The game is the story of a story, told in flashback. One of your companions, Varric, is being held for questioning about how the events of the game unfolded. He tells the story of the hero character, Hawke, as he escapes Lothering during its destruction by the darkspawn. Please note that I will refer to Hawke as a male, even though he can be a female. It’s just easier that way. Varric originally tells the story the way the legend tells it: Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall, is a mighty fighter that slayed many darkspawn along with his sister, Bethany, as they escape their hometown as it burns to the ground.  This telling of the legend is a clever way of letting the player try the different character classes at a higher, more powerful level for a few battles before Varric tells the true story which brings the player to level 1.

The story eventually brings Hawke to Kirkwall, the city where most of the game takes place. Hawke meets almost all his companions here and they all spend years here, just living the livese of adventurers. Hawke does venture out in to the surrounding areas for missions, but they still feel as though they are part of Kirkwall and not a larger world.

While the smaller world makes the game feel like it is scaled down, it does give the experience a more intimate feel than if it had some vast explorable world with many large cities or quaint towns. Player will recognize the minor stand-in NPCs and, throughout the game, see how they contribute to one of the missions over the seven years with which the game takes place. However, that also poses the question, “Why are they standing in the same place and saying the same exact thing for seven years?” With that minor gripe aside, the story spanning seven years also allows you to revisit some characters involved in major missions, and see how your decisions can lead to different outcomes and missions. This results in the game almost begging you to give it multiple playthroughs.

However, having the game take place over many years in the same location led the developers to respawn loot stashes after the time lapses for each of the three acts. While this was necessary to give you gear for your appropriate level, it created a sense of redundancy. To add to that redundancy, parts of Kirkwall are explorable by day and by night with different loot stashes for each time of day. This continuous hunt for loot can really slow the pace of the game down.

This slowed pace can be rather jarring when you get into battles, which are much faster than those found in Dragon Age II’s predecessors. There is an element of strategy involved, and it does help to pause the action to issue orders to your companions. However, when the orders are given and the battle resumes, the action is brutal. Attacks feel faster and harder, and magic spells feel more devastating. The action isn’t without its flaws, mind you. There are parts of the game where you hit spikes in the difficulty, to the point where I had to adjust the difficulty of the game to the easy setting to get past an encounter. Maybe the fault was my own, and I didn’t spec my character properly, but it still shouldn’t be that much of an annoyance for a game being played on the normal setting.

The look of Dragon Age II has definitely improved from the first game. A lot more detail went into the character models, and it’s most notable in the design changes in some of the species. Elves are now made to look very angular and slender, almost to the point where they’d look frail if it wasn’t for the toned muscles. The biggest change was made to the design of the Qunari, who now look like massive bipedal beasts as opposed to a larger form of human. There was one such Qunari whose model was so detailed and intricate that he looked like he was going to be an important character throughout the game, only to never see that particular one again. Granted, the model did pop up a few other times, but never to the point where you could really take time to admire it.

Sadly, the level of care given to the characters did not seem to go into the environments. With a smaller overall game world, one would expect more detail in the spaces that were created, but this is not the case. Only a handful of unique dungeon layouts were created for the many that you will end up exploring. They would be decorated a little differently, and some passages would be blocked off, but there is no mistaking one dungeon from being the same as the one you visited an hour ago. That’s just lazy level design. However, a good job is done in creating the separate sections of Kirkwall. The lavish High Town area feels like a place for nobility, while the dank area of Darktown gives the impression that a junkie could be right around the corner. There are also some really good instances of lighting, particularly in High Town during the third act where the sun is setting. You can almost feel the warmth when you step into its light.

The narrative in Dragon Age II is an odd beast because it takes a long time to really come across to the player. In the first game, the story was obvious from the get go. The darkspawn are coming. Kill them, and save the land. They took no time to present the epic nature of the quest. In the beginning of Dragon Age II, however, you get the impression that Hawke is just twiddling his thumbs and trying to make a name for himself.

The first act is about nothing more than getting money by doing odd quests in order to fund an expedition. Yawn. However, during the second act, it is made clear that some of those quests in the first act all introduce you to the real issues at hand. The issues still aren’t seen as an epic adventure, but rather sociopolitical problems that plague the land. The third act is where the story comes together. That’s where you then get the notion that the whole world is watching and reacting to what’s happening in Kirkwall and will follow suit. These problems of social and diplomatic unease finally erupt to create jaw-dropping moments that stir a whirlwind of emotional responses, from anger, to sorrow, to sympathy, that lead to making difficult decisions in the game.

The stirring of these emotions is done largely by the relationships the characters form. A large portion of the quest in the game are done for your companion characters, whether it’s helping them with dire problems or simply talking to them about difficulties they are having. You get a real sense of camaraderie, and not just between Hawke and his crew. The companions are always having conversations amongst themselves, giving a sense of deep personal relationships. And it’s not all smiles and laughter between your companions. There are tensions between some of the characters due to the prevalent sociopolitical problems that are presented throughout the game, but that too adds to the feeling of intimacy. It also makes you think long and hard about whom you want to bring with on quests in order to get the desired friendship or rivalry.

All in all, Dragon Age II is a very dense game which results in both its strengths and weaknesses. It confines itself, which creates both redundancy and intimacy. It presents a story that starts slow but ends incredibly because you are so connected with everyone around it. In the end, it has you making decisions that feel like they are impacting a whole world beyond what the player experiences within the game. Dragon Age II has more than its share of problems, but it also does so many things well. The first half of the game is boring, but if you are willing to stick with it, it has immense payoff. It definitely leaves you eager to see what is next for the world of Dragon Age.

Pros:

• Really good character models
• Sense of intimacy with the world
• Great character development
• Huge payoff at the end

Cons:

• Reused environments
• Exploration is redundant
• Difficulty spikes
• Starts out VERY slow

Final Verdict: Try It

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5. Darkwatch-74
Statistics show that a new first-person shooter is born in the video game world every three minutes (Note: Statistics do not actually show that a new first-person shooter is born every three minutes). The problem with this is that statistics also show that 98% of them are war-based shooters (Note: Actual percentage may vary). Whether it be a desert war, jungle war, space war or war in a space jungle, there is very little in the way of variety when it comes to the genre. Darkwatch is the answer to this narrative monotony. You get to play as a cowboy vampire that blasts the limbs off the undead on a mission to defeat an evil vampire lord. How does that not sound enticing? Fast-paced gunplay, interesting locales and enemies that aren’t just military people in different uniforms make this a game worth checking out if Call of Honor: Operation Frontlines in Arms 14 has got you yawning.

I’m lookin’ for them Twilight kids…

4. Scene It: Box Office Smash-76
Take the most notable movie trivia franchise and give it a solid video game treatment, and you end up with Scene It: Box Office Smash. While there is a newer installment to this series, it doesn’t stand up to this one. The 360 exclusivity gets you in-game avatar usage, and it’s also the only version to feature online multiplayer, which adds almost limitless replay value for movie geeks. At the very least, it’s the lazy version of a great game since there’s no messing with a DVD player, moving game pieces around or any of that exhausting dice rolling needed. Sit back and enjoy the fun of saying, “Aaah, what’s that guy’s name,” with minimal effort.

Never worry about having real friends to play against. The game provides you with virtual ones!

3. Elebits-75
This is a game that gets the shaft because nine times out of ten, video game reviewers can’t admit they like something that could be described as “cute looking.” No, Elebits does not have the most manly aesthetic in the world, but let’s be honest, is it really that big of a possibility that some smoking-hot chick is going to burst through your door unexpectedly and catch you playing the game, thereby ruining the chances of her waggling your remote? Other reviewers did write it off as being a little too tech demo-y since it’s really based around just one mechanic. What they don’t tell you is just how fun and satisfying that one mechanic is. Well, now you have been told. Go and play.

I told you not to get them wet!

2. Batman: Vengeance-70
Remember when Batman: Arkham Asylum came out last year, and everyone peed their pants because the voice-acting and production value was awesome enough to give you a bat-seizure? Yeah, Batman: Vengeance did that nearly ten years ago. This entry into the Batman franchise not only borrows its look from The New Batman Adventures, a spin-off of the legendary Batman: The Animated Series, but it also borrows the voice cast. That means you get the same great Batman and the same great Joker as in Batman: Arkham Asylum. While the gameplay will seem a bit dated by today’s action-standards, it holds up well enough to get you through a fun and polished Batman story in which the cut-scenes alone are worth playing for.

The recession took the greatest toll on the henchmen’s wardrobe  budget.

Of course, I’m not going to show my whole hand just yet. Tune into Pixelosophy this coming Monday to see which game takes home the top spot.

5. Pokemon Snap-77
Yeah, I picked a Pokemon game, what of it? If there is one thing that I love more than mystical made up lands filled with mystical made up creatures, it’s photographing them. Wouldn’t you know it; Pokemon Snap lets me do just that! I think that this game was seen as a cheap cash-in on a hit franchise, but the mechanics work surprisingly well and become quite addictive. Once you get passed the on-rails travel and start to soak up the world, you’ll find yourself wanting to go back again and again to see if you missed anything. Sure, they could let you foot it, but where would the challenge be? Although, a next-gen, open world version of this game would be pretty badass. So, if you missed it the first time because it was a Pokemon game, get over it. It’s a cool photography game with some truly great moments, so download it on your Wii right now.

One of us. One of us.

4. NHL Hitz 2002-78
Really? A 78? Let me put this into perspective for you. I dumped more time into this game than most games I own. If I had the choice to play the multiplayer in Hitz or the multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2, you’d better believe I’d be dusting off my Wavebird and calling up my friends to mix it up on the ice. There is simply no better competitive multiplayer experience, in my eyes, than this game. I think as far as its score goes, it was a victim of being a good game that came out in a time when its genre was flooded and on the outs. A few games such as NFL Street tried to keep the hyper sports games going, but ultimately there was no saving them. I consider this to be the best of the bunch, and if you have any sense, you’ll track down a used copy, call up four of your friends, and have the best weekend ever. Buy it on the Gamecube, the controller makes all the difference.

HITZ, BITCH!

3. Kane and Lynch-65
This is, undoubtedly, a game that was tarnished because of the controversy that surrounded it. The sad thing is that it is actually quite a wonderful game. With great character development, great settings, and a good story, there is a lot to like in this game. Sure, the shooting can be a bit wonky, and the same goes for the cover system, but once you learn to work within the constraints of the game, it’s easy to get hooked. Like I said, the character development is great, not only in what you learn about the characters themselves, but in how you learn it. I never thought I’d be engaged in the actual story of a game while shooting out the back of a black van speeding away from cops (number 28 on my list of dream scenarios). A lot of people turned their noses up at this game because of everything that went down around it, and a lot of people missed out on a great experience. You owe it to yourself to play at least the first two levels.

The Denny’s Free Breakfast Went Horribly Wrong.

2. Fatal Frame-74
It’s funny how history has a way of altering our perceptions on games. As with Hitz, here we have another game that I believe was a victim of its own genre. When Fatal Frame came out, we were getting a new survival horror game every other week, and I think a lot of reviewers threw this to the wayside because it wasn’t Resident Evil or Silent Hill. To be honest, that’s what makes this game so great. It approached the genre from such a unique angle that I don’t think people got it at first. However, as time has passed, a lot of people cite this as one of the best horror games ever. So, if you missed it the first time around because you thought it was a run-of-the-mill horror game, do yourself a favor and track down a copy. Just make sure that you tell your significant other to leave the room when you play. You don’t want to embarrass yourself by screaming like a nine-year old child at the first sight of a ghost.

TMZ…Of the Dead!!!!

Of course, we’re only going to give you five through two, so be sure to tune in Monday as we reveal our number one’s on Pixelosophy.

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We’re all guilty of it, myself included. We’ve all opened up a magazine or clicked on a review page only to stare blankly at the mountain of words looking back at us in the tiniest of print. Words upon words upon words. You think to yourself, “I’m a busy individual. I don’t have time for all these words!” And there at the bottom, like a shining savoir, is the final score, rating or number stamped, nay, branded into the review. There may even be some sort of summary or technical breakdown presented in a much more bite-sized manner. Those are words we can handle, right? What more do we need?

Well, if gamers are going to complain about the loss of time and money when they get the shaft from a bad game, then this passive attitude towards reviews needs to change. Gamers need to adopt an active role in the way they approach reviews, and it all starts with actually reading the whole review. Don’t believe me? Let’s look at some of the outcomes of doing both.

The only thing that reading just a number or breakdown gets you is an incomplete picture of the game. It’s a major mistake to think that all reviews come from the same point of view, but by putting all your faith in just a score with no context, that is the assumption your are cornered into making. All reviewers have different perspectives, and many of them are undoubtedly different from your own. Assuming you’re all on the same page right from the jump will always yield inconsistent results when it comes to how much you enjoy a game. Maybe a reviewer dislikes a certain genre to begin with and refuses to be objective in their review. The unfair 6/10 they gave the game would be very misleading if all you knew was that score. It also works both ways. Reviewers whose undying devotion to a genre or franchise may lead to an inflated score that leaves you wondering what the big deal was once you actually play the game yourself. You can’t know any of this without reading the whole review.

Gamers need to start treating their relationship with reviews like the same relationships they have with their friends. Everyone has friends whose opinions they listen to more than others. This is due to a shared perspective when it comes to the subject you are talking about. It takes time to develop these relationships and to get to the point where you can take that friend’s suggestions without hearing a whole dissertation on the subject. This same time and care needs to be taken when considering reviews. Gamers need to familiarize themselves with reviewers by reading the entirety of their reviews. Only then can gamers begin to take a review at its face value or score, but even then, you’re still taking a blind risk with your time and money.

Even if you don’t have the desire to find a reviewer that suits your tastes, it is still important to fully read reviews. One of the best ways to make a decision about buying or playing a game comes from having a conversation with someone who has played the game. You wouldn’t just walk up to a total stranger and take their word for it that a game you are interested in is a 9/10. You would talk to them, and hear them out. Think of a review as the other side of the conversation. You have to read it all in order to engage in a perceived conversation with the reviewer. You may agree with what they have to say, or you may not. Either way, you have participated in the process and done your share in deciding whether or not a game is for you.

Believe me, I understand. Some reviews are needlessly long, and in the often-amateurish world of video game journalism, some of them just aren’t that good. In the end, however, you are doing a disservice to yourself. The one who loses out is you. It’s your time and your money at risk, and if you aren’t going to do your part to protect them, you have no one to blame but yourself.

The wrapup begins 33 minutes in for you filthy dialogue skippers.

Downloadable content is perhaps the trickier of the two to examine so it seems like a good place to start. The easiest way to approach it is to look at a game that isn’t heavy on narrative but is built around a core gameplay mechanic. This may be shooting, real-time strategy, anything. Most of these games also rely heavily on level design, or maps.  Now, imagine that a game comes out with really great core gameplay mechanics but shoddy level design. Initially, a reviewer may score this game low because the experience there is not enjoyable. Now, fast forward a month or so when some new maps have been released, possibly for free. If these maps are amazing and fun to play, shouldn’t they be taken into consideration for the score of the overall game? Typically, a reviewer will review DLC separately from the game proper. Here is my problem with this. On the one hand, yes, there are people who don’t have their systems online and will just be playing what’s in the box. But, for those with their systems online, some of the updates happen automatically. Here is where the trouble happens. If I look at a score for a game and see that it got a five, I may be turned off. If at the time that I am thinking about buying it there has been DLC released that makes it better, I may never know just looking at the score. So, in a sense, I could be wondering about a completely different game than the one that has been reviewed.

It gets a little more interesting when looking at narrative-heavy games. Sometimes, DLC is released that adds to the story on the disc. Again, the same question. What happens if this content makes the game better or worse? Should it not be taken into consideration, and should the overall score not be revised? In a way, this can almost serve as a director’s cut of a film. Maybe the studio didn’t want a scene in there so it was pulled for theaters. On the DVD, a scene is put back in, and it could change the entire viewing experience. It should be reexamined in this new light, in my opinion. Games have this unique ability to deliver content post-release, and I believe that game reviews should be just as unique as the medium they are reviewing.

Patches seem to be a bit more cut and dry. Sometimes a game ships with a major bug, and a reviewer is left with no choice other than to give it a bad score. A month down the line a fix could be released for this bug, and the game is an instant classic. Doesn’t the reviewer owe it to people who can download this patch to take another look at the game and let them know how it works now? Again, there is a large group of gamers that may not have the ability to download the patch, and that’s fine. The initial review is for them.  But when two groups of people could be getting two separate experiences, I think it is the reviewer’s responsibility to clarify between the two.

So, what’s the solution? Well, there are a couple of possible solutions. One, a reviewer could go back in and change the initial review score. The problem with this is that it neglects the audience that can’t alter their game through patches or DLC. That leads to the second solution. At the end of a review, if a game has been altered due to some patch or DLC, there should be a section where the reviewer can give comments as to the effect of these changes and the ability to give an additional adjusted score if desired. This way the original score is kept intact, and people buying the game post patch can have all of the available information.

The fix for this problem is quite simple, and it is one that I hope we see implemented soon. With a medium that can change in a heartbeat, we should offer a review system that can do the same. While some people may argue that this allows developers to skate by and put out a better product later, the reality is that they have bosses to answer to and ravenous fans that can’t wait to get their hands on the product. They are going to try to get a game out as soon as possible, or they are going to be forced to. Not changing reviews for new content is not only doing a disservice to the players but also to the creators. We all make mistakes, and if a developer is going to recognize a mistake and make it right, I say more power to them. As I said before, we should have a review system that is as unique as the medium we are reviewing. What good does it do us if the review we are reading is no longer for the game that we are playing?

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