Bad ending

Dragon Age: Origins review

I'm struggling somewhat to convey my thoughts about this game. I recall really liking the game way back when I played it on the Xbox 360 back in 2010 or so. I tried replaying it a year or so ago, bounced off and played other stuff. This year I tried playing it again, was struck with an intense desire to play literally anything else, but I kind of forced myself to stick with it. I don't want to compare it to the Pillars of Eternity games, or Tyranny, or any of the other CRPGs I've played in recent months because I feel that's a really unfair comparison. I don't really have a game I can compare it to from around the same time frame. Do I compare it to Final Fantasy XIII, The Witcher, Kingdom Hearts 2? Because I don't think those are good comparison either, they're extraordinarily different games. There is only one point I feel I can reasonably compare Dragon Age to The Witcher and that is the generally ramshackle and astonishingly glitchy experience I had during my play time of the two. 

My entire playthrough of Dragon Age Origins was constantly beset by constant crashes to desktop. I thought perhaps my issues were stemming from the fact I was playing with mods, but I was experiencing crashes even before I installed the mods so I doubt it was that. There was never a consistent reason for the crashes either for the most part. During the Return to Ostagar DLC it would routinely crash if I attempted to use a spell called Winter's Grasp, at least until I got past the initial outdoors area. Then it became a thrilling game of "what will cause the game to crash this time?" Clicking a door? Clicking your inventory? Clicking an enemy to attack, moving the camera? Moving your character herself? Sneezing solidly? Taking my eyes off the screen for a second to do something unrelated? What did surprise me is I never experienced any crashing when I was using these large AOE attacks that fill the screen with lightning, fire, or ice. Whenever it crashed during combat it would only do so when I was using either Winter's Grasp (I lied the issue persisted outside Return to Ostagar), Bloody Grip, or the direct fire, ice, or lightning attack. The crashing issues came to a head when I arrived in the Dwarven city of Orzammar. After being in the city for roughly half an hour it became a coin flip on whether the game would crash when I attempted to do literally anything. This was the absolutely lowest moments of my time with Dragon Age: Origins where during any given attempt to play the game I would have to stop playing the game in an attempt to try to divine WHY the game was dying every alternate step. It got so dire I tried playing the game using the Steam version of the game, and considered having to redo multiple tens of hours of progress just in an attempt to undo whatever black magic devilry was afflicting the game this time. I still have no idea why or how I was able to brute force my way through the Orzammar section. If I were less stubborn I absolutely would have abandoned the game right then and there. Perhaps I should have given the incredibly miserable time I was having with the game. My theory why the game started behaving more solidly is kind of a really stupid idea. Shortly after switching the game's difficulty down to easy I had a far more stable experience. For whatever reason after putting it on easy I had nearly no crashes from then on. I had the odd crash here and there but never to the frequency I had during 90 percent of Orzammar. Even the odd graphical bugs I had been experiencing during most of the game dropped off entirely at this point.  It had nothing to do with messing with graphical settings as far as I can tell because after I dropped the graphics down to medium I put it back to high and seemingly nothing had changed. Yet when I switched the game to easy most of my issues seem to have just evaporated to the winds. I cannot explain why this happened, I doubt it's because my laptop is not nearly as strong as my desktop computer. I had been experiencing the crashes on my strong lad as well. I was extremely paranoid that the events in the Orzammar/Deep Roads portion of the game would have to be the end of my playthrough, when the game had a large number of enemies on the screen more often than not: crash to desktop! And I seemed to recall the war segments of the late sections of the game would throw similar numbers of enemies on screen, so I prepared for my playthrough to be done. I want to circle back to my graphical issues for a moment. During at least half of the game whenever I killed anything the blood that poured out of dead enemies became a glowing flickering red square. This happened regardless of enemy, other graphical oddities included character hair just being odd and clipping through other aspects of a character's hair. It gave characters who have braided hair weird mustaches that just sort of jut outside of the sides of their faces, it did this regardless of character gender. It was clearly supposed to be part of their hair because it would be the same color, but it was just a smooth untextured shape on their face.  I wish I had had the presence of mind to record or screenshot these because it was damn peculiar. Moving on, because I feel I shouldn't just complain about my technical issues. This game's version of real-time with pause doesn't work nearly as well as I think it should. It just plays kind of shoddily compared to other games with the system. I genuniely think that maybe the game shouldn't have allowed you to directly control your party members, because having to remember how a melee character plays after you've playing a wizard for thirty hours is always a panicking moment. Then again, maybe they didn't do that because then they would've had to make the characters have to be proficient in the fights. I swear these bastards would go out of their way to die in the most inconvinient of times just on a lark. When you go in to the tactics menu just to have your melee boys (Alistair, Sten, Zevran, Leliana, Shale, Dog, Oghren, and other) heal whenever they're below fifty percent just for them to ignore that particular aspect of the tactics menu I started to think they were doing it deliberately. Also having to rely on your other spellcasters, both Wynne and Morrigan, started to aggravate with their equally useless spell loadouts. Perhaps it's because I'm a poor strategist/leveler but I always just reloaded whenever my character died and there was more than five any given enemy alive. But don't worry it's not just complaints about my party I have I also have some for the specialities you can unlock. I had foolishly assumed since you can unlock some Blood Powers if you drink Avernus' concoction during the Warden's Keep DLC that Blood Magic would actually be worth a damn. Blood Magic, for all the hype the series gives it, is some of the worst spells available in the game, perhaps this is meant to be a punishment for the evil player since the only way to get it is to condemn a child to possession, but I wanted it to be a more worthwhile choice in the game. One of the things that just feels off to me about this game is when you do attempt to try playing a separate party member. Either due to the protag dying, or you just want to try to get a feel for a melee character, it just feels weird. The combat system just feels wildly different if you try to use a different type of character to me. Which is unfortunate because in a game like Pillars of Eternity yes, a spellcaster does play differently to sword and board fighter, but it doesn't feel like you're trying to play an entirely different game. Also, try as you might to make Wynne or Morrigan a different type of spellcaster, you will always have to have at least three of the same spells on all of them just to get any real types of damage dealing done. It makes it an odd moment where they play just similar enough to not be entirely feel like a different type of magic system has been suddenly thrown at you. The computer itself also seems to share my complaints with the magic system, in spite of Morrigan being a "shapeshifter mage" she almost never actually used any of her shapeshifter abilities while the computer was controlling her. Again, perhaps this all comes down to me not knowing what I'm doing with the tactics menu, but it seems like the game would make more use of her specialized skill set without me having to take the wheel from it. Wynne never had a problem using her suite of healing spells, and my PC never had any issues using her assortment of elemental and damage dealing spells, and that includes the Blood Magic I generally never bothered putting on the hot bar due to my intense dispassion for it. One of the things I liked towards the back end of the game is when you are forced to engage with larger and larger groups of Darkspawn (and zombies, dragons, etc.) the game has the decency for them to die really easily. Perhaps this is because I was playing on easy but during the final big war sequence in the finale my party was cutting a bloody swathe through the assembled horde. Made me feel like I was actually an unstoppable mage; freezing, electrocuting, and burning my way through the Blight. Of course during the final hours the game just loves to keep sending more and more of the Genlock and Hurlock Emissary enemy type in with the hordes. These spellcasters unfortunately don't have the same level of accomodation the rank and file Darkspawn have and will pick away at you until death. Ranged enemies in general are a constant annoyance in the last half of the game because they always possess the ability to just whittle away you and your party's health regardless of difficulty. A particularly funny moment I recall during my playthrough was during the endgame there's a section where whichever party members you didn't take to the final boss have to defend an area. The enemies were dying so fast because of the other party members and support NPCs I never had the chance to actually fight any of them during the entire section. I don't really have much in particular to say about the story of Dragon Age Origins. While actively going through the game I was having a pretty good time with the story, but when I stopped playing it for the day, or indeed when I finished it none of it really stands out as particularly memorable. This may be entirely to do with the fact that in the decade plus since its release there has been deeper, and better written stories in basically every fantasy RPG under the sun. But even in some of the RPGs that were out at the time I don't think Origins stands out as a particularly strong story. I enjoy the dark tone of Origins, and I think for the most part it is a pretty well-written story, but it just has been out done and out classed by so many other stories that have come out since. The story of the game is that there is a race of subterranean monsters called the Darkspawn. Once in a particularly long stretch of time if enough Darkspawn gather they give rise to a large dragon-like Darkspawn called the Archdemon. Once an Archdemon is born it mobilizes the forces of Darkspawn to attack the surface in an event known as The Blight. To combat the Blight is an organization of trained monster slayers called Witchers, I mean Grey Wardens, who are able to sense Darkspawn and are the only living entities on Thedas (The World of Dragon Age's setting, it's an abbreviation you see) who can actually kill an Archdemon and put an end to the Blight. The Origins part of the title comes into play because you choose one of six starting backstories for your character in addition to race and class. These Origins see you play through the life of whichever race and backstory before you're forced out of the starting area and into becoming a Grey Warden and taking part in a battle to hopefully end the Blight. Obviously the battle goes pear-shaped and you and another Grey Warden named Alistair are the only Wardens to survive the battle. You're then tasked to unite the disparate races and groups to join together to fight against the Blight and hopefully end it once and for all, again. The interesting thing is that in theory whichever Origin you pick can have some small influence on events later on in the game. For instance if you pick the Mage Origin when you go back to their starting zone: The Circle of Magi, characters from the prologue talk to you about some of the stuff you did prior to leaving with the Grey Wardens. I don't know how the events in say Orzammar go if you play as the Dwarf Noble, or indeed any of the parts from the Origin as a human noble, but I presume there's something there to give you a small wink and a nudge about your chosen Origin. One aspect of the story I do enjoy is how some of the things you do can actually affect the story of the other sections. For instance, say you recruit the Circle of Magi to render your aid during your fight against the Darkspawn, when you go do the story segments in Orzammar (the Dwarf homelands) and Redcliffe (a human village being beset upon by the living dead) there will be story fragments that are available to you that wouldn't have been available otherwise. It's not particularly major things, except for one big choice you get offered in Redcliffe, but I appreciate that some token nod was made to notice plot progression. I like that during the course of the game there is always a chance that one or more of your party members will get sick of your choices and opt to leave the story entirely. It's never a particularly large chance unless you go out of your way to antagonize them, but it's there. Or if you get sick of a characters constant belly-aching you can send them away, I don't know why you would because their complaints never really reach that level of irritation, but it's an option that you can certainly choose. Even when the game outright forces characters to abandon you there's always the chance to get them to stay, you just have to play your cards right. I'm going to talk about some end of game spoilers now so skip the next four paragraphs if you've never played Origins, and don't want the plot spoiled. Also there's some slight spoilers for Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. Two aspects of the story I don't particularly care for happen damn near the end of the game. During the final areas before the end of the game you run across a character named Riordan. Riordan is a Grey Warden from the far off nation of Orlais, all he's really here for is to do some lore dumping about how whichever Grey Warden that kills the Archdemon will also die themselves. After which the only other thing of note Riordan does is die in a very embarrassing fashion. The other thing is during the Landsmeet to determine who should be the king or queen of Ferelden you have the option to either execute or recruit the traitorous character Teryn Loghain mac Tir into the Grey Wardens. If you opt to recruit Loghain you then lose the character of Alistair who has been your staunch loyal companion for the entirety of the game. Loghain is a major sufferer of the late-game recruit-able character disease like so many other characters in RPGs before and since. Him being alive doesn't amount for a whole lot because he doesn't really have any interaction with any of the other party members, and the story pivotal NPCs don't acknowledge his existence. He gets slightly more play than characters like Ydwin, Vatnir, or Rekke did in Pillars II, but only just barely. Loghain gets some lines when it comes to the choice of whether you want to have Morrigan absorb the soul of the Archdemon with her as yet unconceived god-baby. Outside of that he gets at most two sentences about whether you or he should sacrifice themselves to kill the Archdemon. In this playthrough I did not let Morrigan get her god-child. Loghain also suffers from the fact that as a party member is just isn't nearly as useful as Alistair has been during the game. You have at most four hours to get used to his moveset which differs quite a bit from Alistair, and you're basically saddled with the guy because he has to be there for the final fight with the Archdemon. I appreciate the game giving you the choice to recruit the guy, but I genuinely think the story would have been better off if you had to make the choice to either execute Loghain or force him into exile. But as I said this has been a consistent enough issue for RPGs before and since this game so take that as you will. Circling back to Riordan for a second. It seems to me that it might have been a better idea to have not killed Duncan way back during the Battle for Ostagar. Instead of killing him they should have had Duncan be the Grey Warden you rescue from imprisonment instead of Riordan. That way you would actually have felt something when he dies during the finale instead of the nothing I got when Riordan bit the dust. This is the end of the story spoilers. We now resume our regular review. I had mentioned previously that I felt Dragon Age Origins is probably a game people should play. I kind of stand by that statement, but I want to strongly impress upon you that it ultimately might not be worth your time or effort. Perhaps you'll go through the entire game and not experience any of issues I described above. In which case you'll be left with an RPG that I feel doesn't play particularly well just to experience a story that doesn't really have any real lasting elements. I don't really think you're doing yourself a disservice by not playing Dragon Age: Origins. The only way I would really recommend Dragon Age: Origins is if they do make that remaster the writer mentioned he wants to make. If they make Dragon Age: The Legendary Edition that fixes this and the two sequels for modern systems then I would recommend it. Or if you have access to a console that can play the game. Using a controller might be a worse experience than a keyboard and mouse for this type of game but you'll probably not have any of the issues I, and many other PC gamers, were subject to. Hell maybe the game is worth playing if you have a Vista or XP machine, I wouldn't know. What I do know is that I found the game to largely be a miserable experience and I can't in good conscience recommend it in this day and age.

2020 Recap - My Year in Gaming

2020. What a year for video games. I had big plans for last year, but in the end I did very little besides play video games, and I don’t think I’m alone there since we were all stuck at home looking for a way out of reality. I wanted to do a year-end recap as I’ve done sporadically in past years, but this one will be different than the typical “Games of the Year” format because despite all the games I played in 2020, almost none of them came out in 2020, and some of the things that defined my year in gaming weren't even games. 

Resident Evil 3 Remake (PS4)

RE3 was one of the only games I played in 2020 that didn’t coincide with the deadly pandemic's spread across the US. RE3 is, of course, a game about the spread of a deadly virus in Anytown, USA. It was an appetizer, I guess. 

When the Resident Evil 2 remake dropped in 2019, there were some things I loved about it, and a few things that felt like steps back from the original. I feel much the same about RE3. I had also theorized that a Resident Evil 3 remake would be better off as RE2 DLC than as a separate full-length game, and considering how short RE3 turned out, with some of the best sections of hte original cut entirely (namely, the clock tower), I stand by my theory. 

Oh well, at least Jill gets this rad gun, which for the time being is the closest thing to a new Lost Planet we can hope for anytime soon.

Sekiro (PS4)

Sekiro is the first video game I ever Platinumed. This is partly because conquering the base game was such a spartan exercise that going the extra mile to get the Platinum didn’t seem so bad, but it’s also surely a result of the pandemic. I needed a project and a big win. Who didn't? 

I wrote at length about why I like Sekiro more than every other modern FromSoft game, and also about the game’s cherry-on-top moment that reminded me of blowing up Hitler’s face in Bionic Commando. Please read them!

Death Stranding (PS4)

Release date notwithstanding, this was obviously the Game of 2020. I wrote about it here, here, and here. This game bears the distinction of being the second one I ever Platinumed. It took 150 hours. Only then did I learn I had a hoverboard.

Streets of Rage 4 (PS4)

This is the only 2020 game I played for more than a few hours. In fact, I cleared the entire game at least five times. I still don’t think it captures the gritty aesthetic of the prior Streets of Rages (nor even tries to), but this is probably the best-feeling bup I've played. Huge bonus points for finally bringing back Adam, but in the end I found it hard not to pick Blaze every time.

Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch)

What impressed me about this sequel from Inti Creates was that it wasn’t just more of the same, even though that would've been fine. BMZ2 builds on its already excellent predecessor with a catchy new format where players can freely cruise the cosmos and stages take the varied form of planets—some big and sprawling, others short and sweet. Hopping at will from planet to planet without ever knowing what experiences and treasure each one held felt like system jumping in No Man’s Sky and island hopping in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, both of which felt like opening presents.

Dragon Force (Saturn)

Charming, satisfying, and addictive as a bag of chips. Unlike a bag of chips, when it’s over, you can do it all again. And again. And it’ll be different each time! This might be the first strategy game I've truly loved. Better late than never.

The PC Engine Mini

The PC Engine/TurboGrafx-16 Mini seems a particularly justifiable mini-console for people outside Japan because so many missed these consoles entirely, the games are hard to obtain, and the lineup includes titles spanning the entire convoluted Turbo/PC Engine ecosystem—the TurboGrafx-CD/CD-ROM², Super CD-ROM², Arcade CD-ROM² and SuperGrafx, in addition to plain, old standard HuCard games. I myself didn’t know the first thing about these systems before. It’s like reliving the nineties again for the first time. 

Most of the titles included are simple action games that don't require a command of Japanese, but make no mistake: being able to understand Snatcher and TokiMemo does make me feel like an elite special person worth more than many of you. 

(Side note: From a gender representation perspective, the difference between Snatcher and Death Stranding is stark. Virtually every interaction with every woman or girl in Snatcher is decorated with ways to sexually harass her. Guess someone finally had a conversation with our favorite auteur.)

A Gaming PC

I’d threatened to transition to PC gaming for years after beholding the framerate difference between the console and PC versions of DmC in 2012, and last July I finally took the leap, buying an ASUS “Republic of Gamers” (ugh) laptop with an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Max-Q GPU. It seems like consoles are getting more PC-like all the time, especially with all these half-step iterations that splinter performance and sometimes even the feature set (à la the New 3DS and Switch Lite), so with the impending new generation seemed like a fine time to change course.

In the half-year since, I’ve barely played a single PC game more recent than 2013, but just replaying PS3-era games at high settings has been like rediscovering them for the first time. 

I also finally experienced keyboard-and-mouse shooting and understand now why PC gamers think they're better than everyone else. Max Payne is a completely different game with a mouse. Are all shooters like this??

The USPS

Early in the year, I rediscovered my childhood game shop, Starland, which is now  an online hub known as eStarland.com with a brick-and-mortar showroom. To my delight, it has become one of the best and most modestly priced sources for import Saturn games in the country, and I scored Shining Force III’s second and third episodes, long missing from my collection, for a mere ten bucks each!  

In June, I treated myself to a trio of Saturn imports from eStarland: the tactics-meets-dating-sim mashup Sakura Taisen 2, the nicely presented RTS space opera Quo Vadis 2, and beloved gothic dungeon crawler Baroque. Miraculously, this haul amounted to just around thirty dollars total. Less miraculously, they never arrived. This was the second time I’d had something lost in the mail in my entire life, and also the second time that month. Something was wrong with the USPS, and it wasn’t just COVID pains. We would soon learn Trump had been actively working to sabotage one of the nation’s oldest and most reliable institutions in a plot to compromise the upcoming presidential election.

Frankly it’s a miracle there’s still such a thing as “delivery” at all, and a few missing video games is the last of my worries considering what caused it, but nevertheless this was an experience in my gaming life that could not have happened any other year. I won’t forget it.

*By the way, USPS reimbursed me for the insured value of the missing order, which was fifty bucks. So I actually profited a little off the experience.

Mega Everdrive Pro

I love collecting for the Genesis and Mega Drive, but I will not pay hundreds of dollars for a video game that retailed for about sixty.  The publishers never asked for that, and the developers won’t see a (ragna)cent of the money. I'm also far less inclined to start collecting for Sega CD, since the hardware is notoriously breakable, the cases are huge and also breakable, and the library just isn't that good. 

Still, I'd been increasingly curious about the add-on as an interesting piece of Sega history, so when I learned Ukranian mad scientist KRIKzz had released a new Mega Everdrive that doubled as a Sega CD FPGA, I finally took the plunge into the world of flash carts. This has proven a great way to play some of the Mega Drive’s big-ticket rarities I will never buy—namely shmups like Advanced Busterhawk Gley Lancer and Eliminate Down—as well as try out prospective additions to the collection. I never would have discovered the phenomenal marvel of engineering and synth composition that is Star Cruiser without this thing, but now that I have, it’s high on the shopping list.

The Mega Everdrive Pro is functionally nearly identical to TerraOnion’s “Mega SD” cartridge, but slightly less expensive, comes in a “normal” cartridge shell instead of the larger Virtua Racing-style one, and supports a single hardworking dude in Ukraine rather than a company with reportedly iffy customer service.

Twitch

Getting a PC also resolved issues that had long prevented me from achieving a real streaming setup, and much of my gaming life in 2020 was about ramping up my streaming efforts. I even made Affiliate in about a month. Streaming has been a great creative outlet and distraction, as well as a way to connect with other people during the COVID depression and structure my gaming time. Find me every Monday through Thursday 8-11pm Eastern at twitch.tv/lacquerware.  

Metroid: Other M (Dolphin)

PC ownership also gave me access to the versatile Dolphin emulator, liberating a handful of great Wii exclusives from their disposable battery-powered prison. 

One of the Wii games I fired up on Dolphin was Metroid: Other M, a game I’d always wanted to try but had been dissuaded by years of bad publicity and the fact that I never had any goddamn batteries. I know I should temper what I’m about to say by acknowledging that I was playing at 1080p/60fps on a PS4 controller so my experience was automatically a vast improvement over that of all Wii players, but I’m increasingly confident Metroid: Other M was the most fun I’ve ever had playing a Metroid game. I haven’t decided yet if I’m willing to die on this hill, but I will just say that if you like the Metroidvania genre in general and aren’t particularly attached to the Metroid series’ story or its habit of making you wander aimlessly for hours, there’s a very high chance you will enjoy Other M—especially if you play it on Dolphin.

Don't Starve Together (PC)

Don't Starve is the only game my friend Jason plays, so last year I tried to get into it with him. I respect this game's singular devotion to the concept of survival, but make no mistake: every session of Don't Starve ends with you starving to death. Or freezing. Or getting stomped by a giant deity of the forest. The entire game is staving off death until it inevitably comes. Even when death comes, you can revive infinitely (in whatever mode we were playing), which means even death is not an end goal. There is no end goal. You don't even have the leeway to "play" and create your own meaning as you do in similarly zen  games like Dead Rising. 

Don't Starve is a game for people for whom hard work is the ultimate reward in and of itself. Don't Starve told me something about Jason. 

G-Darius (PS1)

In the early fall, Sony announced they were dropping PS3, PSP, and Vita support from the browser and mobile versions of their PSN Store, and since the PS3 version of the store app runs like a solar-powered parking meter in Seattle, I decided this was my last chance to stock up on Japanese PSN gems. 

Among my final haul, the PS1 port of G-Darius proved an instant favorite. Take down the usual cast of mechanized fish in a vibrant, chunky, low-poly style that perfectly inhabits the constraints of the original PlayStation hardware. I believe this is the first Darius game that lets you get into giant beam duels with the bosses, which is quite definitely one of the coolest things a video game has ever let you do. The PS1 port is also surprisingly feature-rich, including some easier difficulty levels that present an actually surmountable challenge for non-savants.

This one’s coming to the upcoming Darius Cozmic Revelation collection on Switch alongside DARIUSBURST, a good-ass romp in its own right.

Red Entertainment

In my effort to shine a tiny spotlight on some of the unsung Interesting Games of gaming, I found myself drawn again and again to the work of Red Entertainment. First there were cavechild headbutt simulator Bonk’s Adventure and twin shmups Gates of Thunder and Lords of Thunder on the PC Engine Mini. Then I streamed full playthroughs of the PS2’s best samurai-era, off-brand 3D Castlevania, Blood Will Tell and the Trigun-adjacent stand-‘n-gun, Gungrave: Overdose. Then I was dazzled by Bonk’s Adventure’s futuristic spin-off cute-‘em-up, Air Zonk, which was also sneakily tucked away on my PC Engine Mini in the “TurboGrafx-16” section. It turned out all these games were made by the same miracle developer responsible for Bujingai, the stylish PS2 wushu game starring Gackt and a household name here at the Lacquerware estate. How prolific can one team be???

Month of Cyberpunk

In November, I started toying with the idea of themed months on my Twitch channel with “Cyberpunk month.” It was supposed to be a build-up to Cyberpunk 2077’s highly anticipated November release, but holy shit that didn’t happen, did it? Still, I always find myself gravitating toward this genre in November, I guess because I associate November with gloom (even though this year it was sunny almost every day). A month is a long time to adhere to a single theme, but cyberpunk is such a well-served niche in gaming that I could easily start an all-cyberpunk Twitch channel. The fact that we’re so spoiled with choice makes Cyberpunk 2077’s terrible launch all the more embarrassing. Here are just some of the games I played (and streamed!) in November:

Ghostrunner Shadowrun (Genesis) RUINER Remember Me Transistor Rise of the Dragon (Sega CD) Shadowrun (Mega CD) Cyber Doll (Saturn) Binary Domain Shadowrun Returns Blade Runner (PC) Deus Ex: Human Revolution Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Observer

Shadowrun on the Genesis gets my top pick, but the two most recent Deus Ex games are great alternatives for those looking for something in the vein of 2077 that isn’t infested with termites.

Lost Planet 2

Every year. I played through it twice in 2020.

Dead Rising 4

I slept on this one too long. While it's a far cry from the original game, it's easily the most fun I've had with a Christmas game since Christmas NiGHTS. This is the game a lot of people thought they were getting when they bought the original Dead Rising with their new Xbox 360--goofy, indulgent, and pressure-free.

Devil May Cry 5: Vergil (PS4)

Vergil dropped for last-gen consoles in December and breathed a whole lot of life into a game that was already at the head of its class.

Nioh 2

I’ve only played a few hours of Nioh 2 because I promised my friend I’d co-op it with him and wouldn’t play ahead. But he’s a grad student with two small children. Nevertheless, Nioh 2 is my Game of 2020.

And that's it! Guess I'll spend 2021 playing games that came out last year, and maybe eventually getting vaccinated? Please? 

God of War Preview: Old Man Kratos

What happens after a god killer runs out of gods to kill? What happens when someone like Kratos finishes slaughtering an entire pantheon and his mission is over? The answer, apparently, is settle down in the woods and raise a family. Life seems to be pretty great for Kratos, but then one day turns everything upside-down.

God of War tells the story of a whole new phase of Kratos' life, one in which he's not fighting for himself, but fighting for his family. Shacknews recently had a chance to go hands-on with the first part of Kratos' new journey and soak in this new status quo.

Kratos' life as the Ghost of Sparta has ended and he did indeed settle down to raise a family. But the opening minutes of the game leave Kratos in an unfamiliar position. He must now raise a little boy by himself. His early utterance of the phrase, "Everything is different," encapsulates his demeanor going forward.

The dynamic between Kratos and son Atreus. is quickly established through an early father/son hunting trip. Atreus is just learning how to wield a bow and arrow, with his only other weapon being the hunting knife that his mother passed down to him. He's still at an innocent age, not knowing what it's like to kill anything. In fact, as a deer he shot with an arrow laid dying on the ground, Kratos walked him through his first kill to the end. Atreus is quickly established as a sickly boy. He's showing less signs of sickness, but he still has occasional coughing fits. But worse than that, he has anger issues, something he clearly gets from his father.

It doesn't take long for the classic God of War action to kick into high gear. Over the course of the demo, there are a couple of early boss battles that set the tone for the game going forward. They perfectly capture the theatrical, over-the-top action that the series is known for. What pleased me greatly was that it was a more polished version of that same 3D action I've become accustomed to. On top of that, I didn't see a single quick-time event through my entire time with the demo, which includes the boss battles and elsewhere.

Segueing into the action, God of War centers around two different kinds of combat: hand-to-hand and melee combat with Kratos' new weapon, the Leviathan Axe. Given that the series is now delving into Norse mythology, it's all-too-appropriate to make the comparison to Thor's hammer Mjolnir, in the sense that the Leviathan Axe can be thrown and called back at will. It deals damage as a melee weapon, but also deals damage when chucking it at a foe and if it catches any enemies on the path back to Kratos' hand. The Leviathan Axe has several uses on top of combat, like freezing switches in place, which helps solve platforming puzzles or trigger locked treasure chests. Some enemies are resistant to the Axe, requiring Kratos to use his fists. Using hand-to-hand combat allows Kratos to use visceral finishers, which aren't quite as gory as previous God of War games, but still every bit as effective. Kratos' attacks can be upgraded through XP and various currencies found over the course of the game.

In fact, that was the one part of the demo that was difficult to follow. There are numerous currencies and collectibles, so much so that it can be hard to keep track of it all. It certainly adds replay value for anyone looking to collect everything, but there's a lot of "everything" to find. A lot of is collecting for the sake of collecting, but there are some items that upgrades that will actively help Kratos in combat. This includes Runes, which can give boosts to the Leviathan Axe. For example, the first Rune I found allowed Kratos to strike his Axe against his shield to stun nearby foes.

But what about Atreus? Atreus doesn't fight directly, but he also doesn't need active protection. Those concerned about God of War becoming a giant escort mission can rest easy. Atreus stands to the side, similar to someone like Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite. He'll yell out to Kratos if an attack is coming at him from the side or behind, but he'll also be a little more helpful with his bow and arrow. Atreus can fire at enemies to cause a distraction, allowing Kratos to move in with his fists or his Axe for a killer combo. This is particularly helpful against defensive bosses or against larger numbers of foes.

Atreus is also helpful in the field. Kratos will frequently come across Norse writings or art, which contain lore secrets or hints as to what's coming. While Kratos can't read any of them, Atreus learned how to translate these markings from his mother. Add this to the list of collectibles, but one that should satisfy those more curious about Kratos' new status quo.

While I walked away from the God of War demo with a better idea of what Kratos' new world looks like, there are still a lot of interesting questions out there. The biggest one involves Kratos and the Norse pantheon, as players will quickly discover over the early hours of the story. There's a reason Kratos has settled down, but can anyone ever truly escape their past, especially when outside forces aren't willing to forget?

There's a lot to discover in the new God of War. And there's certainly a lot to kill, as Kratos and Atreus run into a large variety of hostile creatures, living and dead. In fact, sometimes they're both, as one sequence saw Kratos take down a group of cannibals and then take them down again when their corpses are suddenly raised. Kratos has a lot of challenges ahead of him in his father/son adventure. God of War arrives on PlayStation 4 on April 20.

God of War Preview: Old Man Kratos published first on https://superworldrom.tumblr.com/

Kingsroad Hack

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