Dragon Age: Origins

What can I say? There is something about Dragon Age that just.. isn’t doing it for me. The weird thing is, I’m not sure why. When I have some spare time, I just didn’t feel like loading it up. The times I did force myself to play it, I was mostly having fun. It is really odd to me. The only thing I think it could be is the combat, as I did find it a little tedious at times, but I really do enjoy the story (as with all Bioware games) and want to play through it. The other thing is, other than the weekends, I’ll only ever have a spare few hours max at a time, and I think it is the sort of game you really need to just spend hours getting into, and you kind of lose the flow over shorter play sessions. So, yeah, I failed. I ended up sinking about 25 hours into overall, which maybe got me a quarter of the way through the game. I’m going to save it now, for Easter, or even Summer.. we’ll see.

Some thoughts on what I played though. The dialogue is amazing, as is most if not all of the voice acting. So far I haven’t run into anyone who I’ve specifically thought was poorly acted. The actual writing behind it also seems to be very crisp.. everything you would expect from Bioware really; they didn’t let up. The entire story I don’t really want to comment on though, as I’ve only done a very small part of it, but so far it is the reason I want to keep playing. Finally the combat is solid, if not a little tedious. I was playing on hard difficulty (which seems a little silly if the main reason I want to play it is for story…) and most of the time it was just the right amount of challenge. The kind of challenge where I had to think about nearly every fight, and a few mistakes would cost me. And because I’m terrible at remembering to auto-save, this normally sent me back 5 fights, and when they are all challenging it got a little monotonous. But well, that’s just my fault really. And you can change the difficulty at any point, so if I didn’t have such a high sense of pride I could just turn it down to easy to blast through the same fights. One more thing, graphically this game is pretty impressive. With all settings on max the environments look pretty impressive, spell effects are great. Character models and animation are a little lacking, but nothing too serious. So, that’s my one paragraph review of Dragon Age: Origins.

Torchlight

Okay, so I didn’t manage to complete Torchlight either. I did get a good portion of the way through it though, and I am going to try and complete it tonight, but wanted to write this close to the schedule I promised. I got to floor 35 of the 50 the main dungeon has to offer, while doing other little side-quest dungeons in between.

First off, this is coming from some one who has only ever played 30 minutes of Diablo 2, so I won’t be making any comparisons to that, and just judging the game on it’s own merits. For those that haven’t heard of it, you are missing out. Brought to you by a fair few of the guys that worked on Diablo 1 and 2, and the company that brought you Hellgate: London and the never released Mythos, this “budget title” is a great game full of character. It consists of 50 levels of dungeon crawling, a choice of 3 different characters with 3 skill trees a piece. Quests and side dungeons thrown in as well, with many loots to collect and with other things such as gems, enchanting and fishing this game has a lot to offer.

The gameplay is Diablo. There is no denying that at all. Click to move. Click on something to attack it, hold the click to keep attacking it. Right click to use an ability on it. The style on the other hand is where it differs. It has a great variation of environments that change every 5 or so floors, and personally it was one of the big things that kept me playing. I couldn’t wait to complete the next few levels to see what the next art style they would use. They start of with “the cave” and “the jungle” but then go through some quite unique areas. The areas are half randomly generated. As in, they have designed some large pieces, and then they are randomly generated together. In my opinion this is the best of both worlds. A nicely designed area, but still not the same dungeon over and over again when you replay it.

One complaint that most people make is the lack of multiplayer. Now, as I never played Diablo to any great extent, I haven’t really noticed a lack of this. I never thought that this would be especially better if I was playing it with some one, and would urge you to still play this game if that is keeping you from buying it. Also, Runic have said that they are turning the game into an MMO, and started work on it as soon as the game had shipped. They have also stated that it would take them around a year to do this. So, buy it now, play it, then just keep it safe for the future.

So, that’s week 1 done already. Or I am counting it as done. Don’t judge me. Anyways, this week is Mass Effect 2. I can barely contain my fluids over this game. First one was definitely one of my favourite games of all time. I just love everything about the story and the characters, and from what I’ve seen this is more of that, with improved combat… cannot wait. It was posted today, so should come on Thursday. Will be a push to complete by Monday, but every morsel of spare time will go to this game.

Spen

Well, over the past few months many great games have been released, many more than I can play due to my lack of time and my own ability to procrastinate at a world-class level. The immense Steam holiday sale did not help, every game that I’d ever thought I might kinda want I bought. My Steam games list alone ballooned upto 111 games at this point, and as my friend made me count, I’ve only actually completed one of those (and that was MW2. Edit- CoD4 as well).

So I am going to make a stand. I’d love to do some hardcore 30 games in 30 days thing, but due to both college and my job I just do not have time for that, so I’m going to do a pussy version. 1 long game (ie Dragon Age) or 2 regular size games (6-15ish hours) per week, and then write some words about them on here. Hopefully this will give me the inclination to actually complete some games that I do genuinely want to play through.

EDIT: So I got to thinking, and 2 games a week might be too tall of an order with everything going on, and my need to play some other multiplayer games as well. So I’m changing the format to “52 games in 2010″. 1 game per week, 1 blog post about it, sounds good. Will do the list in 4 parts during the year, so I can stay more up to date with new releases.

A few things that have to be said. This list may change and games may be pushed back if a new game comes out in a specific week that I want to play more than the games I have planned (I have tried to plan in advance for games with solid release dates). Secondly, I am going to try my best to stick to this list, but as I mentioned I do have other responsibilies that I may cause a week to be pushed back (ie a deadline at College). Thirdly I do not own either of the main consoles at the moment as I am primarily a PC gamer. I am planning on investing in both a PS3 and an Xbox 360 in the coming months, so I may do a console version of this list as a sequal later on (already have a few games on that list – how good does Bayonetta look?). I think that’s it, so let’s go.

The List

Week 1 (18th Jan) – Dragon Age: Origins, Torchlight

It is a sin and a travisty that I have not seen this game to completion yet as it was one of my most anitcipated games of the holiday season. I am going to start this game now and count it as next weeks game so it’s all nice and tidy – and because I really want to spend some hours in this game. With the hours I will hopefully have left of next week I’ll complete Torchlight. I’m about half way through and really enjoying it so far.

Week 2 (25th Jan) -  Mass Effect 2

This is a tricky week. Mass Effect 2, which I cannot wait for, comes out on the 29th of January. A game that I could spend a long long time playing if I wanted to, but I do want to stick to this one per week thingy. That could be tricky as the game does not come out until the 29th(but will hopefully arrive a few days early), and it is just a regular week with no time off from work or college so it may spill over into the next week, but I will try and prevent it. Will update if it does.

Week 3 (1st Feb) – Bioshock

Bioshock and me have had a wierd past. I played it a while ago on the 360, but FPS’ on consoles give me motion sickness – don’t ask. Have been wanting it on the PC for ages now but never actually got round to it, and then it was on the Steam holiday sale.

Week 4 (8th Feb) – Bioshock 2

Sequel to Bioshock does look like it will be fun, have the preorder ready to go, hope I enjoy Bioshock 1 so this is something I’ll be looking forward to.

Week 5 (15th Feb) – Ghostbusters

Ghostbusters was a fiver in the Steam holiday sale, bought it, watched both of the movies in preperation, not yet played it.

Week 6 (22nd Feb) – Crysis

Another big shame of mine. Two games that I have not completed and I call myself a PC gamer, with a decent gaming machine. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve played them as a cool benchmark when I got my PC, but not even 10% of the way through the orignal. Must fix this.

Week 7 (1st March) – Crysis: Warhead

Stand alone expansion meant to be as good as the original… we’ll see.

Week 8 (8th March) – Plants vs Zombies, Braid

Indie blowout spectacular! Although, I don’t think PopCap count as indie, I think of them as such. Ah 180 employees you say Wikipedia… Fine. Casual gaming blowout spectacular! Anyways, both great games from what I’ve seen with enough play time in them to class giving them their own week, so much so it is going to be somewhat of a challenge.

Week 9 (15h March) – Fallout 3

I think this game requires it’s own week as I can tell it is quite a large game. Need to play this game and I have no excuse why it has taken me so long. Will possibly try and play all of the DLC as well, will see how it goes.

Week 10 (22nd March) – King’s Bounty: The Legend

Well, I bought King’s Bounty: Armored Princess when it was in the holiday sale and played basically the tutorial only. At the time of writing, both of the King’s Bounty games are on sale, so I picked up The Legend as even though they don’t follow on or anything I like to be chronological. May add Armored Princess to the list if I fall in love with the first one.

Week 11 (29th March) – Prey

Prey was in the Steam holiday sale before they ran out of keys, luckily I was quick enough.

Week 12 (5th April) – Zeno Clash

Zeno Clash had  Steam weekend sometime before Christmas. Played the demo, liked it, bought it, then never actually played the game.

Week 13 (12th April) – Borderlands

Borderlands is a bit of a maybe. I don’t know if I want to play through the whole game on my own, and don’t know if there will be anyone left who hasn’t played it yet to play through it with me. It does look like a good game, but will have to assess the situation closer to the time.

Week 14 (19th April) – Chronicles of Riddick: Assault of Dark Athena

Bought this one in the 5 day Steam sale, the one before Christmas (I really do love Steam). Looks great, looking forward to playing it.. in 4 months.

Week 15 (21st of April) – Call of Duty: World at War

CoD: WaW I skipped on it’s release due to lack of funds at the time and due to the poor reviews. Since learnt that the single player is more than playable, and I like hearing Kiefer Sutherland in any capacity. Want to play as more of an experiment to find out the truth of the matter.

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Well, I think that covers everything so far. There are a few games that are expected the first quarter of this year that I am looking forward to such as Max Payne 3, Splinter Cell: Conviction (if it is as good as it looks), Thief 4 (Ubisoft are deffo trying this year aren’t they?). All games that if they come out before some of the later games on my list I will be inserting in there and will be pushing other games back. This list has really just made me realise how much of a fail gamer I have been for this long. Damn.

So that’s that. I will be updating the list every Monday and posting my thoughts on the games, somewhat of a mini review. May do a full size review of some of the new release games, but do not see the point of reviewing a game that has been out for a while. I’ll also be updating my twitter with my progress and thoughts as I go,  because I’m all upto date like that. So wish me luck.