Dragon Age 2 continues the bloodletting with more of an emphasis on action combat.
As a big fan of Bioware’s RPGs for this console generation (Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, and Mass Effect 2), Dragon Age 2 was a no-brainer purchase for me. Despite its criticisms of not being as good as its predecessor, I took the plunge anyway so I could see for myself whether the series took a turn for the worst. Hit the jump for my thoughts now that I’ve completed the game.
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My fond memories of Dragon Age: Origins have been dulled by the number of extra DLC that “expand” the game.
Last Friday I posted about how I felt that EA’s Project $10 initiative is working, and I’m a supporter of it. Hey, I’m all for supporting developers and publishers to make money off their own products and if it came down to it, I wouldn’t mind if the used market disappeared altogether. EA has been coming back into the spotlight in a positive way with gamers these days, while Activision has gone the other way. But there’s one thing that EA is now more guilty of than others at this point that I am annoyed with: DLC for single player games. Read on for my thoughts why.
EA is now including one-time use codes in their more popular recent releases
I don’t buy every game at launch. In fact, I rarely do these days except for games I’m willing to pay the $60 price tag for on day 1. But with interesting games that aren’t worth the $60 on day 1, I’ll wait until I either have more time afterward or the game is cheaper. Gamestop fills this niche for me, as they often run promotions such that I can buy a game still retailing for $60 at about half that for the used price. I don’t love buying used games, but at half the price it’s certainly something I partake in from time to time. Publishers and developers hate this, as Gamestop makes all the money from used game sales. EA has implemented “Project $10″, and for me it’s actually worked. Read on for what it’s about and why I think it works.
Mass Effect & Dragon Age – Bioware’s own Star Wars & Lord of the Rings?
So coming off of Mass Effect 2, I decided I needed some more Bioware in my life, so I picked up Dragon Age: Origins to give it a whirl. I’m really digging the game and am getting pretty into it, although I still think Mass Effect 2 is the better game in my mind. Maybe that’s because every step of the way in Dragon Age I’m just comparing it to Mass Effect. I decided to jot down a few of my thoughts into writing.
A couple of you have been anticipating my Dragon Age: Origins review, and I’m glad that I finally was able to find some time this past winter break getting through its 50+ hours. Having now completed it once (still debating whether to go through it again so soon after), I wanted to share my thoughts primarily for the Xbox 360 version of the game. I also had a chance to check out the PC version, as I ended up deciding to play through some of it after the 360 version since I heard the PC version was better. Read on for my review on this epic adventure. Warning – this is a long review as I have a lot of opinionated thoughts on the game.
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World of Warcraft & Team Fortress 2 continue to give PC gamers updates
It’s interesting for me to see the “evolution” of the PC gaming landscape. Growing up on Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem, I’ve lived through the rise and decline of the PC gaming scene, from the introduction of first person shooters, real-time strategy games, online multiplayer, 4X strategy games, and now MMORPGs. If you’ve also grown up with fond memories of Doom & Quake, I highly recommend checking out the book, Masters of Doom. It’s a well-written book that chronicles how John Romero and John Carmack met, formed id Software, and completely shook up the gaming industry. Having said that, today’s entry will contain my more general thoughts on the PC gaming landscape, and why I’m still excited for its present and future.
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In Part 4 of the Awards/Shopping Guide, Leveling Down will be tackling some of the more controversial categories: Best Story, Best Value, and Most Overrated. Admittedly, these categories are VERY subjective and are only our opinions, and on some counts even espion4ge and I don’t see *exactly* eye to eye. Nonetheless, controversy is a lot of fun, so might as well give it a shot!
One of the Xbox 360′s strongest features compared to other consoles is its multiplayer gameplay, which can probably be attributed to the Live infrastructure. It is thus not surprisingly to see strong multiplayer games on this system. For today’s awards, I will be discussing the best multiplayer games released this year, and the one better than the rest.
I will also be discussing the best new IP and best sequel of the year. It’s good to see that in 2009, there were nearly an equal number of good new IPs and sequels. The moment we begin seeing only sequels releasing and new IPs no longer developed is the moment the game industry stops advancing. It’s easy to support sequels since you know what you’re getting yourself into, but this year was perhaps the year with the largest number of development studios shutting down. Continue to take a chance by supporting new IPs – the developers need this type of support to stay in business and come up with new and exciting games to push our industry forward!
It’s that time of the year again…as 2009 draws to a close and the holiday season is upon us, cmfl3x and I decided that we wanted to do our own “Leveling Down” gaming awards for 2009 where we choose winners in several categories for Xbox 360 games that have been released in 2009. At the same time, we also wanted to preserve the holiday shopping guide that Leveling Down produced last year but felt that the awards and the shopping guide were too similar.
Instead of separate 2009 awards and holiday shopping guide posts, we’ve decided to combine them this year into one. Every game we’ve nominated within our awards are games worth considering for the holidays, but at the same time, we’re also declaring the winner. Consider the awards as, if you can only buy one game from the nominees of the category, buy the winner. But if you are further interested in other games from the category, you should definitely pick them up as well as they have aspects that all make them worth considering. Game boxes have been provided for all nominees, and all of them link to Amazon, our gaming retailer of the year due to not only their ridiculous gaming deals, but their constant vigilance in price matching practically all competitors.
Our 2009 awards/shopping guide will span all week, with cmfl3x and me alternating posts and writing about a few categories each day. This will culminate on Friday when we both share our own nominations for Game of the Year, and our picks for Game of the Year. I will kick things off today with three categories: 2009′s Best Fighting Game, Best Role Playing Game, and Best First Person Shooter for the Xbox 360.
If you have been a reader of Leveling Down since back to the early part of this year, you’ll probably remember when cmfl3x and I listed the five titles we were each anticipating most for this year. Sadly, Dragon Age: Origins remains one of the only two from my original list of five that are actually going to make it out this year.
Before I was an Xbox gamer, I was a PC gamer. That meant Doom, Quake, Tribes, Unreal, Command & Conquer, Starcraft, Diablo, Warcraft, etc. I was also a huge fan of PC RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, Planescape Torment, Icewind Dale, etc. To this day, Baldur’s Gate 2 may be my favorite PC RPG ever. Then Bioware moved on to Neverwinter Nights, which I tried but disliked due to the fact that it was heavily online-based and there wasn’t a strong single-player game. Bioware further moved down on my list when they decided to start making console RPG games like Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic and Jade Empire on the Xbox. I tried out Star Wars KotOR and was shocked at how simplified it was compared to Baldur’s Gate, and just couldn’t get into it. Bioware was practically dead to me in the early to mid 2000′s.
A couple years ago, Bioware released Mass Effect on the Xbox 360, and for the most part, I enjoyed it. Granted, it nicely appealed to my shooter and RPG loves, so I was able to set aside its simplistic RPG gameplay design (such as the equipment system). Once Bioware announced Dragon Age: Origins as a “spiritual successor” to Baldur’s Gate, I couldn’t help but weep with glee. I’m sure there are many of us out there that are applauding this return to form for Bioware as well.
The problem is, now that Bioware is firmly entrenched in developing for both the PC and Xbox 360, they’ve decided to release Dragon Age: Origins for both systems (as well as the PS3). That puts me into somewhat of a conundrum over which system to buy it over: buy it on the PC to respect my love for playing Baldur’s Gate on the PC, or buy it on the 360 where I enjoy most of my gaming today. Sadly, it’s not so simple – there are specific features inherent to both versions of the game that make it difficult to judge.
First off, Dragon Age: Origins is not like Mass Effect where you’re controlling just the protagonist – you’re controlling a party and need to strategize over what each member is doing. How can you do that on the 360? This especially makes me wonder because the PC allows you to zoom out so you get the classic Baldur’s Gate view on all your characters, instead of the over-the-shoulder style view that console gamers are forced to play. And of course, the use of a keyboard and mouse may make the PC version more enjoyable to play as it’s kind of a hardcore party-based RPG. Some may argue about all the fan-made downloadable content on the PC, but I never cared for that stuff (also why I never got into the Neverwinter Nights franchise).
The 360 version has one of the “strongest” reasons to buy a 360 version of any multiplatform game’s release today: Live. This means not only Achievements, but the fact that your friends can see you playing the game (so I can advertise that I am playing a game I love) or communicate with you as you’re playing. And of course, you can play the game from the comfort of your couch. It’s a tough decision, but the Live support has me leaning slightly more towards the 360 side – even if the controls and the graphics won’t be as good. If only Dragon Age: Origins was released on the PC with Live support – then I would have easily picked up the PC version. Ah well…it looks like I may wait for some initial reviews first to see how the 360 version of the game controls just to be safe. Expect me to write up on one (or even both!) versions at some point in the future…
