#10/10 most replayable dragon age game

[reapers-shmeapers]

God I hate the deep roads in theory but every play through I still scour the entire map for every conceivable bit of loot/codex entries. I have it memorized

Will I use any of that loot? No. Will I actually sell it? Of course not. Am I enjoying myself by doing this? Again, no. I just can't explain why I keep playing.

At the end of the day I've just accepted that after so many playthroughs the lyrium has finally gotten to me. To the deep roads I will always return, and in my dying hour it's endless sopping caverns will bekon me home with the siren squeals of nugs and the sweet promise of never-ending darkspawn shortbows

you wouldn't last a day in the asylum where they raised me

[joudama]

And that’s that for Veilguard. Got all the achievements and got the four main possible endings (didn’t bother with the bad ending where you do none of the side quests, everyone dies, and you end up trapped in the Fade forever with Solas).

My four Rooks:

Female Shadow Dragon elf mage - saved Minrathous - romanced Harding - punched Solas in the face

Female Antivan Crow human rogue - saved Treviso - romanced Lucanis - tricked Solas into using the fake dagger

Male Grey Warden dwarf warrior (this was originally going be a Qunari, but I couldn’t get over the yassified look of all the qunari I tried to make and I gave up) - saved Treviso - romanced Davrin (meant to romance Bellara and lol welp, that didn’t happen) - big softie who sent Solas into the Fade with the Inquisitor

Male Mourn Watch elf mage - saved Minrathous - romanced Emmrich (meant to romance Bellara or Neve and lol welp, that didn’t happen) - told the Inquisitor she could do better and made Solas go off into the Fade alone.

My Mourn Watch one is probably going to be my “canon” run, since I liked it the best (that’s not saying much) of my runs. I went with a life leeching run for him, including using the unique items that made health potions/companion heals not work, and beefed up leeching. Literally the only time I died was when my controller ran out of juice in the middle of a dragon fight. The Elgar’nan fight was over so fast I was like, “Wait, is that it?” It was like the curb stomp fight in Inquisition with Corypheus before they let you have enemies scale up with you.

And now for my thoughts. And oh boy, do I have a lot of them. Hoo.

I have…so many issues with this game. It is a very good…whatever the gaming equivalent of a popcorn flick is. It’s great if you go in with your brain turned off and enjoy all the shiny. But that’s not what I want in a Dragon Age game. I’ve been replaying DA2 - the game that DATV is basically trying to channel - while playing these, and the difference in writing quality and intricacy of plot and world building could not be more sharp. The first time I played DATV, I thought it was fine. Almost aggressively fine. I had fun with streaming the game and seeing where it went. I loved the reveals with the wolf statues. I had some major issues with the writing being as subtle as a brick to the face at times (more on my thoughts about the dialogue LATER, because oh boy), but it was serviceable. And I genuinely thought Veilguard had been robbed by not being nominated for Art Direction at the Game Awards, because say what you will, the areas are fucking gorgeous. But, even then, I was like, “Yeah, this would not have deserved a GOTY nomination had it gotten one,” and placed it at a 7 or 8 out of 10. A good enough, enjoyable game that ran well, but was not by any means GOTY material.

Then I made the mistake of playing it again, and the cracks began to show. By the time I hit the middle of Act 2 of my third run, I was just so done. I hated every time certain companions had anything to say at all. I hated that you couldn’t call people out for being a jerk but had to be the supportive nursery school teacher at all times to them. And for the first time playing any BioWare game at all, I found myself wishing I could either not recruit certain people or kick them out of camp. The cracks were beyond showing at that point, and I no longer thought the writing was even “serviceable.” Things that hadn’t seemed so bad on that first popcorn flick run suddenly became a problem - not being able to actually talk to your companions to get to know them went from “it feels more natural to have them saying this stuff while out in the field” to “what is even the point of going around the Lighthouse if all it gets me is a line spoken at me or overhearing bits of them having ACTUAL conversations?” It legitimately hurt replayability. I missed being able to actually talk to my companions, and I realized I cared more about Manfred and Assan than most of my companions because Manfred and Assan actually seemed to like interacting with me. I will take Manfred’s rock-paper-scissors game over a “hey Rook” and dead-eyed stare.

By the time I hit late act 2, I couldn’t wait for it to be over so I could delete the damn game off my hard drive…only for the last achievement I had yet to get to NOT pop when I finished the game. I looked it up and discovered it wasn’t set by triggering a certain end state, but was tied to picking some flowers in Act 2, and wanted to cry. I don’t usually 100% games, especially if I feel like some of the achievements are bullshit I don’t want to do (‘sup, MELE needing you to do some Armax Arena Spectre-level fight - I would sooner chew off my own arm than do that, as anyone who watched me stream Veilguard would have guessed watching me kvetching the whole time I was doing that Hall of Valor shit), but that was just frustrating. I decided to try to get it on a fresh run as a Mourn Watcher, since I’d heard that was one of the surprisingly good faction backgrounds, and that was a good choice. Mourn Watch became my favorite faction, when it had been Shadow Dragons until then. It added so much to a lot more conversations than I would have thought, and made it so I actually enjoyed the sadly few times you get to actually have conversations instead of eavesdropping/being talked at. I’m glad I decided to slog through one more time for that achievement, because if I’d ended it on that third run, I know I would have never played it again. It turned back into a popcorn movie again, aided by me knowing when to put on a YouTube video and watch or scroll through Bluesky instead of listening to a certain character be the fucking worst. If I ever play again, it’ll be a Mourn Watcher (I already know the Veil Jumpers and Lords of Fortune are considered, shall we say, lackluster background factions.)

Which brings me to some of the big, fundamental problems this game had.

This is not a CRPG. It’s just not. It’s an action RPG now, with the focus on “action” not “RPG.” It’s part of the whole Mass Effect-ification of Dragon Age. And I say this as a huge Mass Effect fan:

Dragon Age should not be like Mass Effect. And vice versa.

When Andromeda came out, they decided to ditch the Paragon/Renegade system, and instead went for DAI-style emotion-based options. Which seems great! More speech choices to make a more nuanced Ryder instead of picking up or down! Great! Only no! A lot of people hated it because it didn’t feel like Mass Effect. They had taken away something that had seemed like a major part of how you roll played in the series, and replaced it something very different. It was the first time they took a mechanic from one game and ported it into another, and it didn’t really go over well with a lot of ME fans because it didn’t feel like a Mass Effect mechanic.

And now with Veilguard, they basically made a Mass Effect game with a Dragon Age skin on it. And it just doesn’t work.

Combat: They copied the combat wheel from Mass Effect, but did it kind of badly. I honestly hated it because I tried to play like I do in Mass Effect - pull it up, use it to look around and get a handle on my environment, then pick an enemy or a safe space to bolt to - and the camera snapping the enemies meant I couldn’t. It drove me crazy because it was like the Mass Effect wheel but fundamentally not, and the camera drove me mad because I’d pull it up trying to find where the nearest blight boil was, and it would snap on enemies instead of just letting me look. It’s like they wanted to get rid of every little bit of tactical game play and replace with smashy smashy bang bang instead. Don’t think, don’t plan, just attack…which fits in with the popcorn flick-ness of DATV. Don’t think, just do. Turn your brain off and look at the particle effects.

Another Mass Effect-ification with regards to combat is dropping from taking 3 companions to 2. Which you need to do to have that Mass Effect style combat wheel, and the Mass Effect 3/Andromeda style primer/detonation style interaction of companion powers. It was very satisfying, but not very Dragon Age-y, and requires throwing out some of that DA lore to make it work, because now everyone uses magic-based abilities even if they aren’t mages. Assan attacks deal fire damage. You can spec a warrior who calls up a giant lightning hammer to twirl around, and…how? That’s not enchantment, that’s plain ol’ magic, and how?! Warriors didn’t deal magic-based attacks uncles their weapons where enchanted before, but now, everyone is just tossing magic attacks at everything. That’s not how the world of Thedas has worked until now, but you can’t have those flashy explosions or particle effects otherwise, so shhh, turn off your brain and don’t think, shhh. Look at the screen light up and the pretty lights. It worked in Mass Effect because they had already set up tech and biotic attacks, but there’s no way to make hitting something hard with a sword cause it to blow up and damage all the other baddies around them, so now everyone has magic. OK.

As an aside, it was also a really bad idea of get rid of how aggro worked. Dragon Age had always worked by warriors drawing aggro because they had the heavier armor (or could use taunt on enemies targeting squishy mages or rogues). Rogues had lower aggro because they had lighter armor, and could sneak. Mages had even lower aggro because they had the lightest armor and were distance fighters. DATV threw that out the window, and Rook draws all aggro because they are the only ones with a health bar. Your squad is immortal in fights, which means there’s no reason for enemies to ever target them. Which means god help you early game when mages and rogues have no real skills yet. Enjoy dodging while your companions hit the enemies with what seems like attacks as powerful as spitballs. It also means that there are times what the game tells you and the fight you just seem are completely at odds. Remember that fight with the Wrath of the Stone in Harding’s companion quest? That thing is on your ass the entire time, but then at the end of it, Rook says something along the lines of “It really hates Harding,” and…are you gaslighting me, game? That thing ignored Harding the whole damn time in favor of trying to stomp me like a cockroach. Harding did not exist to it during my fight. It had a hate boner for Rook and Rook alone, no matter what the game tried to insist on after.

Now, imagine how that would have felt if Harding actually could have been killed/knocked out during the fight, and it was only going after her? What if you couldn’t damage it if it took her down, so you had to make sure she stayed alive? Imagine how different that fight would have hit then? But no, that would mean the devs have to think about how to rez characters and how healing would work, and would mean players have to be tactical, and shh, no, no more of that, no thinking, just dodge and hit things and look at the particle effects. Shh. Have some more popcorn.

Story: DATV wants so badly to be ME2. It wants to recall the big suicide mission where you have to have everyone ready or you’ll all die. But you can’t copy what you did before and get the same flowers and results. You just can’t. You can try, and all you’ll get is diminishing returns. They tried to do the big cosmic horror of ME1, complete with a Virmire choice, then have the big final stakes of ME2, and no. You can’t follow a template and get the same greatness. That’s not how it works.

And speaking of following templates…

Romances: The romances in Veilguard are just dismal. And I think it’s because they decided to follow the Mass Effect pacing formula instead of the Dragon Age one.

Dragon Age: You start flirting in Act 1. You usually flirt with everyone because hey, why not? Some time in Act 2, things start getting serious, and you have to settle on who you want to go for. Things start to get serious, you get together, and then you get happy fun adult time with your new LI. You get the option to break it off or commit to them fully. By Act 3, you’re in a committed relationship. People comment about it. You can go to them and spend time with them - nothing major, maybe just a kiss. There might also be a special scene that’s just with them and unique to the romance. And by the end, after the lengthy amount of time that’s passed, you are Together.

Mass Effect: You start flirting in Act 1. You usually flirt with everyone because hey, why not? In Act 2, you keep on flirting with everyone. By the end, you might have to make a choice if you’re flirting too hard with everyone and the two LI options tell you to pick someone already, but you’re just picking who you’re interested in. Early in Act 3, there might be an almost kiss, but it’s mostly just the occasional anticipation of eventually boning and nothing really happens until right before the final big fight, when your LI shows up to your cabin for “oh shit, we might die in a few hours, so let’s go out with a high note” happy fun adult time. The only time you get that “committed relationship” vibes is in ME3 if you’re romanced the same character for at least one other game, and you choose to continue the relationship.

The Mass Effect pacing works in the Mass Effect trilogy because each game is only 20-40 hours long. Veilguard is a good 80 hours long. That means using that same amount of romance you use in ME is going to mean you’ve got too little butter to spread over too much bread. It’s why you have a good start for the romances in Act 1, then act 2 is a such a desert of nothing after you commit that I genuinely wondered if I’d hit the wrong option at said no at several points during the very long third act. There’s not just enough content for that long of an Act 2. Near the end everyone starts commenting on you being with them, but it’s not actually happening in the game. There’s no flirting, there are no extra scenes, and even the scene when you commit to them is based on a scene that happens with everyone, just with a romance option tacked on. The only person (of the ones I romanced, so I can’t speak to the others) who really get unique scenes was Emmerich. He actually takes you out on a unique date. It helped a lot to make Emmerich’s romance feel more fleshed out than the others. And Davrin had so many little jaunts out in the woods that those turned into romantic trips out, which added a lot to his. But Lucanis’ and Hardings? With both of them, like I said before, I genuinely wondered if I had accidentally opted out. Their romances most used the Mass Effect format, and it just doesn’t work for a game this long. BioWare knew that once, long ago, because Andromeda did not use the ME trilogy format for romances and was closer to one they used in DA. But DATV is trying to be ME2, so they used ME2’s very thin romances as a guide.

And we can all see how well that turned out.

The Executors: Fuck me, they feel like Cerberus reskinned, and I absolutely hated when Mass Effect shifted from sci-fi/Lovecraftian horror to space opera with Cerberus as the main bad guys you have to fight with the Reapers functionally falling to the background. The Executors are a secret, shadowy organization pulling strings from behind the scenes like the Shadow Broker codexes in ME2 retconned Cerberus into having been doing in ME. Ugh.

The Andromeda-ification of dialogue: Remember Peebee? Remember how she talked? Give her long hair and pointy ears, and she’s Bellara. Down even to the techno-babble. It’s like they’re trying to change magic to just “sufficiently advanced technology.” Everyone speaks in that modern, quippy style that was annoying in a game set hundreds of years in the future because it felt dated by the time the game came out (Ryder makes a Frozen joke, y’all). And it feels completely out of place in a game set in an early modern setting (I don’t think DA is medieval, honestly - it’s more a pre-industrialization/early scientific revoltution setting, so more 1500-1700s, and I’m gonna stop now). It was jarring. You can only let one quirky character break the rules about how people talk (Alistair in DAO, Varric in DA2, Cole in DAI) but when everyone does, it’s jarring. You can be anachronistic, but you have to know what you’re doing and how to do it when you do, and I’m sorry, but the current crop of BioWare writers don’t. They wrote the dialogue like it was a modern day YA novel, not a Dragon Age game. It would have been fine for a modern day urban fantasy game. It was not fine for a DA game set in the same time period as people using the four humours for “modern” medicine (remember the surgeon in DAI? Talked about the four humours? Yeah.)

OK, I did not intend to go on for this long, and I haven’t even gotten to what the game did to how religion is handled or the sociopolitical aspects of Thedas, and how they threw out so much that made Dragon Age unique in their urge to do a soft reboot, so I’m just going to end it here. I wanted to love this game, and I can only do that if I turn my brain off, and that’s not what Dragon Age should be.

[fersrsbizniz]

My definitive totally will now shut up final reflection…

..on DATV.

Before I begin, I bought this game out of spite. I intentionally had not preordered it because of how badly I had been burned on Andromeda (glad they fixed it enough that others liked it but I could never go back to it—sour taste just never went away), how they fumbled Anthem (which I did not purchase but watched that pain from the sidelines), and my concerns as to how they were handling development (I did celebrate when they shifted away from live service).

I bought it because, as a fan of Dragon Age, anyone proclaiming it was bad because of inclusion was an idiot and I wasn’t going to let them tear down the good name of a game that has let me have some variety of LGBTQ+ romance since the inception of the franchise. Also, one of my Rooks can be non-binary now? Sign me up.

And they were wrong. Of course.

The problems lay somewhere else entirely.

I’ve vented, yes, but I will be as fair as I can with my subjective assessment because I can be measured when I have a clear picture of what I’m reviewing.

I’m going to do a partial holistic rubric on this sucker.

And it’s about to get a little long:

Rubric Topics:

Visuals

Gameplay

Level Design

Story Elements

Narrative Cohesion

General NPC and Follower Dialogue

Lore

Voice Acting

Player Character Dialogue Options

Replayability

Criteria Scoring:

1 - Game successfully provides an experience that interacts with the previous games for cohesive purposes / or provides a satisfactory experience within its topic

.5 - Game attempts to provide an experience that somewhat connects to previous games that creates relative cohesion / or attempts to provide an experience related to the topic.

0 - Game does not provide or fails to provide a proper experience within the topic parameters.

Total is out of 10 pts.

——

Visuals

I didn’t care for them in the beginning, and I’m still not sold on how smooth the faces are, but they are consistent. The general landscapes were pretty. However, the egregious darkspawn design, the inappropriate facial motions, and the hideous armors (I transmogrified every armor to the original deal we got at the beginning of the game because I couldn’t take it) were major deal breakers for me. I’m used to Dragon Age having shit armor, but if you are making me look back at plaid-weave or that eye poking out bust portions of armor problem that DA2 had and have me reminiscing how good that looked, we have a problem.

Really, though, stop making everyone smile when it is clear they are supposed to be depressed and frowning.

However, I DO still like it more than most visual choices in DA2.

Score: .5

Gameplay

Definitely leans more on the action heavy side. As a plus, I could actually see my character and didn’t always get lost as to where they were in the whooshes and flashes. As a negative, I did often lose where the enemy was. I did not care for either mage or warrior from what I’ve played but if you had put this ability to switch back and forth between dual wield and archery as a rogue in Inquisition??? I would be so happy.

Vulnerabilities made me think of Persona so I was cool with it.

Score: 1

Level Design

This has nothing to do with the visuals.

The game was generally presented pretty open leveled UNTIL it wasn’t. Then it felt weirdly railroaded, and the different heights felt clunky and awkward.

If I have been through an area it should remain open to me. It’s ridiculous to block players off.

If you want me to take the urgency seriously don’t plant chests for me to wander off from my team to go get.

The puzzles were too easy, and if I had to shoot one more blight pustule/red lyrium crystal/shiny orb to open the thing or undo the barrier I was going to McLose it.

Score: .5

Story Elements

All general beats were understandable, plot points tracked, side quests made general sense as things to happen. Technicalities were narrative cohesion/ lore based/dialogue problems so are in their own categories.

Score: 1

Narrative Cohesion

How side quests were picked up, how they flowed with the entire story (DAO onward), and how elements of the story were filled out left much to be desired. Some character backgrounds were so sparse that I didn’t get connected until the last act, even WITH their side missions. Some writing was so clunky that it became easy pickings for the ridiculous complaints because there was something wrong with the writing, but it was because it was handled so poorly and unnaturally, as if the writer was unused to presenting these ideas in the first place, not because the situation existed.

Choices made some impact, but most responses were the same and the outcomes create the same situations in a more than predictable way. Multiple times in the story we get worse than the Mass Effect 3 ending railroading for end results.

The ending was flubbed with the most basic cards that showed hardly any world change and the “secret ending”. It is reaching to say that this was not something that guided others and these were still their choices in other games. It flat out says guided. That means their decisions were guided. That doesn’t mean gentle suggestion and that all falls on the original enemies. I wish it meant that, because they are more interesting, intelligent, and vicious in their personal well-meaning that way. I will not elaborate too much, but let’s just say it is not an incorrect read to be irritated that while some blame is still on the original villains, guided 100% means that it was not fully their idea (and sorry, Howe fooling Loghain is better than this), and cheapens every one of their moves and motives.

Romances…are disappointing. I watched the ones I didn’t go for and I experienced Davrin’s (his and Emmrich’s were the best but still lacking) and the writing and connection for a “connection” were awkward at best and pathetic on Rook’s part at worst. He’s just not that into you…

There is also the problem of pacing in the acts. Act One was a slog. Act Two only started to up the ante near the end. Act Three is the only act I would be willing to replay for story purposes.

There was an attempt, is all I can say.

Score: .5

General NPC and Follower Dialogue

I was offended the entire time. Offended because they didn’t take my intelligence seriously.

Sure, my Rook ended up being the happy go lucky guy he had to be, and there were some choices I approved of, but this is NPC and Follower Dialogue, not Rook dialogue.

How many times were “it’s hard” “it’s difficult” “I’m sorry” “Nadas Dirthalen” and the worst offender “Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain” repeated? How many times must I late in the game be handheld to my waypoint. At least Sera made up a bunch of names to keep Corypheus interesting in Inquisition. At least “the Taint” gave us a giggle in DAO. This? This just irritates me as a gamer that likes poking around and finding out.

“Shokra tou ebra” makes sense being repeated as it is a saying, I don’t mind it.

And why all of the sudden did we give up on the way we pronounce elvhen? It went from pretty and different to just…sounding like the running joke that they are mispronouncing words in an order.

Score: .5

Lore

I will be the first to admit that Inquisition screwed up here a good number of times too (specifically with Dalish and their treatment of magic) but the handling of the blight is bizarre in this game (I don’t care how “different” it is, it’s the blight, there are in-game rules). The Crows shifted way too hard from what they stood for even in Tevinter Nights, there was little to no pushback on elves, necromancers, Qunari (who were simplified in such a racist way, yikes) that was meaningful, aside from the other racist way that elves were blamed for things people who subjugated them did in the first place.

Having said that, the codex literally had so much of what I wanted in game, but of course they haven’t learned that showing is far better than telling in certain ways.

Score: .5

Voice Acting

If I could give a +2 for this I would. I have no qualms about the actual voice acting for anyone. Everyone did what they could with what was written and I couldn’t ask for more. Direction? Actual text provided? That’s another problem.

Still salty about the pronunciation issues.

Score: 1

Player Character Dialogue Options

I normally can’t stand the wheel and I’m ambivalent to voiced player characters but even recognizing the bias here, this very much is not…optimal.

This is the epitome of saying the same thing in a different way. Which is a shame because I really felt the voice matched my Rook this time, unlike with my Inquisitor, where I just shrugged and said, “eh, close enough?”

DATV was so close!!! If I could have just said something different in a meaningful way!!!

Score: .5

Replayability

I put 159 hrs into my main game and over 230 hrs as a whole into this game to give it the good old-college try. I tried. I tried so hard to like it and find replayability.

I have thousands of hours in Inquisition. Same for DAO. I played DA2 and some of the DLC twice only because I didn’t care for that game, but there were paths I knew I hadn’t taken that would have felt different even if the result was the same.

I’m not feeling it here. Everything feels the same with a slight change in pleasant cadence.

What is worse is if it weren’t for that awesome CC I would question if they even bothered to shoot for replayability. There’s nothing really new except a few new faction lines here and there. Nothing that grips me to go back. Except for my save at the beginning of Act Three. You shouldn’t bank your whole game on the last act, you know, “The journey…not the destination” and all that jazz.

Score: .5

——

Total

6.5/10

I was patient as I could be with this game. It is not a terrible game—just not a good Dragon Age game. But that’s part of the pain. There’s nothing to mock, only to be disappointed by. I can see the glimmers of the story I love hidden behind this milquetoast mess, but they only shine at the end. And that’s just not enough.

I kept my explanations as brief as I could with still getting the gist of where I came from. What can you expect from someone who actually did not hate the Hinterlands and misses it dearly (they were vast but I was patient. And I collected every shard in every map. Every game.)

So, I bought the game out of spite and now my wallet has regrets.

This really does make my preference DAO>DAI>DA2>DATV.

And I really had wanted this one to be up there.

Gonna go listen to Fall of the Magister now.

[thewardenisonthecase]

Finally, some overall thoughts on Veilguard

I want to begin this by saying I only got into DA back in June of this year. I don't have much of a dog in this race as the people who have been here since 2009 or the people who have been waiting 10 years for the conclusion of the narrative set up by the ending of Tresspasser.

But I have been obsessively playing the three past Dragon Age games since June and I was extremely excited for Veilguard, in part because I wanted more and because I needed a new distraction from the world.

All in all, I enjoyed the game way more than I expected. Maybe it has to do with the fact that my expectations were on the floor but who knows. I did like the game a lot but I do have many criticisms for it.

There some things that, at the begging, i didn't like but grew to enjoy. The combat is one of them. At first, when I was still learning, I really hated the combat system, but with time, I got better at it and now I enjoy it quite a lot. I will say, I still prefer the DA2 combater overall, and I miss being able to control my companions. While I prefer a more tactile style, I thought the combos were pretty nice.

Let's talk about characters. I was quite surprised that I ended up enjoying all the companions. Even if there were some I didn't bring out as much, I still liked them, and I enjoyed most of the personal quests, with Emmrich and Bellara's being my favorites. I like that the companions talk amongst themselves and it really seems like a group that is actively living together.

I do wish, however, that there was more...variation? to how some of their personal quests ended. I feel like only Emmrich's quest had a final choice that severly impacted his character, while the others, sure, I can see how internally they can impact them but it didn't feel like either outcome made a lot of difference. Also, Taash's quest of choosing to be more rivaini or qunari sure is...weird, but other users have gone more at lenght at this than me.

Side note, while the Hardened mechanic is really interesting, I was a tad dissapointed it only happened once.

I also really liked Rook, and after struggling to connect with the Inquisitor, Rook was what I needed. I like that for the most part, they're just some guy who has to shoulder all these responsabilities. I like their dynamic with Solas, and especially with Varric.

What I'm not the biggest fan of is the lack of actual roleplay/choice. See, in RPGs, I tend to play the typical good guy because being rewarded for doing good is like a power fantasy to me, so Rook being that was great for me. However, I can totally see why not being able to just be kind of a dick sucks. It takes away some nuances that a player can choose to give to the character, and it can kill replayability if you can only kinda of always play the same personality type.

Also, even thought the diplomatic/sarcastic/aggresive wheel is back, I think it was just for show. In DA2, even if the 3 options led to the same outcome, each response was written in a way that made them unique. A diplomatic Hawke is very different from a Sarcastic or Aggressive one. With Rook, it was remeniscent of DAI, where they don't have a lot of variation (by the way, I mean variation in how they were written, not at how they're acted out). I ended up varying a lot between all three options and never really noticed a lot more difference than an "aggresive" Rook is a little more curt/to the point.

And I must say, while I think most dialogue scenes are pretty good, and some even being amazing in my opinion, there were others that felt very...therapy talk. Lucanis's Inner Demons quest was the one that came off as that the most to me, which broke my heart since I romanced him. It just felt jarring. I think the game could have benefitted of having a quest focused solely on Rook, kinda like how DA2 has the 'All That Remains' so that at least for once, it wasn't Rook having to do therapy talk to all their companions. I also think the beggining of the game should have been Varric recruiting Rook, kinda like in Origins, mostly because I would have personally enjoyed that more than a wall fo text.

When it comes to the overall story. I am of two minds. I think, taking the game for what it is, I like it a lot. The ending made me cry, there are a lot of high points, and I liked the conclusion. However, when you take into consideration the previous three games, that are things that make me pissed.

I always knew that the lack of custom world states would piss me off, but I didn't expect to be so infuriated. There were MANY chances for this game to make references to the Fifth Blight and they don't, and yes, that pissed me off because it would have tied Veilguard with the beggining of the series, which would have felt quite nice. Althought the lore is interesting, I hate that everything is tied to the elves and that the mystery of Andraste, the Maker and the 7 magisters was explained and is now gone. I knew that was the direction of the game was going but personally, as someone who's not that invested in elves to begin with, I was sad that all of the plot points I enjoyed the most were tied back to the Evanuris. But again, that's a personal thing.

The lack of teeth in this game is real but more people have gone in detail about this so I won't go long.

In comparison to the other games, there are not a lot of actual, world impacting choices to be made, but at the very least, the ones that are there are indeed very impactful.

Like I said, I romanced Lucanis and while i LOVE the scenes we have, for a game that was marketed as 'the most romantic', it felt lacking. I think just being able to directly talk to the companions at any time like in DAO and DAI and spam a kiss button would have made it for me.

Even though I have...complex feelings about the Varric reveal, I think the endgame portion of the game is the strongest. I do wish there were actual epilogue flashcards. Also no, i'm not going to talk about the post credit scene, don't remind me of it.

All in all. For what it is, I think it's an amazing game. For a DA game, however, it was lacking. I still enjoy it a lot, and it's better than Inquisition in my opinion (but I just really...really don't like Inquisition).

[benefitnoone]

I just finished Dragon age the Veilguard

and here are my thoughts and spoilers

I played as Female rogue and lord of Fortune with female Inquisitor who romanced Solas

SPOILERS! and english is not my firts language and I am emonitional right now so be beware of mistakes

uff I need this to get out.... lets start with positives

I liked the art style :D seems like I am the only one...but it was pretty...some locations are breath taking

not dying in easiest settings was amazing...

Manfred ♥ and when he started talking....amazing

Assan ♥ => just love

Neve=> I wasnt sure about her but she is my fave...and I am pissed at myself not romancing her....

Davrin => loved him

Taash => I liked them more than I thought

Emmrich was fun

and now for negatives and wtfs

I dont think this game was made for fans of the series and hear me out...I was there whe Dragon age 2 came out and it was mess but Hawke and companions made up for it and I dont think Rook and their team matched that

it was too positive? Like everyone agreeing with Rook... ok Lucanis and Neve can leave but they come back and there is like no change in them? Yes, Lucanis will not romance Rook (Idk about Neve bcs I saved Minrathous)

since we are talking about Lucanis...him not romancing Rook If they choose Minrathous but end up with Neve ( if not romanced) is like WTF? and big fuck you to Rook... I think i would make sense that he woudnt romance anyone when hardend, and If you save Treviso he would be with Neve or Rook... also missed angst in romance with him with Rook wo does not save Treviso

back to companions... Like I said it was too positive for my liking... Bioware said in begining they want to focused on building found family and there was a lol effort and quest and cut scenes... but it felt flat... and even in family you can struggle but work it out and there was no working out

the decisions were also meh... and I dont realy know about replayability of the game...major decision was Minrathous vs Treviso and I think thats all? later you can decide somethings about companions....

I though that playing as rougue elf would mattered to the game.... like Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain  would be extra disgusted by that their oponent is nonmage.... but lols on me...

i romanced Emmrich and I was really excited, but idk romance itself was fine but the building for it was there if I compare it to rest of the game series was bland

Solas and Solamancers... well I am one of them... in DAI it was great...chef kiss....but in DA:VE.... it felt like nothing... there could be one memory from his time in inquisition... also his stance ond blood magic... no comment

omg i think I know what is wrong with Dragon age the Veilguard...It is black and white in world wiev and DAO and DA2 is gray and that is what I loved about it

also Rook backstory should be prologue tutorial like DAO....Varrics mentorship and death would be more impactful for new players... you know show dont tell ...

also writting in general was meh ...

why wasnt Hawke pulled from fade by power of friendship?

Varric not mentioning Hawke was heartbreaking as well as Isabela

the game would be fine If it wasnt Dragon age.... You had 10 years and you got us this...

I am sad

Game was fine and I had fun most time but it dint felt like home like rest of the games

[armofandruil]

Dragon Age: The Veilguard delivered in its finale where other Bioware games fell flat

Veilguard feels like the end of something. While it may not be the end of the Dragon Age series for good, it is most definitely the end of Dragon Age as we know it. With the Blight waning, no one to terrorize the Veil, and light shed on most of the major mysteries , it seems the next heroes of the Dragon Age will be battling against much different foes. The ending slideshow delivered the same reflective tone as Mass Effect 3 did, recounting the conclusion of each choice made throughout the course of the game. But while one of these finales caused outrage, the other felt earned. When I reached the end of Mass Effect 3 at the tender age of 13, I sat with my controller in my hands, thinking to myself, "That's it?". With Veilguard, I held my hand to my chest and thought; "That's it."

It's common practice to rag on Mass Effect 3's ending, even over a decade later, but there were still things I liked about it. I loved seeing the companions I've known and loved for 3 whole games gather on Earth for a final stand. I loved the final rush to the beacon. I loved everything until that little brat beamed me up into open space and gave me the choice of an RGB colour slider. And then made me download an epilogue. But Veilguard didn't fill me with that anger and disappointment. The main thing that I think sets these two apart is the final choice.

In Mass Effect 3, we had 3 choices that determined the faith of the galaxy, all with damning implications, but nothing to see the payoff of because it was the last entry in the series. In Veilguard, you finish it how you set out to at the very start of the game. Yes, it would have been nice to let Solas tear down the Veil, but that would leave no possibility of a sequel in a series that already has dwindling choice carry-over. And we all knew that this game was either going to be Bioware's last hurrah or a final chance at a comeback for the studio, so there was no chance of that.

Veilguard delivered in its finale everything I loved about previous instalments and more. It filled me with the genuine anxiety I had in the Suicide Mission of Mass Effect 2. Only this time, there was no saving some people. And it was a choice that came back to bite me in the ass hours later that couldn't be undone without reloading back MULTIPLE levels. THAT made the stakes seem real. I got to command the armies of the Battle of Denerim again, but this time I got to see the faction leaders in action. I got one last grand final assault like I did on Earth in Mass Effect 3, but this time I got a high stakes cinematic of all the faction leaders I'd gathered kicking absolute tail while I divvied out assignments. I felt like I got to see the payoff of the hours of work I did getting the factions to max strength, unlike the war assets/galactic readiness system from ME3.

I loved every conclusion, bar the lack of a true epilogue to the story. From redeeming Solas to punching him in the face. And I feel like that's a choice that will have satisfying payoff if they ever decide to continue. An angry Elven god trapped in the veil by a violent hand, a kicked dog beaten at his own game, or a benevolant protector of the veil all make for some interesting stories.

This game was far from perfect. There were retcons. Clumsy writing in places. Areas that weren't as fleshed out as they could be. But speaking as someone who's been in love with this series for nearly 10 years at this point, I was left very satisfied by this conclusion of this game, and perhaps, but hopefully not, the franchise. I was in a rush to finish this entry. I wanted to see how it ended. But those last couple of hours made me actually slow down and savour it. I loved it. And the replayability of it was just the icing on the cake, because it's mot over, not really. I can't wait to play again with a new rook, a new worldstate, a new story.

[ggmanreviews]

GGMan’s Weekly Video Game Recommendation #4

I play a lot of games. Some, everyone has played. Others, not so much. I'll be listing one game per week, that I have played and believe it deserves more attention. If you have already played it, then that's great! If you haven't, then you might as well. Pushed ahead of time because on other platforms, I’ve already reached the 4th review.

Name: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning Genre: RPG, Fantasy, Open World Game Developer: 38 Studios & Big Huge Games Publisher: Electronic Arts Engine: Havok Length: Up to 200 Hours Singleplayer? Yes. Multiplayer? No. Release Date: February 7th, 2012 Platforms: PC, PS3, Xbox 360

Reviews: Steam 9/10, PC Gamer 74%, GameSpot 7.5/10, Metacritic 81%

Eyyyyyy it's the first of many huge triple-A role-playing games, to come. This unique looking RPG and its story originates through the minds of bestselling author R.A. Salvatore, Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion lead designer Ken Rolston. Although this game was not exactly the best result for 38 Studios, considering how they filed for bankruptcy shortly after its release, it is still a decent game with predominantly everything that you'd expect out of a "poster-cut-out" RPG.

Essentially, you start out as a complete nobody, sadly like how many of us are in real life, until you are discovered to contain a special power or life-force of uncertain heroism, again like how many of us are NOT in real life, and as you would expect, your job to is to find out more about yourself and fulfill your destiny as the world's saviour. Although this game initially received mixed feelings when it was first released, you have got to hand it to the developers of 38 Studios that the general idea of a single man/woman being the supposed "chosen one" meant to save all of mankind and defeat the dark evils, that probably lurks just under your bed, is not a terribly overrated idea. This is considering, how many other games such as Skyrim, Greedfall, Witcher 3, Sekiro, StarWars: KOTOR, and many other similarities, have either fully adopted or partially used a strand of this primitive outline for their own storylines. I'm not saying that these games have done exactly like Kingdoms of Amalur, but rather, these games had done it better, with the exception of StarWars: KOTOR as that game is of its own supreme level and thus, might be covered by yours truly, in the future.

The gameplay, I would say feels like if the original God of War games had a baby with Dragon Age, and then in the mix came polygamy with Darksiders... then yeah, that's probably the best short description I can give you. On a real note, the gameplay wraps around a skill-based system where timing your button pressing skills would lead you to victory. Also, just like most action-based-button-pressings RPG's, this one does include a "rage mode", in or in this case, a "fate mode" where you literally wrestle with fate and use it to bash your enemy's head in. Sadly, unless you're into a full achievements Olympic track record, the replayability is not exactly there. Like Witcher 3, Kingdoms of Amalur is essentially a cakewalk after a few hours of character progression on the hardest difficulty and the only reason, that I would personally find, for going back would be the outcomes of the choices you make throughout the game.

Last but not least, the look of the game is amazing. It could be your alternate, less people-ish / less community-ish World of Warcraft game since the graphics, if you were to compare it, looks fairly similar. However, if you think that this game does not look like a Gordon Ramsay's Special Beef Wellington, then I have news for you. THQ Nordic purchased the rights for the game back in 2018 and plan to release a remastered version some time this year, 2020.

PC System Req (Minimum) OS: Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7 Processor: 2.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo / 2.6GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Memory: 1GB for Windows XP / 2GB for Windows Vista & Windows 7 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 / ATI Radeon HD3850 Sound: DirectX Version 9.0 Storage: 10.5GB

PC System Req (Recommended) OS: Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7 Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Quad / 2.6GHz AMD Phenom X4 Memory: 3GB for Windows XP / 4GB for Windows Vista & Windows 7 Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260 / ATI Radeon HD4850 Sound: DirectX 9.0 Storage: 10.5GB

Side Note: Minimum Resolution of 1280 x 720

Price (USD): $19.99 [PC, Xbox 360, PS3] On Steam it's an assured 20 bucks but for consoles, especially the Xbox 360 (since it's no longer in production), the prices may vary depending on where you purchase the game. In my opinion, the price is just right for the game considering the amount of content it offers. However, if you're like me, who feels that you're are always poor no matter what you've got in your bank account, then waiting for a sale of minus 5 bucks, is alright.

Longest one yet so, I do apologize if you're annoyed because it is a bigger game in comparison to the rest so, I wanted to give a proper take on what it's worth.

[jentrevellan]

DA questions 10, 12, 17 please?

Tassss I’ve only just seen this because tumblr mobile is the absolute worst! Anyway! Here we go, thank you for asking lovely! <33 

10. Share a pic of your favorite OC from any DA game.

Elsie of course! I just really love her. A lot. gdi. 

12. Do you prefer DA:O, DA2, or DA:I most?: I’m gonna say DA:I simply because it got me back into the series, and the replayability is super high and I’ve literally poured thousandsof hours into it. It’s so pretty and it’s my go-to de-stress game. <3 

17. What did you name your Mabari?: Ser Wuff! 

Dragon Age Questions 

[ingloriousbi]

Long, drawn-out 80-hour experiences aren’t always a good thing. They can be incredibly frustrating.

Side quests become tedious, with no real rewards. They become fetch quests or grind quests or inconsequential rp quests. 100% requires all these little collectibles – like the ac feathers or solas’ orbs or what have you. Travel between locations can be difficult or stunted, and gameplay can become tedious – the fighting takes too long, or the cutscenes take too long, or the dialogue is unending. I usually find myself skipping through long dialogue when I can read the text, I don’t usually read everything on terminals, and I usually only ever 100% things out of compulsion.

For reference: my first dark souls 3 playthrough was 50 hours, but my second was less than 20. Even going by just the second play through I would consider dark souls 3 worth 60 bucks.

Because it isn’t *just* about hours. An 80 hour, long-ass drawn out low quality shit show isn’t better than a high-quality, well polished 20 hour game. But those 20 hours need to be *polished* and they need to serve the game. In a game like dark souls 3, that meant the atmosphere, combat, boss fights and environment needed to be polished and interesting. And they were! The atmosphere was amazing, there was good enemy variety, the boss fights were awesome, the lore was interesting enough to keep me on my toes, and the combat system had good depth to it.

But RPGs need roleplaying elements. Shooters need engaging gameplay. For 60 bucks, the outer worlds should have offered more time with its existing system or greatly enhance it.

The armor and weapons easily capped their max armor/damage, and with the tinkering ability and unending trash a-la fallout, I had a better weapon than any drop or quest item ever gave me. Instead, the constant armor and weapon drops exclusively became a means to money, and this translates into insane inventory management, because of course it does. I can’t speak too much to weapon/attack variety, because once I’ve got a gun I like I usually do a full playthrough with it (although the distinct lack of snipers annoyed me, especially for places like roseway and tartarus), but armor variety was shit. Armor offered little balance, bad mods, shitty stats, and all looked ugly as hell. I never used any medical items except for the standard heal, and never felt the need to (I was playing on regular difficulty). The difficulty curve was really weird; I struggled the first hour or so and soon after I was completely overpowered; but manti-queens were still always a tedious, semi-difficult bore, even when I one-shotted everything else.

The roleplaying elements started off really strong. Back in Edgewater, way at the start, someone even commented on my wearing marauder armor – which just happened to be the first thing I looted from some enemy. There was a lot of humor to balance how genuinely overwhelmed I felt with this new world (in a good way) that slowly gave way to more serious narrative, while never taking away your options for fun. As I found my bearings in the world, the narrative offered good themes and such (obviously; fuck capitalism!) but also had a good balance of “large save the colony!” vs “Im just a dude in space” and you can roleplay for either or in the middle of those two. There was never really a moment I felt it was weird that I was putting the main quest on “hold” to do side quests (with the exception of the fucking tailoring quest line which was really jarring lmao).

Questlines typically offered a healthy balance of options; it really allowed for different outcomes, different character motivations, etc. I didn’t feel shoe-horned into certain dialogue options in order to complete quests the way I wanted to complete them. There was nuance to your choices/dialogue options with characters and in questlines. Persuade, lie, or intimidate weren’t always a different button to the same outcome; oftentimes they actually led to different things happening in the quest. There were also different ways to complete your goals in-game, with different kinds of stealth, to murder or not to murder, talk your way through, guns-blazing, etc. Usually quests gave options I wasn’t really expecting and had a pretty good amount of interactivity between them (think the strike quest on Monarch, or the Sublight quests on Monarch). The only time I felt really shoe-horned was at the end of Lily Hagen’s questline and during the ending quest. Lily Hagen’s last quest is also the only time I felt like I got a significant choice where the consequences didn’t actually matter, which was really frustrating considering the ending of the fucking game.

The way skill points allowed for both in and out of dialogue improvements was really cool (e.g. persuasion isn’t just new dialogue options but affects enemy’s statuses, etc) and the combination of skills required during roleplay elements (i.e. you need persuasion AND science points to convince a scientist of X) felt really strong and did really well for my immersion. In the last mission this all went to shit though.

I liked a lot of the individual characters (I fucking love Phineas and ADA, Zora and Sanjar and even the Van Noys were really fun, a lot of characters were really sympathetic like Reed and Graham) and most of the companions have interesting enough personalities, but there’s a definite problem with the crew members and their implementation.

There was a huge difference in character quality between them; Felix has significantly less character depth to him than any of the other companions, even though his questline felt like it should have had a significantly larger impact on a person. Ellie and Nyoka are super interesting characters, but neither really allow for significant character growth after their respective missions or during companion dialogue.

Parvati and Max have significantly more depth than anyone else on the ship, and these are characters with the most growth and arguably most impactful side quests (measured by impact on the characters). They also have way more, and more in depth, companion dialogue. And still I’d argue the growth is too little. You run out of dialogue with your companions super quickly and they rarely have anything to say about your choices or whatever. Only Ellie really spoke up about some stuff I did/had questions for me about Phineas and even then it didn’t actually matter. Ellie’s lack of character growth was probably the most jarring, because she actively starts conversations that would/should lead to it but she remains unchanged until the epilogue informs you You Did Change Her Mind After All. Felix’s lack of anything was really disappointing especially since I didn’t really care for him, but he was really sympathetic to the captain and to the unification of the crew, especially near the end (his joining the crew was also the most random). I loved Nyoka but her alcoholism is a little much and casually overplayed for no reason, and it actively inhibits what could/should have been character development after her mission. I actually kind of feel like non-companion NPCS like Catherine Malin or Zora had more character development and relationship development with the captain than some of my companions. Parvati got the most personal and had the most growth, but it was *all* in relation to her dating life lmao.

This lack of depth or use for the companions is really bad when you think about the way they are positioned in relation to the factions and again, this is made worse during the last mission. I was kind of happy there were no romances when that was announced, because I thought it would allow for more independent character growth instead of development based on whether or not you’re fucking the player character, but what it really lead to was static characters and static interaction with them. The interactions between them are fun at the start but there aren’t many of them and they quickly end up repeating themselves. I wasn’t expecting fucking Mass effect or Dragon age companions, but I was expecting better than the fallout 4 fare.

The gameplay, skill division and choices/quest options really allow for interesting replayability for both different options/character motivations within an ending but even more so when you consider the fully pro-board playthrough (idk if I could stomach it though). But even with another playthrough I’d be looking at just 40 hours of gameplay (if I 100% it again, and I could probably do it in less than 20 now that I know where/what/how and how useless most loot is) and the companions would remain disappointing.

And the ending just throws it all in my face, especially the skill/stat division is just… terrible. I was level 30 and all side quests were done; I couldn’t milk more levels/exp if I WANTED to, and it was still bad. But I did get to walk back to my ship, re-spec my stats, and then walk all the way back to the end of the mission I’d already played which was super fucking funny.

It was a good game, and most of the game was genuinely good, but the things that let me down were the things that I really wanted, or are really impactful (IT’S A SHOOTER RPG, WHY DOES YOUR COMBAT SUCK). And it was so short. It was a eally well polished, quality experience, and I wouldn’t have liked to see it stretched out to 50 hours because it would have ultimately done it a disservice (and the story WAS genuinely really good and well-done, the world was well-crafted, and I would have hated to see it drone on and one when it’s better than that) , but I WOULD have liked to see an hour or two extra per companion and a price reduction to 40 bucks at launch.

Theme: 10/10 Narrative: 10/10 Atmosphere: 10/10 Environments: 9/10 Shooter-gameplay: 5/10 Character creation: 7/10 (shitty physical creator 3/10, very good stat creator 8/10) RPG Dialogue/Quest Gameplay: 8/10 Companions: 4/10 Inventory management: 1/10

[captainmeowvel]

for the dragon age questions!! 1, 7, 8, 10, 12, 33, 34, & 78!!

/happy screeching

original questions: http://octozoid.tumblr.com/post/164261188460/101-dragon-age-questions

Thank you Cricket for indulging me and my dragon age trash :’>

1. my friend @fujo got me into it!! she visited me last year (or was it the year before??? what is time) and told me I needed to play these games because I’d love them and she was not wrong. I got completely hooked.7. I’m torn between Tabris and Mahariel. Mahariel tears my heart apart, as does Tabris in a lot of ways but I fucking love being a lady elf and having your guy elf turn up and chuck you a sword - i c o n i c8. MAGE. Super predictable but I fucken love mages. magemagemagemagemageeeeee10. Arla Lavellan

12. how am I supposed to choose????? I love them all but I would probably go with inquisition, it’s the most replayable for me.33. acKKKK DECISIONS. I love them all for diff reasons but overall? Probably Shale. I just really fucking love Shale.34. probably solas to be honest. I mean, he doesn’t like tea???? wtf??????????? for real tho, I found him very grating because he was so patronising and very disparaging. also the whole ‘your/my/our’ people thing was iffy as hell. I know he’s very well loved but I just… he reminds me of guys I knew at school and not in a good way :x78. a mage without a hidden agenda. also some better character development for Solas. more than that, I don’t know really. I’m trying not to think too much on it and get my hopes up?? I just can’t wait for it to be released, the excitement of playing a bioware game for the first time… nothing beats it really c’:

[viatorix]

Steam Summer Sale Game Recs

Since the summer sale is on and I’ve gone a bit ham on it myself, I thought I’d rec some fun games. There’s some great games going for ridiculously cheap right now until the 5th of July, so have at it. These are in no particular order, but [*] marks my some of my absolute favourite games.

UNDER 5

[*]Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic ($2.49 | £ 1.74 | € 2.49)  - Fantastic story with traditional Bioware choice-based decisions, and awesome, memorable characters. This is a classic game and one of the greats. You don’t even need to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy it. It’s an old game, so it’d run on probably most low grade computers.

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, The Sith Lords ($2.49 | £ 1.74 | € 2.49) - Sequel to the first game, and set five years after. This one is just as good as KOTOR, if not better. Be aware that its recommended that you download a mod that restores parts of the story and fixes bugs (found here).

Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor - GOTY edition ($3.99 | £ 3.19 | € 3.99)  - Like a better version of Assassin’s Creed except in the world of LOTR. 

Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons ($1.49 | £1.09 | €1.49)  - this is criminally cheap for the heartwarming game this is. It’s not too long, as you can finish it in a few hours, but it’s good. Bear in mind you will have to have a controller to play this game as you use the analog sticks to control each brother.

[*]Dishonored ($2.49 | £1.99 | €2.49)  - A first person assassin/stealth game with an awesome story. Dishonored is one of my favourites and probably one of the best games out there. It’s highly optimised, so is pretty playable on most machines.

Fallout: New Vegas ($2.49 | £2.49 | €2.49) (Ultimate Edition: $9.99 | £7.49 | €9.99) - One of the best, if not the best fallout game. Awesome story with high replayability, and highly moddable. 

[*]Life is Strange ($4.99 | £3.99 | €4.99) - A narrative, Telltale-like game with (yet again) a great story and characters. Warning: you will cry. Heavily. More than once.

[*]The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition ($2.99 | £2.24 | €2.99)  - Great game, and great introduction to the Witcher series. Much better story and controls compared to the first game, so don’t bother with that one. A medieval slavic fantasy in which you not only kill monsters but also get mixed up in political intrigue. 

Saints Row IV: Game of the Century Edition ($4.99 | £3.74 | €4.99)  - insanely fun and hilarious GTA-like game. The moment ‘Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ by Aerosmith started playing as I tried to disarm a rocket in the first ten minutes, I knew this game was gonna be great. I also recommend Saints Row III  (Full Package: $3.74 | £2.74 | €3.74)

Apotheon ($3.74 | £2.74 | €3.74) - Do you like Greek mythology? Then this side-scroller is great. It’s simple, with fun combat, bosses, and all in a beautiful Ancient Greek vase art style.

Domina ($4.99 | £3.49 | €4.99)  - Wanna manage and even play as Roman gladiators? This is a short, pixel style game in which you can!

Kindergarten ($3.99 | £3.19 | €3.99)  - play as a kindergartner and solve a murder mystery while trying not to get killed yourself (yes, really). This is funnier and more light-hearted than it sounds. 

Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna) ($2.99 | £2.39 | €2.99)  - Native American story written by Native Americans in partnership with the game studio that created it. It’s a beautiful puzzle platformer about restoring the balance of nature.

Reigns ($1.49 | £0.99 | €1.49)  - A simple card choice game in which you are damned by the devil to play the lives of every successive king and try to maintain your kingdom while unlocking more cards through your choices. I’ve had fun with it. 

Portal 2 ($1.99 | £1.49 | €1.99)  - If you haven’t already got Portal 2, do yourself a favour. This is a fun game (great with friends) and it is ridiculously cheap.

UNDER 10

[*]Borderlands 2 - GOTY ($4.99 | £ 4.99 | € 7.49)  - This and Tales are two of my favourite games. It’s a fun scifi shooter that is great playing with friends or just alone. The characters, especially the villain are awesome and the whole thing is so well written (and hilarious). Plus since its GOTY you get all the DLC which is hours upon hours. Don’t bother with the first Borderlands, it’s rather dull compared to the sequel.

[*]Tales from the Borderlands ($6.24 | £ 4.74 | € 5.74)  - A telltale game set in the Borderlands world and after Borderlands 2. As a telltale game, it’s mostly a purely narrative game in which you control the character and the choices but don’t have to go shooting at stuff (95% of the time). It keeps the humour of the Borderlands games, and features great characters.

[*]Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition ($7.49 | £4.99 | €4.99)  - The first dragon age game is arguably the best. Good story, characters, and something you can sink your time into. It’s a good (and obvious) place to start the three game (so far) Dragon Age franchise. 

The Walking Dead ($6.24 | £4.74 | €5.74)  - Another Telltale game (they’re great okay?) based on the Walking Dead series. This is one of Telltales best. Be prepared to cry. Also pick up Season 2 ($6.24 | £4.74 | €5.74)

The Wolf Among Us ($6.24 | £4.74 | €5.74)  - Well you might as well get this too. Though personally, Tales from the Borderlands will always be my favourite, the Wolf Among Us has been lauded as the best of the Telltale games and is pretty damn good.

[*]Final Fantasy VII ($5.99 | £4.99 | €6.49) - The most famous of the FF games and one that was pretty much my childhood. The nostalgia is unbelievably real. There are stories that stay with you, and this is one of them. 

Baldur’s Gate II: Enhanced Edition ($6.79 | £5.09 | €6.79)  - One of the classic, defining games from which other fantasy games spawned. This is an old game, but the story is still amazing.

[*]The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GOTY ($7.49 | £6.49 | €7.49)  - the precursor to Skyrim and just as good. There is a stupid amount to do in this game, not to mention the mod scene which is still alive and kicking.

UNDER 15

[*]Final Fantasy IX ($10.49 | £7.99 | €10.49) - Another of my favourite FF games, and in my opinion, one of the best. Definitely recommend.

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen ($11.99 | £9.59 | €11.99)  - an open-world RPG with lots of quests, story, character options and is damn fun.

Bioshock: The Collection ($14.99 | £9.99 | €14.99)  -  Bioshock is a great franchise, and with this pack you get BioShock Remastered, BioShock 2 Remastered, BioShock 2: Minerva's Den Remastered, BioShock Infinite, BioShock Infinite - Season Pass, and Bioshock Infinite: Columbia's Finest. Holy shit.

If anyone has any other recs, feel free to add them!

[illusivegore]

Eight to Consider: Games of Last Generation – Part One

I’ve been pondering over this list for some time now. I’ve wanted to discuss my favorite games of last generation, but I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. As you may or may not know, Eight to Consider is an ongoing feature here at GAJ and usually consists of a list of eight items related to a certain topic, but with all the games I had to choose from, eight just felt too small. I didn’t want to bog the list down with too many games, but I wanted to discuss a good number. I ended up deciding on 20 because it just felt right to me, so let’s just pretend the title of this article actually makes sense.

The next question I had to ask myself was, “What exactly should be considered last generation?” Should I include PC exclusives or handheld games that technically haven’t changed generations? Should I consider the Wii as last generation or the Wii U or both since there’s a bit of a grey area there? Should I include HD re-releases or compilations? Well I went with what I felt was the most obvious way to handle it. I decided to keep the list strictly confined to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 library (since that’s where I played a majority of my games anyway) and if it was on the system at any point, it was fair game. This includes all retail games, as well as games available exclusively via download from PSN and XBLA.

(Shout out to the original The Binding of Isaac because it never made its way to consoles, so it doesn’t fit the criteria for this list, but it’s fantastic and you should play it.)

With all that out of the way, what follows are my favorite games from the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (as well as a few extras sprinkled throughout). Here are the first 10 of 20 games from last generation for your consideration.

20. Pac-Man Championship Edition DX

Platforms: PSN, XBLA, Windows Phone, Windows 8, Windows RT, Steam, iOS, Android

Starting things off is a fantastic entry in the Pac-Man series. Championship Edition DX is, far and away, the best Pac-Man game I’ve ever played. By taking the great foundation that the original Championship Edition built and ratcheting the intensity up to 11, DX is a truly special game. It is all about memorizing patterns, while traversing each maze at insane speeds and was some of the most fun I had on both Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

19. Fable II

Platforms: Xbox 360

The Fable series is a bit of a divisive one. I never played the original Fable and Fable III left much to be desired, but Fable II hit all the right notes for me and I fell in love with it. It was the perfect blend of adventure, RPG, and action, just deep enough to keep things interesting, but not overly complicated like so many games of the genre tend to be. Now that it is backwards compatible with Xbox One, it might be one of the reasons I end up picking up Microsoft’s new console.

18. South Park: The Stick of Truth

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

South Park: The Stick of Truth might just be the biggest surprise on this list. With all the ups and downs it faced during development and with it being a licensed game, the fact that it turned out well was a bit of a shocker. Not only did it turn out well, it’s actually pretty damn great RPG. As a long time fan of South Park, getting a game that actually did justice to the show was a long time coming and well worth the wait. Granted, The Stick of Truth probably isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve ever enjoyed an episode of South Park, do yourself a favor and give this one a try.

Honorable Mentions: Batman: Arkham Asylum | BIT.TRIP Presents…Runner 2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien | Borderlands 2 | Braid | Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons | Castle Crashers | Child of Light | Costume Quest | Darksiders | Dragon Age: Origins | Dragon’s Crown | The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

17. Rock Band 2

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Wii

This right here was, in my humble opinion, the pinnacle of the rhythm game. Some believe Rock Band 3 was the best in the series, but I felt it got a bit watered down with the addition of the keyboard and because of that the game’s track list suffered. Rock Band 2, on the other hand, took everything great about the original game, refined it, and made a near perfect experience. While the track list wasn’t quite as good as the first game, being able to import the original’s songs made for a complete and satisfying rock show. On top of all that, the sheer amount of downloadable songs made Rock Band 2 a game with nearly endless replayability. Perhaps the greatest attribute of Rock Band 2 is all the fun times and good memories it help create and for all those reasons it more than earns its spot on this list.

16. Resident Evil 5

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Shield Android TV

Resident Evil 5 isn’t quite as good as its predecessor, Resident Evil 4, but it’s still a great, underrated game. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for RE4 coming before it, RE5 would probably be a much more lauded over game. Granted, the addition of co-op wasn’t welcome, thanks to the terrible AI. Outside of that one complaint, Resident Evil 5 is and will always remain one of my favorite action games from the PS3/Xbox 360 generation and if you’ve never played it you can even pick it up Xbox One and PS4 now.

15. Tomb Raider

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, Xbox One

The 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider is another game that surprised the hell out of me. I’ve never been a big fan of the series, for a variety of reasons, so I was skeptical about this reimagining of Lara Croft. Well, it turns out that Tomb Raider is one of the best action games to release in years. There is so much to love from the exploration to the combat to the actual tomb raiding. It’s a nearly perfect experience and another game you can check out on current generation consoles if you missed it the first time around.

14. Bastion

Platforms: Xbox 360, Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One, iOS

Bastion is the total package. It’s gorgeous, has one of my favorite soundtracks, and is an absolute joy to play. I’ve played through Bastion at least half a dozen times on a variety of platforms and each playthrough is always just enjoyable as the last. With a variety of upgrades and challenges, multiple endings, and combat that never gets old, there are plenty of reasons to consider Bastion one of the best games of the past decade.

Last Gen’s Biggest Disappointments

Batman Arkham City | Brutal Legend | Dead Space 2 (Let’s not even talk about Dead Space 3. Gross.) | Dishonored | Fable III | Resident Evil 6 | Shadows of the Damned | State of Decay

13. Shatter

Platforms: PSN, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux

What a game. Shatter is fantastic and did something I never thought a game could do, it made me enjoy breaking bricks. It’s a unique take on the Breakout style of game that changes up the types of environments you play in, allows you to manipulate how your ball travels, and even throws in boss fights for good measure. All of that is great, but perhaps Shatter’s best feature is its amazing soundtrack. Seriously, have a listen to this sweet tune.

12. Super Meat Boy

Platforms: Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Android

In 2010, Super Meat Boy was the best platformer I had played since Super Mario Bros. 3 and to this day that remains true. Thanks to its tight, precise controls, quality level design, superb soundtrack, and brutal, yet fair difficulty I’d consider it a modern day masterpiece in game design. I’ve never completed the final level (apparently my skills peaked just prior to finishing the light world), but that has not and never will diminish my love for Super Meat Boy.

11. XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Platforms: PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Windows, Linux, OS X, iOS, Android, PlayStation Vita

I am terrible at strategy/tactical RPGs, but I still love playing them. Something about the combat is just so satisfying, but I couldn’t pull off a proper strategy to save my life. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is an unforgiving game, even on its easiest setting, but I couldn’t stop playing it until I saw it through to the end. If I’m being completely honest, I think Enemy Unknown is the only strategy/tactical RPG I’ve ever finished. There’s just something so addictive about building your own base, developing new tech, and of course the turn-based combat.

[pixelrelatedpodcast]

Dire Wolf Digital, the creators of the award-winning Clank! A Deckbuilding Adventure, today announced Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne, a new tabletop deck-building game set in the world of Dire Wolf’s hit digital card game Eternal. Available in stores this August, fans in the United States can pre-order Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne now via Dire Wolf’s online store for $25.00 USD.

Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne is the first stand-alone physical game based on the strategy card game Eternal.  Eternal is one of the most truly free-to-play digital card games on the market. Its sixth expansion, Dark Frontier, will release next week on May 9th and introduces new stories, game mechanics, and over 200 new cards. Eternal is now available on PC, mobile, and Xbox One, and will be coming to the Nintendo Switch later this spring.

Designed by Paul Dennen, lead designer of Clank!, Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne combines features of both deck-building games and card battlers into an intense strategic experience for two to four players. In highly-replayable games that unfold over 30-45 minutes, players will experience fast-paced gameplay as they attack, block, and summon creatures in back and forth CCG-style combat.

At a glance:

Number of Players: 2-4 players

For Ages: 12+

Playing Time: 30-45 min

Game Type: deck building, card battler

Dire Wolf is partnering with Renegade Game Studios to co-publish Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne in their ongoing collaboration on a number of physical and digital titles.

“When we first began to make Eternal, our crazy magical world of six guns and sorcery began to come to life around us,” said Scott Martins, President of Dire Wolf Digital. “We’re pleased to be working with our friends at Renegade to help Eternal make the jump from digital to physical gaming.  Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne is the next step in that journey, and one that we’re looking forward to sharing with existing players and new fans alike.”

Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne contains:

160+ Cards

4 Health Trackers

35+ Tokens

Rulebook

1 digital code for redemption in Eternal Card Game

Every copy of Chronicles of the Throne also includes a unique digital code that can be used in Eternal itself for 1 Draft ticket, 10 digital card packs, and an exclusive Curiox Dragon totem. Those who pre-order Chronicles of the Throne will receive an additional Draft ticket for Eternal, for a total value of $30 in free in-game content.

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Dire Wolf Announces Eternal Tabletop Game: Chronicles of the Throne Dire Wolf Digital, the creators of the award-winning Clank! A Deckbuilding Adventure, today announced Eternal: Chronicles of the Throne…

[roaddraw1-blog]

Avoiding Road Rage Incidents

This can be a game of spotting items out of the automobile window which are listed on the sheet and counting their occurrences. Each player would a use 1 facet of the car to look for the agreed gadgets. The one with the most occurrences inside a sure time period or distance is the winner. All you need is a pen and paper for every player. Items corresponding to cows, horses, farm silos, tractors, church buildings, cemeteries, farm dams and road indicators are good starters.

Variations - so as to add further spice each youngster might attempt to predict what number of of every item they will see within a certain distance or timeframe. The closest to their prediction wins.

Highway Journey Game #2 - Connect the Boxes

Every little one will need a pen and paper. One participant will draw a grid of dots (say 30 dots large by 10 rows so that the width between the dots and the rows is about equal). Every participant, in turns, then connects 2 dots with a horizontal or vertical line. The intention is to be the player that closes the 4th side to complete a field. The winner is the player who closes the most bins. (Trace: For those who shut in 3 sides you might be fairly positive your opponent will rapidly complete the box and add his/her preliminary within the centre.)

Street Trip Game #three - Automotive Make / Mannequin Reversii

This may have the entire car in matches of laughter...assured! When you see a Cadillac Eldorado (as an example) whiz previous, the gamers try to quickly say the make and mannequin spelt BACKWARDS. So for this instance the youngsters can be making an attempt to say "Callidac" (Cadillac spelt backwards) and the pronunciation would be something like Name-i-dac. Then for the model Odarodle (Eldorado spelt backwards) they might try to say O-dar-odle. Once people are attempting to say these words shortly it instantly turns into a real chortle... you may remember this game for years. (I do not know of anyone else who has performed this game aside from our family - so you could say it is unique.)

Road Trip Sport #four - Licence Plate Spotter

On a piece of paper every participant writes all the letters of the alphabet A- Z. Then the concept is to seek out the first digit on the number plate to match each letter on your list. The primary to seek out all the letters is the winner. (You could slow things down just a little, making the game last longer, by selecting a sure color number plate or a sure state and many others)

Street Journey Game #5 - I Spy

This works effectively for younger children especially. Take turns to search for one thing the other player(s) has to guess accurately. You start your flip by saying "I spy with my little eye something beginning with a (letter)_____". The opposite participant tries to guess it from the surrounding gadgets or countryside. The person who accurately guesses will get to have the next turn.

Staying sane on a household road trip goes to require some entertainment, each on the road and during down time. We have been playing some family games this last year that lie a bit off the overwhelmed track, that lend themselves well to a mobile way of life. All of them are card-based, fairly than board based mostly, all are versatile in the variety of gamers, and all have proven to be very replayable, no less than in our family.

Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Golden Carrot. There are a number of video games in the Killer Bunnies household, but in my view, that is the one you may want to take a look at. In this recreation, three or extra gamers vie to maintain their bunnies alive, while eliminating their opponents' bunnies. You will throw attacks at your opponents starting from relatively benign (Green Gelatin with Evil Pineapple Chunks) to endless racing game extreme (Laser Gun.) Defend your bunnies with the Magic Spatula, or feed your bunnies to keep them healthy, and try to be the bunny on the end of the sport with the Magic Carrot to win! This is not a collectible card recreation, but it surely does have booster packs, which add extra bunnies, more weapons, and more variety to the game. It is offbeat, wacky fun, with a bit of strategy and a whole lot of luck of the draw.

Magic: The Gathering. This can be a collectible card game, and one of the more complex technique games I've come throughout. Invented by a mathematics professor in 1993, it now attracts hundreds of thousands of players worldwide. On this recreation, two players face off with a personalized deck, constructed from cards they've collected. With the cards of their decks, players try to play creatures, events, and skills to reduce the opponent's score from 20 down to zero. The game is very strategic, expectantly thrown in, owing to the fact that cards are shuffled before each recreation.

The game has almost limitless variation and replayability, as cards will be traded, further cards purchased, or any of the hundreds of might be adopted to make games longer or shorter, or embrace more than two folks.

Munchkin is the mega-hit card game about dungeon journey. . . with none of that stupid roleplaying stuff. You and your friends compete to kill monsters and grab magic objects. And what magic objects! Use the Friendship Potion or the Boots of Butt-Kicking. Wield the Staff of Napalm. . . or possibly the Chainsaw of Bloody Dismemberment. Begin by slaughtering the Potted Plant and the Drooling Slime, and work your way as much as the fierce Gazebo or the dreaded Plutonium Dragon. Munchkin video games will sometimes final 20-40 minutes, and are assured to be hilariously funny for 2-6 gamers.

There's not a whole lot of technique here, and in fact the popular type of play is to use your cards on the most ridiculous second doable. Gamers are free to gang up on one another, or leap in and assist each other at any time, and the foundations cheating is encourage dishonest, just so long as you don't get caught. Give this game a attempt, I feel you will have fun with it.

Family street trips are a terrific and infrequently inexpensive strategy to spend vacation time with your children. Nevertheless, they can also be immensely aggravating for your complete family when your children start to get bored and restless. As an avid road warrior and a mum or dad of three young youngsters, I've been by means of quite a few ups-and-downs whereas touring by automotive. In consequence, I've mentally developed loads of "classes discovered" on the subject of hitting the highway. Here are a number of of my suggestions for helping mother and father and youngsters survive - and enjoy - an amazing street journey.

1. Break up longer journeys into small sections. If you can limit your time on the highway to 5-6 hours a day, it can save you yourself a number of stress. Attending to your first cease may also provide you with and your children a while for play and relaxation. Many youngsters cannot sit in a automobile for hours on finish, then go straight to bed in a strange hotel room. So attempt to stop before you're too drained, so that everybody call relax and have enjoyable before bedtime.

2. If you will be stopping for the night earlier than your ultimate destination, pack the bare minimal for a single evening in a separate bag out of your foremost baggage. This way, there's less to carry into the hotel, and also much less stuff to climb over while you're in your room. Once we travel, we pack a pair of pjs and a single change of garments for each baby and minimal toiletries (their toothbrushes are vital to remember!) in a duffel bag. It is a lot simpler to cope with for a single in a single day resort stay than bringing in a large bag with our total wardrobe for the journey.

3. If your children argue over a particular seat (or row of seats within the minivan), arrange a schedule upfront so that everyone considers their time within the special seat to be equal and honest to everybody else's time. It could actually save quite a lot of arguing over who sits where after each stop you make.

four. If there's a couple of grownup and extra room within the again, sit together with your youngsters for not less than a part of the journey. They might really feel that they do not get enough attention from Mom and Dad for those who're both in the front seat, having a conversation that doesn't include them.

5. Cease at relaxation areas every time doable, not just for a bathroom break, but also for snacks. If the climate is nice, it is also an awesome likelihood to let youngsters stretch their legs and eliminate the stressed vitality from sitting all day. Deliver along a soccer ball or frisbee and allow them to play close to a picnic space for a bit. It helps stretch cramped muscle tissue, relieve stress by way of recreation, and simply breaks the monotony of being in the automobile.

6. Domesticate a information of great road trip video games. Some examples are finding license plates from every state, on the lookout for all the letters of the alphabet (so as!) on road indicators, and looking for enjoyable shapes in clouds. You'll find an enormous choice of car games for teenagers by doing a simple online search, and in case you add one or two new sport ideas to each trip, you will preserve the selection contemporary and more thrilling in your children.

7. Make a sing-along CD of the kids' favourite songs, and have a family karaoke-model sing-alongside as you head down the road. Include age-acceptable CDs made for teenagers, but try to find some that you could get pleasure from too. One great line to consider is "Kidz Bop", which options remakes of well-identified pop songs with youngsters singing alongside. We even have made a CD of songs that our household likes to "carry out" on the Band Hero video games.

8. Get each little one an age-acceptable exercise guide and pens/pencils/crayons. Coloring books are great for toddlers, older kids might like multi-sport books, and teenagers often enjoy crossword puzzles or Sudoku (no less than, if they're trapped in a automobile with no telephone or game console)! With smaller children, it is a good suggestion to limit their time with crayons and pencils though; do not let them get so bored that they start drawing on the inside of your automobile!

9. Get a portable DVD participant if your vehicle would not already have one. Bring alongside a number of of their favorites, but also pick up a brand new movie from the store or the native video rental place. Try NetFlix if you travel often; you'll be able to keep your picks so long as you need, so you don't have to worry about due dates and overdue fees. You may also take a look at DVDs from many public libraries for free.

10. Pack low-sugar snacks to keep hunger at bay with out inflicting a sugar rush and the inevitable crash. Small baggage of child carrots, apple slices, or air-popped porpcorn ease a rumbling tummy. Healthy snacks are additionally vital if your children are likely to snack when they are bored reasonably than simply hungry.

If you go on a street trip with your kids, you understand that this can be quite a chore. Your youngsters can get bored, fatigued, and even start to whine as being in a automobile all day makes for a very long day. Beneath we are going to focus on what you can do that can help your kids from being bored on a protracted road journey to make issues simpler on you.

First of all, you must tempo your self when on these journeys. Plan in some breaks and let your youngsters get out of the car and walk round a bit. In case you can plan a stop after just a few hours of driving and do one thing kind of fun, the children will just like the journey loads better than just being within the automotive all day lengthy.

Get some transportable DVD gamers. These work nice particularly with smaller children who will take pleasure in their favorite movies. Get the automobile adapters as a way to preserve it powered up. Watching movies will help go the time for your youngsters.

Get a laptop desk for your kids. These are like a bean bag on one side whereas having a solid surface on the other. What is sweet about these is that your kids can use them as a desk to paint, draw, or do table top actions.

You would possibly depart on an extended highway journey earlier within the morning. Your youngsters will be awake at first but progressively the shortage of sleep can catch up with them inflicting them to sleep for a part of the trip making it simpler on them.

[zydrateacademy]

Review - Mass Effect: Andromeda

It occurred to me while thinking/drafting/writing some of this out that I have a lot of complaints mixed in with everything I say here so let me be clear: I like the game. I’m a fan of the series as a whole and my experience with the trilogy may paint over this review with the brush of bias. This game can be boiled down to “just more Mass Effect” and for a certain amount of fans, that’s all we need. I have some fairly strong feelings about how the internet has treated ME:A under a sort of double standard. An Elder Scrolls game gets released with a hundred bugs and graphical hiccups, nobody cares and just makes memes out of it. ME:A comes out and everyone loses their minds about how a triple A studio should have been “more prepared” and they had “five whole years”. Alongside various other logical leaps. Bioware is already taking steps to mitigate the wonky animations and frankly, that's enough for me. I'll be happy to see the patch later on. Yes, you could argue that it should have been done already but shit happens and making games is probably really difficult. I'm not really going to be part of the consumer dictation on what they do or don't do because I'm not in the industry, don't understand how it works and neither do most of us. Moving on. We’ll start with the story. The game begins six hundred years after the events of Mass Effect 3. We play as one of the Ryder siblings, put under cryosleep for those last centuries as a variety of “Arks” were prepared for the Reaper invasion and were sent off into Oblivion for the longevity of various species. The “Initiative” was never mentioned in the trilogy despite its rather insane implications but the Asari Councillor did have a sort of throwaway line in ME3 that could have alluded to this. Not all is golden, however. Right after you wake up you run into something called the Scourge, a silly name for some space magic that destroys some systems and puts your not-used sibling into a coma. (Yep, they’re still in the game. Clever!) After some literal firefighting you meet up with the Nexus, which is effectively the Citadel from the previous trilogy, except mostly under construction. You get sent to Eos in hopes to create a proper colony, but in order to do that you have to discover the secret to some “remnant” technology that is present across the universe as some sort of terraforming project.

This begins to tie into one of my main complaints of the game as a whole; The writing here is some of the weakest in the series. Once again, our entire existence relies on technology we know nothing about and are constantly fighting what is essentially the maintenance workers of the whole thing. They’re basically the stand-in for the Prothean race (At least the third game went and gave us one to talk to). Just another mystery to solve, and I don’t like it. Too many questions; What if one of these “Vaults” breaks down? Why are they even called “vaults?” They don’t store anything. They’re basically maintenance facilities. Find another word. That’s only the surface. Everything is named the way a ten year old would name their action figures. All the remnant robots are called something to the effect of what they do; “Observers” are oculus-type things with eye beams. “Creepers” are spider-like robots that swarm but don’t do a lot to you. “Nullifiers” have shields. And so on. It doesn’t end there. After you clear Eos of its radiation and return to it a few missions later, it unlocks some new areas and as you’re driving through some of these new areas, someone pipes up on the radio to justify their dumb names. I forgot the exact name of it but driving through one area was basically called “Allshope” or something with the radio saying “The mayor named it this because you gave us such hope!” Some shit like that.

However most of my ire is towards the vault thing. It’s Knights of the Old republic all over again, these vaults being the new Star Forge. Remember that? If you do, then you basically have a hold on how the whole game’s story is structured. Still, I’m here for the flavor and ME:A has plenty of it. The combat, as you may have heard in other reviews, is good. Not mindblowing (Nothing in ME:A is) but solid enough to be interesting. I mainly only played infiltrator in previous games and I really do miss the Slow-Mo I had to help me line up proper headshots but it’s mitigated with an admittedly more interesting RPG system that’s reminiscent of Mass Effect 1, at least in the sense of scale. You see: You have access to everything. Everything. You don’t just choose a class in the beginning of the game and stuck with that forever. Nay nay, Instead you opt into “profiles” that give you class-related buffs that are different across the board. You can swap between them as you feel encounters merit, but I have not explored this mechanic yet. As of writing I am level 32 - Of the 135 level cap. It’ll be something I’ll explore more in the NG+ but for now, I’m pleased with my tech abilities. While the trilogy struggled to find a balance between pure action and RPG elements, I think this is a cool style. The only hindrance I can think of is replayability - There’s almost no need to reroll a separate save file unless you just want to experience the early game with an entire different kit. I may do this with a biotic at some point, myself.

On a lore standpoint, this is due to an AI being implanted into you (Not as sexy as it sounds) and being able to “override” motor functions, etc. Hey, this is SciFi. On a similar vein, loot and crafting is derivative of Dragon Age: Inquisition, which brings its own set of irritations. Frankly, I don’t quite enjoy wasting too much time trying to scour every corner for every scrap of loot. Typically there’s a ton of mods, salvage, weapons, and armor that I will never use. Most players find a set of armor that caters to their playstyle and stick with it (It’s hard to ignore things like shield bonuses and weapon damage). The game doesn’t care, as it throws yet another shotgun at me, I just end up selling it. The only loot that excites me comes in the form of minerals which act as crafting supplies. They’re harder to get than usual and the early-game was a huge pain in the ass as I was forced to use the same equipment for the first 10-15 hours of the game. Early Game Hell is in full effect here folks and I don’t blame some people for finding it a tad boring. Indeed, this is Inquisition in space. Keep that in mind. Before I get down to a real hate-on let me cover a few things I like; I like most of the squadmates. Liam and Cora are a bit bland for my tastes but that’s generally been the case with all ME games two starter squadmates.  I like how the squadmates actually move around on the ship. Good touch. I like the crafting, even though the early game is a pain in the ass. I like the environments. By extension, I like some of the cities. Kadara Port looks awesome. I like the vaults themselves, even if I find them weak on a story standpoint. The moral choices are back and they’re pretty intense. I hope to see the ramifications and I predict another playthrough to ‘correct’ some of them. Go ahead and assume that stuff I don’t mention is probably at least “adequate”. Let’s get to the real hate. SAM. SAM is that AI I mentioned earlier that I wish would, for the love of all that is good, would shut the f[insert overlong explicit gag here] up about the survivability. See, when you’re off on your adventures, the environments will usually constantly wear down your life support because, as explained before, the terraforming devices have gone under disuse, or were otherwise turned off. A fine mechanic that makes sense and doesn’t bother me too much except for certain areas, like enemy strongholds, that have pockets of “adequate” breathability and support. So imagine my frustration when I’m fighting enemies, running and ducking for cover which takes me in and out of these compounds... Yes, SAM pipes up every single time it happens. He’ll even interrupt and override squad banter just to tell me that the area is ten less degrees than ideal. Fuck off, SAM. It doesn’t end with that. When you’re in the NOMAD, a slightly more passable version of the Mako from previous games, you have the chance to probe certain areas for minerals and resources. Usually when you’re in an applicable area, the interface will start a subtle blinking animation to let you know.

For some players, they’ll stop because crafting. Some just want to go complete the next quest and come back to these areas later; They don’t go anywhere to my knowledge. Of course, SAM cannot WAIT to tell me about it the nanosecond I drive into range of one of these areas. I’ve never played a Zelda game but I think I can sympathize, now more than ever. There are also some performance issues that put a stop to my being able to record the game for my Youtube channel. Every so often the game effectively becomes a fast slideshow, jagged nonsense that renders the game unplayable. It typically happens when landing to a new planet and exiting my ship but that is not the sole time it happens. It will also happen when I drive next to an enemy camp, lead the Nomad, and it begins again. Every time it happens I’m stuck in an unplayable state for a solid 30 seconds or more while I try to aim my slideshow behind cover so I can not die while the game remembers how to game. I’ve tweaked settings as much as I could and I’ve yet to go all the way to “low” on everything but I shouldn’t have to. My system is not toaster-oven status for another few years. There’s also some glitches that almost break the game, though I suspect they’d be remedied by reloading an earlier save. Every now and then you’ll have an objective akin to “Clear all enemies”. One time I ran around for five minutes trying to figure out what to do next, only to find out that one enemy was left, inside a wall.

I got lucky, they managed to clip through the wall and I was able to shoot their arm to death. That doesn’t happen every time, the above screenshot was in a generic respawning enemy camp that I couldn’t clear because that idiot was stuck in a rock. Clearing camps usually nets around 250 exp, and I don’t remember if I got it or not. To Bioware’s credit they’ve already outlined a roadmap to patching a lot of the problems people are facing with this game. I understand if some buyers will wait for a sale, some will wait a few months down the line while some of the major sweeping patches finally hit. For example, they’ve done a week one patch of adding some eye shaders that helped a lot with the uncanny valley issues everyone was having. I also made it to the same spot that one gif where Ryder steals the gun out of someone’s hand with an awkward expression; That did not happen in my game. So they’ve already done some hotfixing, and kudos to them for working on that. Whether or not I recommend this game comes in two parts. If you’re like me and you’ve been a fan of the franchise from the start, in all of its ups and downs then you’ll feel at home here. It’s more Mass Effect and after five years, I’m content with that. If you expect ‘more’ from developers, the best tech possible for the year, then some of the technical issues may hamper your enjoyment. Either way if you’ve played the trilogy and enjoyed it, then it’s very likely you should play this game to see the universe continue. That’s what I’m here for.

[andrewstwocents-blog]

Aralon Sword and Shadow 3d RPG

That which is done cannot be undone, but it can be avenged.

From the Creators of the award winning Ravensword: The Fallen King,The Elder Scrolls Artist Mark Jones, and Developer Galoobeth Games, comes ARALON: SWORD AND SHADOW, an Epic 3d Role-Playing Adventure.

A 3d RPG inspired by that classic vein that focuses on a compelling story, a unique hero, and an open 3D world ready for exploration. Journey through the Kingdom of Aralon and unravel its mysteries.

Features:

– Over 30 hours of gameplay – Gorgeous and dynamic 3d environments – 3rd and First Person play modes – Full Day/Night cycle and dynamic lighting effects – Epic Soundtrack and realistic sound effects – Customizable characters, including hairstyles, armor, and different faces – 4 Character Classes – Unique Skill Trees for each class – 3 Playable Races: Humans, Elves, and Trolls – A primary quest and multiple, optional side-quests – Hundreds of items to acquire and wield – Comprehensive Inventory System – Battle various enemies that use different fighting tactics – Faction system, herb gathering, crafting potions and magical items, dual-wielding, lockpicking, pick-pocketing, and more – Swimming, Fishing, Campfires – 8 Different Mount Types, including horses, dragons, and more – Fully animated 3d characters – Achievements – Pets and henchmen to help you in your quests – Save system with 6 different save slots

Game Studio Tycoon

Build a gaming empire! In Game Studio Tycoon you begin as a new game dev looking to make it big in the gaming industry. Over the next 40 years you will be able to develop games of all sizes on over 40 different platforms! Do you have what it takes to be the best in the business?

Features: – Play through 40 years of gaming history – Run a studio! This business isn’t just about making games, it about staying afloat! Have total control of your company including how much investors should own of it. – Develop on over 40 recognizable consoles from the past and near future! – Manage a team of game devs to make the best games possible! – Research new game types and platform options! – Hire contractors to help improve your games! – Awesome pixel graphics! – Tons of replay value – no two playthroughs will ever be the same! – 3 Save slots – Appropriate for all ages

Bloons TD 5

Five-star tower defense with unrivaled depth and replayability. Now with rewarded leaderboards for even more fun and challenge!

Build awesome towers, choose your favorite upgrades, hire cool Special Agents, and pop every last invading Bloon in the best ever version of the most popular tower defense series in history.

Bloons TD 5 delivers hours of fun and challenging play to fans and new players alike, with awesome features like this:

– 21 powerful towers with Activated Abilities and 2 upgrade paths – 50+ Tracks – Two-player co-operative play on custom co-op tracks – 10 Special Agents – 10 Special Missions – 250+ Random Missions – New Bloon enemies – tougher Camos, Regrower Bloons, and the fearsome ZOMG – 3 different game modes – Freeplay mode after mastering a track – 3 difficulty settings and family-friendly theme so anyone can play

And that’s just the beginning – regular updates will keep Bloons TD 5 fresh, fun, and challenging for many months to come. Now it’s time to pop some Bloons!

Meditation Studio

  Over 250 guided meditations

Over 30 leading meditation experts

Get unlimited access for a one-time fee

Stay on track with session scheduling

Get stress relief, sleep better, boost confidence & more with curated collections

Learn the basics, find happiness & break habits with step-by-step courses

Reed

Reed – it’s a tiny creature and the last creation of an old supercomputer. The old supercomputer is dying by losing all of his cubes and he’s getting much slower without them. Without supercomputer, world is going to end. Could you help him and save the world ? Can you collect all the cube that could be found in levels that are not so easy to pass ?

Infinity Loop Premium

The objective.

The game is all about rotating pieces properly, so that there would be no loose ends.

The content.

Entire content of the game consists from most exceptional fan-made puzzles, which were carefully selected by the developer team. This is why each and every puzzle will surprise you and bend your imagination in extraordinary ways. Animals, superheroes, real-life objects or beautiful abstracts – you can find it all here.

Nature of the game.

Although the nature of the game is quite meditative, it flexes the player’s mind in a manner, so that it improves both short-term and long-term memory, along with logical thinking capabilities.

The length. The game currently presents about 12-14 hours of top-notch puzzle experience. Please note that to ensure the infinite play, the content will be frequently updated. Make no mistake – every puzzle you see will blow your mind

    Deal – Free premium Apps and Games – Get them before they become paid again Aralon Sword and Shadow 3d RPG That which is done cannot be undone, but it can be avenged.