A Sane Man of an Insane World

I mean, it hasn't been that long since I've posted this, right? I mean, not much has really changed with Dragon Age. After all, Bioware is still calling it a "Dark Heroic Fantasy", it still has a combat system that can't decide if it is real time or turn based, and it probably still has characters that are remarkably similar to certain character from Baldur's Gate 2.

In truth, not a whole lot has changed with Dragon Age. But for once, they actually decided to let out some little things - well, a lot of little things, rather - that have changed the picture.

First off, let's start off with the fact that this game is hard. Dragon Age is undeniably a hard game. Reviewers have said it time and time again: you will wipe alot, and you will wipe hard. Higher levels and superior equipment and spells will be a great boost, but they will not be the deciding factor in who wins each battle. You will have to use something that most modern gamers are very much unused to - tactics! Strategies! Using your superior brain matter to overcome the AI!

I know a lot of players are gonna complain on the forums about it. And I am just going to gloat at them like the inferior beings they are. "Of course you died! You don't take advantage of the environment! You don't surround your enemies and use buffs to enhance your characters!"

I strongly suspect that we are going to get a repeat of alot of the brainhurt we got when Storm of Zehir came around - people say the game is too hard because they are idiots. "Enemies keep on ambushing me, even though I invested no points at all in sneaking and I have no rangers or thieves in my party and I have all Paladins!!1!1!!"

Secondly, I like the casual talking that your party members will have while you are just walking around the world. Nothing will trigger it. It adds a dimension to the characters that forced conversations don't possess. And it sounds to be very amusing when the sarcastic Alistair and the wry Morrigan send jabs back and forth as you go across town.

Thirdly, you can have your bones broken! When your party members come back from losing all of their health in a fight, you'll notice something. They'll have wounds. Surprisingly, people don't fight as well when they have a broken leg or a wound across their groan. They can be patched easily enough, but what if you run out of medkits?

Well, the game gets a lot more interesting. 

Lastly, I just need a good party oriented RPG that actually tries to tell a story, even if it is one I have heard half a dozen times before. I just want to recreate that feeling I got with Neverwinter Nights 2, or Knights of the Old Republic. The Witcher is the best RPG to come out this generation, but I still like my RPGs with people to fight along me.

And seriously, I need to stop being so stingy. How am I supposed to love this hobby if I hate every other game that comes out?

Fallout 3 is still a horrible pile of shit though.

(From Wikipedia: Downloadable content (commonly referred to as DLC) is a form of digital media distributed through the Internet. The phrase is used to refer specifically to content created for video games that is released separately from the main video game release. The phrase has, however, also been used to refer to any type of digital entertainment media distributed online.)

In a nutshell, DLC is content that adds to a videogame. This can essentially be anything from a costume to a mini-expansion, adding hours worth of content to a game for a modest price. Now I don't know when exactly the concept of DLC first came around in the sense we know of them today. It certainly started with the Xbox a good 8 years back. With Xbox LIVE, and consoles finally entering the internet a good 4 years after the PC, being able to download new stuff was not just an damn fine idea. It was downright inevitable.

So, skip a Videogame Generation, and take a look at DLC and it is everywhere. You can't escape it. Developers always say they will give DLC support. If DLC is right there on Day 1 it is praiseworthy. Heck, DLC is now commonly addressed in FAQ on most videogame websites. It is as common as the ridiculous regenerating health. You can't escape it!

But I don't like DLC. On the surface, it is good. More content for just a little bit more cash? What is so wrong with that?

Well, it is when you are charged $4 just to have an Xbox LIVE avatar that it is bad. It is bad when you have to pay for an unlockable costume, or $2 for a single weapon that DLC is bad. Pretty much, it is when instead of given you an opportunity to test your skill at a game you are tested at how thinly you can stretch your wallet that DLC is bad.

In fact, a lot of DLC sucks in this regard. Now, there are some instances where the developer has the balls to not charge you for more. Mainly VALVE - they never charge you for anything beyond the actual game. Portal's challanges? Free update. Team Fortress 2's new hats and guns? Came with a patch. Left 4 Dead's new campaigns? Again, one big update.

The problem with DLC is that it is way too much for too little. Recently, Bioware announced their first DLC for Dragon Age: Origins - Warden's Keep. $7 for a quest that we are assuming will last a few hours.

That is just too much. Think about it - for the PC, Dragon Age's MSRP is $50. The game itself will last a very long time - reviewers say anywhere from 30 to 60 hours on a single playthrough. With additional Origin stories, that could easily be tripled.  That is at minimum of, what, $1 (or less) for every hour.

The DLC is asking for twice the price tag for not even a fraction of the original game's play time! 

Now, do not get me wrong. I fully and completely understand why DLC is a necessity. Videogames are becoming more expensive. Budgets are getting bigger by every year, standards are getting higher. But $50 for a game isn't cutting it any more. Not even $60 is good enough for most console releases. Companies need extra income to stay afloat.

That is where DLC comes in. But the problem is that they are too much. And it is becoming more of an issue where developers may very well cut content from a game to sell it as DLC. It is not ridiculous to assume that one day some big name company will say "Insert Credit Card for Ending".

And players everywhere will do so willingly.

A long, long, long, time ago, I made a little post about my initial thoughts on building myself a gaming rig. What I had originally planned on buying then, and what I ended up were quite different. The cup was the same... but some other stuff was somewhat different. And some of it was the same. I kept the video card, but I threw out G.SKILL in favor of CORSAIR, and I favored COOLER MASTER for my cpu cooler. 

But that is all besides the point. I have a new computer - one that is wholly mine. I built it myself from scratch. I chose each and every component. This was my creation. And it never felt so good to see that boot up screen on my monitor (a tiny 1280x1024 one. It will be solved soon, I promise!). 

To be at the end of the road, it is nothing less than weird. When I first bought that Intel Core i7 waaay back, I was fairly certain I would end up selling it after giving this affair up. But for some reason or another, I persevered. I'm not one for commitments. I like quick satisfaction, and to actually spend a year buying the parts for a high end computer was a fairly big departure from the norm for me.

There was quite a few road bumps, most specificly me trying to figure out why nothing would show up on the monitor despite the fact I plugged everything in right. It only took me 12 hours and 1 help post on a computer builder forum for me to find the problem culprit in a DOA RAM stick.

Oh, and did I mention I had trouble getting the cpu to lock into place, and it had to take my engineer dad to do it for me? Yeah, that was an interesting moment.

I also had to redo it 3 times (first time because I forgot to install the backplate for the cpu cooler, second because I put the cpu cooler in the WRONG direction, and the third time to see if that would solve the monitor issue). 

But at the end of it all, it was all worth it. I love having a 5.4 out of 7.9 system rating from Windows 7, and the only reason for that would be due to the "slow" transfer rate of the primary hard drive. What with everything else being 7.3/7.4, one could hardly call this an "okay" machine.

And I can hardly describe how darn cool it is for me to finally have a computer with an Alienware case! It is quite intimidating. 

Every year, White Wolf Publishing, the guys behind Vampire: The Requiem, Werewolf: The Forsaken, Mage: The Awakening, Changeling: The Lost, Exalted, Scion, and lots of other rules-lite roleplay-heavy games, releases a limited release for their World of Darkness line. In contrast to their main lines, which will have a few supplement books every year added to it, these limited lines will get only 5 or 6 at most.

Geist: The Sin-Eaters is their newest limited game, and I was looking very forward to it. I really can't emphasive how much I was anticipating this game. Heck, I preordered it way back in May! I even marked the release date on my calendar.

Folks, I never ever mark anything on my calendar. Not even The Dark Knight or Star Trek! I was quite happy when Geist came in on Saturday. Of course, as luck would have it, I was busy that day, with me at Cold Stones training from eleven to five, and then my best friend Pete came over and we played Guitar Hero and went to see District Nine. His first time, my second. He loved it, and I still continued to love it. But that is neither here nor there.

But I did read Geist today, but not all of it. It's barely a 300 page book, so it is not the biggest RPG White-Wolf has put out. I think Mage and Changeling are the runners up for that, with a cyclopean 400 something pages.  In fact, I'm only halfway into Chapter One, which describes exactly what Sin-Eaters do and their duties and the circumstances in their metamorphosis from humans to Sin-Eaters, as well as describing the death demi-gods the Geists that live within them. It covers alot, but I'll leave my description of them for another post.

This post will be on my initial thoughts on Geist. So far, what I am loving I really do love. I love the concept of the Geists, these very tormented souls that have become the embodiment of whatever type of death that took their lives. They don't even have a personality any more. And they don't cause deaths because they are monsters - it is because they have to. It is their nature. Fire can't help but burn people alive - it just burns.

I like how Sin-Eaters understand that this is their last chance, so they have to live like no one has never lived before. How to do that is different from Sin-Eater to Sin-Eater.

But, I do not really like how Sin-Eaters just mish mash all of the cultures together to make theirs. It just does not make a lick of sense to me! I see no real life culture ever doing that. I mean, you could give some argument for the English culture, but we have nothing on these guys. Sin-Eaters put a little bit of every foreign culture they encounter into their own. And then they drop it the next week and replace it with something else. It. Does. Not. Make. Any. Sense.

And another thing: if Sin-Eaters are so religious (which makes sense, since most of them are poor, and the poor have the tendency to be more religious than the middle class and the rich), why do they put stuff from other faiths into their own religion as much as with their culture? I just have a very difficult time getting that.

And this is more of a personal preference, but I do not like how most Sin-Eaters are aware of the fact that other Sin-Eaters are out there. I like unified supernatural beings, not divided ones. I can certainly see where the writers were going with this, however, since the Sin-Eaters' krewes are essentially gangs, minus all of the crime. That tightly knit brotherhood. "I watch your back, you watch mine, brother".

But even then, I do not hate the stuff I don't like. I just don't get why any rational human being would do something like that. What I do like, though, I more than like. I love them! And I am only 30 or so pages into the game, so don't count this as gospel.

Until next time, gentle readers.

Thanks to Kotaku, I have been informed of some absolutley bizarre news.

Next Tuesday, the next video game in the long running First Person Shooter franchise, Wolfenstein, is being released.

It is up against that hellspawn of a game, Madden 10.

The project's director, via his Twitter, has said the following:

Here's the deal folks: if Wolfenstein outsells Madden 10 in August I will personally pay for your copy (keep your receipt) - SPREAD THE WORD

That was yesterdat at 10:51 AM.

I am tempted enough to contribute to this madness!

Source: Escapist

Here is what I have to say to you, Activision. This could of had been yours. This hard rocking game of a gem could have had your nice little label on it, and you could of have made oodles of cash on it.

You could of had it Activision! You could of had it all, only if you wouldn't make it a Guitar Hero spin-off! But noooo, you had to have that cursed spin-off, you couldn't perceive the brilliance of any marketing strategy outside of it. You didn't dare have the awesome power of metal burn your faces off like butter sitting on a freshly warmed knife!

So you got rid of it! You abandoned Schafer's baby in the cold desert of 'No Publisher', leaving all those years of labor for naught. And when EA swoops down to save it, what do you do? You panic! You go "Oh noes!" and you decide to pull off the biggest douche bag move you could ever conceive of pulling off.

You try to use the legal system to delay it, you good for nothing sons of mothers! You tried to stop the great charge that was Brütal Legend.

But you can't stop it! You can't! Even the legal system urinated you in the face! You had your chance to do something good with the gaming world, but you shrunk back!

And you got nothing for it all!

And that is all you deserve.