Dragon Age: Origins on PC

Okay, I got it wrong.  Going into the Fade was never part of Initiation.  It comes later in the game and I have now got to that bit, but I'm not going to write about today as there is loads more to cover.  What I'm going to write today follows on from the previous entry.

After Teyrn Loghain's betrayal the tower which my character (Ank) and Alistair are at the top of fills with Darkspawn and we are both overcome...

Miraculously, we are not torn to shreds.  I wake up in bed in Flemmeth's hut.  Flemmeth is Morrigen's mother and lives in the Kocari Wilds (I got the name wrong last time).  She is apparently a famous and powerful witch but there is some doubt about who she really is but whoever she might be she must be powerful to have saved us from the Darkspawn.  (I am going to write about my character in the first person from now on).

I now set out with Alistair, Dogmungus (see previous entry) and Morrigen (at Flemmeth's request) to unite the people of Ferelden against the Darkspawn.  Alistair and I are the only Grey Warden's left since the disastrous battle and it is our duty.  Morrigen is clearly more morally flexible and has no time for such quests.  I am trying to play a fairly selfish, neutral sort of character myself but it is sometimes hard to fit that in with taking on the responsibility of a noble purpose.

We leave the Wilds and travel to the village of Lothering.  There we are introduced to the Chanters' Board, the Chanters being a group of religious types who want work doing, and the Blackstone Irregulars, who also have tasks for us to perform and are a fairly down to earth group who are trying to fight the Darkspawn.  These two groups have liaisons in all the major locations in the game and you can cash in work done for them with any of their representatives.  I accept all the jobs that are on offer from them and some others from a woman who is trying to help the large number of refugees who are fleeing the Darkspawn and have taken up residence in the town, plus other work from local people.

We have to kill several groups of bandits in the area (the area around the village is referred to
 as a forest; there are no trees).  There is also group of giant spiders and another of bears to take out.  There is also a bit of gathering of stuff to do.

When everything that can be completed in this area has been done I finally go to free Sten.  He is a large character from a neighbouring country who had been imprisoned for murder (which he does not deny).  He agrees to come along and help us, but with little enthusiasm.  This is first time I have to decide who will come along with me and who will be left in the camp, because only me and three other characters can be in the party at once.

Sten in Prison.

In my previous play through I had not taken Sten with me, and I had assumed that this, or some other thing I had neglected to do, was the reason why Lothering subsequently appeared on the map as being inaccessible because it was overrun with the blight.  This feeling that I'd got something wrong early in the game had contributed to my being tired of playing it.  However, after I left Lothering this time the same thing happened and I cannot go back.

We ran into some Darkspawn on the way out of town and rescued a traveling merchant dwarf and his idiot son.  They will take residence in the camp soon and will sell us reasonably priced goods and the son has a talent for enchanting weapons with Runes which give them extra powers (more damage, greater chance to hit and even resistances etc.)

I then get my first view of the world map and choose to go to Redcliffe, where I must get the local lord, Arl Eamon, to join the fight against the Darkspawn.  I also have parts of side-quests which need to be taken care of there.

LittleBigPlanet and Burnout Legends on PSP and That Game on PC

I have been neglecting my blog writing duties lately.  I should have by written that LittleBigPlanet on the PSP failed to do the one thing that I asked of it and have plenty of content.  I think this is a great shame.  If I had played the PSP version first I would never have known that LBP was special and I never would have bothered to play the PS3 game.  Every game in a franchise advertises every other so every one should have the same time and attention put into it as every other.

I have now started Burnout Legends and it seems okay but I have not played much yet so don't feel I can really comment.  More later, hopefully.

As much as I was enthusing about only playing games in specific categories in my previous entry I have caved in and played on the PC before my two months of playing on handhelds had expired.  What was the game which caused me to weaken in this way?  What was the game which has kept me as it's slave since and not even allowed me to write this blog for over a fortnight?  It was the same game I previously forsook and swore never to play again, even after over 220 hours playing time had been clocked up on Steam.  Perhaps because of those 220 hours.

I had been playing a character who looked ridiculous and I hated him.  He was a mage and a useless one.  His physical makeup was pathetic, his ginger suede-head was ludicrous and the cowl he was adorned with was absolutely the finishing touch.

There were long periods in the game when I could not remember what my ultimate goal was.  I just seemed to do side-quest after side-quest and was so bogged down with so many incomplete quests in my codec that that my head spun as I trudged from room to room dreading to open the next door because there would always be an impossibly difficult fight behind it.  Could I not just open one of these doors and find some excellent loot and move on?  I think I have earned it.  No, you will find seventeen enemies any one of which will be able to beat any member of your four member party.

My ultimate goal was, of course, to unite the peoples of Ferelden and defeat the Darkspawn and the game was Dragon Age: Origins.

Going back to it now as a more experienced gamer I can see that it is excellent and did not deserve my hate.

The pieces of data that you find in books around the game world separate it from the herd.  They don't need to be there but they flesh out the culture and history of Ferelden and its neighbours so effectively in a few short paragraphs each.

This time I am a rogue.  "Rogue's have more fun," I said to myself.  I am a male human.  It almost felt like the radical thing to be.  While I'm not overjoyed with the way my character (pictured left) looks he is at least not totally crap.  He is not a constant reminder of my own stupidity.  I was going for safe, and I think that's what I managed.  Also, he's not an Elf!

I chose to be a noble and in this storyline you spend quite a bit of time messing about in your dads castle, and then it gets overrun and you have to get out.  That all happens pretty suddenly; but I suppose these things do.  It is decided by your father that you are going to go with Duncan, an experienced Grey Warden, who it seems you will meet whoever you are, and become a Grey Warden yourself and fight the Darkspawn.  I seem to remember that at this stage you go into the fade as part of your training if you are a mage but I could be remembering that wrongly.  I might go into the fade at a later stage.

For a human noble rogue the stage prior to initiation involves going into the Wilds (these wilds have a name beginning with K which I cannot remember, it's Kunari or something like that).  You are part of a group of four initiates.  Here I ran into a side-quest which I did not complete and seems to have been kicked into touch on the codec.  You are looking for an artefact which belongs to the Grey Wardens and you do find it and you also find Morrigen (also in the picture) and after a certain amount of messing about you take the artefact back to Duncan, leaving her behind.

It is known that the Darkspawn are soon to attack the area near your camp and you are to be initiated prior to this attack.  At the camp you also meet several other relevant people.  One is the King and another is Teyrn Loghain; a Teyrn being a type of noble.  You also meet an aging Mage called Wynne.

To cut a long story short, initiation involves drinking darkspawn blood.  This can kill you.  You do not die.  Neither does Alistair, who is one of the other initiates.  You also meet a Mubari warhound who takes to you so you take him along with you.  I called him Dogmungus.

In  the battle the King's forces are to take on the Darkspawn directly.  You and Alistair have to go to the top of a nearby tower to light a signal fire to let Teyrn Loghain's forces know that it is time to attack.  The tower is already overrun with darkspawn who you have to fight including a demon at the top.  You light the fire but Teyrn Loghain turns his army away, leaving the King (and Duncan) to their fate.  What a git!

God of War Chains of Olympus and LittleBigPlanet both on PSP

You will probably have to read the previous entry to make complete sense of these next three paragraphs.

Firstly I'd like to correct one or two things I said about Chains of Olympus.  When an enemy is about to attack you you do not have to press L and triangle simultaneously to reflect the attack back on to them, you just have to press L.  If you do it too early you will just fend off the attack but not damage the enemy and if you do it to late you get hit.

I was right in saying that you can do this a lot of times to the two large enemies I described last time to no noticeable effect but I did discover that a single heavy hit using triangle can usually be completed just after this defence and it will get through.  Occasionally when trying this I held down the button for too long and struck out with a longer attack and did not always get away with it without a retaliatory attack coming back.  Sometimes it appeared that even though Kratos got his shield up to block the retaliation he ended up being flattened to the floor and this would usually leave him open to two further attacks, one from the original attacker and one from the other enemy and this could be very frustrating as they did a lot of damage between them.

After quite a few more deaths I managed to kill both enemies using this method.  I had tried so many times that it was one of those moments when I could hardly believe that I would never have to do it again and that I was actually seeing the next section of the game.  A small part of me already felt nostalgic and mourned that frustrating arena and those enemies I had hated and killed but which had embedded themselves in my mind.

The PSPs LittleBigPlanet is very recognisable to anyone who has played LBP on the PS3.  Protagonist Sackboy runs and jumps his way through platform levels which have a variety of themes based on different parts of the world.  Along the way he gets fried, spiked , electrocuted steamed and frozen (I don't remember any freezing in LPB for PS3 but it is very similar to electrocution).

A blurry Sackboy in a blurry alpine setting.  Also pictured: some thin guy.

There is one difference, however, which makes the game a completely different experience to the PS3 version which is that, despite the terrible things that happen to Sackboy, he does not die.  He simply regenerates at the last checkpoint and you carry on.  Previously there was a limit to the number of times you could regenerate at a given point before you were finished and had to start the level again.  As much as this drove me up the wall when it happened its absence gives me a slightly casual attitude towards getting cooked and this is to my detriment as you lose points when it happens and my scores are generally mediocre as a result.

There are other differences in this game.  The stages, which are a bit shorter than the PS3 stages, are themed around different parts of the world from the first game.  The game has a 2 1/2 dimensional quality in the sense that Sackboy can move in and out of the screen between different layers to move around obstacles or avoid hazards.  There are only two layers in this version of the game whereas there are three in the home console version.  It is not immediately obvious how this difference effects gameplay, especially as I've not played on the PS3 for a while but having created a level on PS3 I can imagine that makes a substantial difference for the developers as well as for players.

I won't be creating any levels for the PSP as I only have an E1003 PSP Street which does not connect to the internet.  I'm a bit sorry about this as level creation is an interesting aspect of the game but when I did put my one PS3 level online it was rapidly relegated down to obscurity because so few people played it.  I cannot help thinking that this was not based on merit or lack of it but simply the fact that there are so many levels out there which have already clocked up loads of plays, and a few likes and this makes it hard to get a foothold.

Getting back to the PSP game.  It certainly is excellent but I cannot help thinking that death would improve it, and that longer levels wouldn't hurt, and could probably have been accommodated, though if there are plenty of levels I will let this go.

The positive thing I would say in conclusion is that I am anxious to stop writing this and play the game which I never really felt about Exit or Chains of Olympus but did feel about Civilization Revolution.  Maybe I should be giving the DS more of a chance.  Nevertheless, I have bid on a copy of Burnout Legends for PSP on ebay.

I have been having ideas for other restrictions I could place on my gaming for a limited period and come up with a few interesting ones.  The period I would implement the ideas for would depend on how restrictive they were:

1. Playing only games bought in charity shops and jumble sales
2. Playing only games bought on ebay for less than £5
3. Playing games from a single IP; GTA and Elder Scrolls come to mind but there might be other suitable ones.
4. Playing only games from a particular genre
5. Playing only games from a particular publisher
6. Playing only bonus content.

The first two would probably involve more PC and PS2 games than usual.  I am frustrated because I
had thought of another idea which was the one I was going to implement next but I've completely forgotten what it was.  I might do bonus content soon because I have got Harley Quinn's Revenge from Arkham City waiting to be played. 

God of War Chains of Olympus for PSP



I am slightly scared of this game.  It is excellent but it seems to have got the better of me and when I think of playing it I feel a bit intimidated and I honestly believe that I spent the whole evening watching TV last night in order to avoid it.

 

I am trying to get through an arena where there are several birds which attack me, two weapons which fly on rails from one side of the circle to the other at regular intervals, one perpendicular to the other, and two large enemies who shield themselves instantaneously when attacked.  I have been advised that the combo square square triangle is the way to break through their shields but I find that once I hit triangle I am immediately flattened by the enemy I'm attacking.

 

The Ghost of Sparta looking at his most ghostly.

Because of these failures I have moved on to a new method for getting through this stage and it is also not working.  I am entering this section with only enough magic for one special attack and most normal attacks end in disaster so my method is now to first finish off all the birds in the arena and second use primarily my shield to attack the larger enemies.  Defending from their attacks is easy and you just have to keep your shield up and you won't take any damage, though you will be pushed backwards.  However, you can use the shield to reflect their attacks back onto them by pressing L and triangle at the same time, but this has to be done with pretty good timing or you get hit by that attack and probably another one or two as it takes time to recover and get your shield up.

There are definite signs that my strategy is having some effect as a message comes up on the screen saying "2 hits" when I do it, implying that both enemies have been effect, but despite some pretty long lasting scraps of this kind I have never survived long enough to see the O appear above the head of either enemy to imply that I can now execute the finishing move on them.  This is a pity because the finishing move for these enemies is pretty easy.

I am going to pick this game up again today and one way or another I will get past this fight.

Otherwise the game is excellent.  Some of the fighting is hard and sometimes you find you are dumped into a difficult encounter with none of the magic required to win it or only a sliver of life left.  The plot is a bit far fetched but that is the nature of the game and not to be criticised.  There is an interesting mix of enemies and there seems to be plenty of content and I always put it down thinking what a great game it is despite the frustrations I might have experienced when playing it and I think that it always the real test.

I have now bought Little Big Planet for PSP and will hopefully be writing about it soon.

I do some voluntary work at a local charity shop and today they had some XBOX 360 controllers which I was able to buy cheaply as they are not able to sell electrical goods to the public.  Hopefully they will work okay with the PC.  They have installed themselves but as I am not allowing myself to play on the PC or console at the moment I have not been able to properly test them.