Throw the Javelin

I played the Anthem demos. both the VIP one and the open one. If you just want to know what I thought of the game without having to read everything; basically I really enjoyed the gameplay, but there were some massive issues with the VIP demo and a few issues with the open demo.

If you're still here, then I suppose you want a more in depth review of what I played. As always I have to start with the preface that I'm a massive Bioware Fanboy. That said, this is a very different type of game to the games they usually make. It’s still a role playing game to an extent but the focus has shifted away from the story or at least away from the human experience, the relationships you form to something more about gameplay and action.
For those who don’t know, Anthem is BioWare and EA’s upcoming multiplayer, 4-person-squad based shooter based around the mech-like ‘Javelins’ that the players will operate and pilot.
Not a lot is know about the story at this point, it seems to be a sort of post apocalypse where people live in forts and players known as ‘freelancers’ venture out to get whatever is needed and stop the bad guys and monsters from coming to get you.
It's a fairly common idea that we see in games a lot these days. Destiny, Borderlands, Metro to an extent, fallout and who knows how many others. So i wouldn't say the story is particularly original, which is a shame because that's what we all know and love about Bioware. That said it was only a demo. We got barely any story for it, so it's unfair to judge.
What we did get was level 10 game play.
the developers have said that the levels will cap out at level 30 so what we played was about a third through the game, strength wise and it was a ton of fun. One thing I've heard a lot, and agree with about the last Mass Effect, Mass Effect Andromeda, is that the story was bad, but the gameplay was a lot of fun, really refined, and i feel like Anthem took that and massively improved upon it. Without the shackles of an established franchise to hold it down I genuinely think that Anthem's gameplay was a huge step in the right direction.
The flying felt fun, the combat was punchy and the special powers made me feel very Epic. Especially the Storm suit which had me blasting elemental attacks as well as using the standard guns.

It's also worth noting that despite the solid game play there were a lot of issues with the VIP Beta, not all of which were fixed for the open Demo. For instance I experienced infinite load times, menu errors that stop you from being able to continue and the servers just not working for the first twelve hours or so.
It's to Biowares credits that all of these things were fixed by the open demo and the issues I faced in the open beta were significantly smaller, limited to things like losing connection to the server or simple bugs like graphical errors and lag.

So like I said, there were some errors but the gameplay was really enjoyable. We'll see how it does when it goes live on friday the 22nd, though I wont be able to play until the 25th as I'm going on holiday.
I do have high hopes, I hope its good.

- James

Anthem Tube

Dragon Age: Inquisition In Review

So.

Dragon age: Inquisition.

So the latest dragon age. The latest Bioware game. The Review. I should have done this a while ago, but I kind of didn't want to. Not because it was bad, it wasn't. It just wasn't as good as I hoped. And I don't understand why people think it's amazing.
This coming from an admitted Bioware Fanboy. Speaking of which; there were some moments in this game that did make me fan-squee a little.

So anyway, here it is, my opinion. Minor Spoilers ahead. ;

So I liked this game, really liked it in fact, but I didn't love it. Dragon age Origins, I loved. Mass Effect 1 and 2 I loves, even Dragon age 2 and Mass Effect 3 I loved. I'm the guy who plays Mass effect three, gets annoyed about the ending in private but then defends it when people complain.
Drangon Age Inquisition, however... Okay, let me qualify this. It's a good game, a really good game, but there were just some things about it that bothered me.

For starters, save compatibility;
I played on the PC, I played Origins and 2 on the PC so I wanted to play Dragon Age Inquisition on the same medium to continue my save file, to make sure that my quest continued, but they no longer allowed that. It worked perfectly well in Dragon age 2, I simply uploaded my save from DA: O to DA2 and I was ready to go, all the choices I made carried over and all the things they effected were effected from the go. This worked perfectly well 4 years ago, but when DA:I came to be developped it was impossible. Bioware required that we go to a website and 'upload' our characters then select which choices we made as we progressed through the game. Bare in mind its been about 6 years since I played and I dont remember what I did with every single character. Also worth noting that it couldnt find my main play through characters from DA: O no matter what I did. Not that it really mattered as I had to input all of the choices anyway, it just would have been nice to have my character name and image.
So that put me in a bad mood from the start.

Next thing that bothered me was the control system (I think thats the best way of describing it). DA: O and DA2 controls were designed for PC, or at least they felt more like they were. I could have every single one of my spells available at every moment. there was never a time where I had to choose between 2 different spells. I liked it that way because my character would have a dozen or more abilities, sometimes they wouldn't even be useful, except when going into specific scenarios or specific types of battles, but you wouldn't always knowyou were going into one, so when you did you were always glad that you had that spell sat at the end of your shortcut bar, waiting for it's time to shine.
In DA: I, however you're limited to 8 abilities, and after not entirely too long if you're a mage you have more than that. This limitation is due to the fact that the PS4 and Xbox One controllers map abilities to 4 buttons and then those same 4 buttons while L2 is held. PC doesn't have any of these limitations as it has both the mouse and 12+ keys to lock it all to. In DA: O it had the whole bottom of the screen dedicated to abilities and anything more than the number keys you jut have to press with the mouse. And I like it that way.
With DA: I I had to only use all purpose abilities, no attacks that only really worked in certain situations and no abilities I just kind of liked. Everything had to be streamlined and sometimes chaos works better.

Another bother for me was the necessity of unnecessary side quests.
Now making side quests a necessity has been happenning forever. In RPGs you have to do side quests to level up and move on. It's a part of the gameplay, you need to be stronger to fight stronger things, it makes sense. You're never locked out of progressing, you just might not be able to beat the things you have to face out there.
In DA: I, however, if you want to progress through the story you have to have enough 'Inquisition Power' to do the next mission. Each mission costs a specific amount and the amount gets higher as you progress. Each side quest you complete gives you one maybe 2 points of power, so they literally lock the next story mission until you complete an arbitrary number of side quests which, by definition should not be important. It's extension of game length via stopping you and turning you back.
It didn't bother me very much on my first play through. I'm a huge DA and Bioware fan so playing through every single thing was my goal, I was racking up 2 or 3 times the amount of points needed to get everything done, but when I decided to play through it again with a different character type I felt like I simply could not be bothered with it. I did not want to have to go pick up those 5 tomes again. I didn't want to have to go find 5 iron and a logging site. I didn't want to have to kill 15 mountain goats. I just wanted the story. I just wanted to advance.
I guess this is a pro-con complaint. on the one hand it was good enough I wanted to complete it again, on the other hand it was not as good hte second time because I'd done it before.

The last thing that annoyed me, and this is a really minor thing but it was a big thing to me, was the character archetype of 'comedian'.
What I mean by this is, you remember in DA:2 where you had the option of what your character said. You could say something good, something evil, something serious or something funny. and the game would remember it, then if you did it enough it'd make you say funny things without having to select it in the second and third act. But in DA: 2 you didn't have that option. I get that it was a serious situation. the world is ending and all that, but I feel like even in those situatiosn some people would be able to laugh. I feel like those situations are the best time for those people to do so.
Yes the world is ending, but if we stop laughing then we really are doomed. So I was disapointed by that. However it wasn't as disapointed as I was by a certain other character who was supposed to have a comedian mentality returning and being the dryest most serious character I'd encountered. The way that character was developped he should have been able to laugh in the face of any danger, any peril... and yet he didn't tell a single joke, make a single witty remark. It was disapointing.

Also the characters were a little weak in this one.

That said it was still a very good game. It made a lot of advances in the franchise and is well worth playing.
There are some really nerdworthy scenes where you meet up with characters from previous games, the gameplay, despite the consol limitations, is still thoroughly enjoyable, and the story is top notch. The personal stuff takes a little bit of a back seat, and I'd like it if they made the companion conversations more common, like, a lot more common, but otherwise it's still a pretty fun game.


I'm glad I bought it, glad I played it. Not sure I'm glad I bought it twice... but... Oh, yeah I bought it twice.
I'd bought it on the PC and then I heard it was going to have multiplayer so I bought it on PS4 to play with my friends. The multiplayer was a nice little edition, but not worth a whole second copy of the game.

Anyway, that's my thoughts, its not as good as the others to me, but still a really good game.
7/10.

Tubage
- James.

Dragon Age 2 Re-post

Again, away until next monday, so here's another old review (I'm running low on theses, not much more filler material left :( )
Enjoy!

I want to talk about Dragon Age 2. As you may have guessed from my previous reviews; I am a Bioware fan boy and almost everything they do will win me over, and this was no exception.

I absolutely loved Dragon Age 2, from its story to its gameplay, I loved the characters, the dialogue, it was absolutely amazing, however... I do understand most of the issues people have had with the game. True; the graphics aren't amazing, true; there has been a lot of customisation taken away from the player and true; the re-use of maps does seem a little cheap and tedious.

Since I'm such a fan boy we'll get the positives out of the way first so I can pretend there are negatives in more detail. The story was great; it was based around Hawke, the protagonist. He or she starts out as a refugee, recently forced from his home in Lothering (you might remember Lothering as the first place you went after you escaped Ostagar) with his mother and brother and sister. You decide to go to Kirkwall, where your mother has family.

From arriving in Kirkwall to the end of the game the player is constantly trying to move up in the world, from refugee to lord all the way up to Champion of Kirkwall.

The story doesn't have one over arcing villain or any impending doom that directs you, however the player is told at the beginning that something happened. Throughout the story there is a general undercurrent that the Templars and the Mages are at war, secretly and that is generally what the story is about. However even if I did love the story, without the intensity of a master villain to slay the story does seem unfocussed and lacks drive until the final act.

From the outset the player is told that the champion was there when this major event happened, and that he is the only one that can put the world back together, you're also told that he vanished, but you're told this by one of your party members. There’s something about giving the story narration from one of your main characters that takes away from the risky choices, at least when it comes to that characters general survival.

My major problem with the games narrative, regardless of my love for it, was (without giving too much away) in the end it felt like a massive introduction to the next game. most games where it starts as a story to learn something at some point you learn it and then you are able to do what needs to be done, with Dragon Age 2 the character doing the interrogation does not find the information they seek, they simply know that the Champion, just like the Warden disappeared and the world is falling apart.

I also loved the characters from DAO popping in every now and then, Zevran, Leliana, Alastair... would have liked to see Sten or Shale, but I loved the other guys’ appearances none-the-less. Gameplay wise I thought that the quick paced action of this game worked a lot better than with the previous iteration. It kept the player on their toes with the need for constant control of your character and your whole party. So far I've only played through as a Mage, but I played the demo as both the Rogue and the Warrior and all classes are incredibly fun to play. All of the abilities are more showy and, in some cases, far more useful. The only thing I can fault is, and this is purely personal preference, the inability to target team mates for spells. In DAO I would often let my Alastair get all the enemies crowded around him and then cast blizzard of lightning storm on him, in DA2 I was forced to target the floor or an enemy. It's only a minor thing, but then I did also really, really enjoy the game.

The Missions were well put together, and while many people complained that the game re-used a lot of maps to me that made sense. Your in a city, one city, working your way up, you're likely to visit places more than once, when a place has been swept of enemies you're not likely to come back three years later and find it still empty or with the enemies bones resting on the floor. Still, it was a big city; more locations would have been nice. Maybe some different shaped estates. I don't know, you'd have to poke a Bioware level designer to see what went wrong there.

My main grievance with the game was that they took a lot of customisability out of the user’s hands. In DAO my character was a mage, but he was a mage with sword, shield and armoured up to the chin. I understand that the lack of powerful armour could be chalked up to there not being anyone to teach the Champion Arcane Warrior to transfer Str/con stats to Mag/Wis stats, but then I didn't even get the choice to give the sword and shield character a great sword, even though she had the stats. The archer couldn't wield daggers, it annoyed me. I like to dictate what my characters can do, I don't like it when that choice is taken away from me.

That said, of course looking at it from a narrative point of view I agree with it, a person trained with a sword and shield would lose a lot of skill when faced with using a great sword, just as an archers skills are not in tuned to using twin daggers.

Still, on a petty note, I wanted my mage to wield a sword.

Over all I loved this game, but there were some major flaws, too few locations, the removal of customisation, the lack of drive to the story and the feeling at the end that I just paid £29.99 for a massive advert for the next game.

I'd give it a biased 9/10 and an un-biased 8/10.

Seriously-Bioware-CG-Ads-Are-Awesome

- James

Two of Fifty-two

***Spoilers***

Characters
Mordin Solus.

Ah, Mordin Solus. The unexpected highlight of the Mass Effect franchise. Don't get me wrong; there are wholey awesome other stuffs that happen in the game, but I find Mordin fascinating. He's Smart, funny, compassionate, callous, brilliant, unique, hard and soft all at the same time.
From the revelation that he sang Gilbert and Sullivan in multi-species productions to his work on the genofage project - both reintroducing it to the Krogan population when their bodies started to cure themselves and then later curing it himself - he is a constant avatar of the people who do what they must in order to protect the people of the galaxy.

Mordin is a former special ops agent slash scientist slash doctor. The first time you hear about him - In Mass Effect 2 - you are told that he is on the asteroid station 'Omega', running a clinic, attempting to combat a plague ravaging the non-human enhabitants of one of the residential districts.
The first time you see him he's talking at lightning speed, verbalising his thought process as he figures everything out about you in under a minute just from - what, in the mass effect world, constitutes as - an idle glance.

He joins your team and regails you throughout the game with a series of witty and intelligent remarks, alongside some quite perplexingly brilliant moments, like when you talk to him about your on-ship romance and he gives you inter-species sex advice.

Not only does he have a brilliant character, he looks amazing. he's scarred, haggarred and he's lost one of his... antenae? But still he smiles, he looks compassionate unless there's call for hardness, in which case he looks like an assassin. He  dresses like a field medic, but shoots like a spectre.


He is simply brilliant, so much so that I can't put it into words. from the first time you meet him and he casually dismisses you (your Sheppard dammit, nobody dismisses you!) right up to the point where he gives his life to make sure that the entire population of Krogan are freed from the fertility imparing genofage.

I wish I'd used him more in game. I always wanted to have Tali in my group which meant I needed a biotic which ruled him out, perhaps on my next run through - I'm going to be doing a full run through so that I have fresh eyes for my ME3 review - I'll use him and Jack in the second game.

So here's to Mordin Solus, he is the very model of a Scientist Salarian.
YouTubage
- James

MMOs, What is my problem...?

I just wanted to take a general look at Massively Multiplayer Online games, and what my problem is with them.
I've played a lot of MMOs. Star Wars: The Old Republic, Rift, DC Universe, Star Trek, Champions Online, Warhammer, Aion, Pirates of the Caribean, Lord of the Rings, RF Online, Dungeons and Dragons, The Matrix, City of Villains, Guild Wars, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, Everquest II - for about two hours - Star Wars Galaxies, Ragnarok and - my first experience - Runescape.

Yet I rarely last more than a month or two unless the game is free to play. I don't know why I only last a month or so, but I do. I love the idea of an MMO, a game that you can play with thousands, sometimes millions of other players.
A game where you can work together or compete for prestige or prizes.
I love the idea that you get recognition for your accomplishments in an MMO, sure you have to stand out brighter and better than anyone else, it's hard, gruelling work, but when you accomplish it people on your server know.
I've completed a lot of single player games, had a lot of accomplishments but nobody knows that. I've logged over 300 hours of Skies of Arcadia, but nobody will ever know that unless they read this blog.
I, however, know that a player named Cally on Eve online ran a bank for months, collecting people’s money and looking after it for them, until he walked in one day and took the 790 billion ISK - about 170,000 real world American dollars - used half the money to buy the biggest, baddest war ship in the game, kitted it out with the best gear and put a massive bounty on his own head with the other half, daring people to come after him for it on a fifteen minute YouTube video.
I know all about it and I've only ever played eve online for about twenty minutes.

Still, as amazing as it all should be I've rarely enjoyed an MMO enough to maintain a subscription for an extended period of time. I think, most likely, because they don't make me like my characters. I don't feel like I'm putting a character through the game so much as an avatar. Star Wars: The Old Republic is the only game I've played that does it well - and coincidentally it's the only MMO I've ever maintained my subscription from day one until now and got to the max level on any characters.

You can't really talk about MMOs without mentioning WoW I suppose, but all I have to say about it is that I got to level 30 out of (at the time) 85 and I was so bored I quit. It does so well now, not because it's the best MMO, but because it has so many people who have put so much of their lives in it. if they quit now they'd have thrown away half their lives. Sorry, no, not because they will have, but because they'll have to accept that they did.

Another problem I have is that I'm not great at chatting to other people in game. In my experience people are happy to jump on, get your help with a quest then disappear, but you rarely have conversations with them, rarely interact on any decent level.
I dunno, it just feels like there should be more to it. I've been playing through SW:TOR with a friend, so maybe it's that rather than my character that's keeping me going. Still I played WoW with a friend a couple of times and it always just felt boring.

Maybe I'm just a Bioware/Star Wars fan boy. Who knows.

Fairly pointless post, but hey you still get a YouTube video!
- James

P.S. Let’s be honest, they weren't all going to be winners, at least it's coherent... ish.