Comment in my blog and I'll surely comment in yours (unless of course the blog is about something that's way out of my league)

• 26Nov 09

  Rant and Updated Dragon Age Impressions

  My net's once again giving me too much trouble. For the past two days I've hardly had more than half an hour of active net connection(with all those 1 minutes and 2 minutes put together). So I'm finding it hard to be active on GS. To make matters worse, Dragon Age is keeping me occupied for most of the time.

  UPDATED IMPRESSIONS

  Dragon Age's been a bittersweet game so far. There are a number of flaws and yet the game manages to keep me hooked. The torture!

  As I said in my previous blog, the game is glitched enough for me to say that Bioware decided to put out a half-finished product. Glitches include:

  1. The enemy attacks going way off mark and still being able to damage my character.

  2. Characters getting stuck at the corners of even small obstacles

  3. Random drops in frame rate

  4. Sudden freezing and crashing

  5. Unresponsiveness to orders in tactical mode

  ...and a few more minor and rare glitches.

  However, the storyline is very good and the missions are interesting. A number of side missions are close to the main story and hence you don't get the feeling that you're getting side tracked.

  Overall, the game is good in almost all aspects, but minor flaws in every aspect prevent it from being the best in any.

  I find myself comparing the game often to other games as well as a few books. Comparisons are as follows:

  Oblivion:Inevitable! The previous(and perhaps even now) pinnacle of open ended RPGs(the un-hack n' slash type) has a few things in common with DAO and yet there a are so many things completely different too. The most important aspect is the open endedness - DAO isn't half as open ended as Oblivion. You can't travel on foot between towns or areas, and thus the very aspect of exploration is limited. A lot of 'explorable' places are also restricted early on and obviously the game is more plot driven.

  Mass Effect:The last time I played a game with such an awesome storyline and detailed universe was Bioware's own Mass Effect. However, I feel that DAO still falls short of the ME storyline, which was totally epic... worth a novel. I'd say DAO has a great storyline, but I wouldn't call it novel-worthy. ME had a more engaging plot with more suspense and twists than your average mystery novel.

  The Witcher: The tactical mode and the combat view in it reminded me of The Witcher, even though the isometric view was introduced as early as Dink Smallwood.

  Fable-The Lost Chapters: Character interactions look like those from Fable. The character is shown as a dumb(in the sense speechless) dopey looking kid in Fable and I find the same expression in DAO. Couldn't they have done something better here. At least the accompanying characters express their views occasionally, which kinda breaks the monotony.

  Eragon: The whole Grey Warden thing and the dealing with the different races - it reminds me so much of Eragon. And then there are dragons in both.. tho the portrayal of dragons is different. There were a few instances that made me feel that I was playing a scene out of the book. I can't tell you the scene because then it'd be a spoiler.

  Lord of the Rings: The mother of fantasy novels! Naturally I always tend to find something from LotR in any fantasy novel that have humans, elves and dwarves in them.

  I actually hoped that I'd be writing a review by this time, but the game is so large that I feel that I've hardly breeched the surface. So the review will have to wait.

  • Posted Nov 26, 2009 8:25 pm PT
  • Category: Games
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• 22Nov 09

  Dragon Age Origins Impressions - Not quite the game they say it is

  Yes, after much waiting and anticipation, I finally got my hands on the game of the season - Dragon Age Origins, thanks to one kind vendor who had managed to ship it down. I started the game and yesterday and it's been 10 hours of game now. What do I think of it? Well, so far it's not quite the game the hype made it to be.

  The game universe is quite large, not very different from the Oblivion or Fallout games. It's the basic fantasy role playing game, with all it's machinery. The storyline is darker and more engaging than Oblivion and the game seems more story driven than Oblivion... In a way, I think it's a good thing, since I can enjoy the storyline and not be distracted to hell, like I got in both Oblivion and Fallout 3. The combat system is much better than Oblivion and allows for more satisfying battles, rather than the half hearted attempts in Oblivion. Also, the inventory management and Quest/Information management feels more comfortable.

  On the flip side however, the game scales much less. Frames rates dropped at 1280x1024 resolution with no bells and whistles and it still looked worse than CoD 4 at the same setting. I could even crank up CoD4's setting with x2 AA and x2 AF and still enjoy a stutterless experience. The textures were incosistent - there was smooth texturing for most part, but there were places where the bad texturing became an eyesore.

  The game is also pretty glitchy. The character would get caught on the edges of obstacles, like logs or rocks. You wouldn't even notice that there is an obstacle there and yet find your character stuck. I found the other obvious glitch when I was fighting a large monster. The monster would strike the ground long after I had moved away from the spot and yet I would lose HP... or it would do a headbutt and I'd easily dodge it; the monster would ram into the wall, but still my character took the toll. Pretty irritating that.

  Overall, except for the combat system and a more streamlined storyline, I find little that stands out in the hype fest. Of course, it is not bad... in fact far from it, but then it's not all that revolutionary or stands-out-of-the-crowd kinda game, either.

  I'd give it somewhere between 8 and 9. However, I have to play the game more to actually find out how good it. Storylines are an important factor for such games, and a good one can surely sway my opinion... just the way Mass Effect did(having little novelty and not a very deep gameplay, but an incredibly awesome storyline)

  How did you find the game?

  See you next time... probably with the review.

  • Posted Nov 22, 2009 8:13 am PT
  • Category: Games
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• 13Nov 09

  Hi and I'm back

  My vacation's begun. Actually it began a week ago, but my net decided to give me the run when it went bust on the second day of my vacation. Took a week to get it ready and here I am. I've been playing a few games at this time, especially revisiting older titles, that were gathering dust in the shelves. And I finished Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts(which I started exactly a year ago, right down to give or take two days last year)

  And here's the review of CoH: OF. Read and comment. Rec it if you like:

  Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts review

  More news soon!

  • Posted Nov 13, 2009 6:14 am PT
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