Two nights ago I beat Dragon Age: Origins. Last night, I got the three remaining ends to the game and am now probably done with it. For those who are unaware, Dragon Age is a real-time party-based RPG in a high-fantasy setting. Plotwise, it goes something like this: your character has, for whatever reason, encountered Darkspawn. These Darkspawn are an ancient always chaotic evil horde bent on destroying everything for reasons that are explained by the game's backstory. Periodically, the Darkspawn rise up and actually attempt to assault the surface in number rather than running around just causing periodic trouble. This organized attack is what the game calls a "Blight". Your character (somehow) ends up part of the Grey Wardens, the ancient military organization whose sole purpose is to kill Darkspawn and to prevent or stop any Blights.

Generally speaking, it's a fairly straightforward "save the world" plot. The interesting parts come in when you get tasked to raise an army to defend against the Blight and quickly find out that everyone in this entire universe is a self-serving jerk who must be threatened, cajoled or bribed into saving their own skins. Nevertheless, I generally found it to be compelling and the twists and turns of the game kept me playing.

Gameplay wise, it is similar in form to Bioware's other RPG endeavors such as Knights of the Old Republic or Jade Empire. The game uses the standard four-man active party system and a level-based advancement system with each character coming from a specific class (Warrior, Rogue or Mage). Every level, you gain a few additional stat points and an additional skill.

I played the game on its "Normal" difficulty and found the learning curve to be incredibly steep. Although there are many skills open to players, there is an incredible disparity between the usefulness of different skills. Furthermore, the classes have a distinct lack of balance. If you're just beginning, expect to die quite often. The system is set up such that the enemies all have the same sort of skills that players have access to and have abilities based on stats in the same way that players do. This, coupled with the dynamic difficulty nature of encounters, means that the party never really gets substantially stronger than its enemies. As such, you have to win by superior tactics and skill choices. To create further difficulty, enemies usually outnumber your party at the two-to-one level and several encounters are at the three-to-one or even four-to-one level.

I mentioned above the lack of balance between classes. When I say this, what I'm really saying is that mages are the best class by leaps and bounds. Unlike the other classes, none of their spells have level requirements. This means that you can have a fourth-tier ability by the time you're level 7 or 8 (to meet the statistic requirements). Even worse, they have a near-monopoly on area-effect attacks. An archer has a single, fourth-tier area of effect attack. Considering only the "Primal" class of spells, the Mage has eight area spells (three cones, four spheres, and a "chain lightning" which is something unique). Mages standard attack (a blast of elemental energy from a staff) also never fails to miss. Although other classes tend to do higher damage, the fact that they miss periodically makes mages one of the most consistent damage dealing classes available. Of course, nothing can be said about the amazing power of mages without making note of the spell "Cold Cone". This is a third-tier mage ability. It causes everyone in its area of effect to take cold damage and have a chance of being frozen solid for up to 10 seconds. When I say "chance" however, I mean near-certanty. The only enemy that I've ever seen resist the effect twice in a row was an enemy who was otherwise immune to cold damage (a Revenant for those keeping score) and I've never seen an enemy resist it three times in a row. Couple this with the facts that the spell has a 15 second cooldown and being frozen makes enemies vulnerable to being shattered and that it interrupts ongoing attacks (like charing up certain spells or grabs and the like) and you've got a spell that is single handedly a game breaker. No other classes has anywhere near that kind of ability for control. In fact, I beat both of the optional bosses merely by throwing cold cones through them alternately using my two mages and having the other party members do additional damage via ranged attacks.

Balance issues aside, I think the game is quite well constructed and certainly worth playing. If you've liked Bioware's other entries, you'll probably enjoy this one as well. It is certainly more difficult than their other ones--I never remember having to pause the game to micromanage my entire party while playing KotOR for instance--but once you've overcome the learning curve, deaths quickly become rarer. I picked it up for somewhere in the neighborhood of $35. I think this was a fair price for it considering the amount of game available. I also ended up picking up the one DLC that is out that I didn't have (Warden's Keep). It was alright, but probably not worth the $7 price tag. The one that came with it--The Stone Prisoner--was substantially more interesting and I could imagine myself paying the $7 for it.

As a bit of an aside, the PC version of the game (the one that I played) incorporates an achievement system like XBox Live and PS3 trophies do. For whatever reason, however, rather than simply being a Game for Windows LIVE and integrating with their system, they've chosen to roll their own in the form of "Bioware Social". I can see how they might have their own reasons for wishing to do so (licensing fees, control, etc.), but frankly, I don't think we need yet another achievement system. The proliferation with LIVE and PSN was bad enough already, but adding another--and one which will add maybe two games per year at most--seems like the highest level of arrogance on the part of Bioware (or possibly EA). So, now I have yet another score to keep track of.

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So, I was trying to find where I stored some software that I wrote and released online last year. To do this, I searched for the phrase "guyblade script profile" though without the quotes. Though I didn't find it through that search, I did find a bizarre thing: I found a post by Lissa from five years ago in which, for reasons that I don't understand, there is a side conversation about my taste (look in the comments). I find discovering such things to be bizarre, especially since I have no memory of seeing it before. Stranger how such things persist for so long. Yet stranger still that 5 years ago, I was in college. I may be getting old.

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Psychonauts is $2 on Steam today. This may be relevant to your interests.

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I do not believe in good and evil as absolute moral concepts. In truth, I believe in very few absolutes at all instead tending toward shades of grey and fuzzy edges. If I did believe in such things, however, I find that this might be the closest thing to absolute evil that I've ever read.

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So, Steam has a pre-order deal for Bioshock 2 (PC). If you pre-order from them, you can get a four-pack for $135 which is like $33.75 per copy. That price is honestly pretty close to what my price point for first-person shooters tends to be. As such, I'm looking for three other people who'd want to go in to buy with me.

Any takers?

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So, I was watching television, as I often do, when a comercial for Kidz Bop. I was mostly not paying attention do to the fact that I was playing Dragon Age, until they mentioned that If you bought Kidz Bop [number] then you'd get Kidz Bop Sings the Beatles for free. At that point I was like, wait, the Beatles? Really? I so hope that they have "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?", "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", "Revolution 9", and "Rocky Racoon".

Somehow, I doubt it.

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In addition to defeating Assassin's Creed II over break, I also beat one other game. I had previously purchased Shadow Complex when it was on sale, but didn't have a chance to play it before I went back to Indiana for my break. My brother, however, had also purchased it and so I made use of his copy to play it.

For those who are unaware, Shadow Complex is generally described as a metroidvania game. In gameplay terms, this ends up meaning that the player character interacts with the world through a two dimensional interface and explores a world which is mainly revealed through the acquisition of new equipment. The game also includes a "leveling" system which gives periodic meaningful powers every 10 levels and minor (as far as I can tell, useless) powers at every level. The character's level is carried over from subsequent playthroughs which gives an incentive to play through it repeatedly. The game also has a somewhat unique addition to the nominal metroidvania framework. Since the game uses the Unreal 3 engine, the universe itself is rendered in rather high-quality 3D. The developers decided to make use of this by allowing the enemies the ability to move in that dimension that your character is unable to. To deal with this, the second analog stick is used to aim your weapon which allows you to point "in" or "out" of the screen to target enemies who inhabit those areas. Though it is sometimes a bit frustrating, it generally works very well.

I enjoyed Shadow Complex quite a bit and decided about half-way through the game that I was going to defeat it. On my first playthrough (on normal difficulty), I collected 100% of the items which has at least one major side benefit for subsequent playthroughs--it unlocks the ability to start the game with the most powerful primary weapon rather than going through the normal weapon upgrade progression. My second playthrough was done on "Insane" difficulty. My reason for choosing the highest difficulty was that it provides a major boost in experience gained and my goal was to reach maximum level as quickly as possible. There is very little lying when it comes to describing the difficulty as insane. Enemies do truly outrageous amounts of damage on that level and can, in a few seconds, turn a full health character into a dead one. This leads to a major shift in the way the game is played. Rather than rushing into a room and punching or shooting everything in sight while bounding around, you must make use of the cover provided in the levels, shoot enemies from adjacent rooms and make use of good bad bugs like the fact that your health persists across saves, but whether a health pack should still be in a save room do not.

The insane playthrough went faster than the first one, but wasn't a 100% run. The reason for this was due to the fact that, although the entire map becomes visible when you hit level 20, the item locations (and pickup status) which show up at lower difficulties is notably absent on insane. Nevertheless, I eventually managed to beat the game, and since I had gathered so many items (about 98%) and killed so many enemies (because I was leveling), I scored quite highly on the leaderboards. At the time, I ranked in at 1133 of all the players of the game in overall score for a playthrough.

My next run was to be the "minimalist" run. This run was done in order to get an achievement. In order to get it, you must beat the game with less than 13% of the items. There is a further "bonus" checkbox that can be ticked if you beat the game with under 4% of the items. I decided to get both of these in one fell swoop. Because of the large handicap, I decided to play it on the lowest difficulty--casual. After examining the relevant guides and a few false starts, I managed to clear the game with only 3% of the items. Managing this particular feat requires quite a bit of sequence breaking and actually cannot be done without making use of a secret area which is specifically for the purpose of making such a run possible. Since doing a "minimalist" run takes so little time, I actually managed to rank somewhat highly on the "Fastest Playthrough" leaderboard--somewhere around the upper 1500s if I recall correctly.

My final run was to get the last achievement: reach level 50. I was already past 40 by the time I cleared my minimalist run, so I simply started a new game on insane and ran around until I'd reached maximum level.

I should probably say a few things about the game that perhaps might be understood without me stating them explicitly. Firstly, the game is really quite solid. It is rare that I play through a game twice. It is rarer still that I play through a game 3 times. I can name very few games that I've played 4 times since I reached the point where I could get new games easily. As such, if you have an XBox 360, I recommend the game very highly. It is periodically cheap (I think I got it for 800 MS points, nominally $10), but is usually 1200 MS points which is still a fine deal for the price.

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So, I've been at my mother's home for a while with relatively little to do. Not long after I arrived, my mother mentioned that she wanted to make a table from a bunch of old books that she was otherwise going to discard from her library (for those unaware, my mother is a high school librarian). After a bit of consideration, I came up with a plan that led to the table you see above.

The legs of the table were made by drilling 7/16 inch holes through the center of each book. The books themselves were then stacked together on a 36 inch long, 3/8 inch diameter bolt The bottom book of each stack was then specifically choosen to be especially thick. This book was then screwed shut (possibly into another adjacent book), and the counter-sunk using a 1 and 1/4 inch panel bit. The counter sink easily covered up the nut and washer placed on each side. The screws helped these bottom books maintain uprightness when their integrity was otherwise compromised by the countersink.

Drilling the books was accomplished via clamping them to a piece of scrap MDF and then drilling through. The clamping was done soas to provide something to drill against and to create better exit holes on the books. My brother and I accomplished the drilling over the course of several sessions wherein he setup books to drill and I drilled them. Using multiple clamps and setups allowed us to drill several books per minute.

The top of the table consists of 28 books from a particular set of books (what set, I have no idea). All of the books were placed onto a piece of 49 inch by 39 inch piece of MDF (that luckily had already been cut to size and was a leftover of my rackmount case project from college. Each book is screwed in place with four 1" screws. The corner books are special due to the fact that they have to support the legs. These books, after been screwed down, had holes drilled at about center through the book and MDF. After the holes were drilled, I used the 1 and 1/4 inch panel bit to countersink through most of the book so that I would have a place to hide the other set of nuts and screws. All of the holes and drilled screws in the top of the table were made with the corresponding books open so as to leave the faces undisturbed.

Assembling the table was done after the legs and top were otherwise finished and was accomplished by only myself and my mother. It only took a few minutes, but we did have to remove and replace a few books due to slight misjudgements of the amount of space needed at the top. Now that it has been completed it will probably sit where it is until my mother changes schools (ACSC is undergoing some sort of reorganization).

Additional photos are on my flickr page and show the insides of a couple of the top books to show the construction as well as the table and legs from various angles.

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For Xmas, my brother gave me a copy of Assassin's Creed II for the XBox 360. I had originally been intending to pick it up for the PC, but the 360 is a fine place for a platformer. Luckily, my brother had brought his 360 home from college, so I began to monopolize it to play through the game. I ended up finishing it about 5 days later.

The game mostly plays quite similarly to the previous. Gameplay wise, there's been little done to alter the mechanics, though they do feel more polished and combat seems less like countering is the only option (though it mostly still is). They've also severely deemphasized the framing device story. Although you do begin the game in the "real world", unlike the former, you cannot exit to the "animus world" at will, nor are you kicked back into the "real world" whenever you complete a chapter. Overall, I think this makes the actual game flow better.

The game added a new "money" dynamic that had a relatively large impact on gameplay. In the early game, money is mostly obtained via pickpocketing, completing missions, or finding chests. About a third of the way through the game, however, you gain access to a "Stronghold". This should more accurately be called a city in your charge. You're given the ability to remodel various buildings in the city, open new establishments and otherwise make the place better. Doing so will cause the city to periodically produce money. Unfortunately, the amount of money that it generates quickly becomes ridiculous. I was able to completely finish the non-plot-related upgrades about half-way through the game. Collectively, they caused me to earn about 15,000 florins every 20 minutes. Until that point, the most expensive item that I'd seen was about 12,000 florins. The most expensive item in the entire game is only about 50,000 florins. As you can see, money is of little need once a certain point is reached.

I ended up deciding that I would get a perfect gamer score for the game. This was relatively easy due to the fact that there were only a few things that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise due to the nature of their achievement choices. Honestly, the most annoying part was probably the collecting of the 100 flowers. They aren't marked on any in-game map, but Games Radar politely provided a map of them all.

Overall, I'd say that if you liked the first Assassin's Creed, you'll probably also like the sequel. It generally improves on most everything about the first while removing most of the largest annoyances (such as repeated, extended travel over long distances). Of course, we do have another Halo 2 situation wherein there is quite obviously going to be a sequel and thus ends without resolution.

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