Last game you finished, tell us about it

[DArtagnan]

It´s also a game that separates the men from the boys .

Haha, I don't doubt it

 

[skavenhorde]

Just Finished Attack of the Paper Zombies

It's a fun little freeware game I ran across. The game is simple and difficult at the same time. The object is to capture the zombie lairs with 3 - 5 soldiers. You can upgrade the soldiers to have flamethrowers or sniper rifles and you can build a few buildings as well like a turret, cannon, and teleporter (this is a must since it's the only way to receive reinforcements). There are also grenades and poisonous gas attacks that use ammo that is regenerated over time.

It really isn't that difficult to learn, it's just in the later levels the zombies get special powers after you start taking over their bases and they start spawning incredibly fast. Plus the suckers will sneak across the paper to reclaim their lairs if you're not careful.

The games played out on a piece of graph paper with walls set up depending on what level your on.

For a freeware coffee break style game it was a lot of fun. You can get it here.

 

[JemyM]

Dragon Age: Golems of Amgarrak
Golems of Amgarrak is a DLC for Dragon Age in which you can import your character or create a new one. If you beat it you will get a few items on your character in the main campaign or in the expansion (Awakening).

Story
You are called by a dwarf who ask you to explore an underground settlement in search for a lost group of dwarfs (including his brother). The dwarf is a dualwielding rogue who joins your party. With him he have a tame Ronto (rhino-like creature) that acts as the party's tank.

Since the DLC is fairly short and set in the same single area, there's not much of storybuilding here. In the beginning the DLC is quite spooky, but then it becomes more about finding your way through a labyrinth, beating very difficult challenges. None of the NPC's you meet are that deep or interesting.

Gameplay
GoA adds a few new game elements to the module. The Ronto get his own little portrait, sitting up-right from the rogue who summoned him. Unfortunately, when the Rogue go down, so do his Ronto. I found this to be a bit annoying, since you might want to use the rogue as fighter, but he go down very quickly and take his tank with him. Also the Ronto takes up too much space in the often narrow pathways, meaning it gets stuck most of the time. Once I even managed to summon the Ronto inside a wall.

Much of GoA means jumping back and forth between differently colored dimensions, but in every corner you can expect a tough combat. Before you get your entire party, this was tremendously difficult for my imported level 23 mage. You do get a respec tome if you want it though.

You get your second companion just around the corner where you begin the DLC, a golem. This golem is interestingly a mage/spirit healer. If you find a few upgrades for him he can cast both group heal and revive and hurl lightning as well. He do not level like other characters though, you have to find upgrades for him.

You should import a character that have a couple of runes with him/her to make the DLC easier. You can attach runes on anvils scattered around the module and they can be replaced if you like. Since you cannot reimport your character back to the main campaign, feel free to be wasteful. This is too bad, since there were plenty of good items in the module, including top healing items or runes.

Reward
There are a couple of achievements to be unlocked in GoA. If you beat the DLC you get a few items on your character in the main campaign or in the expansion. Unfortunately you cannot import your character from GoA to Awakening, probably because one of the items that can be found in GoA is earned by beating GoA on high difficulty. There are also a couple of achievements to be found.

Final Conclusions
If you want a DLC for a Bioware game, grab Overlord for Mass Effect 2. That said, I would place this DLC on an above average scale, even if it's nowhere near as well done as Overlord. If you want a tough challenge and have a couple of hours to spare, feel free to try it out.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

It´s also a game that separates the men from the boys .

And those who want-to-be-men from those men who'd rather play boys' games, so to say. (In part I mean the graphics; DA was trying hard to look more "mature" with defining "mature" as being "dark & gritty" and especially as "bloody".)

 

[JemyM]

Dragon Age: Awakening
The expansion to Dragon Age: Origins.

Story
Half a year has passed since Dragon Age: Origins. THE Warden (imported character) or a new Grey Warden, enters Vigil's Keep, just to find it overrun with darkspawn. After liberating the keep, it becomes the base of operations for exploring the region for clues on a new type of enemy; a sapient darkspawn.

Like in Origins, you get a couple of main quests that each lead you to a distinct area. These areas might be taken in any order. Each place has it's own story and it's own secrets that are fairly well done.

Baldur's Gate II: Throne of Bhaal and Neverwinter Nights II: Mask of the Betrayer were direct sequels, Awakening not so. How Awakening and Origins are connected is only loosely revealed. Sure, you might meet some companions again but the first dialogue with one of them almost sounded like he didn't recognize you at all. Awakening is really a story in it's own, and it's far from as epic as Origins. However, it takes the darkspawns into a new interesting direction which I look forward to see more of in Dragon Age 2.

The new companions were all well done. You are likely to grow to like at least some of them.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
While Awakening keeps a similar engine to Origins, I have to mention the improvement in area design. Each of the major areas have a very distinct look from one another. Each area really look new and unique with some really good at design. Origins that look a bit pale and generic in comparison. It even made me stop at one place to take a screenshot.

Gameplay
Like I said in the story, Awakening is more about upgrading than adventuring. You go out in the surrounding areas, then you return to the keep. Between main missions you do political choices, such if you shall protect cities or farmlands with your guards. You can improve castle walls, build exceptional items with the blacksmith (Wade returns from Origins), and help the trade to improve.

With an imported character, expect to be able to go from level 20+ to 30+. There are a couple of new specializations added. The ones I tried was pretty nice. I played as a Mage, and like the first game I begun as a buffer. However, I soon ended up as an extremely damaging mage, despite not spending points in the traditional spells (lightning, fire, ice). You gain two new Arcane branches, one that creates damagedealing fields, which just felt like a manasink to me. The other adds more interesting abilities like resetting spelltimers.

Keeper sounded silly to me first, but once I got used to it, it became the battlespell of choice. It summon branches around you, but immobilizes you. Once there, you can upgrade it to damage nearby foes, drain their health to add to your own, or launch heavy damaging spikes into everyone inside. How damaging? It gave me Heavy Hitter as a mage. The only thing still standing after one such strike was yellow foes.

Battlemage contains damagedealing fields which I didn't care much for, but Stoic gives you mana when you take damage (when you need mana the most) and Hand of Winter was a heavy damaging burst of ice that freeze people around you.

Other specializations was the Legionary Scout that improves fighter-style rogues and Guardian which is a dedicated warrior-tank.

Even if you import your character with a ton of gold, expect items in Awakening to cost A LOT. Good then to know that almost everything you loot will give you a soverigns.

Bugs
Yes. Awakening suffers from some huge bugs. First noticeable bug is that companion approval is usually bugged. In many places you get 100 approval right of the bat, while you have to go slow with others. One companion stayed neutral despite having 100 approval, another ended up at "love" while the companion didn't seem to love my PC at all. Then you have companion quests that simply wont happen or won't complete if you do things in an unintended order.

Another nasty bug that caused me 3 hours of distress to fix with the toolset, is when the PC is supposed to lose the inventory and get it back. If you use bonus equipment from the DLC's, you won't get your items back at all, unless you hack your savegame.

Another bug was a frozen Animated Dead in a place where one shouldn't be. Non party characters ended up attacking it, but it was unkillable. After several replays I finally got past this one. I believe it happened because a NPC tried to play dead on a stair, which ends up bugging him.

Anotr is the Arcane Shield. It's graphics tear up models during cutscenes, which looks quite bad. They should have disabled spell effects while talking.

It seems no real effort have been made to fix these bugs either. I haven't seen any patch, even if someone would be neccessary to make this one a quality game.

Final Conclusion
Awakening is a mixed bag. If it hadn't been for the bugs, I say it's a decent story of it's own, but it doesn't feel like a real sequel, more like an attempt to expand without anything to build on. It progress the story about the darkspawn for Dragon Age 2 more than "what happened with the Warden". Still, I will probably have fond memories about some of the new companions.

 

[Thrasher]

Nice summary, JemyM.

 

[JDR13]

I think I enjoyed Awakenings more than Origins, although I wish they had fleshed out the story a bit more concerning The Architect.

 

[Thrasher]

Hmm, I REALLY hate bugs, but am tempted…

 

[DArtagnan]

How in the world can such bugs exist at this stage, with the kind of resources available to Bioware?

Someone explain that to me.

 

[JemyM]

I bet you saw it coming... Leilana's Song. The only thing I could do in Dragon Age now is to chase achievements, or play future DLC's. I have finished everything else there is to the game, except for Darkspawn Chronicles which I intend to save until later. With only 12 days left of summer I guess it's time for another game.


Dragon Age: Leliana's Song
A Download Content bonus campaign focused on the history of Leliana the Bard, one of the companions in Dragon Age: Origins.

Story
Leliana's Song is a prequel to Dragon Age: Origins, dealing with the events that later had it's climax in Leiliana's Companion Quest in Dragon Age: Origins. Unlike Origins and Awakening, LS is completely linear, even more so than Golems of Amgarrak. You pass through 8 areas in a sequence, telling a continous story. Since the future have already been written by Origins you do not have much choice in changing what happens, you are just there to experience the ride. Unlike Origins/Awakening Leiliana's dialogue is fully voice acted, and just like in Mass Effect she never say what the dialogue option seems to indicate.

With Leilana you have a dwarven tank and an elven wizard. The three companions speak to eachother all the time, commenting on everything that happens, much more frequent than in Awakenings and Origins. I guess they couldn't have done this in the larger adventures since it would require too much work and resources, but it was a nice touch.

Short as it was, I liked the story. It was sometimes emotional. It clearly made me decide what to do with a certain NPC if I ever replay Origins.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
Not much to say here. Doesn't really look as good as Awakening, more like reused content from Origins. When NPC's are introduced you get a short flashy screen with the NPC's face, name and some bloodsplatter. This was a nice touch, I wish they could used a similar one in the other expansions. I like how Leilana and her boss have this alternate dialect that makes them sound foreign (which they are).

Gameplay
LS is like playing a light version of Origins. You have a very basic party with a low level mage, a rogue and a warrior. There are shops in which you can update equipment, there are interactible objects you can click on to get codexes etc.

Since your characters are low level you have to use them to their max. Some opponents, like a red boss in the first map, is almost impossible unless you use a really good strategy. If you enjoy challenges, feel free to try LS out.

Final Conclusion
If you loved Leilana or if you enjoy a few hours of challenging gameplay, check it out.

 

[JemyM]

Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods
What kind of game earns 36% average on reviewsites and lead to the publisher to officially apologize for the game? Well, to find out have been my mission for the past few days.

Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods needs an explanation first. It's not the same game as "Gothic 3", but a stand-alone expansion and sequel.
It's also the prequel to the upcoming game Arcania: Gothic 4.

I loved the Gothic series, and I found Gothic 3 to be really enjoyable. Since it's release, the community have patched it up to make it a really solid title that can be enjoyed by anyone who enjoy large, free-roaming roleplaying games with a heavy focus on exploration.

However, Gothic 3 was released in an unfinished stage. The AI was broken and caused issues like insta-killing boars, quests that couldn't be finished, repeated crashes, and the worst of all; trashed savegames. It could be debated on why this happened, G3 was a very ambitious title, possible the most ambitious large-scale RPG in the modern era. The result however, was that the developer (JoWood) and the publisher (Piranha Bytes) went separate ways, Piranha Bytes later produced Risen, a game that carry over a lot of features from Gothic, but with a new setting. JoWood instead hired the Indian company Trine to make an expansion for the game, called "Forsaken Gods". However, they weren't allowed to get too much time to publish it, they had to do the impossible; to design a large scale RPG in a very short time. Due to the restraints, they had to go with what they got; someone elses game, someone elses engine, and lack of resources. The expansion was thus doomed from the start. Yet it was published, and there were even a collectors edition too.

Playing the game with the most recent patch is still like playing an alpha version, a gamemod in progress that was only just started. FG is not even "beta", and it's far less complete than G3. Explaining some of the surreal issues is what I will do in the rest of this minireview that would be fitting an episode of Angry Video Game Nerd or any other harsh videogame reviewer.

Story
FG takes place right after G3. Not given too many spoilers away for those who still would like to enjoy the first 3 games; the hero left the land after bringing it peace. But peace didn't last in his abscense. New factions arised, the challenged eachother, war broke out again. Scrying Myrtana from afar, the hero decide to return to the land to set things right again.

The hero begins with Inog and Anog, two brothers in the west of Myrtana. Thorus have gathered the orcs who fights against humans under Gorn. To the east, Lee have taken the throne of Vangard and hope for peace in the land.

To be able to end the war and build an alliance between the factions, the hero travels from city to city, speak to people, solve issues and collect loot from everthing that isn't nailed/glued to the ground.

This could have been nice setup. But the execution is awful. Since the game is unfinished, quests are likely to break so you can't finish the game, much of the dialogue is simply missing (giving you empty dialogue bars, or for some reason written in latin or missing voice acting). Some cases dialogue is spoken by the wrong person, which is very confusing, so the hero asks the NPC's question that the PC then responds. This makes it really difficult to understand what's going on, and the quest journal isn't helpful as it often gives wrong information, like "collect 1000" when you need to collect 3000.

As that wasn't enough, the actual game beneath all that have the kind of writing that reminds me of my own adventures I wrote when I was eleven. This makes Two Worlds look like an AAA title! They also trashed an almost perfect ending in Gothic 3, turning the whole awesomeness of that game upside down with the new silly plot that breaks the game and definitely shows that the original developers weren't around to stop the new ones from raping the NPC's the player got to love in the earlier titles.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
This is Gothic 3, with almost no enhancements whatsoever. Just like it's prequel it looks like crap at first, but once you tweaked the INI file, it can look quite good.

The game uses the same map from the first game, cutting Nordmar and Varant which leaves 1/3 of the map (Myrtana, the Middle Lands). It keeps the music from the first title, which is actually one of FG's only redeeming qualities. The music in G3 is often mentioned as "best game music ever". Walking around in the virtual nature, listening to the soft tunes, is strangely relaxing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLyqSQhS6E0

As I mentioned in the Story, the voice acting is screwed up. But there's another thing I would like to mention; when a NPC have nothing more to say, they tend to speak using the generic NPC voices, which means you can talk to someone who suddenly speaks in a drastically different voice.

Gameplay
Imagine you had a complete game open in a toolset. Then you begin to wildly delete items that someone else placed in the toolset, such as NPC's, but even if you delete a lot there will also be a lot still in the game that you hadn't time to delete.

Traces from Gothic 3 is everywhere in FG. In fact, some of the patches were "delete patches", that simply removed Gothic 3 stuff that shouldn't be in FG. Still there is a ton of stuff from G3 that weren't changed at all. Chests are everywhere with the same items inside. Monsters stand at the same spots, including those related to quests in G3. Some might even give you G3 rewards when killed.

But at least they filled up with new content in the areas they deleted to build the new story. That's fine right? Where as Gothic 3 had about 20-30 NPC's per city that was worth talking to, FG might have five. Quests are usually "guide NPC", "bring me # item X" and really annoying. Many RPG's have at least a few silly quests that are clearly there for humerous relief. In FG more than half of the quests are awfully silly, pointless and stupid and they aren't even funny. There's for example a whole ton of "crazy people" who are clearly out of their minds. One or two might have been fine, or funny, but FG have them everywhere.

To really get through this game, I took no chances. I used a full walkthrough that do not only give hints, it also tells outright when one of the hundreds of gamebreaking bugs pops up, how to avoid them and how to use the console to fix the game if it happens. I used the console all the time to be able to even finish the game. I also used it to shorten the time it took to play the game using the GOTO NPC command that teleports you to key NPC's. Some quests involve going back and forth between cities multiple times which might cause hours of meaningless strolling in areas you already explored and cleaned out. Unfortunately, there's also a lost of quests in which you need to guide NPC's over the entire continent which provide some frustrating hours of simply walking and making sure the NPC isn't stuck.

Let me give you one example of the quests you will find in this game. In the first city you get a couple of missions, including "find my brother and take him here" and "kill the owner of the inn, he's an orc sympetizer". In the second city you talk to the brother who do not want to leave the city until you have done quests for him, including "collect taxes from the owner of the inn". You have of course killed him already, causing the game to break. I had to respawn the NPC using the console. In other cases you need key items that other events delete from your inventory, so you have respawn them again. Then there's key NPC's missing and you have to use GOTO to find them. In one quest you have to find a Black Mage who will only spawn after speaking to 5 NPC's, including people in other cities, who when you speak to them only give you a generic response, but the quest still updates when you do.

Balance is out of touch. You can find the best armor in the game early on, but finding a mage that can teach you will take ages unless you know where to look. There were a trainer in the second city prior to the 2nd patch, but now you have to go through over half of the cities before you find one, unless you go there at once, which I actually did. I walked over the entire continent, collecting every teleporter stone, reading every book (skillbonuses) in the beginning of the game before beginning to do quests in the first town, just to speed things up.

Most traders have the same content, making it easy to get some generic items, but impossible to get others. I found only one shop in the entire game that sold empty vials, neccessary for alchemical potions. The only one selling robes refuse to sell it. All helmets have the same stats. Getting into Vangard got me every magical weapon in the game and the best armor in the game within the first hour of playing, since they forgot to make items solid. That means you can simply grab stuff that are used for decoration in the throne room for example.

There is no logical placement of things, you will aquire so much loot and money from every chest you see that you will eventually stop bothering to loot.

Being a mage, I quickly realized that the fireball you get from the beginning of the game is better than everything else you can earn, so I never got to use anything else. I also realized that many of the mages skills, such as Light Armor Proficiency (that should double robes protection) simply doesn't work. I also realized that my damage 45 staff did more damage than my 140 damage sword, by only draining 5% of the stamina the sword does.

Final Conclusion
Well, I did get through the game. Now at least I feel prepared for Arcania. FG was often a surreal experience and I am happy I didn't actually go out and BUY this game. Alphas stolen and uploaded to torrent sites are sometimes in better shape than this game is, despite the patches the game received. The games only saving quality is that Gothic 3 had great music, which is reused in FG. There have been talk about a community patch, but I say do not bother. Even if all bugs were fixed in the game, the bad writing, the pointless quests and meaningless content makes up the bulk of the game and if there's a silver lining somewhere, I couldn't find it. Buy the Gothic 3 Official Soundtrack instead.

 

[JDR13]

Forsaken Gods isn't worth the time it took you to write that post.

 

[JemyM]

Forsaken Gods isn't worth the time it took you to write that post.

I say failure deserves to be represented in the history logs.

 

[Kostas]

I admire your courage,I strongly advice anyone against trying it but sometimes you have to play it to see how bad it actually is.
But you could have used the time spent playing it on Risen.

 

[JemyM]

But you could have used the time spent playing it on Risen.

I'm doing that right now.

 

[JemyM]

This is going to be long... A full-length review...

Risen
History lesson. Risen is a spiritual successor of Gothic 1-3, made by the same developer Piranha Bytes. After Gothic 3 was published too early there was a major fight with the publisher (JoWood). PB went their own way they made Risen. Risens mechanics is almost identical to Gothic, which is a good thing. Stroll back a few posts to see my review of Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods, JoWoods attempt in same conflict.

Story
This will contain some spoilers of chapter 1. Since most of the story is revealed in #2, that might be fine. In the intro we can see a mage with an ocular device over his eye, on a boat, trying to fight off a seademon in a storm. We see the main character and a girl hiding in the background. The mages attack fails, and he teleports out of there. The boat is turned upside down by a wave. The main hero is washed ashore together with Sara. Together you go into the Island you landed on to get help and to explore. Soon you meet Jan, who fills you in on what's going on.

If you aren't used to the Gothic series, this might be confusing to you. You must actually speak to people and learn the islands geography. There's no "follow the waypoint" system. You have a quest journal but it won't tell you exactly what to do. This makes things harder but also more immersive since it forces you to absorb the dialogue and what's going on. Once you gotten far enough, more secrets are revealed to you and the greater picture takes form.

Unfortunate, Dialogue is not too fleshed out. Dialogue can be used to pump someone for information, but it's rare to see that dialogue makes a difference. You can usually just take every dialogue option you get without worrying about the outcome.

But back to Jan, he tells you that the Island have two factions, the "Bandits" and the Order. The bandits are a mix of freedom lovers ticked off by the Orders powergames and real bandits, so depending on your morality there are reasons to support or not support them. Same with the Order, a religion with a mix of good charitable people who try to look out for the needy and some hardcore zealots who push their order on everyone. They aren't necessary the good guys.

There are three places of note, the Bandits camp in a swamp, the Harbor City where there's a powergame between the bandits and the order, and the monastery. The Bandits camp is open at once, but the City is difficult to enter and difficult to escape since it's sealed by the order. Going anywhere near the order is disencouraged by everyone you meet. By following the leads you get and their advice you soon understand that something is happening to the island. Temples is coming up from the ground, filled with treasures and nasty monsters. Both the bandits and the Order seems interested, in their own way.

Depending on your choices you can be forced into becoming a warrior for the order right from the beginning of the game, all it takes is to get too close to the Order. They smack you over the head with a stick and then your choice is made for you. If you can avoid that, you can later either join the bandits, or get accepted as a Mage. Once you chosen your faction, the main story is almost the same for all characters.

As I said, much of the overarching plot is revealed in Chapter 2. Prepare to spend many many hours not really understanding what's going on, having no further option than trying to help people with trivial tasks in order go get by.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
The graphical impression of Gothic is a mixed bag. Nature and the world is stunningly beautiful to watch. The thick foliage of jungle mixed with soft yellow light from the sun creates a warm and welcoming tropical environment if it wasn't filled with monsters. I felt that pickable plants were easier to spot here than in Gothic 3, where they were often covered with tall grass. I found nights to be a bit annoying though, they are so dark that it's impossible to see where you are going, which is an issue before you can find the first beds you can use, such as in the beginning of the game when you must find yourself to a city and even inside it's too dark to find a bed. It got dark in my first playthrough before I got to the first buildings, so I couldn't see that there was a bed inside… Torches exist in the game, but once you lit one up you cannot restock it to your inventory. At least they can be dropped on the ground and picked up in your hand instead of being destroyed when you leave it in Gothic. (Apparently there seems to be a hotfix for the darkness in the game, hmmm).

Inventory and 2d art have been much improved since the Gothic series. Shields, swords, animal parts, plants and potions etc look really good in your inventory.

Characters and character animation is barely improved from Gothic 3 (2006). After recently playing games like Assassin's Creed one is a bit spoiled in the animation department. Especially jumping looks like the character is floating in the air like gravity is distorted. I do not think they use motion capture for jumping in this game.

Monsters look really good and there are clearly a new art design to several of them. Animals warn when you get too close, the boar for example starts to make noises and the huged spiked rats begin to shake their spikes at you as a warning. Gnomes are fun, they begin jumping around when you get too close. I felt that with all the flora and fauna in Risen, nature and the world feels alive. At least until you slayed and harvested everything in your path.

The music is often soft and very relaxing to listen to the many hours you are going to pour down into the game. Voice acting isn't memorable even if it isn't awful. The main character is rather emotionless. The Audio is enhanced by using audio tweaks offered by modern soundcards. For example, dialogue is given a slight echo when underground. Unfortunately, this make some dialogue difficult to hear.

Gameplay
Risen inherit gameplay from Gothic. The only thing new I saw was rune magic, axe combat instead of heavy weapons and having 3 magic schools. If you didn't play Gothic before, here's the deal; the Gothic series pull off a free-roaming world that feels alive, in a way that other games simply fails to do. Oblivion feels empty and dead in comparison. Exploration can be really enjoyable here, since you always find something new and unique everytime you go off road. Exploration is also a key to get powerful, the best items isn't found in shops.

Oblivion was based on scaling encounters based on your level. Games from Black Isle or Bioware tend to block you from access unless you progress the main story. Risen allows you to go anywhere you like at first level. Risen limits you by placing difficult monsters, so you know you are threading on thin ice when monsters seems to be radically harder than you can handle. That's when you take a few steps back and find a better area to explore, then you can return later. This offers a more realistic sense of freedom, your own skill is ultimately that decide where you can safely go. It makes leveling up more rewarding since it allows you to explore new areas. If you want to take risk though, nothing is there to stop you. I managed to sneak past a large monster early in the game and got a +20 life amulet for it, which is nice when you have only 100.

Factions are better represented than in most recent RPG's. Picking a faction here has major consequences. Each faction have their distinct stronghold, culture and opinion on what goes on, and even early on while talking to people you hear their opinions about what goes on elsewhere. That way you are absorbed into a world that feels realistic and alive around you. More things happen here than what happens around your character. And who you wish to support ultimately falls on you.

In the game you begin with weak weapons that anyone can use and you do quests and earn experience. As you level you get Learning Points that must be used with a trainer. You can train in Melee weapons, ranged, thievery, crafting and magic.

All classes can create and use magic scrolls while mages can use the spells without a scroll. Some spells such as telekinesis, levitation and Nautilus transformation is necessary to get past puzzles in the game. If you want to use the greater runes you do not only need to spend learningpoints, you need to boost Wisdom, which can only be done by reading books and stone tablets scattered throughout the island. They aren't easy to find, unless you use a walkthrough you might only unlock the 2nd or 3rd tier in runecasting.

Mages can also use crystals as spells, the fire, magic bullet and ice crystal are all used for offensive magic and can be updated with more powerful versions. You seem to be meant to max out one during the game so it's a hard pick as each have their advantages and disadvantages. That said, I found damaging spells a bit boring. You can max out one school unless you really minmax and can max out two. Fireball consumes little mana and have an AoE effect, but the AoE is too weak so you almost never get something out of it, and unless foes are standing at a good distance you are going to fail. A fireball must be loaded up and if you get hit or try to jump, concentration breaks. This makes close-quarter fights almost impossible with fireball. Magic Bullet is fast and have a knockback effect, but drains mana rapidly. You have to chug down potions all the time, but you won't have the problem you do with fireballs thanks to the knockback. Ice freezes opponents, but then what? You have to manually beat them down. Magic Bullet was an unnecessary addition to the game, and the way fireballs worked in Gothic was more fun (they become homing if you load them up). The need to pick between the three attack spells was inconvenient. Had it been a spell school, unlocking plenty of "fire" or "ice" spells for example it would have been better, but picking between only 3 spells? Using the same attack spell throughout the entire game is boring.

People who want to be mages have a long and frustrating walk to go. The first mage trainer isn't met until you played the game for a day or two, which means fighting a lot of opponents while saving points. This can be done, I did, but it's a really hardcore route. Luckily the first two cities can be solved by very little fighting and if you get decent equipment it is possible to finish every quest in those without spending a single point in fighting abilities. It can be discussed if this is fair, but if you keep the points you get instant awesomeness once you get there, which might be really rewarding. I found a +5 strength potion, and I often quicksaved during combat if I successfully damaged my opponent, reloading if they struck me down. Cheating? Maybe.

As you improve your fighting abilities you as a player is actually trained as well. The trainer tells you how to fight better while your character gets faster and more fluid in his combat movement. He can also begin to use a wider range of techniques with more options in combat. This can tick people off though, since you might think the game have slow and bad controls at first, but that's actually your characters low level that does that. Once you improved your fighting skills you can pull off greater feats and can react much faster. Even early on you can learn how to improve your fighting though by learning how to fight a certain animal or creature. There's usually a trick. Wolves tend to attack rapidly then flank you, by blocking during their rapid attacks you can follow up with a counter attack. Human opponents might try to smack your sword out of a way and then do a follow up attack, so you need to learn to block right after that happens, then react with a couple of attacks on your own. Learning this allow you to take down even more difficult opponents untrained.

Thievery means you can sneak, pickpocket and pick locks. Lockpicking is one of the more awarding skills in the game and takes back the little minigame from the early Gothic games, in which you need to trial and error a code using your A or D key. Easy locks have a 4# code, where as more difficult locks have more. I thought this was fun. Failure might mean the lockpick breaks. Unlike Dragon Age where you can loot every chest you see, people react at once you enter their homes. They watch your moves and if you take anything, they attack and usually call the guards. Sneaking in at midnight is a way to avoid this, so sneaking is a very useful ability to learn. I actually do not know a RPG in which it's so much fun to be a thief, even if it's not your main class. Sneaking is useless outside cities though.

Crafting have always been a fun thing in the Gothic series, even if you do not train. You can for example always harvest meat from killed animals that can be fried over a campfire into a healing item. You can always cook, if you found the recipes. There are even recipes that permanently upgrade your stats, but ingredients are hard to come by. Learning the skill "Gut Animals" allows you to harvest more, fangs, hides etc, that can be sold for more coin. Prospecting allows you to harvest veins (like gold) you find in caves that can be sold or used for smithing. Smithing allows you to make weapons and artifacts that cannot be bought. Alchemy have often been a real gem, there's tons of potions that can be made from all the plants you pick up along the way, including potions that give you permanent bonuses to your stats. Since there's no regeneration in the game, mana and health potions is a must.

Unfortunally, you cannot change the main character beyond his class. It's always a he, and you cannot change his appearence. Gender roles in Risen can be discussed as ladies either are prostitutes or look like them.

I would have preferred a second or third quickslot bar, and the ability to assign key combinations like SHIFT+1. 10 slots didn't feel enough for a mage and 6-10 is inconvenient anyway (see technical issues). I also missed a properly scaled minimap and at least the ability to buy a compass. You can use the map, but it covers 1/3 of the screen. Some of the dark dungeons towards the end is difficult to navigate since all walls tend to look the same and the light spell isn't good enough.

I also often got the feeling that the character is moving too slow, even with autorun on.

NPC AI is quite great though. It does what Oblivion wanted to do; make NPC's to behave like they are doing things. They have a life, they work, they stroll around, they sleep at night, they investigate if you walk into their homes, they rest around the campfires. It's annoying that they begin to attack you if you damage them in a battle against enemies though, they really shouldn't have. There is a spell called "Tell Joke" that fixes this inconvenience though.

Achievements
The game have an achievement system, probably made for XBox 360 but inherited on the PC. Achievements wary between doing task X # times, to making certain choices or finding something rare or unique.

Bugs and technical issues
I didn't see too many bugs in the game. My greatest issues is that some keys are unneccessary locked and thus cannot be changed. This includes quicksave (set at F8 when F5 is often defeault) and hotkeys. These keys can be edited by using a XML file, which allowed me to make a more convenient setup (I never saw the point using 6-0 as hotkeys since you can't reach them). For example I often use "F" for light (Flashlight), so i wanted to use F for torch and later the Light Spell, so I had to manually edit the XML so that Quickslot0 became the F key.

Sometimes quests completes that you never took, sometimes dialogue refers to things you do not yet know. It's interesting how quests you do not have may complete when you complete them. You suddenly get a "quest solved" and experience, when you never accepted the quest. Interesting, but if you ask me convenient. You do not need to worry about taking quests first if you want to explore. You can always explore without screwing things up.

The worst bug I saw was that your journal and maps disappear if you use high resolution. To reset this I had to switch to widescreen mode and click cancel so it reverted back to 2048x1536. Doing so got the journal and maps back. While looking at maps, switching to another map (like local/worldmap) cause the character to look around as well behind the windows, while you move the mousecursor around. You might even activate things when you leftclick another map, if the thing you activate is behind the map-tab you click. Minor but annoying. I didn't find a way to delete old saves either, and I accidently saved over old saves more than once when I wanted to load them, but that can just have been my sloppiness.

Most NPC's in Risen are either indestructable or very though. I did get one single event when an NPC died on me that I wanted to keep (only Pickpocket 2 trainer for Mages). I found him much later outside a city. He seems to have been killed by an Ogre on his way back after getting recruited by me for a mission.

You can tweak the graphics quite a bit by editing the INI files, however, some values seems hardcoded like NPC distance. I ran with almost tripple the vegitation view range without slowdowns so obviously the vanilla game is optimized for slower machines or XBox 360.

I did got problems on Chapter 4, monsters begun falling through the ground when slain and whenever I threw a fireball the game began to crawl. Searching the forum made me found others with similar issues, but no solution.

A couple of times I was stuck in geometry. This often happened when I tried to walk off a ledge. The game seem to lock the keyboard when falling, so I had to force the game to close with Windows.

Final Conclusion
Risen remind me a lot about Gothic I. The area is much smaller than Gothic 3 which was Piranha Bytes former title, but a smaller space means more quality. Each area is handcrafted with a unique look and feel, and there are plenty of reasons to return to an area once visited once story have progressed or you earned more skills.

Most issues with Risen are minor, and I can live with them. The strongest might be that there's not much story until you reach chapter 2, and if you intend to become a mage that means finishing three "cities" with no fighting ability before you get to see anything more. You mostly do trivial tasks up to then and feel like an errand boy who's new equipment really do not come as often as they do in games like Dungeons & Dragons. Also, dialogue, voice acting and character faces is definitely a step down from other modern titles such as Dragon Age. There's really only one returning NPC on your side in the game and I say it should have been more. Gothic I had a NPC from every faction on your side.

If you can get through Chapter I (which can be enjoyable for it's own reasons), Risen carry most of the great features that got me to love the Gothic series, a large world filled with actual content and real joy of exploration. Despite the length of this review I cannot even sum up all the peculiar minor details I found in this game. Did I mention that eating ten eggs improve your strength? The game is filled with small and fun details like that.

If you like RPG's and have patience, try Risen out. A warning though, it might not be as easily digested as many games are these days.

 

[JDR13]

The worst bug I saw was that your journal and maps disappear if you use high resolution. .

Depends on your setup. I played at 1920X1200, and never experienced that issue.

I agree about the hero's run speed, it felt too slow.

Did you play on Normal or Hard?

 

[JemyM]

Depends on your setup. I played at 1920X1200, and never experienced that issue.

Seems to happen in non wideresolution. Setting it to 1920x1200 and answering "no" when it asked me if I wanted to apply the new setting fixed it. I had to do this every time I restarted the game.

Did you play on Normal or Hard?

Normal. Playing a pure mage with fireball 10 and close-range encounters was often a major problem.

 

[JemyM]

Red Faction: Guerrilla
During the golden era of First-Person Shooters, many companies tried to bring their own unique twist to the genre. One question many had probably asked was why they couldn't simply blow all those locked doors up, or pass through a wall with a grenade. Red Faction (2001) boasted a new engine that made this possible. However, once the game came it remained a very traditional first person shooter, where the much talked about destruction system was underused and not as useful as it could have been.

The sequel, Red Faction II, was developed for Playstation 2, and was fairly different from the first one both in story and playstyle. It was still a first-person shooter, but since it was made for consoles it had controls and hud accordingly. The destruction system was somewhat improved, but still not really there.

Enter Red Faction: Guerilla, a game for a different generation. Third time a charm, or is it a different game alltogether?

Story & Immersion
RFG continues the "workers revolution" theme of the first games, with plenty of obvious references to socialism. The game takes place 50 years after the first game and make references to both. We are back on Mars (second game was on Earth), where the EDF (Earth Defense Force) is now a corrupt occupying force. Alec Mason just arrives on the planet to see his brother killed after which he is drawn into the revolutionary Red Faction who fight to liberate the planet.

From that point on, Mason is going to do mission after mission with the ultimate goal to liberate Mars, sector by sector. First one actually called Parker, an obvious reference to the main character in the first game.

The story are told through the main storymissions after which you might get a 3d rendered cutscene. There are few of those, and frankly the game isn't that rich on story.

It was rarely touched by the story of the game. It was only the secrets of the Marouders that felt exciting to explore, but only a few quests deals with that tale. Some background story to the game is earned by finding hidden radio transmitters, which is discussed in "Achievements and Collectables" below.

Engine: Graphics & Sound
RFG is set on Mars and Mars have a lot of brownish red. Interestingly, much of the game, the buildings, bunkers, the marouders (savages) etc remind me about the movie John Carpenter's Ghost of Mars.

That said, Mars have been divided into different sectors, not all of them red. Dust is greyish, Oasis actually have grass, badlands looks like a wasteland. Most of Mars is mountains though, and despite the mix of color, variation isn't that different. As a game rich on physics, it's not surprising that the dust/smoke looks good. Either you have foggy wind above you, small whirlwinds on the road, dust coming up from behind your vehicle or smoke from fire. It also adds to the atmosphere that this is a dusty mining planet.

The buildings reminds me about a Real-Time Strategy game, in that they have the same look and have been placed down from above. There aren't that many areas that looks unique, thought out by an architect. It's also rare that you go inside a building for a longer time. In the second half of the game you do get to see some more hospitable areas, actual cities, but still there were rarely a reason to go into a building, and if you did you probably demolish the floors whenever using a weapon inside, so moving upstairs is kinda pointless and sometimes annoyingly difficult. The rest of the planet is mostly wasteland, dirt and heavy vehicles for mining. The vehicles actually have some variation though, the more "civilized" areas had cabs, buses, sportcars and ambulances instead of mining vehicles.

NPC's have a specific artstyle, usually wearing padded clothing. Alec Mason himself have a workers coat with graphically enhanced reflexes that I thought looked rather nice.

There are few NPC's of note, but there are some reoccuring faces on the friendly side. Enemies are almost always faceless and nameless. I cannot complain about the voice acting, and the audio is ok. The music is fitting for the space setting.

The game ran extremely well on PC, despite being a very iconic console game. I played it on a 40" HDTV in 1920x1080 with a wireless XBox 360 controller. The game could sense whether or not the controller was online or not, warning me when it wasn't. When switching to mouse+keyboard temporarily I noted how the game's button icons automatically changed to keys. When earning achievements, a small Windows Live Window appeared in the bottom of the screen. I never had a single crash and the game ran solid and fast even after leaving it on over the night.

Gameplay
As I hinted in the introduction, Red Faction: Guerrilla feels like a game from a very different era than it's prequels. Half-Life 2 proved a few years back that physics was cool, and I know few games who take this more seriously than RFG. Ignoring the destruction mechanics for a moment though, Red Faction: Guerrilla feels very much like a game I played before, but not thanks to the prequels. The core mechanics of the game is now a 3rd person character, a free-roaming environment filled with a mix of storymissions and generic missions, vehicles and unlockables, a cover system, turrets that overheat but never run out of bullets etc is the vanilla game these days. Beyond the Mars setting, the look and feel of the game and it's interface will instantly remind you of games like Grand Theft Auto, Just Cause, Assassin's Creed etc etc. The generic missions also reminded me of Far Cry 2.

I guess the only mechanic that I need to speak about then is the destruction. In the prequels destruction presented alternate ways to bypass problems, or sometimes a puzzle. Destruction in RFG is no longer an optional way to bypass problems, but rather the main point of the game. You need to destroy a lot of stuff to bring the game forward. You smack down or bomb buildings with whatever tools you have to pump a couple of vital values (explained below). I guess that if you have a primal impulse that makes you feel warm inside whenever you destroy something, this is for you. For me, I never really saw the point. Sure, I could tear down every building in the game, I just never felt the reason to if it wasn't to earn the three main values that matter in the game; Control, Morale and Salvage.

Reducing Control is an important task in the game, which means reducing EDF's control over an area. Doing missions can reduce control, but you can also do things like blowing EDF buildings up. Once control is gone, it's easier to move around. Control also unlock storymissions so it's the route you have to take if you want get forward in the main plot.

Next to Control you have Morale. Doing things that increase morale among workers or the Red Faction will make people more willing to help out in fights. I never really saw any other bonus to this than NPC's joining me when fighting the EDF. Most of the time they were cannon fodder, drawing fire off me, which could be quite helpful.

Destroying buildings into scrap gives you Salvage, which is the games currency. You use salvage to buy upgrades, better weapons, armor, jetpack and other useful items. You can also earn salvage by smacking down ore deposits, rusty vehicles scattered around the planet and completing missions.

There are many ways to tear down buildings, you have explosives that can be attached to buildings and blown, you also have an extremely powerful hammer (an obvious Hammer & Sickle reference) that easily turns concrete to dust. You can also unlock more powerful hightech equipment later on that makes destruction easier and faster. You can also use a vehicle, especially the heavier ones, and simply drive it into buildings, which I found to be the fastest way to take one down. There are also plenty of walkers that you can use for the same purpose. Tanks exist in the game, but they aren't accessible for the player except when specifically given to carry out a mission.

I played the game on normal and much of the game was quite easy, although there were a few missions that I had to replay numerous times. There are some missions that simply doesn't work that well thanks to the gameplay mechanics. When you have to run up on pipes and continously get stuck between them you begin to question why you need to run up pipes in the first place. Another time you have to race against the clock, passing waypoints marked with a yellow cylinder. If you pass the cylinder rather than drive right through it, you have to turn your vehicle around and make sure your vehicle really pass through. Since the goal is to get to the end as quickly as possible, this was very poorly done.

Collectables & Achievements
Like all games of this kind, achievements involves doing X # times. Destroy 250 crates, mine 300 Ores etc. etc. There seems to be less than 250 crates which meant that finding the last ones didn't mean searching a needle in a haystack, but there seemed to only be 300 Ore. I find that kind of achievements to be pointless and a waste of time. More rewarding are the 36 radio transmitters that gives you a short hint on what happened on Mars between RF2 and 3. Among those I also found the strongest reference to RF2, if not the only one.

Final Conclusion
If destroying generic buildings in an up-to-date physics engine have an appeal to you, RFG might be your game. If you are looking for a deep and immersive storyline, strong atmosphere, advanced and intriguing missions, tactical thinking, the joy of exploring strange and alien places etc, RF3 is probably not for you. I played both RF1 and 2 before RFG and in hintersight, none in the series really stood out. Destruction is no longer a tactical option, it's now the core gameplay, in a game I played so many times before. Without anything else setting it apart from other games of the same style, there are other games I would play first, with a lot more variation in gameplay and more interesting and immersive story.

I am interested in the idea of bringing proper destruction to the game, but I cannot say that any of the RF games have sucessfully pulled it off and made it interesting. I will still have a look at Red Faction: Armageddon once it arrives, but I do not expect much.

Red Faction Guerrilla: Demons of the Badlands
Demons of the Badlands is the supposed first of three promised DLC's for Red Faction Guerrilla, but I believe it's the only one that was ever released. The DLC is a prequel to the main game, in which you play one of the NPC's. There isn't much to speak about here, the DLC have only have 3 story missions, the rest is the same old generic missions from the main game, except this time you are doing it from the Marouder perspective. You do get some background story to the events in the main game, but overall it didn't feel that interesting. It only took me 2-3 hours to finish at the most.

 

[JemyM]

Mass Effect 2: Lair of the Shadow Broker
Shepherd comes over some good leads on the whereabouts of the Shadow Broker, a mysterious character that appeared in the first and the second game. Liara T'Soni, the blue female alien who used to be your companion in the first game, is determined to find him no matter what. Of course Shepherd joins in on the ride.

Storywise LotSB promises a continuation of the story of Liara, possibly including a continuation of the romance subplot from the first game. It also offers the player to find out more about the mysterious Shadow Broker. Finally LotSB is the first DLC that begins to bridge the gap between Mass Effect 2 and 3. Fans celebrate!

Unlike the majority of all DLC's out there, LotSB do not rehash maps, meaning that each area you are going to visit is crafted anew, including some great new scenery that actually caused me to stop for a moment to absorb. Compare this to the bonus content made for Dragon Age that often simply reuses maps and locations you already been to, with nothing more than minor tweaks. This is good, because the DLC is completely linear unlike Overlord.

The same cannot be said about the opposition, which is the same old enter-room, foes-pour-in. The foes of the same kind we have seen in earlier games, just with a different name and recolored armor. Well, there are exceptions but I won't spoil them.

When it comes to gameplay there are a couple of new mechanics, including a car-chase, although one that I found to be extremely short. It was over before I even got the hang on how the chase was supposed to work. It did made me laugh though since there are some hillarious dialogue going on while driving, and it reminded me about the speeder chase in Star Wars Episode 2. You will also have Liara back as your companion during the mission, including her ability Stasis that I do not think have been in ME2 before. Liara could handle herself quite well. I can add that I played the game on Insanity and found that Kasumi was an awesome companion. We have been able to shoot at explosive cannisters before to damage nearby foes, but in this DLC we also have pieces of the environment that can be shot at repeatidly, which made some fights feel more tactical. There are also bossfights that proved to be interesting challenges.

The mission is not all there is to this DLC. After beating the mission you get the access to a new area, with plenty of new features that I will not spoil here, lets just say that it reveals a lot that will probably be relevant in future DLC's or ME3. I will mention though, that we now finally have a legit way of respecing our companions.

So much for content, is the DLC any good? LotSB is one of Biowares stronger attempts at building a DLC that is like a mini-expansion, which is what a DLC should be. I cannot say that the story or the gameplay had as many surprises as Overlord did, but I can easily put LotSB on 2nd place and fans of ME who plan to play ME3 would be stupid to not check this one out.