Firstly, sorry about the late post. Truth be told, I've not really had anything to write about, all I've played in the last couple of weeks is Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition on PS3 and Fable: The Lost Chapters on the XBox 360, with the magic of backwards compatibility.
Dragon Age, I've gushed about enough really. My only new discovery this time through was the incredible 'Arcane Warrior' class for Wynne, effectively turning her into a battlemage that can not only heal my companions and myself, but she can also now don armour and a blade instead of firing that piddly little staff from afar, limiting herself to elemental attacks and fearing the inevitable badass enemy harbouring an immunity to the chosen element. If anything it was a relief to get her creaky old bones out of those hideously inappropriate mages' robes that I think were possibly designed for Morrigan. It was like having Kim Cattrall in the party. Uncomfortable.
Speaking of uncomfortable, in my quest for Trophies I decided to explore every romantic option for my male Grey Warden, which inevitably led me to the open tent of the Hispanic bisexual man whore elf, Zevran. Where the heterosexual and indeed the sapphic sex scenes in Dragon Age were very tasteful and gracefully made, well, there's nothing graceful about two male elves licking eachothers' nipples and, erm, 'sneaking in through the fire exit'. My character didn't even look to be particularly enjoying it. And so, for the second time (my first being the achievement for kissing boys in Bully), my reluctant homosexuality is recognised in a videogame.
Enough about that. Fable. Fable still holds up really well, the graphics are still great just as long as you excuse the close ups on the faces and the story and system are still accessible yet fresh enough to not be boring. Also, the magic system is a lot more in-depth than that of it's sequels, although when it comes to games of that nature I'm a sword-and-armour guy through and through. Well, sword, axe, club, warhammer, lump of wood with a nail in it (Final Fantasy VII for those who thought I was exaggerating on the last one). And it's very notable that I'm still finding new things out about the game so long after it's release, last night I became the Mayor of Bowerstone for the first time ever, after finally being bothered to investigate the villainous Lady Grey. Not exactly in the same league as becoming king in Fable III, but I got a nice big house out of it.
In other news, I finally remembered to try out the demo for Divinity II: The Dragon Night Saga, and quite enjoyed it. It merges the visual style of Sacred 2 with the combat of Fable and some of the more forgivable parts of Two Worlds (Speaking of which, I've tentatively put a preorder down on Two Worlds II for release next week, wish me luck), only with far better voice acting than the former and latter. And as a bonus the game comes packaged with it's expansion pack too, so I can probably see myself picking it up in my March/April spree.
I also downloaded the demo for Faery: Legends of Avalon on the PS3, which immediately took me back to my teens, when the demo disks on the Official Playstation Magazines had full games that users had created on the using Net Yaroze, a simplified PS1 developers' kit that was released commercially. One title, Terra Incognita, was a Zelda inspired RPG, and, for it's poor translation and sometimes awkward controls, the charm of this quaint game reeled me in at the time. A few years back, while toying with homebrew on my PSP before Sony cracked down on piracy, I discovered somebody had ported the game across, much to my delight. But I digress.
Faery has that same appeal, scruffy, poorly translated and unpolished but my god is it trying so hard to worm it's way into my affections. The main twist on this RPG is that you are completely airborne, flying around as fairies do with your wings. The conversation is ripped straight from Mass Effect, with dialogue choices on a wheel and even blue and red choices for if you want to please or antagonise people. There's even an option for a romance within the game. It's not all Bioware fanboyism though, the fights are traditional turn-based affairs, like in the Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire games of old. I enjoyed it, but I don't know if I want to spend £11.99 on the full game (says a lot about digital downloads really, when I'm willing to pay £35 for Two Worlds II having already been stung by it's prequel). We'll see. Truth be told though, I'm not much of a fan of the fantasy genre, and with this, Divinity II, Two Worlds II, Dragon Age II, Skyrim and possibly Gothic IV: Arcania if it ever comes out, I don't want to overdo it and hamper my enjoyment of any of them.
And finally, Angry Birds. I've seen the game played on both my wife's iPhone and Raz7el's Android powered HTC, but until last night had never had the thing in my clammy paws, so I downloaded the PSP Mini version from the PSN Store. Just thought I'd try it out for a second before transferring it over to my PSP, and was still sat there like an hour later. It's absolute gaming Heroin, impossible to put down. Brings to mind a discussion that Raz7el and I had around the water cooler one day, that the Pigs, Angry Birds' prime antagonists are stealing the Birds' eggs, effectively moving in on their territory and raping them of their resources, and the Birds respond to this by, well, suicide bombing them and flying into their buildings. Hmm... So with that, I'm off. Managed to write a fair bit in the end, despite not having anything to write about...
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