Dragon Age 2

I have a friend who grew up playing video games...it was his #1 passion. Then he got a job as a video games tester, and had it for over 4 years. By the end of it, he pretty much hated playing video games. Nowadays he plays nothing but Pokemon and Minecraft (as do I, coincidentally). Also, he posted this on LJ yesterday. It is very true:

I hate these vids were two speech synthesizers drone monotonously on whatever. Gimmie plain old text over machine-read text.

Fortunately, there's a non-video version of the above rant.

(Disclaimer: I haven't actually listened to more than the first five seconds of the above vid before getting bored to death by the arguing robots.)

The funny part is they don't seem to want to hire those of us who like obsessively testing software and meticulously detailing every little anomaly. They seem to like guys like my brother who just play games all day and develop mad skills. bah

As for gamer girlfriends, I found one of those without trying. And of course she has shit taste in games! Meh. I didn't want her for the gaming.

So I played the demo. As much as I don't like games playing themselves for me, I don't like the lack of auto attack on the console versions. It's just a button masher for any physical attack, literally smashing A over and over. The hair looks awful as well, was that designed for PS2's capabilities?

Other than that and the apparent lack of WRPG-style exploration, it does look fairly interesting, at least from a story perspective.

Well, decided to check it out. I'm enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. Only things that annoy me is it can be hard to target enemies without accidentally clicking to move next to them instead, and the fact you can't zoom out as far as in DAO, which makes keeping track of everyone in the party annoying.

Other than that, I really like the fact that my character is voiced (even if it does somewhat limit dialogue), and funnily enough I like the combat more than in DAO. Guess I'm not much for tactical combat and would rather destroy everything in my path with flashy moves, or something :P

Danarchy said:

video

Xtranormal
7 minute video
7 minutes of ms sam.

Fuck that shit.

(Disclaimer: I haven't actually listened to more than the first five seconds of the above vid before getting bored to death by the arguing robots.)

If you can stand more than 30 seconds of these shitty xtranormal debate videos then there's seriosuly something wrong with you.

Oh and does the game really look this bad or is 4chan just trolling?

Apparently so. At least on "medium" settings.

Source:
https://twitter.com/#!/d0n7bl1nk/status/45701405301936128
https://twitter.com/#!/d0n7bl1nk/status/45715254835027968

Craigs said:

Oh and does the game really look this bad or is 4chan just trolling?

That's on lower settings, apparently. The game isn't gorgeous, and certainly uses a LOT of resources multiple times. But it's passable, if only slightly considering this IS Bioware, and if you look past the laziness (Opaque water, seriously? Daaaaammmmmnnn...) it's not too bad.

There was still DLC AT LAUNCH, though, so don't expect the entire game for your $60 or so.

I saw an ad for this game in the club. I guess it looked okay. But I prolly never play. Because I have a simple computer without advanced processing power or graphics capabilities. Zdoom for life.

Membrain said:

That's on lower settings, apparently.

From what I've heard, its the opposite. I remember seeing those screenshots first posted on the Bioware forums from a guy who claimed he was running DA2 on High.

Danarchy said:

I have a friend who grew up playing video games...it was his #1 passion. Then he got a job as a video games tester, and had it for over 4 years. By the end of it, he pretty much hated playing video games. Nowadays he plays nothing but Pokemon and Minecraft (as do I, coincidentally). Also, he posted this on LJ yesterday. It is very true:

lGar7KC6Wiw

Same thing said in 3 frames.http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/25/

Mr. Freeze said:

From what I've heard, its the opposite. I remember seeing those screenshots first posted on the Bioware forums from a guy who claimed he was running DA2 on High.

I can say for a fact that he was doing -something- wrong. It's not exactly gorgeous, but it looks a shitload better than that.

I ran the game on medium, and tbh it didn't look much better than DAO (probably worse actually). Perhaps it would be better on high/ultra, but it ran like crap on those settings, where DAO runs quite smooth.

Xeros612 said:

Apparently so. At least on "medium" settings.

Source:
https://twitter.com/#!/d0n7bl1nk/status/45701405301936128
https://twitter.com/#!/d0n7bl1nk/status/45715254835027968

Even for medium settings that's pretty much unacceptable. The shot of the elf thing looks like something from a game that uses the first unreal engine.

For some reason I doubt that's actually on medium.