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Monday Gaming Diary: Witnessing Vlad the Heartless

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Alistair is not amused.

Alistair is not amused.

SGR editor Chris came in town this weekend to 1) hang out, 2) drink beer, and 3) take family photos. While he was here, he hooked his PC up to my office TV to show me just how awful Vlad the Heartless is to Ferelden and everyone who falls in his wake.

I promise I didn’t backseat game; well, I did after I had a few beers in me, but that’s to be expected.

What’s most amazing to me is not how awful of a Grey Warden Vlad the Heartless really is, but how different our games were in so many ways. Everyone reacts to him so differently, he has different dialogue options pop up, and holy cow I didn’t know Alistair could be so mean. Since I worked toward romancing the guy, of course he was always nice to me, so I never witnessed the side of him when he hates someone like he hates Vlad. It was chilling. Even more chilling was seeing what it was like when Morrigan likes someone. She hated me because I was such a paragon, but apparently when you give a fuck about no none except yourself and your mission, she finds that hot.

Vlad was running through the Temple of Andraste’s Ashes to obtain a pinch of ashes to cure the Arl of Redcliffe (although he would have let the Arl die if he could have) when I started my viewing session. Vlad’s MO is to kill anyone he is able to kill. If the option ever pops up to attack a person, he will, whether he’s talked to them first or not. The amount of dead bodies he left behind was staggering. First he chased off Brother Genitivi, then he told the cultists he’d defile the ashes, defiled the ashes, and then he killed the cultists after they brought him into their order and praised him. He killed Zevran as soon as Zevran tried to join the party. He didn’t try to talk Leliana into staying after he defiled the ashes. When he went to the Circle of the Magi, he honestly debated killing all the mages and he would have if the idea of having a healer in his party didn’t appeal to him so much.

I was either in a state of shock at how awful the game could get or laughing really hard at the responses to his choices. It also made me want to start another playthrough or two of Dragon Age: Origins. God that game is just so amazing. I truly wonder if Inquisition will have that kind of hold on me where I’d want to see how different choices affect the outcome. DAO just seems to have so many more moving parts than DAI.

I kind of wish I could watch Chris play the rest of the game. I can’t wait to hear what he chooses at the end of the Circle of Magi and the Orzammar main quests. I’m dying to know how his endgame is going to go. It’s going to be so vastly different from my own.

Monday Gaming Diary: This is Why I’m Not a PC Gamer

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10887364_804141632980986_9096888888711947381_oI was supposed to review Homeworld Remastered for work. I received some lovely hands-on time with the games at PAX South, I got pumped, and I was even more excited when I learned I would receive a review code. However, I couldn’t get the Remastered games to work.

During the preview/beta phase, I assumed it was part of some of the glitches with the setup on Steam. I didn’t reach out to tech support as I was busy trying to review other things, including The Order: 1886. Once the full game was unlocked for reviewers, I sat down and got ready to enjoy some old-school RTS greatness.

Yeah, not so much.

My game would crash every time I tried to load it. I could play the Classic version with no problems, but the Remastered version is what I needed to review. I talked to tech support, but the only thing they had info on was problems with AMD processors, something I do not have. After crying about it to Chris, he tapped into my PC via remote access and tried to sort out my issue.

Diagnosis: old graphics card is old. Gearbox tech support confirmed the same thing in far more words. Everything else on my PC is okay, but the graphics card was never meant for games of this caliber.

See, this is exactly why I’m not a PC gamer. I like slapping in a disc into my console and having everything work by magic. I have zero interest in constantly trying to maintain my PC to keep up with today’s demands in gaming. I sadly assumed that since my PC can handle Dragon Age Origins and several modern indies, why wouldn’t it be able to assume an RTS game from 1999? Okay so it’s been remastered, but I fail to see the difference. I’m not asking my PC to play The Witcher 3, FFS.

Chris has helped me find a decent graphics card that will work with my old PC and allow me to play some new games, such as Homeworld Remastered and Pillars of Eternity that releases this month.

Did you know that Pillars of Eternity is getting a strategy guide? SO MUCH EXCITEMENT.

So I guess I can’t put off the graphics card for too much longer. But if I have to start looking into uninstalling and reinstalling DLL files or DirectX updates or reconfiguring drivers for one PC game, I’m done. I’d rather replay The Order: 1886 where I have to watch all of those unskippable cut scenes again and again than deal with that crap.

You PC gamers are nuts. You can keep your Master Race.

Monday Gaming Diary: What happened to the Spring Releases?

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Every Monday morning, I have a little Skype meeting with my boss since he’s in Serbia and I’m in the US and we’ll most likely never meet in person. This morning, we were going over the state of reviews for February (of which I told him I have given my Dragon Age Inquisition disc to my husband to hold onto until I finish reviewing The Order: 1886 and Homeworld), and then we looked into the rest of Spring before the summer doldrums. We both had remembered early 2015 being a madhouse, akin to last October/November. However, after all of the delays and whatnot, from looking at the current list of games releasing through June, it’s rather dearth of titles.

March is the busiest of the next several months, with Battlefield Hardline, Pillars of Eternity, Final Fantasy Type-0 HD, and Bloodborne. April has Mortal Kombat X and Project CARS, and then May has The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

That is IT.

On the one hand, I’m thrilled as it most likely means I have more time to finish up some games I left hanging from 2014. On the other hand, I’m terrified of what all will be packed into the Fall.

I am the first to admit I know squat about what goes into determining a game’s release, other than when it gets finished. My big hope for the world of gaming is that they spread out releases over a year instead of cramming them all into the Fall in hopes for Christmas sales. How many people have to choose one game over another because they can’t justify buying 2-3 games in one month? I barely can, and it’s my job!

Even if money isn’t a factor, time always is, hence why so many of us have stacks of shame. Although, I should start calling mine a graveyard instead of a stack of shame.

I’m not saying I’m not grateful for the lull this Spring, as it has given me time to focus on Dragon Age and other games, but I’m just worried about how it will affect the Fall since so much was pushed out of the Spring. I tried giving up sleep and sanity in the name of gaming last Fall, and it turns out that I’m too old and tired to do so. Maybe it is time to look into boarding school for the kids…

Monday Gaming Diary: Stalking the UPS Guy Part 67

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I’m still nowhere near close to finishing Dragon Age Inquisition−I mean I could finish, but I must leave no region unexplored!−yet I find myself very excited about receiving my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D.

I know I’ve said before that I’ve never played this game, but I know it’s a niche one of the series, and there hasn’t been one like it sense. People seem to love it or absolutely hate it, which makes me think I should start some sort of betting pool of when I will rage quit, even with the awesome strategy guide.

But I can’t start any of this until the blasted UPS guy shows up with my beautiful collector’s edition game and guide! UPS guy gets here any time between now (2 p.m.) and 8 p.m. I wish I was kidding. UPS guy is also a ninja, who gently tosses my packages on the front steps and never knocks or rings the doorbell. Sometimes I can guess he is here by how nuts my dog is barking outside. Usually though, it’s a lot of trips to the front door, peeking out the main window, and then sighing in dejection when there is nothing there.

He’ll come eventually. And then I’ll have to make the awful decision of which do I play tonight: Dragon Age Inquisition or Majora’s Mask. It will most likely depend on how guilty my conscience feels, and there is a lot of guilt on it already. Like, where are those 2014 guide reviews? I KNOW I SUCK AND I’M SORRY, OKAY? WAAAAAAAH!

Man, even my Link amiibo on my desk is giving me the stink-eye.

If nothing else, I should have more to talk about than my obsession with Dragon Age Inquisition. Although, every time I look at this Valentine a friend sent me, it doesn’t help my obsession in the slightest:

cullen-valentineI will mention, however, that SGR has formed a fun new partnership with GameWires.com, a gaming site that runs feeds from various other gaming sites. It’s a fun way for smaller brands, like SGR, to get backlinks, notice, and new readership outside of regular social media. The owner of the site has been a fan here for awhile, and he’s even had me on a podcast on another site he owned. In other words, he’s good people and he has good taste in other people and their sites. Go check it out, and if you own a small site, go get signed up to submit your material!

Oh hey, it’s been a whole 30 minutes or so…time to go check the front door again!

 

Monday Gaming Diary: Majora’s Mask Countdown

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Majoras-Mask

I almost skipped today’s gaming diary entry because honestly, nothing has changed in what I’ve been playing other than my brief stint with the first episode of Life is Strange. That took 2 hours from my life, which is miniscule compared to what I’ve poured into Dragon Age: Inquisition.

I’m supposed to review two other games in the coming weeks, but the both should be fairly short in terms of what I’ll need to donate, so I don’t foresee much taking me away from the Inquisition until The Order: 1886 comes out. Why write yet another post about how much I am addicted to DAI? (The addiction is REAL, people. And I thought Mass Effect was bad for me…)

Then I remembered that The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask releases this Friday. Not next month. Not next Friday. THIS Friday. That means I don’t have much time to pour into DAI as I’ll want, as of Friday or until Gamestop ships it to me. I’m not sure whether to be excited to finally play this niche Zelda game everyone loves so much or sad I’ll have to stop closing rifts and hunting dragons in Thedas for a little bit. I can possibly play them both off and on throughout the day, but when The Order: 1886 drops just a week later, I can forget it.

I need to find a way to pour DAI into my veins, like as much as Chris would with his precious Elite Dangerous.

Then again…maybe it will be good to force me to play something else for a little bit; as long as I don’t take a 3-year hiatus between play times like I did with Dragon Age: Origins. I never want to do that to a game again.

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