any type of personal problem just can't be handled by a player driven device. True, there are games that attempt to tackle things such as these in them, but the difference between having temporary stat penalties and the unyielding thirst of an alcoholic are worlds apart. Having your screen disorient in a game is not equal to coming off of weeks of drug abuse and having to reorient yourself to normal life. There is no audio cue that can express depression of a character well enough. There is nothing that can make a person experience how jarring it is when someone with something wrong with their mental state gets forced not to do what they feel they need to.
However, who wants to play a game about a main character who has a drug and depression problem, who's goal is to survive themselves? Where would fun be derived out of something like that? As many people are clamoring over themselves to cry out that games need more, deeper meanings, have any thought to themselves about what that would entail for actual gameplay, length, and story? Gaming is a large story telling device, but when it goes from the story to actual control of the character, all the emotion disappears. Sadness can not be expressed running around a static game world, anger can not be felt selecting attack from a menu, and deeper meaning can not be expressed by simply "playing" a game.
Can gaming become the next emotional medium, rivaling movies and art as a moving and legitimate platform? Yes, they can. It's going to take a lot of rethinking on the developer side and audience side of things to make this happen though. Developers will have to rethink what a game is and what they can do with it, and the audience is going to have to rethink what they expect from a game, as a deeply moving story should not have to be made with a jump button, or with the main character having a gun for an arm. Doing that, however, runs the risk of making a game "boring" and alienating potential users, but if that bridge is gapped somehow, balancing an experience worth playing with a story worth following through with gameplay that makes sense to the story without making a fourth wall that is too great, games could potentially be the best damn medium for story telling that we as a culture have.
One of the problems with this subject is that with different mediums comes different methods of drawing in the audience to experiencing what is being told or shown to them. With movies there's a lot of subtlety and nuance in what is being shown, what is being expressed in the scene or the whole. There is a compassion from the audience that is being drawn out, a feeling of familiarity with the problems being shown and, in most cases, overcome. Even when the problems are unfamiliar, and even when those problems cannot be overcome, the audience in most cases can relate to the feeling of insurmountable objectives ahead of them and form a sympathy to the characters, helping them to develop attachments to the story and overall arc of the film. With art proper there is what the artist means, as well as what the viewer takes out of it, regardless of if that was the artist's original intention or not. Even when designed for a single purpose, to evoke a single emotion, that emotion may or may not be what the artist had in mind when viewed from a different perspective by a different person. With books or short stories the author may present a version that they believe, or want those who read it to believe, and those that read that story will take from it what they know from experience and what they perceive as the meaning. So even with the architect of all those trying to express and evoke what they want the subject audience to take out of those experiences, it all rests in the hands of those being subjected to take what they will and process it to something they can understand.
So gaming should have an upper hand in this argument, right? Video games take something from all the aforementioned mediums and combine it into something tangible that those that play them can actually control and have a say in the process of the journey through the story. They now have the cinematic control of showing the audience what the creator wants them to see, they have control over the art style to try and evoke feelings throughout, and they have the ability to tell a story that can rival even the greatest stories from literature. However even with all of these advantages something is missing from video games that all those other groups have; something is holding them back from being truly meaningful.
That's not saying that some games aren't well and truly great, and mean something deeper than most of the mindless hack, slash, and shoot drivel that exists, but there are some things that just can't truly be expressed by this digital form of story telling. Problems such as addiction, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, or any type of personal problem just can't be handled by a player driven device. True, there are games that attempt to tackle things such as these in them, but the difference between having temporary stat penalties and the unyielding thirst of an alcoholic are worlds apart. Having your screen disorient in a game is not equal to coming off of weeks of drug abuse and having to reorient yourself to normal life. There is no audio cue that can express depression of a character well enough. There is nothing that can make a person experience how jarring it is when someone with something wrong with their mental state gets forced not to do what they feel they need to.
However, who wants to play a game about a main character who has a drug and depression problem, who's goal is to survive themselves? Where would fun be derived out of something like that? As many people are clamoring over themselves to cry out that games need more, deeper meanings, have any thought to themselves about what that would entail for actual gameplay, length, and story? Gaming is a large story telling device, but when it goes from the story to actual control of the character, all the emotion disappears. Sadness can not be expressed running around a static game world, anger can not be felt selecting attack from a menu, and deeper meaning can not be expressed by simply "playing" a game.
Can gaming become the next emotional medium, rivaling movies and art as a moving and legitimate platform? Yes, they can. It's going to take a lot of rethinking on the developer side and audience side of things to make this happen though. Developers will have to rethink what a game is and what they can do with it, and the audience is going to have to rethink what they expect from a game, as a deeply moving story should not have to be made with a jump button, or with the main character having a gun for an arm. Doing that, however, runs the risk of making a game "boring" and alienating potential users, but if that bridge is gapped somehow, balancing an experience worth playing with a story worth following through with gameplay that makes sense to the story without making a fourth wall that is too great, games could potentially be the best damn medium for story telling that we as a culture have.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and DJ Hero, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Plastic Peripheral
There was a time, not long past, when music games consisted of you, a pad, and the thumping rhythm of poppy music. Sure, a few other games had come out that took you, a controller, and fingers and thumbs frantically tearing up your controller to the beat, but I hadn't heard about those. Except for Parappa the Rapper. That game was keen. But a few years ago, a game, with a little plastic accessory, would come in and change the landscape of the rhythm game forever.
And I thought it looked stupid as hell.
Seriously, a little fake plastic guitar with five buttons, a "strum bar", and a whammy that looked like it was Smiling Bob before the Enzyte? The real musician in me looked at it, looked at my guitar, looked back at the ukulele-looking control, and laughed and scoffed at those who decided to have "fun" with what amounted to a very complex game of simon says. What sort of loser would go out and spend a hundred bucks on a game that makes you look like an idiot, and transfers no real skills over to actually playing the guitar? Why not just spend that money on a cheap guitar and lessons, and impress your friends? You too could be that douchebag sitting on campus with your acoustic playing songs to the ladies, and not be "that guy" sitting at home banging around on your overpriced accessory.
So I ignored it for a bit. Having no desire to play it, and watching the ridiculous videos of people cruising through Expert mode, I let it fester in the back of my mind for a while. Eventually Guitar Hero 2 came out, so people could play it on their xboxs and see shiny note charts coming down the same thing that the first game had, except shinier. Shiny. About that same time the price for the first game had gone down and, seeing the reception of how excited people were for the second game, I decided that maybe I'd give it a shot, see just what the big deal was with this fake guitar peripheral movement was all about.
And I got hooked. It was such a simple concept, hold the button down, press the strum, whammy bar when a note was held, but it was so much fun. Playing along with songs I had no patience to learn on my "real" guitar, playing songs I already knew, and playing songs I'd never heard of, it helped to open me up to different bands and different styles of rock. So I rocked through it on medium in probably a day or so, having too much fun to possibly stop for anything.
Then I discovered the evil orange button. Don't let anyone fool you into believing that this button is anything but the devil. Well, at least until you can figure it out.
Anyway, that damn orange button is one of the reasons I gave up on Guitar Hero for a little while. I got the second one, played through it too on Medium, and promptly gave up on playing hard. "It's too hard," I said. "My fingers won't stretch and position like that," I whined. "Baaaaaaw," is probably what I meant. And then, one day, far into the past from now and the future from then, I played with someone who gave me the confidence to step up past the blue into the orange, and after a few months of practice I done got pretty good. (Special Mid-Article Pro-tip: Move your hand to where your pinky is on the orange button, and your index finger is on the red. It's easier to move your index to the green from there then it is to move your pinky from blue to orange. Also, alternate up and down strums!) Around this time, a new addiction had arisen from the world of rhythm games, and that beast's name was Rock Band.
Imagine, a whole new world of rhythmy goodness! Not only is my plastic guitar good for being a fake guitar, but now it can also be used as a fake bass. And drums come with it! Sure, it's not completely like real drums, but close enough to feel like I have some type of rhythm with my feet and hands, which, as many people found out soon afterwards, we do NOT. And singing! Well, I really let other people do the majority of that, but throw me a few beers and I'll be your huckleberry. For a solo player, it adds that much more you can do with the game. So as opposed to just playign through it once, you can play through it up to four times to see just how each part of the song works with the other parts, hopefully opening you up to just how awesome bands really are and how much work it takes to make a great song. And what Rock Band really did for music games, was take away the stigma of "just some guy with a plastic guitar" and turn it into quite possibly the funnest game you can have going at a party. Regardless of what their backgrounds are, people flock to a good game of Rock Band where they can make an ass of themselves or show off their "skill" to other people.
Introducing DLC to the mix, we now have limitless potential for how many songs we can fake rock out to, or really rock out depending on how much you get into it, but what's next? After all, even with all the bands and songs in the world, how many times can you rock your fake guitar before you get bored? Activision, being the kind, considerate overlords that they are, decided to go ahead and take a break from their nine Guitar Hero games releasing this year to show us the way. And the way is DJ.
Coming out last month, DJ Hero finally released. Being skeptical of a new rhythm game with a new peripheral, and being unsure of how exactly the damn thing would work by looking at it, I decided to hold off on buying it. I succeeded for 10 days. Then, in a fit of whorish passion, I ran to the store flung money at the counter for the ability to play around with a new plastic "instrument". And I'm sooooo glad I did.
DJ Hero is fun, plain and simple. It's got a learning curve, that's for certain, but once you get the hang of it and move on to the more difficult levels, just like in Guitar Hero, the feeling of accomplishment and being there are exponential. While I don't one hundred percent love all the songs on it, there is enough variety in the mixes that are there that aren't really any songs I hate, and they've moved on by the time I've figured out I don't like them. However, DJ Hero takes a step back from Rock Band and Guitar Hero, as even though it's been promoted as a "party" game, the learning curve and starting difficulty is too high for it to be passed around from person to person without them getting glossy eyed and giving up after half a song.
So, besides broke but jamming, where does this leave me? Happily enough, it leaves me broken and spent on the floor, wondering what song I'll get to play next or what mix of songs I'll get to hear remastered. Are plastic instruments ruining music? No, bad musicians who write terrible songs are ruining music. If anything, GH, RB, and DJ Hero are opening up people to new music, and helping the music industry. And if someone finds so much inspiration in playing their fake instruments that they go out and pick up a real one while also being inspired by the better bands on the games, we end up all winning in the end.
And I thought it looked stupid as hell.
Seriously, a little fake plastic guitar with five buttons, a "strum bar", and a whammy that looked like it was Smiling Bob before the Enzyte? The real musician in me looked at it, looked at my guitar, looked back at the ukulele-looking control, and laughed and scoffed at those who decided to have "fun" with what amounted to a very complex game of simon says. What sort of loser would go out and spend a hundred bucks on a game that makes you look like an idiot, and transfers no real skills over to actually playing the guitar? Why not just spend that money on a cheap guitar and lessons, and impress your friends? You too could be that douchebag sitting on campus with your acoustic playing songs to the ladies, and not be "that guy" sitting at home banging around on your overpriced accessory.
So I ignored it for a bit. Having no desire to play it, and watching the ridiculous videos of people cruising through Expert mode, I let it fester in the back of my mind for a while. Eventually Guitar Hero 2 came out, so people could play it on their xboxs and see shiny note charts coming down the same thing that the first game had, except shinier. Shiny. About that same time the price for the first game had gone down and, seeing the reception of how excited people were for the second game, I decided that maybe I'd give it a shot, see just what the big deal was with this fake guitar peripheral movement was all about.
And I got hooked. It was such a simple concept, hold the button down, press the strum, whammy bar when a note was held, but it was so much fun. Playing along with songs I had no patience to learn on my "real" guitar, playing songs I already knew, and playing songs I'd never heard of, it helped to open me up to different bands and different styles of rock. So I rocked through it on medium in probably a day or so, having too much fun to possibly stop for anything.
Then I discovered the evil orange button. Don't let anyone fool you into believing that this button is anything but the devil. Well, at least until you can figure it out.
Anyway, that damn orange button is one of the reasons I gave up on Guitar Hero for a little while. I got the second one, played through it too on Medium, and promptly gave up on playing hard. "It's too hard," I said. "My fingers won't stretch and position like that," I whined. "Baaaaaaw," is probably what I meant. And then, one day, far into the past from now and the future from then, I played with someone who gave me the confidence to step up past the blue into the orange, and after a few months of practice I done got pretty good. (Special Mid-Article Pro-tip: Move your hand to where your pinky is on the orange button, and your index finger is on the red. It's easier to move your index to the green from there then it is to move your pinky from blue to orange. Also, alternate up and down strums!) Around this time, a new addiction had arisen from the world of rhythm games, and that beast's name was Rock Band.
Imagine, a whole new world of rhythmy goodness! Not only is my plastic guitar good for being a fake guitar, but now it can also be used as a fake bass. And drums come with it! Sure, it's not completely like real drums, but close enough to feel like I have some type of rhythm with my feet and hands, which, as many people found out soon afterwards, we do NOT. And singing! Well, I really let other people do the majority of that, but throw me a few beers and I'll be your huckleberry. For a solo player, it adds that much more you can do with the game. So as opposed to just playign through it once, you can play through it up to four times to see just how each part of the song works with the other parts, hopefully opening you up to just how awesome bands really are and how much work it takes to make a great song. And what Rock Band really did for music games, was take away the stigma of "just some guy with a plastic guitar" and turn it into quite possibly the funnest game you can have going at a party. Regardless of what their backgrounds are, people flock to a good game of Rock Band where they can make an ass of themselves or show off their "skill" to other people.
Introducing DLC to the mix, we now have limitless potential for how many songs we can fake rock out to, or really rock out depending on how much you get into it, but what's next? After all, even with all the bands and songs in the world, how many times can you rock your fake guitar before you get bored? Activision, being the kind, considerate overlords that they are, decided to go ahead and take a break from their nine Guitar Hero games releasing this year to show us the way. And the way is DJ.
Coming out last month, DJ Hero finally released. Being skeptical of a new rhythm game with a new peripheral, and being unsure of how exactly the damn thing would work by looking at it, I decided to hold off on buying it. I succeeded for 10 days. Then, in a fit of whorish passion, I ran to the store flung money at the counter for the ability to play around with a new plastic "instrument". And I'm sooooo glad I did.
DJ Hero is fun, plain and simple. It's got a learning curve, that's for certain, but once you get the hang of it and move on to the more difficult levels, just like in Guitar Hero, the feeling of accomplishment and being there are exponential. While I don't one hundred percent love all the songs on it, there is enough variety in the mixes that are there that aren't really any songs I hate, and they've moved on by the time I've figured out I don't like them. However, DJ Hero takes a step back from Rock Band and Guitar Hero, as even though it's been promoted as a "party" game, the learning curve and starting difficulty is too high for it to be passed around from person to person without them getting glossy eyed and giving up after half a song.
So, besides broke but jamming, where does this leave me? Happily enough, it leaves me broken and spent on the floor, wondering what song I'll get to play next or what mix of songs I'll get to hear remastered. Are plastic instruments ruining music? No, bad musicians who write terrible songs are ruining music. If anything, GH, RB, and DJ Hero are opening up people to new music, and helping the music industry. And if someone finds so much inspiration in playing their fake instruments that they go out and pick up a real one while also being inspired by the better bands on the games, we end up all winning in the end.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The Room
This is my first attempt at fiction in 10+ years. Please be gentle.
Listening to the slow tick of the clock coming from behind him, he realized that he didn't have the time for this. The colors fading from his peripheral vision emphasized how important it was for him to escape from this place, but leaving was the least of his worries now. He couldn't remember why he was here in the first place. He drifted back...
It was dawn. The alarm sounding out over the room like the angry electronic voice of god, him reaching to silence it only to be foiled by the distance and having to get up to turn it off. A hiss as the shower started to heat even as he was stripping the remnants of clothing off his body from the night prior. The electronic hum of the empty room he stood in drying off. The cold thoughts that kept drifting closer to the front of his mind.
On his knees now, clutching at his face he tried to go back, tried to remember just how he had ended up in this position, but it was getting harder to think, harder to remember
Her face. It reminded him of someone he had known long ago. Green eyes, so green and deep that he could lose himself in the forest of her mind, a slight tug at the right side of her mouth when she spoke, the almost forgotten aroma that she exuded from the pores on her skin, it was like a waking memory that he had never wanted to remember. He couldn't help himself flirting back with her, however, it was like she knew exactly what he needed to hear, what he needed to feel, right then. The sound of her voice...
He could hear something. Something different. Something that wasn't right. Opening his eyes, he immediately noticed the world was wrong. Shimmering through the blankness that he was seeing spread more and more throughout his vision. The room he was in... The room was shifted somehow, as if put together without care or thought to size and demensions. And there was something else... The room was
Full. He hadn't noticed it, so intently he was watching what was occuring in front of him, but the room had silently filled in the meantime. The girl with the green eyes sitting by him stroked his arm, and directed his gaze back forward. He had decided to come with her, to see what this event she had alluded to in the bar was. But now that he was here, he started filling with a sense of unease. The event playing out in front of him seemed familiar to him, as if he had seen it before somewhere in the distant past of his memories. He looked around the room to try and see if he'd been here before when he noticed
The clock had stopped. The noise coming from around him had turned from a slightly audible hum to a roar of unknown proportions. Tearing his hands from his head and forcing himself to look, he noticed the room had filled between his last glance only a moment ago and his present. The green eyes that peered through the shimmer from the front of the crowd seemed empty... and hungry...
Listening to the slow tick of the clock coming from behind him, he realized that he didn't have the time for this. The colors fading from his peripheral vision emphasized how important it was for him to escape from this place, but leaving was the least of his worries now. He couldn't remember why he was here in the first place. He drifted back...
It was dawn. The alarm sounding out over the room like the angry electronic voice of god, him reaching to silence it only to be foiled by the distance and having to get up to turn it off. A hiss as the shower started to heat even as he was stripping the remnants of clothing off his body from the night prior. The electronic hum of the empty room he stood in drying off. The cold thoughts that kept drifting closer to the front of his mind.
On his knees now, clutching at his face he tried to go back, tried to remember just how he had ended up in this position, but it was getting harder to think, harder to remember
Her face. It reminded him of someone he had known long ago. Green eyes, so green and deep that he could lose himself in the forest of her mind, a slight tug at the right side of her mouth when she spoke, the almost forgotten aroma that she exuded from the pores on her skin, it was like a waking memory that he had never wanted to remember. He couldn't help himself flirting back with her, however, it was like she knew exactly what he needed to hear, what he needed to feel, right then. The sound of her voice...
He could hear something. Something different. Something that wasn't right. Opening his eyes, he immediately noticed the world was wrong. Shimmering through the blankness that he was seeing spread more and more throughout his vision. The room he was in... The room was shifted somehow, as if put together without care or thought to size and demensions. And there was something else... The room was
Full. He hadn't noticed it, so intently he was watching what was occuring in front of him, but the room had silently filled in the meantime. The girl with the green eyes sitting by him stroked his arm, and directed his gaze back forward. He had decided to come with her, to see what this event she had alluded to in the bar was. But now that he was here, he started filling with a sense of unease. The event playing out in front of him seemed familiar to him, as if he had seen it before somewhere in the distant past of his memories. He looked around the room to try and see if he'd been here before when he noticed
The clock had stopped. The noise coming from around him had turned from a slightly audible hum to a roar of unknown proportions. Tearing his hands from his head and forcing himself to look, he noticed the room had filled between his last glance only a moment ago and his present. The green eyes that peered through the shimmer from the front of the crowd seemed empty... and hungry...
2 Hour Impressions (8 hours in): Dragon Age: Origins
Note: This is usually a post I'll make after playing a game for a few hours, you know, get into the game a little, let the story start kicking, get at least an ability or two. However, in the case of Dragon Age, I went a little overboard.
Somewhat lost in the shuffle of big name FPS's and third person adventure games this year is a little ditty by a small company that goes by the name of Dragon Age. Made by Bioware, and set in a fantasy setting, I haven't seen much press or coverage on this game besides the nu-metal action sequence ad that was released a few weeks ago. Now that it's out, and now that I have it in my grubby little hands, how does it live up to the high expectations that come from the Bioware vault? I took a few hours to figure it out for you.
Starting off, I installed the disc onto the hard drive, as I usually do with games I expect I'll be playing a lot of, so everything I say is written from a 360 with the game installed perspective. I loaded up the game and downloaded the extras that came with it, which is to say the two gamestop exclusive items and the extra character that came with the game. I was personally led to believe that the extra character was an exclusive for the collector's edition, but it seems to be in just the regular game manual for the time being, so if you want it, pick it up now. After spending twenty minutes downloading a 200mb file because my internet sucks, I was finally ready to play.
This being my first playthrough, I decided to fall back on my staple "Human Warrior" class. I like getting into the action and chopping up things, so I usually go through games as some variation of that class the first time, and change things up on subsequent playthroughs. So I picked my sex(male), my race(human), and my class(warrior), and the game left me with only the option of "Human Noble" for what my origin story would be. After spending a few minutes changing up some of the facial features, and giving myself a sweet-ass 'stache and beard combo, I was ready to hop into the action.
Dragon Age: Origins is so named for the "origin" stories of each of the playable main characters. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into any of the actual story, but the origin story of our Human Noble was a nice little introduction into some of the game's mechanics, and how deep the story actually runs. And it has some "surprise" enemies that make their appearance and show that Bioware remembers their roots, as well as the roots of all old school point and click hack and slash games. And if you don't know what kind of enemy that is by that sentence, you probably won't enjoy this game.
The battle system works by (basically) running up to an enemy and hitting the A button to whack at them with your sword, or whatever variation of whacking equipment you decide to put there. There are "hotkeys" assigned to the different face buttons, and pulling the right trigger will bring up three more. The left trigger pulls up a wheel that you can perform different actions with, as well as set your skills/talent hotkeys. You can have up to four different party members at one time, and with your AI's you can set different parameters, much like the Final Fantasy XII gambit system, so you don't always have to keep switching back and forth through them, but I haven't quite figured out how to assign actions to them that will make a difference in a fight just yet.
As for the world, the history, and the other characters, this is where Dragon Age has hooked it's claws and pulled me in with reckless abandon. Not in a long time has a game sunk it's teeth into me and dragged me across it's threshold to where I don't want to stop playing for the pure and simple fact that I'm lost in it's world. Every character has a story, save the random NPCs, every story is deep, and every story is different. The backstory to the world is slowly revealed through books and random interactions with people, and you never quite know when you'll walk into an encounter. As for your interactions, this is where the game shines. It's no longer a question of black or white answers as there are black, white, and shades of grey lined up for you to choose from. This is the first game I've played where I've actually stopped and thought for several minutes prior to making a choice. Let me repeat that. I thought for several minutes, because the choice I was asked to make had a profound effect on a main plot line and the characters involved with it. There are small choices and there are game changing choices to make, and you can't change them once they are made.
I love this game so far. It's all I'd hoped it would be and more story wise, and the gameplay, while I admit would probably be easier on a PC, is strong enough not to damper my interest. While I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, if you like your RPGs hard and old school, with an epic fantasy backdrop, this game, despite minor flaws, is for you.
Somewhat lost in the shuffle of big name FPS's and third person adventure games this year is a little ditty by a small company that goes by the name of Dragon Age. Made by Bioware, and set in a fantasy setting, I haven't seen much press or coverage on this game besides the nu-metal action sequence ad that was released a few weeks ago. Now that it's out, and now that I have it in my grubby little hands, how does it live up to the high expectations that come from the Bioware vault? I took a few hours to figure it out for you.
Starting off, I installed the disc onto the hard drive, as I usually do with games I expect I'll be playing a lot of, so everything I say is written from a 360 with the game installed perspective. I loaded up the game and downloaded the extras that came with it, which is to say the two gamestop exclusive items and the extra character that came with the game. I was personally led to believe that the extra character was an exclusive for the collector's edition, but it seems to be in just the regular game manual for the time being, so if you want it, pick it up now. After spending twenty minutes downloading a 200mb file because my internet sucks, I was finally ready to play.
This being my first playthrough, I decided to fall back on my staple "Human Warrior" class. I like getting into the action and chopping up things, so I usually go through games as some variation of that class the first time, and change things up on subsequent playthroughs. So I picked my sex(male), my race(human), and my class(warrior), and the game left me with only the option of "Human Noble" for what my origin story would be. After spending a few minutes changing up some of the facial features, and giving myself a sweet-ass 'stache and beard combo, I was ready to hop into the action.
Dragon Age: Origins is so named for the "origin" stories of each of the playable main characters. To avoid spoilers, I won't go into any of the actual story, but the origin story of our Human Noble was a nice little introduction into some of the game's mechanics, and how deep the story actually runs. And it has some "surprise" enemies that make their appearance and show that Bioware remembers their roots, as well as the roots of all old school point and click hack and slash games. And if you don't know what kind of enemy that is by that sentence, you probably won't enjoy this game.
The battle system works by (basically) running up to an enemy and hitting the A button to whack at them with your sword, or whatever variation of whacking equipment you decide to put there. There are "hotkeys" assigned to the different face buttons, and pulling the right trigger will bring up three more. The left trigger pulls up a wheel that you can perform different actions with, as well as set your skills/talent hotkeys. You can have up to four different party members at one time, and with your AI's you can set different parameters, much like the Final Fantasy XII gambit system, so you don't always have to keep switching back and forth through them, but I haven't quite figured out how to assign actions to them that will make a difference in a fight just yet.
As for the world, the history, and the other characters, this is where Dragon Age has hooked it's claws and pulled me in with reckless abandon. Not in a long time has a game sunk it's teeth into me and dragged me across it's threshold to where I don't want to stop playing for the pure and simple fact that I'm lost in it's world. Every character has a story, save the random NPCs, every story is deep, and every story is different. The backstory to the world is slowly revealed through books and random interactions with people, and you never quite know when you'll walk into an encounter. As for your interactions, this is where the game shines. It's no longer a question of black or white answers as there are black, white, and shades of grey lined up for you to choose from. This is the first game I've played where I've actually stopped and thought for several minutes prior to making a choice. Let me repeat that. I thought for several minutes, because the choice I was asked to make had a profound effect on a main plot line and the characters involved with it. There are small choices and there are game changing choices to make, and you can't change them once they are made.
I love this game so far. It's all I'd hoped it would be and more story wise, and the gameplay, while I admit would probably be easier on a PC, is strong enough not to damper my interest. While I wouldn't recommend this to everyone, if you like your RPGs hard and old school, with an epic fantasy backdrop, this game, despite minor flaws, is for you.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Why, Hello There...
Hi.
I'm Mike.
You may remember me from my galavanting around the internet, wreaking havoc on those with poor grammar and sense, and writing nonsensically about such things as video games, and how I do love them. Well, I figured it was about time I set out on my own, to learn to live and love my own writing on a domain where I actually have control over it, and where I'm not constantly feeling like I should be making fun of someone else. No, here I have only myself to make fun of.
So, until I get somewhere else to write, or, even after I get somewhere else to write and share what I've decided is interesting enough to let the general public see, I'll be posting things here. It's a little more permanant than tumblr, and it'll be nice to have a place where I can't get pushed down by anyone other than myself.
I look forward to the opportunities this will give me, few that they may be, and hope y'all will give me a chance.
<3
bleh
I'm Mike.
You may remember me from my galavanting around the internet, wreaking havoc on those with poor grammar and sense, and writing nonsensically about such things as video games, and how I do love them. Well, I figured it was about time I set out on my own, to learn to live and love my own writing on a domain where I actually have control over it, and where I'm not constantly feeling like I should be making fun of someone else. No, here I have only myself to make fun of.
So, until I get somewhere else to write, or, even after I get somewhere else to write and share what I've decided is interesting enough to let the general public see, I'll be posting things here. It's a little more permanant than tumblr, and it'll be nice to have a place where I can't get pushed down by anyone other than myself.
I look forward to the opportunities this will give me, few that they may be, and hope y'all will give me a chance.
<3
bleh
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