Comparing Dragon Age: Origins with Summoner, Not Completely Crazy

I’m going to do something here that might have folks scratching at their heads, but it has to be done: Dragon Age: Origins and Summoner are pretty similar games. Yes, they’re both third-person RPGs set in traditional epic fantasy worlds, focusing on party-based battles, twisting plotlines, and a constant sense of so much to do. But they also both eerily pace themselves in the same manner.

In 2000’s Summoner, after the introductory prologue to get things started, main character Joseph ends up in Lenele, the City of the Gods. It’s a huge city made up of at least ten areas, and Joseph will spend a good hour or so wandering around, speaking to locals, and picking up a ton of miscellaneous side quests before you can even begin the main one.

In 2009’s Dragon Age: Origins, after the introductory origins story and battle at Ostagar, main character Grey Warden ends up in Lothering, a small village that, while not made up of at least ten areas, offers just as many (or more) side quests before starting the real deal.

At both of these points, I began to feel overwhelmed. The main quest has barely begun, and already I have a honeydew list as long as a broadsword. Suffering from gamer OCD, this is problematic. Anyways, let’s also take a look at plot synopses…

Summoner: Joseph’s goal, achieved through his newly regained powers of summoning, is to defend Medeva from the Orenian invasion and to defeat the evil emperor, Murod, by using rings to summon the ultimate creature.

Dragon Age: Origins: After completing their character’s respective origin story, the player encounters Duncan, leader of an elite group known as the Grey Wardens. Duncan guides the player to their destiny of becoming a Grey Warden, a group who dedicate their lives to the destruction of the Darkspawn, a force of demonic creatures that live underground and have at various points in history swarmed the surface of Thedas in movements known as Blights.

So, one game is about stopping an invasion of evil creatures, and the other game is about…stopping an invasion of evil creatures.

And look, Morrigan’s in both games:

I’m really not trying to harp too much on Dragon Age: Origins. I do like it so far, and it’s definitely going to keep me busy for awhile. Just feels like I’ve played it before, recurring pitfalls and all.

P.S. Woah, I even managed to last this entire post without making the joke that both game’s graphics are interchangeable. Er, whoops. Zing!

Blowing up Megaton ain’t so easy

The Power of the Atom quest in Fallout 3 gives the player three choices: blow up Megaton, defuse the atom bomb, or ignore it altogether. During my first playthrough as a wholesome, good-natured chap fresh from Vault 101, the answer was easy. I defused the atom bomb in the center of town and, as a reward, got a shack to keep all the cool stuff I found out in the Capital Wasteland safe. Throughout the game, Megaton was my hub. I returned there often to both sleep (and get the “well rested” bonus before adventuring) and sell extra gear. The citizens would give me things now and then, and I truly felt like it was my town, my home. I couldn’t imagine playing Fallout 3 without it.

And now I have to.

I’m working on my evil run and actively avoided completing the quest for a number of reasons: first, I wasn’t finished with The Wasteland Survival Guide quest; second, my lockpicking/sneak skills were not high enough to get me into the sheriff’s house to snag the Strength Bobblehead; third, I was pretty good throughout the game at not picking up every single item, but eventually started getting weighed down by too many weapons and pieces of apparel that I didn’t want to give up. So finally I was able to pickpocket Lucas Simms, bust into his home, grab the Bobblehead, and then…I got caught by his son trying to steal a skill book. Asdfghjkl. Now the whole town hated me immensely, over a book, too; bitter, I ran straight back to Tenpenny Tower to press a button. The button. The one that will completely change the way I finish Fallout 3.

I watched the mushroom cloud until it faded away, until there was nothing left but discolored sky and the wind whistling below. My prize? Some caps and a very nice pad in Tenpenny Tower. I then bought the love theme, which puts a heart-shaped bed smack in the middle. It doesn’t feel right. I’m a horrible soul. And I haven’t gone back to the crater once known as Megaton, but I’ll have to eventually if I want to complete The Wasteland Survival Guide quest. I appreciate the irony there, that that quest is still available after detonating an atom bomb, but I’m not looking forward to seeing the destruction I helped create.

Press start to continue

Well, no…not really. But it sure feels like I’ve run out of extra lives after a busy, busy weekend. There was movie-watching, marriage courses, and heavy lifting. Not a lot of videogaming in the end, but hopefully I can make up for that over the week.

You want something to look forward to? How about a review of THE WORST VIDEOGAME EVER MADE BY MAN?

Stay glued for that one.

Liberty City, Home of the Minigames

I’ve been playing a bit of Grand Theft Auto IV recently. It’s a massive game, truly elephantine, and that’s kind of amazing to think about considering I’ve only experienced one island so far. There’s driving and escorting and TV watching and potential girlfriends and clothing shops and and and…minigames!

What? I’m a sucker for them, which is beyond clear when one sees that three out of my seven first unlocked Achievements are the following:

Pool Shark (10G): You beat a friend at pool.

King of QUB3D (15G): You beat the high score in QUB3D.

One Hundred and Eighty (10G): You scored 180 with 3 darts.

That’s right. Niko visited Liberty City, and all he got was this lousy t-shirt were some mediocre minigames. Only one I haven’t tackled yet is the bowling Achievement for three strikes in a row. But I will, oh yes, I will.

But yeah, the minigames aren’t really anything to write home about. I was looking forward to pool the most because I have oddly always enjoyed Flash-based pool games and such. Here, however, it was extremely difficult to tell solids from stripes, and lining up shots was frustrating, as well as determining power and angles. I did, however, unlock the achievement properly by sinking the eight ball, but I know it can also be earned by your opponent scratching at the end. Doubt I’ll go back and play pool, even if it is my date’s favorite activity ever. She’ll just have to learn to love something else. Like drive-by shootings?

That said, the missions, so far, are okay. Pretty GTA standard. Haven’t done many though, just a few side gigs for Roman and F-bomber Vlad. Love the cell phone integration. Can’t really control cars too well. When it rains, it’s just amazing looking and I want to steal someone’s umbrella and go for a stroll. And lastly, mopeds for life!

Lara Croft VS. T-Rex, Round 1

There’s a short, but sweet article over at The First Hour about some great cinematic moments in videogaming history. And wow, I’ve actually played a few of the games mentioned. That’s just crazy talk.

Speaking of talk and crazy, I’d like to write a little bit about one cinematic gaming moment from my history. The time? 1996. The game? Tomb Raider. It was an epoch when the Internet did not spoil the big and small and all moments of a game, and so I knew very little about Lara Croft and her plight, just that the Indiana Jones in me had to have it.

I was exploring some caves when I noticed a cluster of rocks that looked most definitely…climbable. Took a bit to get Lara into position, but we made it over the rocks to discover a skeleton, as well as a lush area that was the polar opposite to the snowy caves I’d just been running and hopping through. Odd, I thought. Then some Velociraptors attacked me. Even odder. What’s going on here? It’s like an interactive episode of The Twilight Zone (obviously at this point I had no idea how much odder Tomb Raider would get; hello, winged and mutated Natla).

But yeah…Lara starts snooping around, her footsteps loud as all gets in the eerie silence surrounding her. And then it happens: the violin-laden music, the roar, the charge of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, the tiny section in your brain passing out. The large-and-in-charge dino comes at you like a train, and may your side-jumping skills be honed because it takes a lot of bullets and swift manuevering to bring down the “tyrant lizard,” and then when you do you’re left standing over it, completely unsure of your surroundings, completely unnerved for whatever is next.

It’s totally unexpected, a gaming experience soon going the way of the dinosaurs, alas.

Big Daddies Mean Business

I do not love BioShock.

In fact, I do not even have that great of a time while playing it, but I’m trying to work through it. There’s a lot to admire though–the worldbuilding, the atmosphere, narrative tricks, the depth (yup, pun intended) of the game–but for the time being I’d just like to talk a bit about Big Daddies.

These are Adam Sandlers fictional folk of BioShock‘s Rapture that have had their organs and skin grafted to hi-tech diving suits. They are also armed with a drill-hand or rivet gun. They are never armed with featherdown pillows. Due to some mental reconditioning, they roam the underwater city for one purpose, and one purpose only: to protect Little Sisters. Now, Little Sisters are creepy children that harvest ADAM from corpses, and ADAM is all the rage with the Splicers these days, so they definitely need some a-protectin’ from those with butterfingers.

My favorite aspect of Big Daddies: they are incapable of speech.

A good chunk of BioShock gameplay is listening. You sneak into a room and listen to Splicers in the distance talking about whatever it is crazy people like to talk about. Marshmallows? 4 8 15 16 23 42? You move across some wooden planks and hear them creak out in anguish beneath your feet. You find an audio recording of a New Year’s Eve party gone wrong and then see the aftermath for yourself. You creep around a corner and hear…a long, guttural groan. Like a whale in pain. Only it’s getting louder, and something is stomping your way.

Enter the Rosie or Bouncer. Sometimes there’s a Little Sister with them, sometimes you have to wait for it to pound on the wall a few times. Either way, I constantly found myself anxiously watching them from afar. Interestingly enough, they move like they look like they should: slow, methodical, careful not to step on their friend. It’s only when they become angry or on the defense do they turn into these fast-moving death-enablers.

You can totally walk by them without incident. Conversely, you can totally walk by them and be an inch too close to their Little Sister and they will freak out on you. Not completely attacking, but making sure you get the point to stay away. This? Loved it.

For those curious, I just got past the part with the bees and smoke stations. So no spoilers please. At this point, I’ve probably fought five or six Big Daddies, and then saved every Little Sister from being harvested. Your reward is a better conscience; your punishment is less ADAM. And you don’t have to even fight the Big Daddies, but you’ll be missing out on ADAM, which helps to upgrade your weapons and such. Each Big Daddy fight is draining; that statement is twofold because these Big Daddies literally drain me of every first aid kit, EVE hypo, and ammo clip, but the fights are extremely nerve-wrecking and frantic. Which is funny when you consider you can’t actually die in BioShock. If you do die (?), you are re-born at the nearest life chamber, with Rapture exactly like you left it. Meaning you could run right back to where that Big Daddy handed you your wrench-wielding ass and take another whack at it.

But the point of all this rambling is that the Big Daddies are amazing. Not just from a gameplay standpoint, but they hold their own narrative and tell it through their one-way actions. That’s extremely impressive for this day and age when a lot of story is spoonfed. Every time I hear a stomp, stomp or a Little Sister whispering about angels, I get excited. And scared.

Odin Sphere is Beautifully Bloated

Last night, I unplugged my Xbox 360, dusted off my Playstation 2, and popped in Odin Sphere. Then my eyes had multiple orgasms.

See, Odin Sphere is just about one of the prettiest games ever made. Feel free to quote me in fanboy rants or whatever. But it is. The game’s visuals are, irrefutably, its strongest feature, it’s reason for existing. Gameplay eventually falls into recurrent levels and tasks (and complex alchemy), but soldiering on is fine as wine for the mere fact of wanting to see more and more. A new location or character arriving–it’s all a treat in terms of eye-loving. Is this the case for everyone? Probably not. I am an artist (I draw webcomics and do illustration work), and that makes me biased, but I find it hard to believe that seeing these whimsical characters all colorful and beautifully animated won’t get some jaws a-dropping.

Anyways, not gonna say much more about the videogame because I’m doing a first hour review of it for…hmm, The First Hour. There’s no way to really phrase that sentence without sounding repetitive. Which is what Odin Sphere is all about! Hey-o!

But yeah…stay tuned.

Spirit Tracks: Blowing, Not for the Faint of Breath

Recently, I brought my car in for an oil change. Normally, since this place is right next door to a shopping development, I’d wander for an hour or so until it was time to come back and mosey on home. However, I decided to use this hour to my benefit instead of wasting it window shopping…or worse, actually shopping. So I sat uncomfortably in the dealership’s tiny waiting room and took out my Nintendo DS, the cartridge for The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks ready to go. All I had to do was ignore the blaring TV and few other waiting souls in the room. Easy enough to do…until I had to play the Spirit Flute to continue playing.

For those not in the know, the Spirit Flute is one of the first items you’ll receive in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. To play it, you have to slide the flute around via the touchscreen and simultaneously blow into the microphone to hit the different colored notes. Some songs will perform special actions in-game while other songs are vital to plot progression.

Unfortunately, the song I had to currently play to continue was not a simple one like the first two or three were. This song involved skipping a colored note and playing the one next to it. A tricky manuever, I can assure you. Why? Well, blowing into the mic and moving the flute around are two actions that work against each other because, naturally, you’re also trying to do a third: see. Yup, fight as you must, you will be trying to look down at the touchscreen to see where you’re moving the flute, and when you do that, if you’re exhaling, your breath will miss the microphone hole considerably, setting yourself up for EPIC FAIL. Well, maybe not that hardcore. I just never get to write EPIC FAIL, y’know?

And I was hoping to get it right on try #1…because, while simply playing a Nintendo DS in front of a bunch of manly men talking about gears and tire pressure and engine noises got me some looks, the ones I got for raising a tiny device to my mouth and then blowing at it like a candle gone wild were, more or less, variations of the following:

But I didn’t get it right on the first try. Or the second. Not even the twelth attempt. Practicing didn’t help much either. Each time I failed, I grew more exasperated, and I think one of the fellows sitting across from me suspected I was having a panic attack. I wasn’t. If only I could have told him the truth. If only the truth wasn’t so ridiculous.

So I stopped playing and wasted the next forty-five minutes watching TV.

I later got past the tricky song part when I was home, in the comfort and silence of my apartment, where the only mocking looks I got were the ones I gave to myself in the mirror. In short, I’ve never much liked DS games that implemented the microphone, and now I have another reason why to add to the list. The Spirit Flute is fine when used optionally, which most of the time it is, but a pain in the jaw when forced down our throats.

Hating the Greatest Videogames

Over at BitMob, folks are talking about great games that they hated.

In general, I only play games I suspect I’ll like or love. On occasion, there’ll be a game that disappoints me, but hate is such a strong word. I mean, I hate global suffering and depression and money woes and the looks puppy dogs give you when you walk by their glass prisons in the mall…but a videogame? Chances are, I’d only hate a videogame if I spent $60 on it and it took my soul and shat on it. But, as previously mentioned, I only go after games that I will probably enjoy.

That said, here’s some “great games” that I found to miss the mark.

Grand Theft Auto III/Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City

For sandbox value, the GTA series is fine. Amazingly fine. Ever want to do 70 mph down the sidewalk? Go for it. Where I felt short-changed, however, was in every single mission, and more specifically, the clunkiest and most unforgiving boat races ever to grace an ocean’s tide. Not only did these repeat themselves, but controlling boats and cars was always way too slippery for me.

Contra

Savage. Sums up Contra well, I think, and I grew up playing this game at a friend’s house during a time when neither of us knew about the extra lives code. We’d run, we’d shoot, we’d die by the end of the first level, and then we’d go outside to ride bikes.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Button-mash here, button-mash there, button-mash everywhere. Don’t even try to form a strategy. Just hit those buttons and stare in wonder at how a Pokemon is kicking the crap out of Donkey Kong. I don’t know. I know folks love this series, but it never resonated like other fighting games did.

Devil May Cry

The same reason I didn’t like the Bayonetta demo or Super Smash Bros. Brawl: mashed potatoes. Er, I mean…mashed buttons. Frenetic gameplay, bad camera angles, and room after room of enemies just didn’t make for a fun time. I dug the gothic style, but ultimately gave up on this hack-n-slash pretty early.

Mass Effect

There’s a lot to like about Mass Effect; conversely, there’s a lot to dislike. Let’s start with the positives: the world, the lore, the voice-acting, the alien design, many of the combat scenarios, which can be both tense and exhilarating. Now the bad: elevator rides, a horrible inventory system, the constant loading of textures, the way faces look like they’ve been punched one too many times, and driving that car-tank with buttered wheels from place to place. I’m looking forward to reviews of Mass Effect 2 to see if some of these problems were addressed.

Again, these aren’t really games that I hate, but they just didn’t do it for me like they seemed to do for others.

What about you, silent reader? Got a supposedly great game to hate? Hmm? Speak up!

Feel the Wrath of Chickens, or The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

It may sound funny, but one of my all-time favorite gaming memories involves chickens.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is a classic. I don’t mean that in a way to say it’s old (it was released for the Super Nintento Entertainment System in North America in 1992; still a teenager, truthfully), but rather that it’s eternal. There’s moments and scenes in this game that can never be duplicated or truly re-experienced. From the rain-laden search of the castle grounds for a secret entrance to the first time you ever switched from Light World to Dark World and saw just how twisted the map screen became, it’s no surprise this game is on my gamers’ top fives, top tens, top fifties, top one hundreds, and top whatevers. It is simply great, with mindful pacing, brilliant action, tons of secrets, and…retaliatory chickens.

Yup, you read that right.

Shortly after you sneak Zelda out of Hyrule Castle and safely deliver her to the sanctuary, you’re given freedom as Link to explore the nearby lands on your quest to destroy Agahnim. One of your first stops will be in Kakariko Village, a colorful spot with lots of interesting characters and secrets to unearth, and there you’ll also find a few chickens hopping about. I immediately went over to one, scooped it up high over my head, and tossed it at the boy to no effect. Well, the chicken was pretty flustered and tried its best to stay as far away from me as possible. Then I remembered something I overheard at school, something about hitting them with your sword. A lot. And so I did. Slash, slash, slash, back that chicken into a corner, slash some more. Those kids at school were right; this is fun and funny.

But then it all changed. Out of nowhere, a swarm of chickens come flying at you to protect their fallen cousin from any more danger. They swoop down in a thrum of feathers and bah-clawk clucks, angry as chickens can be, and they actually damage Link. Only one way out, and that was to run. Once you’re a little ways away, the chickens relent, and you’re safe to wander back over…to do it all again.

There’s lot of other great moments in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, but this is the one that makes me smile the most. The fact is, these chickens exist in this world just to be abused. I know PETA won’t like that. I’m sorry, but there’s no other reason for their existence, and even though the gameworld could ultimately go on without them, I think it’s better that they are there, now and forever, those classic little chickens that take a beating and keep on clucking.