Category: Gaming

Dragon Age: Origins – The Broodmother & DLC announcements

Posted on by Nimgimli

The Darkspawn are a subterranean menace in the world of Dragon Age: Origins. At first they were a threat mostly to the dwarves, who (for the most part) spend their entire lives underground. Recently it seems the Darkspawn are starting to plague surface dwellers, too. Maric encountered the Darkspawn in The Stolen Throne and lived to tell the tale, but where do they come from?

Now it seems we know:

No one knows how the Darkspawn truly live in their tainted warrens beneath the earth, although a few Grey Wardens have, on occasion, delved deep into the old Dwarven tunnels in an effort to find the heart of the Darkspawn corruption and scour it clean. Those who ever returned, did so with ashen faces and spoke only of a creature called a “Broodmother” that haunted their dreams for the rest of their short existence. What the Broodmother truly is, only the Grey Wardens know for certain.

Before we get to the trailer (which is not for the squeamish) let’s talk DLC. Bioware and EA are doing their best to fight the used game market: those of us who buy the game new will get a code The Stone Prisoner, a DLC package which unlocks some quests and adds a new potential party member (a stone golem named Shale) to the game. If you buy a used copy of Dragon Age: Origins, The Stone Prisoner is going to cost you $15.

There’s another package of DLC that’ll be ready on Day 1 called Warden’s Keep. I’ve seen some sources claim this is an XBox exclusive, but my contact at Bioware says it’ll be available for $7 on PSN and PC, and 560 points on XBLA. The Warden’s Keep unlocks Grey Warden Armor, a chest to store your belongings in, and a quest line involved a haunted Grey Warden Keep.

Here’s the trailer for the Brood Mother. The creature is pretty vile, and the amount of blood spatter in this clip is way over the top. Make sure the kids aren’t looking over your shoulder when you view this one. A couple of stills follow the clip. This thing is nasty!!

What's a mother to do??

We're going to need some Oxy-Clean after this fight...

Building a Living World – A Dragon Age: Origins video

Posted on by Nimgimli

When it rains it pours. New screenshots earlier today, and tonight the second Dragon Age novel by David Gaider arrived: Dragon Age: The Calling.

And this evening Bioware has released an interesting ‘behind the scenes’ video which features some of the Dragon Age team talking about the techniques they used to try to build a living world; that is, a world that players can lose themselves in because if feels so real.

Enough of my blather, why not have a look (watch it in HD if you have the bandwidth!):

Check out the Dragonchasers YouTube channel here.

Dragon Age: Origins reviewed

Posted on by Nimgimli

We’re still nearly a month from launch, and Game Informer has already reviewed Dragon Age: Origin (the PC version). Wow, that seems early considering what an epic game we’ve been promised. The good news is that they gave it quite a nice rating (9).

I haven’t read the review since I already know I’ll be playing Dragon Age and would prefer to go into it with a ‘clean palette’ (so to speak). So it’s back to waiting for me.

In the meantime, Bioware has released a fresh set of screenshots, and as always, I’ve hand-picked a few to share with you.

Ahhhpocalypse

Posted on by Nimgimli

Over the weekend I was finally able to log back into Fallen Earth, thanks to my lame arm improving a bit and a change of keyboard (why it took me so long to think about changing keyboards, I do not know). It was nice to ease back into the apocalypse!

Usually when I take a break from a relatively new MMO I feel quite ‘behind’ when I return, but that wasn’t the case with Fallen Earth. Apparently the game is growing slowly (the launch itself was fairly modest) since there were still plenty of newbies running around the starter towns, and plenty of neophyte questions being asked in the Regional channels.

Additionally, and maybe this is just me, but Fallen Earth doesn’t feel all that level based anyway. Yeah, getting levels nets you a nice stash of AP that you can spend on skills, but you can also earn AP from doing quests, which is why at level 6 I’m still in a starter town. I’m wandering from village to village, getting quests, salvaging and harvesting materials and learning to craft stuff. I don’t feel any particular urgency to ‘level up’ in this world. What ultimately drives me is increasing my crafting skills, meaning I need lots of materials, which in turn means I do lots of exploring.

Honestly, I assumed FE was going to get savaged by the greater MMO community. It isn’t the most intuitive game in the world, nor is it the prettiest. There aren’t (m)any flashy loot drops and there’s no fast travel (at least that I’ve found). You have to feed your horse, put gas in your ATV, buy or make ammo for your guns. Basically it has few of the ‘modern conveniences’ we’ve come to expect in MMOs. And yet people seem to like it.

I know I sure like it, and it felt great getting back into a virtual world after a forced layoff.

Undead Knights Demo (PSP)

Posted on by Nimgimli

The launch of the PSPGo meant a deluge of new content on the Playstation Store for PSP owners, so last night I spent some time poking around to see what was available. One of the demos I found was for Tecmo’s Undead Knights, a game that feels like a cross between a Dynasty Warrior style brawler and Overlord.

This being a demo, I don’t really know who you are or what your motivation is. I just knew I was here and the game wanted me to go there. And I had a really big sword. And I could turn enemies into zombies. And the odds were against me. So I waded in swinging.

When you get near an enemy in Undead Knights, you can hit the Circle button to grab them by the throat and convert them into a zombie. As soon as you grab them, a circular gauge starts filling. Once it fills, the enemy is converted. If you get clobbered during the process you’ll drop your foe and have to start over again. However, if you give the opponent a solid whack with your sword first, he’ll blink red. While blinking you can insta-convert him.

Left to their own devices, zombies generally act like zombies, stumbling around attacking anything that comes close. But you can grab a zombie and hold him up to use as a shield, or you can grab one and throw it at an enemy, which will cause that zombie to attack the enemy you threw it at. Early in the demo you’re faced with a big ogre thing, and to bring it down you have to throw a bunch of zombies at it. They’ll crawl all over the creature and eventually will bring it to its knees, at which time you charge in and deliver the coup de grace with your sword.

You can also ‘point’ at an object and direct your zombie horde to interact with it. This works almost exactly like Overlord. There’ll be a gate that needs tearing down, so you face it, hit the right shoulder button and cry DESTROY THAT! and your zombies will charge it. You’ll see a counter showing how many are attacking the object vs how many you need to have on it to destroy it. If you don’t get enough zombie-power on there quickly enough, they’ll all fall off, take damage, and you’ll be back at square 1. It can take your zombies some time to stop what they’re doing and shamble over to the target, during which time you might be attacked and have to stop giving orders. Which again, means the zombies fall off, taking damage, and the obstacle remains in place. At one point in the demo you even have the zombies form an un-living bridge for you to run across!

If it sounds like un-life is hard on a zombie, you’re correct. They take a real beating and don’t last very long, so you’ll constantly have to refresh your supply (tip: when a zombie is missing his head he doesn’t have too much more time left). Luckily enemy foot soldiers seem virtually endless, and they’re easy to take down and zombie-fy. More skilled enemies are more rare, harder to kill, and harder to zombie-fy (but when you do, they seem to be identical to the grunt zombies, so it makes no sense to go to the extra effort of zombifying your tougher opponents).

I had a lot of fun for the duration of the demo and if you have a PSP (and don’t mind gory zombie combat) I suggest you check it out. Frankly it isn’t a game I’m going to run out to buy right now at full price, not with all the AAA titles coming in the next couple of weeks. But it’s one I’ll put on my watch list to pick up on sale during the next gaming drought.

Here’s a gameplay video a snagged off of YouTube. Not created by me but it gives a good sample of almost everything I just mentioned, if you watch carefully:

Just moping around…

Posted on by Nimgimli

I’ve been in a really strange place, gaming-wise lately. It’s like I’m holding my breath, waiting for the deluge of holiday titles to hit.

I haven’t been playing any PC games (including MMOs) because of an RSI-ish injury to my arm. Keyboarding for too long starts to hurt a lot, and sadly I have to save my ‘good hours’ for work. I went to the doc yesterday and he gave me some drugs, so hopefully that problem will be in the past soon enough.

Over in console land, I picked up Need For Speed: Shift for the PS3 but (yeah, I’m whining at this point) the same arm injury causes my fingers to go numb (in a skin-deep way) on my left hand. I think because they’re numb I jam the shoulder buttons too hard when I brake (which you do a lot) in Need For Speed: Shift. Whatever the cause, playing that game for a weekend left me feeling like I’d crushed my finger with a hammer, so THAT was off the table.

So I moved on to Halo ODST on the 360, which I can play as much as I want to… but I’m just not feeling it. I jump in and play for 30 minutes or so and jump out. Put it this way… everyone says the campaign is 5-6 hours. I got ODST on launch day and haven’t finished the campaign yet. I know people love this game; I’m just not one of them. At least not yet. But then, I didn’t love Halo 3 either. I guess when so much emphasis is directed at multiplayer, the single player campaign is gonna slip some.

Anyway, I have gaming ennui!

/emo

Why? Because next week, Demon’s Souls is coming out for the PS3 and I’ve been looking forward to it since a friend played, and raved about, the import version. It’s supposed to be a pretty difficult game, which honestly isn’t often my style, but this time I’m ready to embrace the challenge…for a week.

Why for a week? Because the following week Uncharted 2 and Brutal Legend both come out. I loved Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and the reviews of the sequel have been universally positive. I can’t wait to play! And after sampling the Brutal Legend demo, I’m eager to play it, too. Though I’ll admit, part of why I’m buying this at launch is just to support Tim Schafer, who finally seems to be getting the recognition he deserves.

And then the week after that (the 20th?), Borderlands comes out. With a high co-op factor, it is again a game I want to play at launch. It’s no good playing a co-op game 6 months after it’s come out, right? Either no one will be playing, or everyone that IS playing will be uber compared to you. So I gotta get that.

But that’s 4 games in 3 weeks. That’s stupid… there’s no way I can play games that fast. And yet I’m still gonna do it, budget be damned. We’ll just go without heat for a few weeks. We have blankets!

And then there’s Dragon Age: Origins coming out on November 3rd… and that looks like it’ll own me for a while. I’ll need to clear my calendar for that one. Heck, I was thinking I had some breathing room in there but I guess that’s just two weeks after Borderlands. /sigh

I guess if there’s a good time to not be able to game on the PC, we’re coming up to it (though I had planned on getting Borderlands on the PC, I guess I’ll go Xbox 360 instead, given the circumstances). I just wish next week would arrive so I can get going!

In the meanwhile, I’m finding I really miss Fallen Earth, of all the MMOs I play. Maybe because I was in full swing playing it when I had to curtail PC gaming? Or maybe it’s just an unpolished jewel? Not sure, really.

A whole bunch of holiday titles slipped into 2010, and there are still this many great games coming out (I certainly haven’t mentioned them all). Can you imagine if they’d all launched 4th quarter 2009!?

So what’s everyone else buying between now and, say, Thanksgiving. Any plans?

Dragon Age: Origins — The City of Denerim

Posted on by Nimgimli

More teases from Bioware about the upcoming Dragon Age: Origins. This time we’re looking at Denerim, the capital of Ferelden and a place that will figure prominently in your adventures.

Denerim is an ancient coastal city that got its start as a Mage Tower (now used as a fort). Over the years the city sprang up around the tower, but space was limited by the surrounding cliffs and mountains, so Denerim is now a densely populated place with various districts, including the labyrinthine docks and the Elven Alienage (remember, elves are 2nd class citizens in Dragon Age and so are kept segregated from the rest of the populace). In the Palace District is the Birth Rock, a memorial honoring the prophetess Andraste, who was born in Denerim.

I encourage you to watch this one in full screen, HD mode:

Here’re a few still shots to give a bit more detail:

More Dragon Age goodness

Posted on by Nimgimli

Bioware released another handful of screenshots from their upcoming RPG Dragon Age: Origins. The one that interested me most showed the UI and what gameplay is probably going to look like most of the time. Very evocative of loved Bioware games of the past.

Click to enlarge:
gameplay

Can’t wait to get my hands on this one.

The rest of the shots are just full of pretty, so I’m just going to offer them as a gallery for your enjoyment. Just a bit over a month to go! (Click to see full images!)

Dragon Age: Origins – The Music

Posted on by Nimgimli

If you’re anything like me, some of the early Dragon Age trailers has music that felt a bit off-putting. I, at least, just don’t want Marilyn Manson in my fantasy RPGs.

Fear not. Giant Bomb ran a video today talking about the music and the score in Dragon Age: Origins. Take a lot and have a listen. Of course, if you were super-stoked for the Marilyn Manson stuff, you’re gonna be disappointed!