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Game Review - Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening (expansion)

Game Review - Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening Score -4 (Dragon Age: Origins score +12/-8, reviewed here)

Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening is an expansion for Dragon Age: Origins. Expansions typically offer more mechanics, more monsters, but less hours of gameplay than the original game. No exception here. What is significantly different here is the loss of moral choices in each of the main quests. It was a theme in the original game (which nevertheless had little effect on the final outcome), but Awakenings is much more linearly and simply scripted. The only non-linear part is in which order you do the quests.
- Probably the most disappointing part of Awakening is the story. It's just not that interesting. And the quests you do on the side only touch on the overall story, so that they feel very disconnected and irrelevant, and they didn't really advance the story, deepen the mystery, or enlighten you to what's going on. They were just very long sidetrips. In some ways Origins had this as well, but your trips to see the Dwarves and the Dalish at least were ultimately tied in to the main story by the treaties and your quest to assemble an army (not that you actually needed any of them in the end). There was a story here, and a sort of wrap-up to the whole problem of Blights, but it wasn't compellingly told and what you did to get to the end came across as quite boring. What the expansion could have done was improve on the original gameplay, making you interested in replaying it. For example, it could have made the new mechanics/content -- classes, skills, spells, use of runes, etcetera -- available in Origins, making it worthwhile to replay that, especially as some people might have uninstalled their game and not have a savegame to import.
- Some poorly thought out expanded content, and nothing fixed from the previous. For example, runes were strictly for weapons in the original game, and could not be used on mage staves, bows, or crossbows. Nothing changed here, so if you weren't dual-wielding, you lost out. In Awakening, runes are now available for armor, but not for mage robes, so again mages were excluded. They are powerful and useful enough on their own, however.
- Glaring bugs, like two Captain Garavels after in the throne room after defending Vigil's Keep. Or one of the conspirators against you appearing in court after you exposed and killed them.
- The new character specializations sound interesting initially but aren't actually that interesting to use. They are implausibly attained (reading a book can get you fade warrior powers) and compared to their activation cost, not cost efficient. Warriors now get Stamina potions to keep up their stamina and allow them to use powers more frequently, but the actual powers aren't particularly interesting or useful. I found myself using Origins content only in spells and powers, and still using no potions because the game is generally easy enough at Nightmare mode. The low-level stage where High Dragons are dangerous is long past.
(-) Like other titles associated with the developers, such as their early Dungeons and Dragons based games, we see inflated monster scaling for no good reason. We already took points off for this in our review of Dragon Age: Origins, so I'm not taking more off here, but just reiterating this criticism. A fantasy role-playing game is more rooted in plausibility than, say, Diablo or Dungeon Siege II, which plays more like an arcade fighting game. In Dragon Age: Origins: Awakening, even peasants can be level 27 and have epic amounts of health because your main character is of a high level. What they could have done was to leave trivial encounters trivial, and focus their attention on scripting interesting things to do, on plot events, and choices to be made. At a high to epic level, characters should be focussed on doing epic things. There were a lot of missed opportunities here that don't need epic-levelled enemies. Examples:

Posted by paimo bejo at 3:27 AM No comments: Labels: awakening, dragon age, game review


Freelancer Cheats and Mods Single Player (SP) Cheats and Mods

Most mods for Freelancer are big overhauls that extensively change the game and generally make the Single Player campaign unplayable. We have some simple cheat mods that keep the basics of Freelancer, but release some of the restrictions on the game to change your experience of the Single Player Campaign. Depending on what you like, you can make it easier, harder, or just different.

The mods are basically edits of the INI files in the ..\Freelancer\DATA directory or subdirectories. Simply find the same file, make a copy of it as a backup, and overwrite it with our edited version.

Mods: (GQ Freelancer Mods Download Link)
File: ..\Freelancer\DATA\EQUIPMENT\market_misc.ini
What the mod does:
What this means:
File: ..\Freelancer\DATA\EQUIPMENT\market_ships.ini
File: ..\Freelancer\DATA\EQUIPMENT\st_equip.ini

File: ..\Freelancer\DATA\EQUIPMENT\weapon_equip.ini
File: ..\Freelancer\DATA\MISSIONS\empathy.ini
File: ..\Freelancer\DATA\SHIPS\shiparch.ini

movie_file = ;movies\MGS_Logo_Final.wmv
movie_file = ;movies\DA_Logo_Final.wmv
movie_file = ;movies\FL_Intro.wmv

Posted by paimo bejo at 3:35 AM No comments: Labels: cheats, freelancer, mod


Game Review - Hodgepodge Hollow Score +2/-3


Hodgepodge Hollow is primarily a hidden object game, with a few puzzles in between. However, the main action is searching for hidden objects and following potion recipes.

The overall feel of the fantasy artwork in Hodgepodge Hollow is that of a child's fairy tale book, with harmless-looking characters. Even dragons are adorable looking. The gameplay is quite simple, and these two factors combined suggests a game for a very young child. BUT -- Parents should definitely play it first and pay attention to the tasks you perform.
+- Childish fantasy artwork. You may or may not like this style.
+- Gameplay is fairly easy. Depending on whether you want a relaxed game or not, this may or may not be a drawback.
- The similarity of the tasks wears thin quickly, especially the potion crafting, which is basically tedious and boring. Posted by paimo bejo at 2:50 AM No comments: Labels: game review, hidden object game, hodgepodge hollow

Game Review - Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast Game Review - Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast (Collector's Edition)
Score +5/-1


Like the other Mystery Legends games (The Phantom of the Opera Collector's Edition, Sleepy Hollow), Mystery Legends: Beauty and the Beast picks up where the fairy tale leaves off and lets you play through a spin-off tale. As with the previous games in the series, the artwork in Beauty and the Beast is beautiful. Some animations result in poorly anti-aliased images, however, but for a casual game they cannot really rely on their target audience to have strong computers, and some scenes are already sluggish with the use of certain animations/FX (e.g., smoke, which is notoriously hard on graphics processing).

Definitely get the Collector's Edition for the bonus chapter. Everything else in the Collector's Edition is of little consequence, especially the strategy guide (walkthrough), which you can find online anyway.

+ Beautiful fantasy artwork.
+ Good use of cutscenes.
+ There is a good range of puzzles to the minigames. Also the minigames try to be strongly related to the story in the type of action you are performing, a bit more so than most story-driven hidden object games.
-+ The hidden object minigames typically use a jumble of implausibly placed items. The hidden objects in the game locations, however, are fairly well hidden without being overtly out of place.
+ The story is interesting with a range of environments and actions to perform.
+There is a very nice arcade game finale. It's not a "real" arcade game in that you can't lose, per se -- you just need to figure out what to do, just like any other minigame. But it adds an active and exciting element to what is otherwise a fairly typical game for its genre.
Posted by paimo bejo at 1:23 AM No comments: Labels: beauty and the beast, game review, hidden object game, mystery legends

Game Review - The Island: Castaway Game Review - The Island: Castaway and The Island: Castaway 2

Score +3/-2

These games are linear stories with sidequests in which you further the plot or side stories by doing tasks for others. There is really no way to screw it up, so the whole premise of the game is to immerse you in the story by engaging you with tasks to advance the plot. In this way, you feel like you are part of the action when, in fact, you are just picking fruit or growing vegetables, or the like. Not too much different from a first person shooter with cutscenes and plot points, just a different set of repetitive actions.

They are similar to Wandering Willows, but less tedious to navigate because the action is zoomed out much more, you move quickly, and you can click on quest-giving characters to automatically path-find your way there. It is also similar to games like Virtual Villagers, but with a lot less micromanagement since you only control one protagonist and you don't have to worry about anyone dying of old age.

In the first game, The Island: Castaway, you come to the island after some sort of calamity has befallen it, and you are introduced to mystical happenings and superstitious natives. As you progress through the story, you begin to piece together the backstory, but it is not until the second game, The Island: Castaway 2, that we go back in time to play through the backstory and the full as well as the motivations of some of the villagers, is revealed.

If you like the gameplay and the storytelling, both games set up a third story, yet to be published.

+ The story is intriguing and interesting to uncover.
+ The pace of the game is very fast. Although some tasks require more work than others, there are things you can get to do tasks faster, and the overall pace through which you move through the plot points keeps the game engaging.
+ The characters you encounter are quite interesting, each with a distinct personality.
- The gameplay is a bit too easy. If you are looking for a more relaxed game where you can focus on plot-advancing actions or miscellaneous challenges (such as collecting all the seashells and bugs in The Island: Castaway 2), then this is not really a drawback.
- Some things are clearly implausible. For example, at one point the survivors run out of drinking water -- But there are hundreds of fruit and coconuts that can be harvested from the island. And no one actually goes to get the water later. It is also frustrating that sometimes you are railroaded into a specific action because there are no alternate solutions.

Posted by paimo bejo at 1:05 AM No comments: Labels: castaway, game review, the island


Game Review - Awakening: The Goblin Kingdom Game Review - Awakening: The Goblin Kingdom (v1.0)

Score +3/-4


Awakening: The Goblin Kingdom is the third episode in a fairy tale story that began with Awakening: The Dreamless Castle and Awakening: Moonfell Wood. The artwork is beautiful and has many generic fairy tale elements and creatures. It is equal parts hidden object game and a series of minigames which you are allowed to skip.
+ Beautiful fantasy artwork and good music score.
+ The hidden object game action does not rely on objects scattered about other implausibly sized and positioned clutter.
+ There is a good range of puzzles to the minigames.
- Some of the puzzles don't work very well. For example, the draw-in-the-lines puzzle in the Fungal Forest has poor completion detection. Even the Strategy Guide mentions that it may be necessary to add more to the ends/corners in case the game doesn't detect it correctly. This should have been fixed instead of having to mention it as a hint.
- Some later areas need more playtesting. For example, in the Fungal Forest, there is a coin on the edge of a basin, and nothing preventing you from picking up except that the game is scripted to not allow it. This is highly counterintuitive since the coin is right there in plain view, and later in the game you can in fact pick it up. Another instance of bad playtesting/game choices is the clear-the-board match-3 game at the end of the GobHolme chapter are unnecessarily tedious because you are simply waiting for the correct pieces to appear so you can match them. If you wait long enough you will get what you need, but this can be a very long wait and it wastes the player's time with something that is not related to their skill at all. This should have been adjusted after playtesting. If it were deliberately kept, then this is a grossly bad design choice.
- The strategy guide for one of the clear-the-board puzzles in the Fungal Forest does not in fact work.
- The reasoning behind some actions is inconsistent. For example, at the icy train station you are not allowed to use your dragon to melt ice because it might burn down the train car. But later in the goblin palace, you can use your dragon on a small wooden panel without fear of burning up whatever is behind it.
Posted by paimo bejo at 2:45 AM No comments: Labels: awakening, game review, hidden object game
