Someone To Drive You Home

I was tempted to do a list of games but I have always been a bit lazy and also a paragraph about a supposed game of the year is hardly a glowing recommendation.

2009 has been a mixed bag in terms of games. The fact that we are a number of years into this console generation means that most games are atleast competent. In earlier years alot of these competent games  have ended up half baked  due to developers struggling with hardware that they don’t fully understand. Great you might think but playing a lot of competent games doesn’t make for a interesting year. Games like Prototype, Spiderman Web of Shadows & Red Faction where all competent but missing a aspect which would have pushed them over the top (new gameplay mechanics , interesting overworld and story where things most where skimping on).

Anyway I’m not here to debate how disappointing  this year was i’d much talk about what was enjoyable. So what is this wonderful game. Well it’s Dragon Age: Origins. For those of you unaware is a fantasy RPG made by the lovely team at Bioware(Kotor, mass effect).

pfft Dragons dont even shoot lasers

Now typically I’m not massively into fantasy/Tolkien stuff I’d much rather a cyberpunk or futuristic slant on my fiction so I approached this with a bit of trepidation. The overarching story is a typical ancient evil rising with your character charged with saving the world.

Snoresville right, sure i’l admit to rolling my eyes when I found out I had to become a Jedi Spectre Grey Warden, but you honestly forget about it once you start meeting the other character in the world and specifically the Heroes that join you on your quest. Why is that? Well they are actual characters for a start they have opinions on not only your actions but on the others in your group. For example anytime you come to a situation where you have a choice they’ll chip in with how they think you should precede with Morrigan for example always nudging you towards the sinister and Alistair encouraging you to be as White as fresh snow.

They also have conversations among themselves at random while you’re for example strolling through town these are often extremely entertaining. These occur during periods of exploration which are natural lulls between the combat encounters .The conversation where the French sounding bard calls the stoic warrior a big softy for instance was really entertaining or the dwarf suggesting to the war hound that he could attach a saddle to him and use him as a horse.

Boring Sex Scene Ahoy

At this point if you don’t play many games you might be thinking so what but it’s really a rarity for anybody to put this much effort into throw away dialogue especially considering the limit of only having two companions with you at anytime meaning that most will never hear all the interactions in their first playthrough. This is maybe the best aspect of Dragon Age for me personally and it might sound like a small touch but in a year mired in a wholly competent but uninspired year this is the addition that’ll push you over the top.

The combat consists of equipping your characters with swords, bows, daggers & magical staffs then sending them to do battle with evil doers. The battles themselves all take place in real time ,although you can pause the action to command each individual party to perform a single task, this means that for the most part the action is kept fast paced with only the boss fights that really require the extra level of strategy that I’ll describe later on. Your team hack and slash gain experience and become stronger a nice concession to fun the allies at camp level along with your active party meaning that you can always pull one of your neglected compatriots and not have to worry about them being a weakling.

Hopefully she's not too cold

The battles themselves are bitterly hard but never feel unfair. Regenerating health and Mana in between each fight help to avoid th situation where you get half way through a dungeon and run out of healing items and have to traipse back to town to resupply. It’s a problem that RPG’s have wrestled with since there invention solutions have often been too lenient ( allowing players to run off and resupply) or far too punitive (breaking your equipment, losing experience etc).

While this sounds like it might maybe the game far too easy it really really doesn’t , this is clearly a feature of the game that has been in the game from the beginning in the majority of fights you can die and you will quite readily if you’re not paying attention. Turns out when you know that the player is fighting fit you can put them in situations that are a lot more challenging than if you had to guess what their condition was. This is however a double edged sword on the one hand the game is challenging from the word go and maintains that throughout but on your first play through but you are likely to die a lot while you get to grips with the interface and tactics required to be successful. Is it frustrating? Sure, would I change it? no way there is nothing worse than when a game becomes a matter of procedure the constant challenge of Dragon Age ensures that each victory feels important.

Team Jacob The Later Years

High praise so far but its not all sunshine and unicorns the control scheme on the 360 while it works properly feels a little cumbersome, you cant blame bioware on this one a joypad just doesn’t have enough buttons to accommodate all the complex actions in Dragon Age elegantly (I’ve not played DA:O on the pc but I’m sure having the number keys helps a lot).

I’m no slouch when it comes to RPG but figuring out some mechanics in the took me a bit of time for instance the tactics interface where yo can “program” your AI partners so they for instance heal when there heal reaches a given percentage is never highlighted. I can understand why they might not include a blatant tutorial as it ruins the suspension of disbelief in a game where characterisation is obviously important.

While both these complaints crossed my mind while playing the game they are easily overcome with eventual acclimation in the case of the first and experimentation in the second.

I can defiantly recommend this game to anyone its commitment to characterisation more than anything else is why this has won my Game of the Year, writing one of the least developed aspects in games. What I’m really looking for this year is something that takes its writing and gameplay and raises them both higher.

Fingers Crossed for 2010

This Hat cracked me up