Dragon Age: Origins- Awakening - Review

Dragon Age Origins Awakening is the expansion to, and also what appears to be, the final chapter in the Grey Wardens Origins story. The story picks up after the Grey Warden slays the Archdemon and effectively brings an end to the Blight. However, the Darkspawn hordes continue to endure and once again the Grey Warden is called upon to investigate and end this threat. What’s different this time around is that there are reports of raids on human lands that are led by a Darkspawn that can actually talk. To complete this investigation, the Grey Warden is sent to the northern lands of Amaranthine to take helm of Vigil’s Keep.


Warden’s Keep redux

At the start of the expansion, the player gets a choice to either import a character from the original campaign or create a new character. [Spoiler Alert] If you character had decided to sacrifice their life at the end of the original campaign, the game simply assumes that the character is still alive. It seems like Bioware has recently gotten into the habit of letting players make drastic choices and then finding it hard to effectively accommodate the consequences in the follow-up. In any case, bulk of the expansion is about finding new recruits (party members) to join the order of the Grey Wardens, building the Keep’s defenses and settling any disputes brought to your court. The developers seem to be suffering from RPG fatigue as we see ideas being recycled from one game into another; in particular the idea of upgrading and maintaining stronghold as one of the central themes is getting a bit tired.

Along with Vigil’s Keep and the city of Amaranthine, the expansion adds three major regions to the world map. These locations mainly serve as recruiting stations for new party members and the quests surrounding them are pretty ho-hum, with the only significant exception of Wending Wood area. Unfortunately, the other areas of the game suffer from another typical Bioware trait by which the levels are conspicuously tileset-based designs. As a result, they appear to be only slightly different from areas seen in the original campaign. One area in particular—the Knotwood Hills—suffers not only from mediocre design, but it is riddled with several major and minor bugs.

The Epic and the lame

To their credit, Bioware has made significant addition to the character development side of things. The expansion has six new specialization classes and over 50 spells and talents. It also adds the ability for the player to craft runestones, along with new recipes for potions, poisons, traps and salves. The most welcome addition to crafting is Stamina Draught, which recovers a character’s stamina pool. On the flip-side, crafting runes is a tedious and boring process. Another significant addition is the ability to redistribute skill and attribute points of the playing character as well as all the other part members. It would have been great to see Bioware fit this feature in the original campaign as this freedom to tweak party member’s abilities significantly raises a member’s utility in a party.
The new abilities and specialization classes become available beyond character level 20 and they raise a character’s ability to epic proportions. On the other hand, the enemies do not scale up according to the party’s abilities and due to this combat is a cakewalk compared to Origins. Significantly scaled down difficulty means that it takes much less time to beat the game and the entire expansion has about 10 -15 hours of game-play. When compared with 50- 60 hours worth of game-play in the original game, Awakening comes out as too short even for an expansion pack. This difference in the ratio between new content and actual game-play makes plot development seem rushed.


No time to chat

The pace of party member’s character development is similar to speed-dating and the player is inundated with gold and magical items of ungodly proportions. What emerges out of this is that Bioware has modified its original plan for the franchise and are shifting towards more fast-paced, action-based role-playing games— like their very own Mass Effect series— and moving away from old-school RPG with challenging, tactical combat. It’s either that or it’s a result of spending just four months on an expansion pack and consequently spending less time balancing the game’s difficulty.


A detour

Overall, Awakening is a hit-and-miss in equal proportion, making it an underwhelming—and almost disappointing— follow-up to the original game. The climax does not live up to the build-up and the insane gear that you have by the end of the game feels wasted on the final boss. The antagonists in the expansion pack are sentient, intelligent beings— as opposed to Archdemon from the original campaign, that was essentially a possessed Dragon. Unfortunately, very little time is spend exploring their personalities or their motivation, and effectively the only difference in this final battle is that you get to have a short conversation with the antagonist before inevitably engaging in combat.

Those who found Dragon Age: Origins too long and difficult, will appreciate the new direction Bioware has taken with Awakening. On the other hand, there is a good chance that those same changes will disappoint the hardcore.

Rating: 7.5/10

Details:

Genre: Role- Playing Game
Studio: Bioware
Publishers: Electronic Arts
Platforms*: PC (MS Windows), PlayStation 3, Xbox 360

*Reviewed on PC

God of War III - a Review

 


In the first game, he was a Spartan that rose to the ranks of Gods and in the second game he was a God fallen from his grace. Now in the third and supposedly the final chapter, Kratos is a vengeful spirit with the single objective of destroying Mount Olympus and killing the king of Gods, Zeus. God of War III is a final stand-off between the old Gods and the new, between the Titans and the Olympians. As one would imagine, the ensuing battle is spectacular, both in its scale and the destruction it causes. Santa Monica studio has not introduced anything significantly new to the series with God of War III. They have taken all that we have already seen in the first two games and just made everything grander.

 

Just like God of War II, this game starts off with an epic battle and by the end of it Kratos is stripped of his powers and weapons. Without giving too much of the game away, the central objective from this point is to recover the Flames of Olympus that are said to have the power to kill a God and in this particular case, kill Zeus. Standing between Kratos and the Flames is a whole bevy of Olympian Gods and their minions. The Spartan deals with this in the only way he knows-- ripping them apart from limb to limb and bathing in their blood.

 

God of War III is one of the most violent and gruesome games I have played since Manhunt. Even the violence depicted in the first two games pales in comparison to what you will experience in God of War III. During the course of the game, I actually started disliking Kratos as he goes on a spree of mindless violence and killing everyone he encounters. I appreciate that this is a story about a God of War and violence is to be expected; however at the end of the day, there has to be something left to fight for.

 

Accompanying Kratos in his bloody crusade is his trusty pair of Blades of Athena, now re-christened Blades of the Exile. Augmenting his destructive abilities are three other weapons, and all four weapons also have magic abilities attached to them. These magic abilities automatically upgrade along with the weapon. Kratos will also be able to carry Godly trophies like the Bow of Apollo, Hermes's Shoes and even the head of the Sun God Helios. Just like the weapons, the power of these items can be used in combat as well as to solve certain puzzles in the game. Familiar collectibles such as the Gorgon Eyes and Phoenix Features make a return, and once again they can be offered as sacrifice to increase Krato's health, magic and item-power pool. Kratos can also recover other relics of Gods throughout the game; however these can only be used during subsequent play-through. These items give the player incredible bonuses and essentially work as cheat codes. No wonder then that the game disables trophies for the entire duration of a play-through, even if you use any of these items only once.

 

The developers have introduced some new things to the series, even though they maybe few and far in between. For instance, some of the QTE-based finishing moves are viewed from a first-person perspective. There are couple of other features like this one, but we do not want to spoil them for you. For the most part, this game retains its core-mechanics from the first two parts. Krato's primary blade has the familiar combos and all other weapons have similar keystrokes and effect. If things get really hairy, you can unleash magic contained within the weapons for some effective crowd control. Outside of combat it is still about platforming, shifting pillars, smashing objects and pulling switches and chains, to unlock the way forward.

 

It took me about seven hours to beat God of War III on normal difficulty setting. After beating the game - true to God of War tradition - there is plenty of bonus content to get your hands on. The game unlocks bonus costume, the highest difficulty level, a challenge mode and lots of developer videos. All of the game's cinematics also become available in the video gallery. While you can pretty much get away with mindless button mashing throughout the game, the Challenge Mode will require some skills to beat. After beating the Challenge Mode, the game unlocks the Combat Arena. We are not sure about the nature of this Arena, but speculations on some of discussion boards indicate that this is where you can design your own challenges: to the extent that before the start of combat, you get to decide the type of enemy you wish to fight.

So, is this the game for you? If you are expecting all that was the God of War games on the Sony PlayStation 2, but at a much grander scale, then you should get your copy of the game immediately. The developers have been very careful not to mess too much with the game's core-mechanics, as new features are introduced only in small doses. God of War III is quite simply a relentless and an epic bloodbath from the start, right till the credits start rolling.

Rating: 8.5/10

Details:


Genre:     Action, Beat 'em Up
Studio:     Santa Monica Studio
Publishers:     Sony Computer Entertainment
Platforms:     PlayStation 3

Dante’s Inferno - Game Review

Dante’s Inferno had couple things going for it, way back when it was first announced. The most striking thing about this project was that it was going to be loosely based on a 14th Century poetry that was penned by one man’s imagination, fuelled by his faith and fear. Also, the development team working on the game is made up of the same guys that gave us Dead Space; which for my money is the most exciting game to come out of EA since a long time. Clouds of disappointment started looming when EA first presented the game-play video.

Then after getting a chance to play the E3 code, it was pretty clear that Dante’s Inferno is going to be a God of War clone. This of course is great news for those who swear by God of War’s game-play mechanics. As a follow up to Dead Space, it is very sad to know that they spent the last few months creating a cash-cow for the publisher. The premise of the game was always going to make the game a tough design challenge. However, I was expecting Visceral Games to at least try something different with this game, and although the game is not bad, the potentially deep premise is lost in the chaos of frantic combat.




For an action game, Dante’s Inferno still has a pretty deep storyline, and Dante’s encounters with consequences of his own deeds are some of the best parts of the game. The game’s story will take the player through the Nine Circles of Hell and on to the final encounter with the well-hung Prince of Darkness. Dante makes this journey to rescue the soul of his beloved Beatrice, from the clutches of Lucifer. Character of Virgil from the original works makes an appearance in the game as Dante’s guide through the underworld.



It would have been nice to get more than two weapons; however the combat system is still fairly deep. Death’s Scythe is the only melee weapon in the game and for ranged combat the player carries a holy cross that fires projectiles. Souls left behind by dead enemies and retrieved from special containers are used to purchase upgrades. Player can earn two distinct types of experience points—holy and unholy. The holy path mainly focuses on enhancing attacks made using the Holy Cross; whereas unholy experience improves skills with the Scythe.

Throughout the game, player gets to decide whether to punish or absolve an enemy. Choosing to punish will be rewarded by unholy experience and absolving gets you holy energy. There are also encounters with famous people from history and from Dante’s personal life. These encounters l reward players with bonus experience points. New skills are unlocked as the player earns experience points and these upgrades are purchase by spending souls.




The developers have made up a little for the lack of weapons with the addition of Relics and Spells. Relics are found throughout the game, often in obscure locations, and equipping these gives the player additional bonuses. Spells are unlocked at regular intervals throughout the game, most of them during special encounters. Usage of spells is linked to the player’s magic reserve and these can also be upgraded by investing souls.

So between the two weapons, spells and combos, there are plenty of ways to cause destruction in the game. I really liked the combo system because it lets you seamlessly flow from one combo to another and even between the two weapons. Combat can be a lot of fun as you switch between the two weapons and spells to rack up combos with an absurd hit-count (my finger gave up after 300 hits). Building up the combo meter also fills up a special bar which can be unleashed for substantial attack bonus.




Between the frantic battles, the game slows down the pace by using standard elements like platforming, puzzles, treasure hunt and cut-scenes. The narration and storytelling is pretty good, but the essence of the underlying story does not meld with the game-play. The combat and story are both good in their own rights; however I feel that the two together do not do justice to each other.

The game lasts for about eight to ten hours, depending on how quickly finger-fatigue sets in. Beating the game unlocks the highest difficulty level and a challenge mode. This also unlocks New Game+ mode, giving you the opportunity to max-out with the holy and the unholy paths. This is also an opportunity to collect any Relics or NPC encounters that you might have missed during the first play-through. The developers have already announced a DLC that will add multiplayer mode to the game and will come bundled with a challenge/level editor.





If you are looking only for mindless action and can get past the fact that this game is a GoW clone, then you will probably enjoy this game more than I did. If you are looking for something special from the developers, then the next best hope is probably Dead Space 2.

Rating: 7.0/10

Details

Genre: Action, Hack ‘n’ Slash

Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360

Studio: Visceral Games

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Distributor: Milestone Interactive, Redington

*Reviewed on Xbox 360

Torchlight demo can now be downloaded for free on Steam

It can be difficult to get gamers to shell out money for a new title that they know nothing about. The best way is to let them try, then buy. In that vein, Runic Games has just made the demo of its recently released Torchlight available on Steam.

Torchlight is an action-RPG (role playing game) PC title, played from a top-down perspective. Most early reviews have compared it to Diablo, saying fans of the game are bound to love this new adventure. In fact, Runic was formed by Diablo veteran Max Schaefer.

Our friendly neighbourhood Wikipedia gives a quick low-down on the plot: “In the fantasy world that serves as the setting of Torchlight, Ember is a mysterious ore which has the power to imbue people and items with magical power. The mining boomtown called Torchlight is built above a rich vein of Ember, and adventurers are drawn there seeking the magical substance and the enchanted items it creates. However, as the player character explores the dungeons below Torchlight, they discover that Ember has a corrupting influence which led to the fall of past civilizations and endangers those who use it in the present. Discovering that the dungeon is a ‘layer cake of ruined civilizations’, the player must delve deep below and eventually face the villain who is the source of the corruption.”

PC World has an awesome article titled ’10 reasons you must play torchlight’.