The Past and Times of Yore: Dragon Age Origins revisited

 
Release Date: November 3rd, 2009
Genre: Role Playing
Publisher: Electronic Arts 
Developer: Bioware, Edge of Reality
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X
Players: 1
Classification: M (Mature)

I recently had another go at Dragon Age Origins again, you may remember me mentioning the game in one of my first ever posts back in April 2011 where it was 90% Minecraft and before I formalized the reviews. I didn’t mention this in the post (I didn’t mention much actually but I did get a short way through the main campaign as a Mage and a reasonable way through as a Sword and Shield Warrior) but didn’t end up going forward due to all of the managing of following inventory and also trying to work out which follower likes what. Oddly enough I’ve had to deal with the same thing in SWTOR but funnily enough it’s been easier to manage. 

Character creation screen where you choose your origin

So basically I never did finish Dragon Age Origins though I wanted to have another go as I had so much fun doing the “origin stories” using various race and sex combinations to see how it changes the initial story. I especially liked the Human Noble, City Elf and Circle Mage stories as all of them had that Bioware touch of choice interaction and awkward/cheesy acting and dialogue which sometimes is reminiscent of a soap opera.

"My dear I have a confession to make"

 Human Noble Origin – You’re the son/daughter of the Lord of the Castle and help defend it during a betrayal.

Spoiler: The traitor is the dude on the right

City Elf Origin – You are a  downtrodden male/female City Elf who wakes up on your marriage day that gets broken up by some evil human lords intent on sexing Elf women. I’ll admit this one was the most striking as this is the first ever game where elves are a previously enslaved race.

This is an Elf wedding, you can see how they really are downtrodden.

 Circle Magi – You are a Mage of the Circle who undertakes the Fade ritual, you are under strict control by Templars but get involved in a scandal involving your “friend”

The Magi was probably my favorite "origin" you were under strict guard by Templars who were fearful of their power.

There are other origins of course including the Dalish Elves and Dwarves though I found those three to be the most fun, I enjoyed using female characters in this regard as they can lead to some funny moments especially when as a female Magi you can flirt with a Templar guard and embarrass your friend in front of his lover. 

These kind of experiences make me want to try this in other games such as SWTOR but you put a lot of time and effort into an MMO character and interact with a lot of others and I don’t know if I’d be ok with being hit on by guys and start a relationship with one. I will definitely play as a female the next time I play Saints Row IV as you spend quite a lot of time naked and there is this one party where you dress up as a stripper and have to quicktime a sexy dance and man doing that as a male character was ugh. Though Saints row is a bit different to MMO’s and serious RPG’s obviously as the “romance” is just casual sex.

Everyone's looking pretty calm for a bunch of girls who are supposedly going to get raped, this whole story was ripe for controversy in the general media.

But anyway, Dragon Age never kept me occupied for long, the character creation and interactivity were there it just didn’t hit the nail on the head for me to keep playing though I got a decent way through.  As fun as the origins are you always end up in the same place anyway after all of them so it’s true what Zero Punctuation said in his review that you’ll just keep playing the different starting missions of each race and I sort of have, it’s just to show how I love starting again in games. Dragon Age a stock standard Fantasy RPG but it’s good for a play if you like that sort of thing, come to think of it I have to try Dragon Age II and Inquisition.

JD

Our expressions say it all, this happens a lot in Dragon Age

My favorite place to be is the beginning.

The Past and Times of Yore: Half-Life 2, Episode 1, Let's get the hell outta here

Release Date: June 1st, 2006
Genre: First Person Shooter
Publisher: Valve Software

Developer: Valve Software
Platform: Microsoft Windows, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac OS X, Linux
Players: 1
Classification: M (Mature)

Yes here it is, Half Life 2 Episode 1, oddly named title I know, it’s basically the first episode after the original game which I did a review of in the past. Episode 1 was actually meant to be called “Aftermath” but was changed to Episode 1 to support valve’s episodic structure. I obtained this game by purchasing the Orange Box which contained five games: Half-Life 2, Half-Life 2: Episode One, Half-Life 2: Episode Two, Portal, and Team Fortress 2 and it’s true what they said about it, it really was the greatest deal in gaming history, even if I did already own Half Life 2.

Episode 1 is basically starts right after the end of Half Life 2, you have a brief intervention by G-man where several Vortigaunts appear to save Alyx and also block G-man who is perturbed by the experience, which is interestingly the only time you see him in episode 1, it then cuts to DOG pulling you out of the wreckage with Alyx close by.

A shot from the humorous situation where you and Alex get into a junked car and DOG throws you into the Citadel.

Basically the story revolves around you and Alyx trying to escape theCitadel and City 17 in general, which I quite enjoyed actually, at the start you get reminisce about the end of the previous game seeing some recordings of Dr. Breen and a Combine Advisor as well as an actual Combine Advisor trying to evacuate the Citadel and also encounter the gruesome Stalkers along the way. You end up stopping the Citadel’s core meltdown and have an amusing Razor Train ride before crashing into the sewer systems underneath the Citidel in some awesomely frightening pitch black tunnels where you encounter lots of zombies and the new zombified Combine soldiers who Alyx dubs “Zombines” hah!

The pulsating Citidel Core

After a while you get back to the surface and continue fighting along with other resistance members similar to the Anticitizen One and “Follow Freeman!” chapters in the Half Life 2 story. I love the start of this chapter as it features Dr. Isaac Kleiner who has taken over Dr. Breen’s public broadcast system and reports to everyone that the Suppression Field has been deactivated and basically they should all “give serious thought to doing their part for the revival of the species" in which Alyx remarks that Kleiner is telling them to “get busy”. The ending is one of the coolest scenes where you race to evacuate citizens to a train station then jump on one yourself just in time to see the citadel exploding behind you.

The Citidel exploding as you watch from the train, dang if we were just faster.

 I enjoyed this shorter experience of Half-Life as I enjoyed the areas in the Citadel probably the most from the previous story so this one was pretty damn fun though there was a bit too much use of the Gravity gun, I always like “let’s get out of here” storylines in games and this was a good one. The pace of this story really works and having Alyx with you all the time is pretty cool too as she has infinite bullets and can finish off any annoying enemies such as headcrabs which you couldn’t be bothered wasting ammo or switching to the crowbar for, the episode focuses on story development mostly between you and Alyx and goddamn it’s getting heated but nothing yet. I always wonder how they would pull of a story of the two of you working together without ever explaining why Freeman never talks though they do and do it well even if Alyx is doing all the talking.  As far I could tell the only new enemy were the “Zombines” though you have more contact with the Stalkers as in HL2 you just see them randomly throughout the citadel. You get to see a few new parts of the Citadel and City 17 itself though there are no new characters introduced, my favourite parts are when you encounter the Combine advisors and get assaulted by their physic blasts.

Stalkers preventing Gordon and Alyx from continuing into the Citidel, you never confront them directly just shoot powerballs and roller mines at them.

Controls and base gameplay are basically the same though the graphics have had a small upgrade to the Source engine and a new version of its facial animation/expression technology. I felt that there was relatively few places and things in Episode 1 that made me go WOW! It’s strong point was basically the mostly face-paced story that made you keep on going, the music helped a bit too with its pumping techno and eerie haunts in the darker sections and the sounds were as good as ever. I don’t really have much to say apart from that, there was some general consensus about the game being particularly short but for the price and package I got it in I have absolutely no problem with that, besides this one is just a prelude to what will probably be an awesome 3 part series.

The main menu screen where you can listen to Kleiner giving his freedom speech which is a hoot to listen to.

Of course you probably have all  already played the first and second episodes years ago and are waiting for the third and final conclusion if it ever comes, well we’ll discuss that in my review of the next episode.

JD

Forget saving humanity, first we have to do our part, priorities people.

An Android and his Nexus: Battlefield 4 Commander and Battlelog App

One of the mains reasons I wanted a tablet was so I could play some tablet-only apps such as the Battlefield 4 Commander App, and once I got my Nexus 7 it was one of the first things I got. I did a review of Battlefield 4 back in April and spent a part of it complaining about the Commander mode requiring you to sacrifice your player slot to be a commander whereas in Battlefield 2 the Commander was an actual player in the game. The Commander app is a bit finicky to start with as you have to download the Battlelog app as well, so basically you can go into either one first for example if you start up the Commander app and click server browser it takes you into the Battlelog app then when you join a server it goes back to the Commander App. The Battlelog app is pretty much identical to what you see on the browser version and it also syncs your profile and settings data so you have the same favourite servers and history etc which is a great help, it’s relatively simple to navigate but can be slow and laggy at times.

Looks familiar... that's good

So basically once you find a server you can join as the Commander and be amazed at how fast the damn map loads lol in stark contrast to when you’re playing the game and have to wait there for almost a minute. The battle screen is a simple and mostly colourless view of the battlefield you have your commander tools on the left and your squad info the right, with your usual other information such as chat log, menu and scoreboard buttons, time and score. There are three types of assets that you can use as a commander, these are Default Assets, Main Assets and Squad Assets.

Main screen on the Golmud Railway map, you can see the default assets up the top left, then main assets then squad assets in green.

Default Assets

Defaults assets are things like UAV scans and marking high value targets, these are always available to you but all have their own cooldown.

Scan UAV                  
Deploy an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which spots enemies in the area.

EMP UAV                 
Deploy an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) UAV, which hides activity in the area from enemy Commander. This causes damage to the enemy cruise missiles and gunship.

High Value Target
If an enemy soldier reaches a killstreak of 6, Commanders can highlight them as a High Value
Target (HVT) for their team. The player that kills this target within a short time frame will receive a
bonus along with the commander, and each kill this HVT makes while targeted will earn him a bonus.

Evac Order                         
Warn allied soldiers in the area of incoming danger.
Order                                   

Give an order to a Squad Leader to either attack or defend an objective.

You can see here by the dark patch that the enemy has used an EMP UAV and I have placed a High value target which in this case is a bomber jet.

Main Assets

Access to the main assets usually depends on which flags your team currently has captured as each one is tied to a particular flag, sometimes when playing the game as a soldier it’s good to know which points give the commander what resources as you’d want the one with the Gunship at all costs as it’s one majorly powerful asset when it’s in the air allowing up to 3 people to man 3 different types of guns.

Infantry Scan                    
 Spot all enemy soldiers on the mini-map.

Vehicle Scan                     
Spot all enemy vehicles on the mini-map.

Proxy Attack                     
Disable the Enemy Commander for 10 seconds

Cruise Missile                   
 Launch a cruise missile at an area, destroying all enemies in the area.

Gunship                              
Deploy the AC-130 GUNSHIP. When the gunship is deployed it will circle the base that it is tied to. Your team can deploy in the gunship and parachute from it.

In this particulat instance my side has capture points B and C which allows me to use the Infantry Scan and Gunship assets

Squad Assets

As the commander you can select a squad by touching them and assign them to either attack a neutral or enemy flag or defend a captured one, after a while I worked out that when you issue an order it appears as a dotted line and if the squad leader complies and tells his squad to attacked that flag it becomes a full line. I vaguely remember this in the actually game now being loosely represented by a sort of triangle around a flag that your Commander wants you to capture. Anyway when your squad orders and obeyed and the squad works well together it adds to the Squad Asset bar which is on the bottom left in green and depending on how high your squad asset bar is you can do one or more of the below. Each of these assets cost a different amount of “chunks” of the bar going from promote squad to vehicle drop.

Asset

Promote Squad                
Promote your squad.

Supply Drop                      
Deploy crate via parachute, which automatically heals and gives ammo to nearby soldiers. Allied soldiers can also switch kits by interacting with the crate.

Rapid Deploy                     
Reduces affected squads’ deploy time.

Vehicle Drop                    
Context-sensitive parachute vehicle drop – Personal Water Craft (PWC) or a quad bike.

My squad asset bar is full here so I can use whichever one I like

There’s also a voice option so you can talk to the squad leaders, I haven’t really used this but I have heard someone speaking at some times, too hard to hear what they were saying though. I found that people aren’t that obedient most of the time, it’s only when I was in Japan that the quality of play, chat and obedience really went up, figures huh? There are 4 types of ribbons/medals you can get for playing commanders including:

Leadership - Receive 10 order followed

Surveillance – Obtain 10 scan bonuses

Resupply – Obtain 10 supply crate uses

Gunship  - Deploy 2 Gunships

The Commander app main screen with my commander medal and ribbon information and my beautiful portrait.

Though for the most part the points you get are nothing compared to the points you get when actually playing as a soldier, but I suppose there’s got to be a compromise there somewhere. One thing I found recently was that there was a fair few servers which didn’t allow for Commanders. I suppose that would be because a lot of people don’t like the extra level of difficulty with the Commander around especially when your side doesn’t have one and the enemy commander is pummelling you with cruise missiles and gunships and giving their team the extra advantage, there’s a setting in the server search which allows you to check that the server allows Commanders anyway.

Yay a server that allows Commanders!

Overall I found the app to work pretty well, there was some unexplained server disconnects but nothing that doesn’t happen in the main game, it’s fun to use if you have the opportunity to play and help out your friends, not to mention get some extra points for you soldier. It will never be as good as Battlefield 2 with its assets and commander physically on the battlefield but it’s still a bit of fun for when you’re not at home and need that Battlefield fix.

JD


A short video of the Commander app in action on a Nexus 7