Apologies to those of you who don’t give a damn about teh gaemz. But, well, I’m spending the weekend in the company of lots of new and shiny ones so I thought it was probably worth sharing a few brief thoughts on the noteworthy ones. Of course, there are also some “official writeups” around the place for you to enjoy – today I wrote about Dragon Age II, for example.
Dragon Age II, incidentally, is simply marvellous. I loved the first one (and am, in fact, currently replaying it) but only felt mild interest towards the sequel for some reason. I felt exactly the same about Mass Effect 2, in fact, and ended up absolutely loving that. Having played the demo of Dragon Age II… yeah. That’s now a day-one purchase. They’ve fixed the niggly graphical issues of the first game, added a protagonist that actually talks (and is player-designable, like Mass Effect‘s Shepard) and made the combat make a bit more sense with a controller.
Some PC gamers have been a bit sniffy about this, thinking that it’s evidence of the series “dumbing down”, especially after the first game was a proposed return to BioWare’s roots. But the cinematic nature of Dragon Age makes it ideal for playing one the couch via the big screen. So why shouldn’t it be designed with console play in mind?
Regardless of your opinions on these decisions… it’s looking solid, and I’m very much looking forward to it. It is to Dragon Age: Origins as Mass Effect 2 was to Mass Effect. That is to say, a massive improvement in almost every way.
Besides Dragon Age (which I had to wait for ages to play, and then had to play standing up, which made my shoulders ache) I also had a go at Motorstorm Apocalypse (which let me sit down, but made me wear 3D glasses). This was good fun. There were elements of Split/Second to the “driving amidst chaos” gameplay, though, there was less of the unpredictability of Disney’s title. It was very clear that Apocalypse‘s environmental hazards are scripted rather than triggered by players or AI. It’ll be interesting to see how this works in multiplayer, as many of the effects seemed to be timed conveniently to happen just as the player passed.
Apocalypse was notable for having probably the best 3D effect that I’ve seen so far; that said, the technology is still clearly flawed at the moment. Graphics are low-resolution, jaggedy and run at a poor frame rate. They also seem to flicker quite a bit, and it’s easy to feel yourself going cross-eyed.
Dominating the show floor near the entrance was Def Jam: RapStar. The Eurogamer Expo, which was mostly filled with white nerds, was probably not the best place to show off this game. You couldn’t fault the booth’s staff for their enthusiasm, though, as they kept up a constantly energetic and noisy display all day. Of course, being not the world’s biggest fan of that type of music (to say the least) I found it incredibly irritating. And I wasn’t alone. Still, at least a few people seemed to be enjoying it.
But seriously. That game has fucking N-Dubz in it, which is enough reason to curse its name for all eternity. Not only that, but an N-Dubz song about Facebook. Seriously. Watch this. It’s an embarrassment.
Do you really want to stand in front of your TV and sing that? Yes? Then I don’t think we can be friends any more.
Settling down to a quiet night this evening before stepping back into the breach for the last time tomorrow. To anyone else attending, apparently there’s a Tube strike tomorrow evening, too, so you may want to consider leaving the show early.
Normal business (well, as normal as it ever gets) will resume tomorrow evening. Possibly!