Dragon Age Origins on 360

NOTE: I didn't update, which most likely affects how the game played. Regardless of this, the amount of bugs I found were unforgivable.

I played through as Dwarf Noble Dual Wielding Rogue on Normal.

First some background.

My first introduction to Bioware was with Mass Effect. I didn't play the Baldur's gate games because I didn't have a PC when they were out, and was not interested in PC gaming. Mass Effect greatly shaped my understanding of Bioware because the central protagonist, John Shepherd, was so integral to the story. Dragon Age takes this concept and chucks it out the window. We're back to the silent protagonist who you can't really develop. With Mass Effect, you're the commander of an elite squad. With Dragon Age, you're the leader of the Grey Wardens, elite warriors in the fight against the demonic darkspawn. Except that leader role doesn't translate to the battlefield.

In combat, you're not the character you created, at least not on the 360. You are the party, each of the characters serving as different limbs. You are the tank, drawing aggro and pissing off enemies. The healer, keeping that tank alive. And the two DPS classes, pummeling the crap out of your enemies. This is the problem. Unless you're familiar with this kind of game, the transition is hard to get used to, especially if you're new to Bioware and picked up DA:O because it looked really cool, and Mass Effect was awesome.

Combat on the 360 is annoying. You have to manually move each character, which makes tough fights that much harder. Also, I had a glitch/bug where my melee characters (read Tank) would just sit there and do nothing. This was incredibly frustrating, as it made the entire "tactics system" useless. This system allowed you to set behavior for the characters you are not controlling directly in battle. It worked pretty well for my healer and tank, when the tank would actually followthe tactics set.

This is a near to old-school RPG game, where you have near complete control of you characters' development. And there's another problem. Unless you know what you're doing, it's really easy to mess up, and then the game isn't fun because you're party is dying all the damn time. My advice is to read some guides before starting, so you don't mess up stats or talent builds. Just a quick rundown of what your classes need:

Tank: Taunt. Get it ASAP. Boost strength to around 40 or so, you need 42 to equip the best armor, but accessories can help you reach that. I left my tank's strength at 40.
Mage: Get heal, whatever role you're going for. Also get crushing prison. It shuts down problematic foes (read enemy mages)
Healer: The game gives you one who does a fantastic job.
DPS: On Normal, it doesn't matter. Higher difficulties enable friendly fire, which isn't hard to plan for, but with every extra melee comes another liability for friendly fire from your mage or Archer. If you're planning to play on hard or nightmare, a tank and three ranged classes is the best bet.
Rogue: Having one in your party helps a lot. Shadow and lockpicking enable you to scout ahead, disarm traps, open locked chests and doors. The benefit to this is that opening and disarming locked items gives you experience, which adds up over time, not to mention more loot which you can sell.

Read through guides before starting, as attribute point choices make a lot of difference. Your PC will get some bonuses through a main quest chain, which can be helpful. Items will also give you attribute point bonuses. Plan out your talents carefully, picking the ones that are critical. One of the best pieces of advice I read was "If you're going for a talent, make sure there are at least 2 in that tree that you'll use. Getting three crap talents for one golden one is not a good investment."

With combat and party building done, let's move on to the bells and whistles.

Graphics

Game looks fine. It's not mind-blowingly cool, but it doesn't look like rubbish either. One of the draws shown through the trailers is the blood splatter effect on characters. While this is pretty cool, it can make dialogue hilarious, as the characters will be dripping in blood, and having a very nonchalant conversation.

Audio is fine.

Story

This is what kept me playing. Bioware did a fantastic job with this world. Though only weak point for me was, as stated before, the player character. Silent protagonist is done. I find it hard to build an identity when every other character speaks, but I remain silent in a game where voice dialogue is everywhere. Party conversations were very funny. You do get some characters based on how you progress through the game, so bear that in mind if there are any you want to get early.

There is a ton of stuff to do in this game. My playthrough was at ~38 hours, with just the core game, none of the DLC. Since DA:O Ultimate Edition has all the DLC and Awakening, my second playthrough looks to be reallly long.

Bottom Line: If you're a fan of RPGs, get this. If you liked Mass Effect, bear in mind that DA:O is very different, so it might not be for you. If you want a more strategical experience get it for the PC/Mac. I wish I had a computer that could run it, but 360 works.

How my rating system works

After hearing some pretty intense debates about rating systems, how metacritic and all those other sites do it, I'm not going to do grades or numbers. Instead it's going to be pretty simple. I'll type "Bottom Line" then my recommendation. It could be: go watch it, go play it, go rent it, go read it, stay far, far away from it like it's a nuclear reactor melting down.

Fable: The Lost Chapters for the PC

I'm betting pretty much every gamer out there has heard of Fable, Peter Molyneux's hyped up series. I remember back in 2003, poring over articles up the game, how you could do anything, be anyone, go anywhere. Yeah, not so much.

If you're looking for something to compare this game to, think GTA set in Dark Ages England with magic. That's essentially what they were going for. More specifically, think San Andreas, where you could affect how your character looked to a high degree.

Anyway, the game opens with you as a child in your home village, on the day of your older sister's birthday. After you get some gold for doing various tasks for people, you give her a present and, oh shit, bandits raid the village! Burning, pillaging, possibly raping, everyone! Your mom and sister are tortured, and your dad is killed. You hide, and then a Hero from the Guild (Oh the originality) shows up and teleports you away. Turns out, you're hero material! How lucky. From this point on, the game introduces you to the gameplay:melee combat, ranged combat, and magic or Will as it's called in Fable's world.

The gameplay is pretty simple, but it is fun. If you aim right with your bow or crossbow, you can take an enemy's head off. My only problems with the combat were how you changed spells and blocking. Changing spells depended on your mouse's middle button, as did blocking. It probably is that my mouse wheel is crappy, but changing spells was a pain so I just changed the hotkey. The blocking was more of an issue as I had to press the button in ever so precisely.

Molyneux made a lot of promises for the game and didn't deliver on all of them. For one thing, the game world just seems so...small. Much of it is just paths, there aren't that many open areas at all. Also, your way is often blocked by gates that open up after you reach a certain point in the main storyline.

The story is decent. But you're not really playing Fable for that, are you? It progresses with "Quest Cards" which are just missions that you can do whenever you want. The other, bigger problem, I had with the game is the side missions. They don't respawn. There aren't that many of them.

The alignment system was touted to be very prevalent in Fable but, it's really not. You can do anything, and your actions affect a good/evil meter. If you're full good, you get a halo and your hands glow if you stand still. If you're full evil, you get two little retarded ass horns. Wow. I feel like a real bad ass with this two tumors growing out of my forehead. Based on whether your good or evil, NPCs will either follow you around or run away. Great. Being good/evil has no affect on the choices you make, it just depends on what you want to do at the time.

Another thing that annoyed me, is that I couldn't kill NPCs in towns. They just wouldn't die no matter how many times I hit them. Not very sandbox.

However, as of now, Fable: The Lost Chapters, for PC mind you is $20. That's fantastic. For Mac, it's $50. Rip-off. That $20 price tag helps with quite a few of these issues. And despite the complaints above, I had a really fun time with the game. If you enjoy Monty Python humor, the NPCs won't disappoint. This game was fully worth the $20 and I enjoyed the time I spent playing it.

Bottom Line: Buy it for PC. You'll enjoy yourself.

Vantage Point

Sounds pretty cool doesn't it? Seeing an event from different points of view, the event of the President being shot no less, would seem to be a good action flick at least. Too bad the movie doesn't deliver.

The problem lies within the execution of the "different points of view." The first 3 or 4 characters' sequences are all pretty much the exact same events with a few personal scenes thrown in. This makes the first half hour of the movie pretty boring. I fell asleep while watching it.

The action does pick up after that part, but frankly, it's too little too late.

Bottom line: Rent this. Buy it only if you find it for a ridiculously cheap price, which is all I would pay for this movie anyway.