Awakening is Halfway Decent

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening had potential to be a good expansion, but its execution leaves it a little mired. It amounts to mostly "more of the same," which would be a good thing if I were completely enamored with the original game. But since I grew weary of my time in the first game, playing the expansion didn't do much to rekindle my interests. It has its moments, certainly, but it's nothing particularly great. So I'll just run a quick list of things I liked and disliked in Awakening, after the jump. 

Top 20 Video Game Soundtracks

"Top 20" is kind of misleading, because I don't even want to begin trying to rank these. But it wouldn't be very stylish to call this a "List of 20 Great Arbitrarily-Ranked Video Game Soundtracks," would it? In fact, it might not even be 20 soundtracks at all, as I'm almost certain I'll suddenly remember one or two more as soon as I post this.

The criteria for selecting these soundtracks is based primarily on how well I could remember music five, ten, fifteen years after playing the games. I looked over my shelves and collections of games just trying to see if I could remember anything about the music, and these are the 20 that I actually have lasting memories of. And that, I feel, is perhaps more important than a soundtrack's technical merits.

Continue reading the full article for my pick of top 20 video game soundtracks, complete with four embedded tracks from each of the games. Can you guess which games and songs will be featured?

Great Games You Never Played: Obscure

"Fine, obscure gems." Part of a periodical series: Great Games You Never Played.

Talk about obscure games, am I right? They don't get any more obscure than Hydravision Entertainment's 2004 premiere Obscure (or ObsCure if you ain't got no understanding of how them there English grammaticals work), a good old-fashioned survival-horror game in the same vein as the original Resident Evil. This isn't a sissy game like Resident Evil 5 or Dead Space; this is hardcore survival-horror, complete with limited saves, weird camera angles, obscure puzzles, and more enemies than bullets or healing items. 

Not only is Obscure a faithfully functional rendition of the classic formula, it's got enough style to make it stand out from the crowd. You control up to five different high school stereotypes who've gotten trapped inside of Leafmore High while trying to find their missing friend. Each of the characters has unique abilities that aid your gameplay in different ways, and when a character dies, s/he's dead for good. (Unless you reload a save.) The campaign also boasts a strong two-player co-op that lets you and a friend play on the same screen. 

And if that's not enough to sell it to you, it features music by Sum 41 and Span, as you can read for yourself on the front of the box. Seriously, this is one you don't want to miss. More about Obscure after the jump.

Dragon Age: Origins is a Bloody Long Game

What is there to say about Dragon Age: Origins that hasn't already been said? There's a ton of content to experience, lots of dialogue, lots of loot, lots of blood, lots of quality polish, and not so many dragons. It's probably the most "old school" RPG we've seen in the last few years (or at least the most successful one), and that alone makes it a very compelling game. But despite its many great features and overall high quality experience, DAO still suffers from typical BioWare shenanigans that leave me to say that it's merely "pretty good." 

Video Games in TV: South Park

"Some TV shows just don't get it." Part of a periodical series: Video Games in TV.

I must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if I'm turning to South Park for video games in TV. The season 10 episode "Make Love, Not Warcraft" deviates from the typical formula of video game episodes because it's not a crime drama using video games as the murder mystery, and it's not one of those "trapped in a virtual reality game" cliches. Instead, our heroes---the boys of South Park, Colorado---must stop the killing spree of a high-level, powerful player who has transcended the rules of the game and become stronger than the admins themselves.

There's really not much to say about this episode. I'm sure most gamers have already seen it, and once you watch it all of the jokes make sense. There's no commentary to be had except laughing along with the jokes and nodding in agreement at the satirical portrayal of WOW and its playerbase. I've only played WOW for about 30 minutes one time, but thanks to the Internet and gaming stereotypes, I know everything there is to know about WOW; this episode is accessible to non-gamers a real treat for gamers, thanks to the fidelity of the machinima animation from the in-game models. 

Instead of writing a critique or commentary, I'm just going to post some of the quotes that I found most amusing, along with pictures and things of the like. Continue reading for the quotes.

Pretentious Dialogue Trees

I've noticed that some dialogue trees (specifically those in BioWare games) offer the illusion of depth and complexity, but then betray their shallowness in practice. Conversations give you various response options, but in most situations they have very little effect on anything at all. In the more expository sections, your response only affects the very next line the NPC says, and then they go right into talking about the other topics you didn't prompt. It only affects the order in which information is presented to you, having zero resemblance to an actual conversation and ultimately making your input pointless.

There are a lot of other, more minor issues that bother me with some of theses dialogue trees. Continue reading for more about what's wrong with them.

15 Minutes of Espionage: Gravity Bone

In Brandon Chung's Gravity Bone (of Blendogames), you play as a spy in two simple missions: poisoning someone's drink and delivering it to him, and taking photographs of mechanical birds. It's in first-person with block-style graphics, and even a little bit of first-person platforming. The gameplay is pretty straightforward (functional and intuitive), and it's over fairly quickly (almost prematurely, it seems), but it's enjoyable enough while it lasts. The ambiguity of its ending sequence lends itself to artistic interpretation, if you're so inclined. Even if you're not, it's an interesting concept nonetheless. Get it for free here.