I've finished Dragon Age: Origins two times now and I am preparing for a third playthrough (I am thinking about a Arcane Warrior Blood Mage hybrid). And the role playing experience which the people at BioWare have managed to deliver is pretty spectacular from the beginning to the end. But, as always, the experience can be enhanced a bit by taking a quick look at the Projects page on the BioWare social space, which has some pretty interesting mods you can use to make the game better or, at least, different (yet another reasons to pick up Dragon Age for the PC if you have not yet done so). As far as I am concerned there are 2 mods which ... [read more >>] One of the biggest charges made at Fallout 3 when it made its bid for 2008 Game of the Year was that its ending was totally unsatisfying, lacking any concrete detail on the fates of the various locales you went through and leaving the player wondering whether all the trouble he went through was worth it. Dragon Age: Origins will not face this criticism when it makes its bid for 2009 Game of the Year (there might be things considered spoilers in the upcoming paragraphs).The choices begin early as each of the companions you recruit, keep, or kill have an impact on how the game ends, and players need to be aware of the fact that some conversat... [read more >>] Electronic Arts has announced that Pandemic, the videogame creation studio which has been recently downsized, is set to develop and release a new title in the Mercenaries series, which is at the moment in the initial stages of production. The working title is Mercs Inc. and it will probably arrive later in 2010 or early in 2011.A statement from Nick Earl, who is a senior vice president at Electronic Arts, reads “We are very excited to announce a new installment in the popular Mercenaries series because it demonstrates our continued commitment to Pandemic's rich catalogue of intellectual properties. From the studio at EALA, a core... [read more >>] Star Wars The Old Republic proved very well just how popular it was when, at the start of its beta test subscription, BioWare's SWTOR site went down from the sheer amount of people that wanted to get on the action. Since then, the title kept teasing all of us with all sorts of new content. Whether it was new concept art, the background stories, the comic book or the new classes being slowly unveiled, it kept everyone on pins and needles. As a final push, the last two of the eight available classes that will be available in the MMORPG have been detailed inside the German magazine PC Games. These last two classes are the Jedi Consular ... [read more >>] Barack Obama, the President of the United States, has launched an initiative called “Educate to Innovate”, aimed at getting more people interested in topics related to the so-called STEM, which is science, technology, engineering and math. And it seems that big companies with a presence in the videogaming world are interested in joining him and proving the educational capabilities of their products.Sony Computer Entertainment of America is set to cooperate with The MacArthur Foundation, the ISA, and the ESA, in order to promote a competition powered by LittleBigPLanet which encourages players to create levels with the powerful e... [read more >>] One big problem with most role playing videogames has been the sense of scale. Think of Dragon Age: Origins where you are supposed to be a Grey Warden, which is fighting to stop a Blight that could actually engulf the entire world. You need to recruit allies and assault an Archdemon. Yet, as you walk the halls of Orzzamar, trying to get the dwarves on your side, you can pretty much progress without meeting more than 50 characters which have something to say and do. The rest are enemies which you kill and little non player characters which show up for a frame or two and then disappear. You get to save the world in the end, but it feels ... [read more >>] 3D seems to be the next huge thing in videogaming, with more and more developers thinking about offering game experiences which rely on special television sets and on special glasses to add a lot more depth. And Sony, which is manufacturing the television sets with 3D technology, is saying that adding it to the PlayStation 3 will be easily done via a firmware update, with no need to tinker with new hardware.A new document which has been released to investors clearly states “All PS3 units will be firmware-upgradeable to 3D”. The technology is at the moment not too developed and few titles, like G-Force from Disney and Invincible ... [read more >>] Dynasty Tactics is a video game which was created and published by KOEI Ltd. Inc. The game was released exclusively on the PlayStation 2 home gaming console from Sony. It arrived on September 11, 2002. The game is classed as being a hybrid between a role playing experience and a strategy game with elements taken from real life history which is being played from an isometric top down perspective.Dynasty Tactics is a game spun off from the well-known and long-running Dynasty Warriors franchise which KOEI is still working on. The narrative arc of the videogame borrows quite heavily from Romance of the Three Kingdoms, a Chinese written epic tha... [read more >>] This Sunday, you can check out the Softpedia review for Modern Warfare 2, which is already selling like hotcakes, read the journal related to playing Dragon Age: Origins, read a Weekend Reading piece linked to videogames and movies or check out the EndWeekGame piece we've put together. But you can also take a look at the most important news stories of the week that passed.On Monday, we talked about Final Fantasy XIII, which was confirmed as coming to the West on March 9, 2010, and we also heard that another game set for next year, Dead Space 2, could actually be getting multiplayer. Tuesday was the day when Sony confirmed the existence... [read more >>] Activision was right. Bringing in 550 million dollars in revenue in the first five days on sales, Modern Warfare 2, the sequel created by Infinity Ward, has become the biggest entertainment release in history, beating out videogames like Grand Theft Auto IV and movies like The Dark Knight and the various Harry Potter releases. The talk about the Citizen Kane of videogames should subside for a while as analysts discus about how videogaming is set to displace movies as the big medium for entertainment releases.The question is whether videogaming really wants to take the place of movies in the entertainment area. The budgets are similar, espec... [read more >>] |