Dragon Age: Origins

Along with Darksiders, I’ve also been busy with BioWare’s Dragon Age: Origins..

I started off as a Human Noble, in Cousland Castle.  At first, I have to admit I was a little put off by the amount of cutscene dialogue, which just seemed to interrupt me in exploring the castle.  These were needed to set the scene though, and I don’t think the game would have been the same without.

So, after being awoken by an attack in the night, and finding that my family have been betrayed, I go off with Duncan and Dogmeat (the dog) to become a Grey Warden.

My first stop is Ostagar, an ancient fortress surrounded by Darkspawn.  As part of my induction, I’m sent out into the wilds to kill some darkspawn and collect a few vials of their blood.. and then yeah.. interesting cutscene.. 🙂

Fighting is done by clicking on your target and then either allowing a normal attack, or using special moves from the quickbar.  Pausing the game between turns is definitely the way to go as it allows for more fine-tuning on your attacks.  You can also control your party members the same way, or if you prefer not to worry about them, you can use the tactics system to give them instructions for various conditions.  I found myself using both methods, with the tactics system as a fallback.

Graphically, the game looks great – with the exception of the blood spatters over your character and party following a fight, which just don’t look right at all.

I accidentally found one way of getting rid of these though.. which was a little disturbing, if not downright revolting.  I had Dogmeat in my party near the beginning of the game, and after one such fight I clicked on him while trying to loot the fallen enemies.
One of the speech options that appeared was something to do with “getting rid of this gory mess”, which I assumed to mean getting rid of the bodies and leaving the loot behind..  Selecting this, however, initiated a cutscene of him stepping towards my character, and the screen going black for a moment.  After that,  my character was spotlessly clean again.. 😮

So, aside from being bathed by my dog, there were also a number of funny lines from my party members, including sniping and put-downs between some characters, and my character being chatted up by Alistair and Leliana!

I’ve not finished my first play-through yet, but I’ve already decided I’m going to play this through again but with an evil, twisted character, and access the options that my goody-two-shoes character this time just won’t do! 🙂

Darksiders

This week, I’ve been fighting off the minions of heaven and hell as War in Darksiders, a post-apocalyptic action game from THQ.

War feels rather overpowered, with his massive sword and the fun auto-kill moves, especially when dealing with the general zombies.  For these, hitting the auto-kill button means grabbing them by the ankles and smashing them into the ground, or picking them up by the head and then squishing it!  Cue running around the Crossroads section of the game and only using this button..  Well, that’s one way of getting rid of the day’s stresses! 🙂

In GameInformer’s interview with Vigil’s General Manager, he said the original idea would have had all four horsemen available to play in a four player co-op.. damn..  That could have been a serious rampage..

I’m enjoying this game lots, though at the moment I’m suffering a little from having too many games, but not enough time..  so I’m not likely to finish it too soon.

Are you Serious?

Steam keep on making great offers, and I keep on taking them up.  This time it was Serious Sam HD: The First Encounter..

Via Steam, there are a few achievements I decided I’d aim for.  Not sure how the “I am Invincible” achievement will go – complete the game in single player without firing a single bullet or shell – but some of the others won’t be too hard.

After a bit of a run in the single player, I went for some co-op with a friend.  I was pleased to find that you have infinite retries in co-op, as it allows for a more crazed game without having to restart levels.

We also discovered that you can climb on top of other characters, and for a short time, even walk with them standing on your head.

This did lead to a friend trapping himself though..

After climbing on my head to get on an otherwise inaccessible ledge, he went through the door up there, and then found it wouldn’t open to allow him back through!  Some doors won’t open unless you’ve dealt with whatever is in that section..  We were able to pick him up again, after clearing the next room 🙂

In this game there are also a good number of secrets, and there is an achievement for finding 50 of these.  Let’s just say I’m quite determined to find them all 😉

Warcraft III

After finding out that a friend had this game, I went and picked it up for just £6.71 at Amazon, a bargain!

I played the single player of this oh, quite some years back, but never got into the multiplayer side.  So after a playthrough of some of the single player campaigns, and some tower defense maps (try Run Kitty Run if you need a mood boost!) I thought I’d try taking on a friend.  In retrospect, this could have been seen as a bad idea, as I was seriously owned.. but a good idea, as you can only learn from your mistakes.

After a few more games, we decided to take on an AI enemy, at Insane difficulty level.  We managed it, thanks to a turtle strategy and a great defense mounted at what we nicknamed Fort Knox.  Not bad, especially considering there were two noobs in the team 😉

If you have the game and want to watch the replay, feel free – just don’t mind the odd random comment as we weren’t all on voice chat 🙂

New Year

Band Hero went down really well, with Tim’s mother being quite happy to try her hand at the guitar, and picking it up quickly too!  Never let it be said there’s an age bar to this game!

On the following day the cousins came round, and we got some more play out of things, before heading off for a meal with friends.

We really will have to organise some more Band Hero weekends 😀

New Year’s Band Hero

Heading off for a New Year’s celebration of sorts, and taking the 360 and Band Hero with us and a copy of Guitar Hero 5.   Will see how that goes down with Tim’s family.. and if we run out of energy, there’s always the Wii..

Had a very late night last night, playing custom Warcraft III maps with friends. We played Tower Defense maps mainly, but we also went for a few rounds of “Run Kitty Run” which resulted in giddiness due to the insane music!  Some maps and game types have rather a steep learning curve, but the more basic tower defense games were very easy to get into.  Saying that though, I’ve played plenty of Tower Defense games in my browser, so I had a bit of an advantage!

Only slightly regretting how late it got – 2.30am – but what are holidays for if you can’t stay up late? 😉

Korsakovia

An experimental mod about madness and the end of the world, designed to mess with your mind..

The main character, Christopher, is a psychiatric patient suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome.  He believes that the world has ended.
Dr Grayson is the consultant neurologist at the hospital where he was brought in after an apparent failed suicide attempt..

So, what is the end of the world like?

After an initial wander around a deserted and rather grim hospital, I encounter black clouds which come screaming towards me, while unarmed, I look for a way out.  As they hit, the cracking sound and the flash of bright light feels like I’m being hit myself.

Posters with disfigured, burned hands, commandments to get rid of the eyes.. which is exactly what Christopher has done..

Damage is indicated by cracks in the corners of the screen.  The television is a recurring theme throughout the experience.

The sounds: static hissing, beeping, and heavy breathing.. creepy sounds rising in pitch and volume added to the feeling of dread.. especially during the unarmed sections, in which the only way of saving yourself is to run.

Doors opening by themselves after I was unable to open them and had stepped away..

Blood smears and burned bodies litter the various corridors and broken rooms, mounds of debris spinning like a whirlwind in another room, as well as crackling electricity, sometimes purely visual, and other times an impassable barrier.

Through all this, the script between doctor and patient triggers as you progress through the levels, an explanation of what Christopher has done to himself and why, and what he is (you are) seeing in this world.

In each section, you are unarmed until you find the crowbar, the only weapon you’ll get, and then only after you’ve been through some places you’d have really liked to have it.  Once you have the crowbar, you can kill the black clouds as they attack.  The ones you can see, at least.. there are a few bugs in this game, one of which is the airborne version of these enemies becoming invisible.

Levels are designed to confuse; in the warehouse section there were so many crates it looked as though the escape would be by climbing.  In reality, only one crate was needed, and that was to place under a broken ladder in order to reach it.

Progressing through the game, things become weirder as you leave the hospital and warehouse areas for the tenements.  Collapsed floors, fires, and burned bodies abound..

Floating pieces of concrete making a path to a door floating in the darkness..

As time passes, Dr Grayson starts to integrate herself into the delusion, starting with dreams of the warehouse, dreams of being dropped from a great height into water..

Levels become even more uncomfortable.  I’m in a warehouse again, but the floor is at an angle, and controls don’t work the usual way; trying to turn results in the view tilting and even climbing onto crates to avoid the black smoke enemies becomes a challenge.

I can see why people find Korsakovia unpleasant to play.  Screeching static and whistling noises are at times painfully loud, and tilted views encourage motion sickness; the calm voices talking about removing and eating eyes, and the posters with burned fingers and more, all add up to a disturbing experience – which is exactly what The Chinese Room were after.

If you want to see for yourself, the mod can be downloaded here.  Requires Half Life 2: Episode 2.

Mods

For a long time, I wanted to create my own games.  Lacking the skills of a game developer, and to some extent the time and patience to figure it all out, I turned my attention to map making and level design, as the really hard work has already been done.  There are also plenty of tutorials around the web, taking even more of the pain out of it.  So far, I’ve not devoted the time required to create anything I’d want to show beyond my closest friends though..

Others though, have the time and patience (and the skill!), and there are some great works out there.  I’ve been recommended a few HL2 mods over the last week or so: Awakening, MINERVA: Metastasis, and Dear Esther – and the latest in the list, Korsakovia, is downloading now.

Awakening was described to me as a good game with awful voice acting.  You play as Adrian Shepard, from Opposing Forces, somewhere between Half Life and Half Life 2 in the timeline.
It starts off with a rather long trailer – Combine troops attacking some kind of facility – which pans around the fighting then inside the base, and eventually comes to rest where you wake up from stasis..  Simple enough game – shoot them all!  It’s quite a short game too – I completed it in about an hour.  The level design was great, and battles seemed to be well balanced, although I found myself seriously low on ammo for quite some time..  but yeah.. the voice acting was somewhat amusing.. 🙂

MINERVA: Metastasis really stuck in my mind as the best of the three mods, although all three were quite different from each other.
You begin the game strapped to the underside of a stolen Combine helicopter, being shipped into an island to spy for Minerva.  She communicates with you only via radio messages which appear as text – no dodgy voice acting here, although the language is strangely poetic and could put some off.   Exploring the island, and finding out exactly what the Combine are up to, requires plenty of shooting and some puzzle solving.

The map design here is very open, and although there’s really only one way to go to further the story, you’ll return to the same places a few times during exploration.   I was also quite impressed with the quality of the graphics – at least on a par with the official game itself.

Dear Esther is a strange sort of interactive ghost story, rather than a game.  Had I come across this myself, without recommendation, I might not have paid it much attention – especially as it started off so slowly, and you’re confined to a very slow walk – but that wouldn’t have done it justice.

The game begins with a portion of a letter being read out, to “Esther”, as you look on a deserted building.  Exploring the island triggers other portions of letters, or rambling thoughts, which only seem to become more rambling, more confused as you get deeper into the island, and markings on the walls only add to the atmosphere.

I discussed this with a friend afterwards, comparing notes on our understanding of what happened – an accident on a motorway, drink driving, the loss of a loved one, self-imposed isolation.. mixed with long lost shepherds, stolen bibles, monks and syphillis – all ramblings of a man delirious with a broken leg who somehow feels he deserves his fate..

Having looked around the internet for this one, I find that parts of the script are actually randomised, so if someone else were to play through this, they might have a slightly different interpretation.  Dear Esther made me feel rather sad, stirring up memories of my own, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

I also mentioned I was downloading Korsakovia..
This is another mod from The Chinese Room, the team who created Dear Esther.  This game – experience? – is not meant to be enjoyable.. the whole intent was to explore what happens when you push boundaries and subvert what people expect from a game – with flashing lights, disturbing sounds, and the oh-so-creepy tagline:

“The paramedics report that they were unable to find his eyes. We think he may have eaten them.“

Dreamkiller

Dreamkiller, from Mindware Studios, wasn’t a game I’d even heard of, but a friend told me about the free weekend on Steam.. and well.. always worth a try.  I justabout managed to complete the game over the weekend, though I didn’t get to try out any multiplayer.

The game is this: a first person shooter set within the disturbed minds of people suffering a variety of nightmares.  You’re a psychologist called Alice Drake, and your task is to enter these nightmares and kill the creatures therein, with weapons created by the minds of the patients.

On the first level, this means spiders – in later levels you’re dealing with straightjacketed lunatics with horrible, chomping, metal-toothed contraptions on their heads, or winged demons.  Later levels find you in Alice’s own dreams, of her childhood in a mental asylum with rather creepy lab-coated shrinks coming at her with needles, as well as creatures from all the patients’ dreams so far – and the finale: a giant floating head!

The idea seemed great, but the game was a little repetitive; open door, shoot things, go to next door, and boss fights pretty much being a matter of clearing away some minions, shooting at the boss, running to health pickups, and clearing some more minions before shooting the boss some more.  AI just weren’t that bright..  The beserk mode was also a little offputting – enemies turn red and everything else greys out a little.. in other games this indicates you’re nearly dead, so here it just doesn’t fill you with the sense that you’re doing lots of damage now.

I did like the teleport type feature – sending a representation of yourself running off into the distance and warping to it.  Very useful for dealing with the minions during a boss fight, leaving them at one end of the room and giving you time to fire off a few more rockets.

Overall, it was entertaining in a go-mad-shoot-everything way – reminded me of Serious Sam, though I think that was the better game.  It was also quite fun comparing progress through the levels with a friend, though I only caught up with him right at the end. 🙂

Gnome Chompski look familiar?

Gnome Chompski in Left 4 Dead 2, and Little Rocket Man in Half Life 2: Episode 2.

Gnome Chompski

Little Rocket Man