Dragon Age: Origins

So I had heard a lot of terrible things about this game, but I decided with it being Bioware I would ignore them, boy am I glad I did, I have not had this much fun in ages, finally something to get me away from the thrall of endless MMO diarrhea.

Lets see where to start, why don't I comment on the bad things I've heard and my take on them.

First alot of people are talking about how bad the graphics are and how high the requirements are, first off considering the number of enemies and how vast the draw distance needs to be to make a game like this work the graphics are not bad at all in my opinion.

As for the requirements beyond what I already mentioned I feel a lot of the problems are solved by having a quad core cpu and a decent amount of ram, again this game deals with a lot of things going on at once.

And I hear a lot of "But I don't have a quad core cpu and they are expensive" but I really don't feel that anyone valid excuse to not maintain either a working PC at an appropriate level of performance or at least a decent console, especially with the drop in console prices and AMD's new 620s.

Now I do admit the game does seem to have a nasty memory leak on the PC version, but Bioware assures us they are looking into it and from past experience I believe them.

Another thing I do see a a lot of complaints about is pre order and promotion code woes, but most of those people either ordered a digital version and/or seem to suggest that its it might be a PEBKAC or ID10T sort of situation, please people check that your email is valid and not filtering your codes to a spam folder or that your email is even valid.

As for actual game play I intend to completely avoid spoilers here, the combat system seems nearly flawless to me and flows very well, as is standard in this style of game you can pause the action to issue commands at any time, there is a tactical section for all characters (including the PC) which allows you to dictate how the character will act in a given situation, you start with a limited supply of slots for these tactics but can gain more as your party members level.

The graphics while not upto par with the big hitter like Crysis Warhead or other highend games, the atmosphere is very very good and while slightly low res the textures are still very well done and fitting to the area they are in, although the game did have issues with me and my 3870 forcing Anisotropic filtering which presented itself in a sort of grid between the textures on the ground occasionally, I have not had a chance as of yet to test on any other systems though.

The game has tons and tons of side quests, and I hear Bioware intends to release a lot of download-able content or DLC, infact they launched the game with two DLCs right away, one of which came with most versions of the game.

As a closing comment, I don't generally write reviews as I am not generally very good at it so you will have to excuse me if this is horrible but I just felt like throwing out my opinion on the subject.

WoW Haters

Made a post on my other blog about wow haters felt like linking it here.

Stupid bike

that nice bike is actually mostly crap, obviously i did not know what to look for, hopefully it can be fixed up enough to be worth the price but if not I guess I will try to return it.

New Bike

Found a nice bike on sale so I did a raincheck and I'm hoping to grab it mid next week, I'll toss up a few picks when I get it.

ThinkGeek

I think I want this

ChickenFoot

To quote Wikipedia

Chickenfoot is a hard rock band, supergroup featuring vocalist Sammy Hagar (ex-Van Halen and Montrose), bassist Michael Anthony (ex-Van Halen), guitarist Joe Satriani and drummer Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers).

Now I've seen alot of people talking down Chickenfoot for many reasons, the primary seemes to be that none of the artists really push themselves....since when has music been about pushing yourself? then again most peoples idea of music in this day is either glorified rhyming (not hating) or so filtered you don't even need to voice for it....

The fact of the matter is Chickenfoot is still one of the best Rock bands to see the light of day in a very long time if you ask me, and you are here so you did.

I will stop with a link to one of the songs

Going to try to keep wow related stuff to a minimum in this blog, if you would like to see what I am doing in wow there is the link on the right to my wow blog.