Initial Reaction Shots: Dragon Age: Origins and Muramasa: the Demon Blade
In case it wasn't yet obvious, the reaction shots will have spoilers. Current spoiler warning: end of human origin story.
So getting this game to run has been a clusterfuck of fun, let me tell you. I have an NVIDIA GeForce 9500 graphics card, which I am informed is of a line known to suffer from clusterfucktastrophes involving exploding or something (actually I think it's to do with overheating and that making the solder go boom or something, according to the articles I was linked to), and the first three times I tried to do anything with the game it froze everything and it was not so great. (The first time, right after install, when I was trying to get my pre-order DLC; the second time, right as I got my character looking the way I wanted to; and the third time right after talking to my mother in the castle.) The first time it just froze up and I think it was a server issue; the second and third times, my monitor went into auto-sleep mode the way it does when I've not been using the computer for half an hour, and sound stopped completely, and it wasn't so much "the program has crashed" as "welllll hello this is fun and now we hard reset because NOTHING WORKS." So thanks to
sister_coyote's kind suggestion I have updated my drivers and then was playing with the living room windows open (it is single digits Fahrenheit outside!) to try and cool down the room so the PC would die less.
ANYWAY all technical clusterfucks aside, I managed to play for about a total of an hour and a half, enough to build my character (female human rogue named Elissa) and get through my entire origin story.
I really love the character generation, although I have a complaint: I could clearly change eye colour, but I could not see the results of my changes. She always looked the same. (Look, I just wanted a really adorable green-eyed redhead, and I have no idea what colour eyes I ended up with but her eyeshadow is gorgeous. I'M SHALLOW, OKAY.)
I was amused at the seduction mini-quest, and got myself a nice boy-toy for the evening. Then he died and that was sad :( It is clear that Bioware is not pulling any punches, which is something I've always loved about their games. Either that or I am a sucker, and cry too easily, but whatever. MY FAMILY. And they killed small children. (Although, I have either been doing this too long or it's those funky sideways intuitive leaps I make, again: I totally knew that Howe was going to turn traitor on my family. I do this a lot, really; plot lines in games, even the non-glaringly-clichéd ones, are very often open books to me. I just KNOW.)
Something that grated on me incredibly was Bryce constantly calling his daughter "pup." I understand, from the codex (which btw I am basically in love with), that dogs are really valued in this society and so it's meant to be an endearment of high esteem, but it raised my hackles a lot. A LOT.
However, Teyrna Eleanor is a badass and I want to be like her when I grow up.
Control scheme is nice and easy, and basically identical to Neverwinter Nights, which is good because the buttons I think I should be hitting are in fact the buttons I should be hitting, with the exception that I keep thinking I should be hitting arrow keys for camera control and that is not at all the case. Also, right-clicking everything confuses the hell out of me, but is a definite improvement over NWN's "oops you just ran your sorceress RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF MELEE COMBAT instead of clicking on the troll to target your spell, lollerskates!" So I'll get used to it.
I made myself turn it off after about an hour and a half; I'm going to keep myself to small chunks whenever I can because I can't afford to let myself stay up until 3 am playing this game, and I can easily see how I could.
.
.
.
.
SPOILER TEXT ABOVE.
In other news I started Muramasa: the Demon Blade this morning, and WOW that game is super cool. And very pretty. Gorgeous environments, and on Normal mode it seems to be quite easy, which I am pleased with. I'm playing as Momohime first, and I cleared the first boss and am running around the place with all the cherry trees. Holy wow could characters not-Momohime have bigger tits? I'm thinking specifically of the fox lady, whose rack eclipses her head, but sheesh.
And now, sleepytimes.
So getting this game to run has been a clusterfuck of fun, let me tell you. I have an NVIDIA GeForce 9500 graphics card, which I am informed is of a line known to suffer from clusterfucktastrophes involving exploding or something (actually I think it's to do with overheating and that making the solder go boom or something, according to the articles I was linked to), and the first three times I tried to do anything with the game it froze everything and it was not so great. (The first time, right after install, when I was trying to get my pre-order DLC; the second time, right as I got my character looking the way I wanted to; and the third time right after talking to my mother in the castle.) The first time it just froze up and I think it was a server issue; the second and third times, my monitor went into auto-sleep mode the way it does when I've not been using the computer for half an hour, and sound stopped completely, and it wasn't so much "the program has crashed" as "welllll hello this is fun and now we hard reset because NOTHING WORKS." So thanks to
sister_coyote's kind suggestion I have updated my drivers and then was playing with the living room windows open (it is single digits Fahrenheit outside!) to try and cool down the room so the PC would die less.
ANYWAY all technical clusterfucks aside, I managed to play for about a total of an hour and a half, enough to build my character (female human rogue named Elissa) and get through my entire origin story.
I really love the character generation, although I have a complaint: I could clearly change eye colour, but I could not see the results of my changes. She always looked the same. (Look, I just wanted a really adorable green-eyed redhead, and I have no idea what colour eyes I ended up with but her eyeshadow is gorgeous. I'M SHALLOW, OKAY.)
I was amused at the seduction mini-quest, and got myself a nice boy-toy for the evening. Then he died and that was sad :( It is clear that Bioware is not pulling any punches, which is something I've always loved about their games. Either that or I am a sucker, and cry too easily, but whatever. MY FAMILY. And they killed small children. (Although, I have either been doing this too long or it's those funky sideways intuitive leaps I make, again: I totally knew that Howe was going to turn traitor on my family. I do this a lot, really; plot lines in games, even the non-glaringly-clichéd ones, are very often open books to me. I just KNOW.)
Something that grated on me incredibly was Bryce constantly calling his daughter "pup." I understand, from the codex (which btw I am basically in love with), that dogs are really valued in this society and so it's meant to be an endearment of high esteem, but it raised my hackles a lot. A LOT.
However, Teyrna Eleanor is a badass and I want to be like her when I grow up.
Control scheme is nice and easy, and basically identical to Neverwinter Nights, which is good because the buttons I think I should be hitting are in fact the buttons I should be hitting, with the exception that I keep thinking I should be hitting arrow keys for camera control and that is not at all the case. Also, right-clicking everything confuses the hell out of me, but is a definite improvement over NWN's "oops you just ran your sorceress RIGHT INTO THE MIDDLE OF MELEE COMBAT instead of clicking on the troll to target your spell, lollerskates!" So I'll get used to it.
I made myself turn it off after about an hour and a half; I'm going to keep myself to small chunks whenever I can because I can't afford to let myself stay up until 3 am playing this game, and I can easily see how I could.
.
.
.
.
SPOILER TEXT ABOVE.
In other news I started Muramasa: the Demon Blade this morning, and WOW that game is super cool. And very pretty. Gorgeous environments, and on Normal mode it seems to be quite easy, which I am pleased with. I'm playing as Momohime first, and I cleared the first boss and am running around the place with all the cherry trees. Holy wow could characters not-Momohime have bigger tits? I'm thinking specifically of the fox lady, whose rack eclipses her head, but sheesh.
And now, sleepytimes.