My name is 24 Hour Gamer, and I am addicted to Dragon Age Origins.
It's always daunting for a non-RPGer to take his or her first tentative steps into a Role-Playing Game, they blind you with stats and classes and items with all kinds of different names (why can't a healing potion be called a healing potion in every game?) until before you know it you find yourself curled up in a foetal position fully clothed in the shower, sobbing, with the names of various plants and what kind of healing properties they have Sharpied all over the walls. Just me?
I've been playing light RPGs for the last couple of years, games like Oblivion, Fallout 3, Borderlands, Fable 2, Mass Effect and (cough) Two Worlds, all of which I can still play like an Action/Adventure or FPS if the mood takes me, and foolishly I thought I would be ready for Bioware's latest epic. "It can't have the combat system that made me cry like KOTOR, surely" I thought. "Bioware has learned with Mass Effect that real-time combat is the way to go, it'll be like Fable" I thought.
"Oh, fuck." I realised as I played it. But I'd spent £45 of my hard earned cash on this, I wasn't going to just give up like I did with Star Wars, so I persevered, and now, a week later I am beginning to obsess over Dragon Age, like I did with Oblivion before it.
I'd like to talk about the party members. I picked up my last one last night, a Dwarf called Oghren with the best moustache I've ever seen. They don't just chip in every now and then with conflicting emotions regarding choices to be made like in Mass Effect, everything you do influences what they think of you, whether they like you or not. It's like a violent version of The Sims. But I've not really noticed anything interesting about the characters, there isn't a single Garrus or Wrex among them, nobody I find interesting enough as a person to keep them with me. Shale, the stone Golem was okay, but he was that strong he was getting all of the kills and thus all of the experience points, so I had to drop him from the team. So I opted to just go with all the characters that wanted to nail me, because it made the dialogue between them interesting; Morrigan, the witch from the swamp, Leliana, the redhead assassin and Zevran, the male elf. Yes, there are gay sex scenes, nipple sucking intact. I'd love to see what the Daily Mail has to say about that one.
I've had another dip into my shame pile this week and dipped my toes into Alone in the Dark, expecting to retract them straight away as a wayward turd floats up to me. But as it happens, my expectations were so low that I was pleasantly surprised. The visuals especially are noteworthy, quite reminiscent of The Darkness, and the cinematic effect of being in a crumbling building almost rivals Uncharted 2. Almost. The main problem I had was with the controls and camera view, and apparently there's a driving section that reduces grown men to tears. But I've read that all of these issues were resolved in the PS3 version, subtitled Inferno, so I may just throw the 360 copy back on the shelf and try and find the PS3 one cheap.
And that about wraps it up. Had a quick go on Aliens vs. Predator 2 on the PC in the week, and it's hard to imagine ever being scared by the sub-PS2 graphics, but once upon a time it terrified me. But saying that, so did Silent Hill and Dino Crisis on the PS1 so what can I say? And had a quick go on Guitar Hero World Tour on drums with my Wife and my friend Paul over XBox Live, and half an hour of it nigh on killed me. I am so out of shape. Maybe I ought to try that Wii Fit that's collecting dust in the corner.
No comments:
Post a Comment