lazygecko

Another blatant NWN2 analogy: Both Morrigan and Elanee stalk you early in the game, and both of them are shapeshifter classes to boot.

Stop. Stop it! FUCKING STOP ALREADY!

Yes the overall plot is really standard, but that doesn't bother me when it's executed well. What really makes it shine is the party interaction being on the same level as Baldur's Gate 2 (if it doesn't actually surpass it, I've yet only discovered a fraction of it). I just "cheated" by turning Zevran into a mage. That way I can enjoy all of his banter with Shale and Leilana without having to worry about no healing/CC. Shame it didn't work with the mabari. I gave him flame blast but nothing happens when he uses it... I want my fire-breathing dog, damnit!

Man, there are so many more or less direct analogies to the NWN2 campaign. All the encounters during the road to Lothering is just like getting out of the swamp area in NWN2, complete with a highwayman toll. The landsmeet/trial chapter to disprove the accusations thrown against you (which of course ends with an inevitable duel no matter how well you perform diplomatically), the Ferelden/Orlais grudge and Neverwinter/Luskan grudge, raising your own army to battle the darkspawn/king of shadows, etc.

I never bothered with shapeshifting personally, seems to be the subpar one out of all the mage specs. You might have to do Morrigan's personal quest first before she can teach you. You start it by getting her special gift in the circle tower. I'm disappointed by the disproportionate amount of warriors in your party compared to other classes. Would have prefered some more mages besides Morrigan and Wynne. Thankfully with console commands I can multi-spec anyone I want into a mage. And there's probably some decent companion mods in development as I speak. Wynne is a commendable choice of character though. It's not very often at all video games feature women who aren't 20-somethings.

Just found out there's plenty of hidden benefits to using the glyph spells, like amplifying the effects of other spells or overlapping different glyphs with eachother. Using arcane warrior with a mixture of healing/glyph/hex spells to get as close as possible to a D&D cleric.

A selection of Oghren banters

Now 3 hidden/disabled game types and a bunch of maps have been found in the game itself, which are likely to be sold as "downloadable" content later. http://www.modernwarfail2.com/2009/11/17/unlocking-hidden-mw2-game-types/

Beat it on easy a couple of days ago, replaying on normal now. There's definately an extreme difficulty curve between the two on the PC version. Lots of more pausing than usual for positioning and stuff, and I still need to chug potions like crazy. Just managed to beat the Redcliffe undead attack, and all the NPCs except the knights died. I recommend you get this mod: http://social.bioware.com/project/469/ It allows you to respec yourself or any of your party members. Just run daupdater.exe and load the .dazip to install it.

I lost the mp3s in a system crash, someone else might have them. For now, they're on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGkbO2jcMoI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUwg-n1GgOo

Mirrors: http://www.mediafire.com/?q2mgxzemnnm http://www.speedyshare.com/files/19297550/turricanstrikesagain.mp3 Made with patches and samples ripped from Mega Turrican. It's typical video game level length, though I'd like to extend the arrangement a bit. Could also another channel or two.

Rise from your grave

Every now and then I weep over how the original Unreal ended up being so overshadowed by its Tournament counterpart, which degraded more and more into generic electronica with each installment. The original game and its expansion by far has the most interesting music. The Alexander Brandon interview says they had complete creative control over the music for that game, so no wonder it turned out so good.

I am the wind

Aren't there major issues with getting it to run on dual/quad-core processors? I could never get mine to run properly.

Of course, no RPG is complete without an infinite exp glitch somewhere. Before the battle at Ostagar, do the joining quest by collecting the blood but don't get the treaties yet. Then go back to Duncan and say you just have the blood. The quest won't be completed but you'll still get exp, and you can just repeat the conversation over and over. I guess this will be fixed in the next patch. Until then, it's probably not all that harmful considering enemies scale with your level. Just a fun thing to do if you want to get more high level abilities.

I must give Bioware major kudos for their work on the voice acting. There's just so bloody much of it, and for once it doesn't feel like they had to compromise on the writing just for the sake of having everything voiced, unlike Bethesda's super-condensed efforts with the same VAs recycled over and over. I guess this is what most of the game's 20gb was spent on.

The college frat boy demographic will buy the game regardless. The "hardcore" FPS players I believe has always been little more than a niche, and the genre didn't truly start hitting the mainstream until after Halo and CoD which are more successfully ingrained into the adolescent "guy culture". CoD isn't the game for them anyway. New games will come and go, but Counter-Strike will always be there as the epitome of competetive play.

Doesn't matter to me. The supposed stigma behind it in MMOs is especially laughable, it sounds like they're treating them like online dating services instead of games. I've noticed in World of Warcraft that people playing female elves or humans are more likely to be guys, while female tauren or orcs are more likely to actually be played by women.

Apparently the matchmaking system is as bad as people feared it would be, happily choosing people from different continents.

Just FYI there is a third option for the Redcliffe demon, you can offer to bring people from the circle of mages. There is another possessed child in the game with a much bleaker outlook, but it's part of the stone prisoner DLC.

Man, what the fuck? So I'm in the party camp, and a guy comes along and says he needs my help. Not being one to say no to another quest, I accept, and then the game has the nerve to tell me that this quest is "premium content" I need to buy and download as DLC. It should be fairly eveident by now why I fucking hate DLC so much. Don't act suprised next generation when we'll be effectively paying full price for just half a game.

Got the game now. Just completed the dwarf noble origin. Great experience so far, much better prolouge chapter than the run-of-the-mill tutorial segments you'd usually find in these games. The character models and animations aren't spectacular, but I find them to be plenty more appealing than anything from Bethesda whom are given so much praise for their graphics. Of course it doesn't look anything like Aion, it's not meant to have that anime bishounen boy art (though I'm sure people are going to mod that in at some point). The game isn't meant to be a showcase of eyecandy anyhow, and it doesn't matter much if you're playing in the isometric overhead view (which works great).

Giantbomb review: http://www.giantbomb.com/dragon-age-origins/61-20738/reviews/ I find it especially funny how he says it's so old school that it might come off as something new and forward-thinking to people who have been brought up with games like Oblivion and Mass Effect, due to their brutal streamlining of the genre over the years.

I made a Dragon Age thread here months ago, though no one cared. Now it's about to be released and is almost universally being praised as the best RPG since Baldur's Gate 2. I've got it pre-ordered. For PC of course. The flexible toolkit is going to ensure a steady stream of mods for years, hopefully just as much as there is for Morrowind and Oblivion.