The Force and Fantasy

So, my mother was cleaning out her desk the other day and found these two gems of days gone by.

I honestly thought they were gone forever.

I have some of my other GameBoy games in my bedroom drawer and am saddened with the knowledge that they may no longer work since the batteries inside the cartridges may have expired by now.

However, I do still have my younger sister's GameBoy Color in my possession. I guess I know what Im doing for the rest of the day.

Cheers

Finally and Truly Awake

FINALLY!

I finished Dragon Age: Origins - Awakenings. I thought that DLC would never bloody end. I understand that it was made as a lead in to Dragon Age II but it honestly did not need to take me a week to get through it. The ME2 pre-cursory DLC to ME3, The Arrival, took me about a day to get through and that was honestly much more satisfying and appealing than playing through Awakenings.

I'm pretty happy to finally be able to cross off DA:O from my personal play list but find myself disappointed in the overall game experience. The story was a bit simplified and I never really found myself caring too much for any of the characters. I found that when they disapproved of an action of mine I was more disappointed not because the character was disapproving but because I knew I had to work to get that rating back up just so they wouldn't leave me in the final battle.

As opposed to the Mass Effect series, where I would try my best to do everything possible for my team and crew so that they would be at their best near the end of each game not only because it was necessary, but because I really did feel a connection to those characters. I felt I owed it to them.

Some slight spoilery stuff ahoy.

On Continuity and Awakenings...

So, remember the other day when I said I had passed the main story of Dragon Age: Origins? And was working my way through the DLC extensions of the story?

I need to have stern words with the creators of Dragon Age: Origins. Very. Stern. Words.

SPOILERS AHOY!

Zero Punctuation on Mass Effect 3

I'm just gonna go ahead and put this little video up here, courtesy a friend of mine.

Zero Punctuation is a video game video review series by The Escapist with Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw, who is possibly one of the most monotonous Englishman ever born in the world. This week's feature was on Mass Effect 3.

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : Mass Effect 3

I chuckled. Cheers.

For the record: I too enjoyed the Mako and I was satisfied with the ending of ME3 and the game as a whole. I just find this amusing as well.

The Archdemon Has Fallen

A post on the very next day? With results? Madness!!!

Certainly does seem that way anyway.

I completed the main story of Dragon Age: Origins. I left a few side missions unresolved but I really don't care that much about them as I'm pretty sure it didn't hinder the ending of the game that much. (If it did, I don't want to hear about it, let me enjoy completing the god damned game in peace)

The final battle against the Archdemon left quite a bit to be desired. The entire final march against the Blight actually left me feeling rather let down. I was expecting a hard battle towards the Archdemon, filled with Hurlocks, Hurlock Vanguards, Ogres and Hurlock Emissaries. There were certainly a good number of those, but not enough to make me feel like this was the final battle. I'm also not sure whether this is something the game actually does or this is some strange bug, but when I faced them en-masse, most of them were one-hit kills. Although that was definitely satisfying, it struck me as if the game was simply trying to hurry me along and made the enemies that much weaker. As if to say, "Oh, dearie, I know you aren't strong enough yet for the whole onslaught so have a few lackeys instead." I felt insulted. By a game.

Don't misunderstand me, I was definitely happy to be going through the ending as quickly as I was so I could cross this game off my to-do list, but I felt like there wasn't much of a challenge to be had on my way to the Archdemon. When I finally reached the Archdemon, even that battle was terribly disappointing. Not because it was dreadfully easy, that bastard made me fight for his blood, but because there wasn't any impressive ending graphic of everyone attacking the Archdemon. I wanted my Grey Warden to hop onto the thing's back and have to stab it in the back numerous times before performing a flip over its head as the Archdemon aimed to grab her off its back with its massive jaw,  landing in front of the Archdemon and running underneath it while her daggers cut into the exposed neck of the creature, rolled out from beneath it as it bled out and then stabbed it square in the face.

That didn't happen. Though, now I am seriously considering animating it.

Anyway, the kingdom was saved, experienced peace for a time, political bullshit, blah blah blah. I was happy to be done with the game but felt the entire experience had been a bit lacking in substance. Then, I remembered I had all that DLC to go through.

Leliana's Song
Golems of Amgarrak
The Darkspawn Chronicles
Witch Hunt
Dragon Age: Awakening

I've already completed Leliana's Song, The Golems of Amgarrak and The Darkspawn Chronicles. I am currently in the process of completing Witch Hunt and then beginning Dragon Age: Awakening. I'll write up my experiences with each one later on in the week. Maybe if Dragon Age: Awakening is more satisfying than the whole of Dragon Age: Origins, I'll consider purchasing Dragon Age II. For now, I have no plans of doing so.

Cheers.

Archdemons and Reapers

Good. Fucking. Christ.

Do pardon the expletive, but then again, I never said this blog would be PG did I?

Anyway, I had been playing Dragon Age: Origins up until I realized Mass Effect 3 would be coming out soon. At which point, I abandoned my fight against the Blight, grabbed my M-98 Widow and plowed my way through the rest of Mass Effect 2.

I should explain, the first time I played Mass Effect was on Xbox360. I was young and impulsive and under the influence of painkillers as I had just had my wisdom teeth removed and needed a welcome distraction from the pain. I did not sleep until I had finished both games (okay, that's a downright lie, I slept for about four hours or so between game plays but I finished both games within a week of each other. Nyah).

I had fallen completely in love with the world of Mass Effect, the characters, the environments, hell, I'm one of those weirdos that actually LIKED the Mako. That was one hell of a tank, hardly ever flipped over on me and I loved being able to drive around dozens of alien worlds and appreciate the environments these developers had decided to create for us, the players, because why the fuck not? I will admit looking for minerals and Turian insignias and the Matriarch writings and Salarian ID tags was a bitch and a half to complete, but I did it because somewhere in the back of my mind I knew it would be all worth it just to kick Sovereign's miserable ass. (I also have a slight case of OCD when it comes to really good games.)

When I heard the third installment to the Mass Effect series was on its way, I fangirled like no fangirl had ever fangirled before. Then, I realized that my entire save was on Xbox360. Specifically, my brother's Xbox360. That he had taken with him to college. Needless to say, I was not in a happy mood at that realization and it is a wonder I did not destroy anything within a ten block radius of me.

Now, I have a Macbook Pro. As most people may know, it is possible to boot Windows on a Mac (*gags*). I did so in order to begin my quest to complete Mass Effect and ME2 before the release of ME3. I had a year, it was possible. I immediately bought PC copies of ME1 and ME2, and a copy of Dragon Age: Origins as it was part of a beautiful bundle pack Amazon was offering at the time, three games for the price of one. Unfortunately, I forgot that my Macbook Pro overheats like a motherfucker for no reason (Apple, I love you, but you gotta fix that problem.) so, playing Mass Effect proved a tad difficult when my poor Macbook would decide to heat itself up to the point of possibly melting the motherboard. Thankfully, that never happened. I bought a laptop cooling fan shortly after my first attempt at running Mass Effect on my Mac and though it did help, I found the experience terribly lacking.

Then, as if my silent prayers had been answered, I was provided a monster of a PC to look after and use to my heart's content by a friend of mine (She's doing just fine, btw. I treat her as if she were my own and she is certainly due for a cleaning soon.). This PC, dubbed La Beba, was a freaking god send. I could now play ME1 without suffering from the fear of overheating the machine and with graphics of such quality as to cause tears in my eyes. I was one happy camper. I took it upon myself to buy a 1TB HDD to install into the La Beba to store all of my files in so as to not fill up the 130GB SSD drive it has and so it wouldn't be too difficult to take my files when I would have to return La Beba and build my own monster of a PC (Friend, the time is coming, soon now I will require your assistance in order to build my Monster).

So, I now had ME1, ME2 and Dragon Age: Origins installed on one machine, and it wasn't exploding. My happiness cannot be described and will hardly ever be replicated.

Now, I began anew my ME1 file in order to complete the game. Of course, being the multitasking procrastinating moron I am, I decided to start up DAO as well, just to have it started up. This did not prove to be as detrimental as I may have thought as I didn't have a grand interest in the game at the beginning, my mind filled with space faring thoughts. Of course, my inner fantasy nerd caught whiff of a world filled with magic, demons and dragons and proceeded to lead a revolution against my sci-fi nerd. The battle raged as I found myself switching from ME1 to DAO, back to ME1 and so on and so forth. Eventually, I beat ME1 and then decided to actually take a crack at DAO seeing as I still had a good couple of months before ME3 came out.

Watch out people, here thar be spoilers!

On Saving the Universe...

Oh dear, it seems I've left this blog unattended.

Again.

...

Really, I'm sorry. I just have this perpetual procrastination problem that I've been trying to resolve with not much success.

I have yet to play any of the games on The List to completion yet and I suppose that is going to be a trend for a good while until I finally decide to take some charge in the matter. Maybe actually do vlogs (video blogs) about my experiences because, quite frankly, some of the noises I made while playing Mass Effect 3 were not of this world and my reactions were priceless.

Oh, I didn't mention I had acquired Mass Effect 3 on release day? And completed it this past weekend? Well, that's just silly of me. I suppose I should write something about my experiences with the game, what choices I made throughout and how terrible I thought the ending was. Except, that last bit is completely untrue. I actually genuinely enjoyed the ending I was presented with in the game and believe that people need to stop whining about it ever ten bloody seconds.

Im going to go ahead and give those of you who haven't beaten Mass Effect 3 yet to kindly navigate themselves away from this webpage and somewhere much more friendly. I'll even provide some nice links for you.

>I can has cheezburger?<

>Puppies<

>Wallet Alleviation Support Group<