Final Projects, Books and More...

I've been very busy! I'm approaching finals week, supervising weekend set constructions for King Philip Drama, finishing up the fourth of four Glen Cook novels, and transforming my room for the holidays. Exciting, I'm sure.

The painting could likely have been finished by now but I happen to be an artiste. It's somewhat true. I end up having way too much fun, and yet the finished product amounts to the same color on the wall, go figure! The color was intended to be "Forest Hills" or "Icy Forest", some such dazzling "Light Green" and yet the result has instead equivocated itself to 'toothpaste'. Will these walls wage new war against the insidious design known as morning breath? I should hope so.

I plan to release a book review on the currently final dual dualities of Glen Cook's Black Company series, Guerrilla Marketing 2.0, and Die Broke.

Game Review on Dragon Age: Origins

November is looking like a conflagration of priorities hitting home with an upstart of a train schedule. Does public transportation not run on time? Public transit systems running on time is what Mussolini sold Italy on to fight for the losing side of World War II. Not that anyone could tell what the outcome of World War II would be at the time. The trains are quite important, no exaggeration! Imagine getting fired for always having been on time, for the government-sponsored transportation that won't show! In lieu of keeping things going, its time to toss in another gaming review.

Dragon Age: Origins. Holy smokes.

I am going to 'mass-acronym' and reference to many potentially unfamiliar games and storylines for the next few paragraphs, beware. Dragon Age: Origins (DA:O) is a Dungeons & Dragons (referred to as D&D) Role-playing Game (RPG). Not to be confused with a massively multiplayer online game (MMO; MMORPG), this is a single player tactical adventure.

Game designer Bioware is known for creating adventures with high quality graphics, seamless interface controls and extremely well designed storylines. Bioware is the maker of very many RPGs including: the Baldur's Gate series, the Neverwinter Nights (NWN) series, Jade Empire, Mass Effect, and others.

DA:O is strikingly similar to the NWN2 interface, with the graphical scenery of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (Oblivion; a similarly typed game by Bethesda Softworks) and the playstyle of Guild Wars (a competitive MMORPG with a similar ability usage structure).

Dragon Age: Origins is a highly original adventure, filled with devastating challenges of a well-sized variety amounting to what might as well be an inconceivable plethora of content to overcome. Yes, after getting to a certain point in the plotline many hours into the game and reading the achievement monitor displaying what was an eternal struggle as "24% Complete", I decided that this was, with hardly an argument left, the most intense RPG adventure I'd ever come across. I have been the proverbial wrecking ball of destruction, only to find I've not been chipping away at some massive skyscraper, but rather a bloated countryside, chock full of them. "Holy smokes."

The meaning behind such a landslide of material is that not only will this provide entertainment for hours on end, spanning some impossible-to-calculate dreadnaught of elapsed time to completion, but that little kid inside me who's conquered all the previous computer baddies said, "Whoa, this thing's gotta go down." which hasn't happened since Baldur's Gate 2.

The amazing part? DA:O is low- to non- fatiguing content. The plotline is laden with intrigue, options of all types, and it's constantly restructuring terrain, sub-plot and opposition. Ambushes are everywhere. 'Stuff' is everywhere. And best of all, the characters are interesting.

The typical RPG is like a guy walks into a bar joke, except the adventurer party walks into a room and the bad guys aren't the ones laughing. Unless its Irenicus from Baldur's Gate 2, though he's not much of a laugher. More to the point, these characters talk amongst themselves without impeding progress, they have tactical menus to customize their 'auto-pilot' combat orders, they have rewards or penalties for treating them better or worse, and the player may level them up all themself, meaning they all inevitably do battle in the way decided ultimately by the player. If the player prefers every 'mage' class character to all cast fireball at once at the start of every battle, that is not an issue.

The class roles are substantially different from every other game thus far made, possibly indicating a groundbreaking moment in the RPG genre or also possibly just something well-made and enjoyable that stays where it is. There are only three classes, warrior, rogue and mage, which is where the similarity ends. Despite this being limiting, each class has 4 specializations, meaning a rogue could potentially be designed as an assassin, bard, archer or duelist. With the game mechanics, that rogue could actually be two of those specializations. Note that there was no healer class, meaning the mage class serves this purpose by making use of 'creation' magic abilities. A skill point every level decides what kind of abilities the character will actually have, though more may be purchased through semi-rare expensive tomes sold from vendors throughout the realms. They are quite expensive as compared to the extraordinarily dismal level of income accrued in the first quarter of the main plotline.

There is a monument of information to gather. The main character also stores with them a codex. The codex is a sort of encyclopedia scantron pocket database that every single piece of literature run across becomes assimilated into. Every single book, scroll, or scrap of paper yields experience and reference that the player may peruse at any time. There is in fact so much information that it would be impossible to have read every piece without having spent the amount of time required to read the veritable paperback novel, all in dissimilar scraps of indexed paraphenalia. It does provide a lot of background, as the game environment has been struck from original 'scratch' and must therefore be explained.

Yes, this is quite the adventure. I have to admit it was of a bite a bit more chew than I expected for such. I rate this as a must play for all fans of the RPG genre. I do not expect to be done with this seemingly insurmountable deluge of tediously crafted content anytime soon. I will however, continue to keep chipping at it with my eclectic mage Daylen somethingorother (generic random name generator choice) of 14 levels and possessed of enough destructive magic to make even a dragon envious. Oh yes, and there are dragons.

Game Review on Train Your Brain with Dr. Kawashima

I'm in the middle of several things right now, none of which are complete enough to be reviewed. I did, however, just try out this new brain-teasing game for a bit of a mind refresher.

Train Your Brain with Dr. Kawashima is a PC Game based on activities that apply to the frontal lobe of the human brain. The frontal lobe is registered as the section of the brain that gets the least use during video gaming sessions. Some reports have shown permanent brain dysfunction stemming from the lack of frontal lobe activity, due to child and young adult gaming culture habits, but most reports record that there is no such correlation. Train Your Brain tests are based on four major categories: logic, memory, calculation and vision.

Dr. Ryuta Kawashima is a 49-year old neuroscientist known primarily for his Nintendo DS, console and PC video games involving brain development. Kawashima is an expert on neurophysiology and brain imaging. He actually refused a $22 million salary from game company royalties. Kawashima did finally accept a salary of roughly $100,000 a year. The rest of the money will be used as funding for research. He has put some of the funds to use in constructing new laboratories, with one completed and one still in construction.

Train Your Brain with Dr. Kawashima is similar to any of the games you may find on the Nintendo Wii system. Graphics are colorful, bright, with white backgrounds and Wii-like content bubbles.

Upon first glance, this seems to have the makings of an excellent pastime that will train, stimulate and refresh the mind. Immediately upon creating an incomplete profile, the player is thrown into several brand-new, completely different challenges that may not be played again until the following day. That is correct, these Daily Training exercises may not be practiced and are picked completely at random from 6 potential choices. That means six exercises are off limits and, guess what, ONE HALF of the following content is locked and the player is not allowed to try them until going through the Daily Training many times. This game does not let you play it.

Once every day upon clicking the new profile, a player can add one extra fact about themselves to the actual profile, such as: favorite color, town, age, etc.

Train Your Brain regards itself as scientific. By accessing an information chart, rating all the growth development recorded in score, the player may see how fulfilled their brain has become. Detailed data includes a brain juxtaposed to a radial graph, as well as a Wii Sports-similar calendar outlining trophies and ranks earned.

To say it bluntly, my mind does not appear to be more thoroughly trained. Some of the important Daily Training tests include counting out loud to yourself and pressing an OK button to signal completion, as well as memorizing a series of words over the course of two minutes with no gradual incline of difficulty. Highly scientific. Do you feel smarter already? I have 52 trophies from very little gameplay and can't say I approve of the reward content. In fact, most of the time I was playing Sudoku, which is not native to Train Your Brain. Sudoku is a very fun puzzle-game that will net nothing except casual trophies in Train Your Brain, regardless of the time taken to each puzzle's completion. I highly recommend Sudoku.

The content of Train Your Brain, not including Daily Training or locked games, consists of 12 tests within logic, memory, calculation and vision categories and two casual games that have nothing to do with anything, as far as I can tell. Tests include fast math, memorizations and visual exercises.

Fast math would include making change, simple math equations equaling up to ~100, and clicking numbers in the right order. Not very difficult, or entertaining. The change made must be done with European monies though, which can be tricky at first. That's all there is for calculation! Total entertained play time: 5 minutes?

Memorization exercises are memorizing shapes/pictures in sequence, remembering which paperdoll was wearing what, and keeping track of a walkthrough sequencing the route to get home. The paperdolls get me every time, its too bad memorizing paperdolls is not the most rapturing of experiences. Especially considering the awful difficulties of dudes being chicks and chicks that are dudes with no common proportions of decency whatsoever. The rest is clicking shapes how they were shown, or waiting for a 1st person visual to walk its way home. Total entertained play time: 5 minutes.

Logic sequences are made up of rock paper scissors (yep.), making up animals from other animals, and matching a cog wheel with the impression it makes. Rock, paper, scissors? Making up animals? The cog wheel was OK, except I haven't learned anything substantial. Total entertained play time: 5-7 minutes?

Visual exercises include match the pairs, choose the correct point of view, and 'colorful dots'. Matching pairs on a screen is exactly how it sounds. The correct point of view is choosing the correct camera perspective in 2d while looking at a scene in 3d, not bad. Lastly, colorful dots is comprised of guessing which colored flecks on the screen are the most prevalent. Yep. Entertained play time: 7 minutes, meaning more than one exercise might get a single replay.

That was it, 20 minutes of fun. It wasn't that good. The music is repetitive and I'm trying to get around all these unlocks still being locked. Its not happening. I rate this game as fail, but I'll stick around and see how the unlocks go. One never knows, there could be a Quake engine built into this thing.

Unlikely.