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.

Review on The Ghost King by R. A. Salvatore

"The Spellplague has come to Faerûn. The Weave is unwinding. Magic has gone mad."

This novel was released October 6th, 2009. It is the 3rd and final installment of the Transitions series, the latest of all the chronological sets following in the footsteps of Drizzt Do'Urden, the Drow Ranger and the Companions of Mithral Hall. Cover art is by Todd Lockwood.


The series sets up to this point in time in chronological order to the sequence of events are as follows:

The Dark Elf Trilogy

• Homeland(1990)
• Exile(1990)
• Sojourn(1991)

The Icewind Dale Trilogy

• The Crystal Shard(1988)
• Streams of Silver(1989)
• The Halfling's Gem(1990)

Legacy of the Drow

• The Legacy(1992)
• Starless Night(1993)
• Siege of Darkness(1994)
• Passage to Dawn(1996)

Paths to Darkness

• The Silent Blade(1998)
• The Spine of the World(1999)
• Servant of the Shard(2000)
• Sea of Swords(2001)

The Hunter's Blades Trilogy

• The Thousand Orcs(2002)
• The Lone Drow(2003)
• The Two Swords(2004)

Transitions

• The Orc King(2007)
• The Pirate King(2008)
• The Ghost King(2009)

These stories are awesome! They are mature, well-written, flavorful, inspiring and contain something for everyone. There are chronologically 19 novels before The Ghost King involving the excerpts of Drizzt Do'Urden and Companions. There are also mutiple (which I have spared from listing here) sets that are side-related, catching up on circumstances with many more of the popular characters. Fortunately, the novels don't betray themselves by relying heavily on past content (see: Robert Jordan) insofar as they move on amidst the lives of the Companions of Mithral Hall with detail of the recent past and minor running familiarizations to keep the reader both refreshed and up to par with the current content. In short, yes you could just pick the first book of any series up and read it having only read, say, the first six installments chronologically in the sets without too much confusion. But why would you want to?

R. A. Salvatore is native to Massachusetts and went to college at Fitchburg for communications and then English. He is regularly a NY Times best-selling author and has sold more than 10,000,000 copies. Salvatore also personally wrote the story for the PS2, Xbox and PC video game Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, edited a four story novel set for PC online game Everquest and designed the banter for the Quake III bots. Currently he is the Creative Director of 38 Studios, formerly Green Monster Games, along with Curt Shilling and Todd McFarlane.

R. A. Salvatore's writing style is a strong, well-rounded version of all that can be found in the great writers of our time, likely because he is also very well-read. As with most writers of the fantasy genre, Salvatore juggles between multiple climactic events all taking place during the context of one or more great objectives to overcome. Environment is well-described but not overemployed, struggle and mystery are constant but not overburdening, and characters are scintillating with reaction. Salvatore's most unique style is found within combat, actually having structured the dynamics and timing of everything that must occur within both realistic logic of relativity and fantastical connotations. That may sound complicated, the gist would be in that characters are not in some grey area of imagined triumph or loss amidst undescribable chaos where only what was written is to be finitely occurring. Also, the choices are related to Wizards of the Coast's Forgotten Realms content and must stay within those 'guidelines'.

The Ghost King is a puzzle piece fitted exactly in the conjunction of all Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons and Dragons and Forgotten Realms content. The PC game expansion pack Neverwinter Nights 2: The Mask of the Betrayer might ring a bell (good game by the way), or any reference to the Spellplague may also. All magic fibers have been torn asunder rendering deathly irony to what once were the most powerful entities on Faerûn. The realm of shadow is pouring into the prime material plane, with legion armies of otherworldly force spewing forth in contortions of rampage.

The Ghost King himself is partly the reincarnation of Crenshinibon, the crystal shard. That is the same crystal shard as mentioned in The Crystal Shard and Servant to the Shard. It is an ancient artifact millenia old that seeks revenge on those surviving who have spited it. The Spellplague, an unraveling and weirding of all magic context, has caused its previously detonated energy to form new substance. The Ghost King is possibly the most severe, colossal and heart-wrenching culmination of events that Salvatore could have designed.

Review on Be Near Me by Andrew O'Hagan

"My father always said one wasn't a man and knew nothing of life until one could read the local newspaper from cover to cover and find every item interesting. Everything from the church news to the prices of used cars, from the legal notices to the births, marriages and deaths."


Be Near Me(2006) was a Newsday Favorite Book of the Year, San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, Plain Dealer (Cleveland) Best Book of the Year, Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, Library Journal Best Book of the Year and was also nominated for the Booker Award.

What is the good life that all must live? Is it in the forever fun-loving and innocent nature of youngsters? Can it be found lingering late at night within the haunts of metropolitan atmosphere? Is it anything like what was expected? Has it been there all along, in the lifelong journeys, the good and the bad?

This was a good book. It's as if the character contained within moves, eked of their own will and desires, to flagrantly disagree with the perpetuities the reader will find written on each page. The content is richly perceivable, written just like it had been lived. There is a strong sense of spontaneity in a bleak yet beautiful and well-loved atmosphere.

Father David Anderton is a Catholic priest with an education hailing from Oxford. His views are intelligent, prototypical and naive. All good-hearted, learned men must in fact be very naive or masochistic. Father Anderton devotes his life to helping his parish understand the religious soul as Christ saw it. More specifically, he is like a well-cultured, highly cynical, lost puppy. The problem being that he doesn't ever seem to crack a laugh despite literally constant antics incongruous with any sort of reverend-like behavior.

The novel is set in several different time periods, assumably the 1930s to 1970s within England and Scotland. David Anderton grows up never having understood his own father. His mother simply says his father really knew the way things were and what to do about it. Anderton lives the majority of his life bereft of a companion, helping others who are in need. It may seem a pleasurable existence, but his inner soul trapped in methodical boredom is not satisfied.

O'Hagan's style is like walking in a painting, except the people are real. In fact, that's one of the things written that are a part of the story. I could not eludicate on it any better than that, it is exactly accurate. From the moments of a garden kept within a church (enter: Final Fantasy 7?), asides between child and mother, men of great faith at a table, to end-all moments within a courtroom, a theme glitters, fluorishes and leaves the reader with a prism of deeply manifested roleplay.

Be Near Me was another choice from 'must read' book lists. The cover of my particular book featured an unerring masterpiece of an 80's haircut done up in sepia tones. This title was, yet again, an interesting experience that I would have otherwise possibly never picked up. I'd like to include more in the novel review about it, but every piece of description seems to produce spoilers that I am unwilling to yield.

Website Construction

I've been nonstop producing websites! I've just completed a final draft version of King Philip Regional High School's Drama & GAPS. You can find the running demo here. I should have some novel reviews ready soon!

Review on Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

"Nevertheless, we all of us, to varying degrees, believed that when you saw the person you were copied from, you'd get some insight insight into who you were deep down, and maybe too, you'd see something of what your life held in store."


Never Let Me Go(2005) is named after a song on an album named Songs After Dark by fictional singer Judy Bridgewater. The novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005, for the Arthur C. Clarke Award in 2006 and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2005. Shortlisting is another terminology used in awards for displaying a noteworthy finalist. The movie adaptation of the book is set to release in 2010.

The author, Kazuo Ishiguro, displays a freedom of thought glancingly similar to James Joyce's stream of consciousness writing. Fortunately, and in line with my own personal preferences, it only faintly resembles such accolade. In this novel he is portraying three life segments of a young to middle aged girl named Kathy H..

Is it often that we stumble upon a male author writing award-winning material with their main character being the opposite gender? There are examples of this happening. Of the many examples, I believe the proportions to be vastly skewed in favor of both main characters that are male and unsuccessful attempts at capturing an undeniable element of femininity. In this case, Ishiguro is creative and clever, finding the niche where every individual character's mind may lie. To contrast between Ishiguro and what a female writer may have written, I find that Kathy H. is personified as being less vicariously empowered, and that because of this she is also inherently fragile. For the analysis go further indepth, it would lose direct connection to the content. I found it enjoyable to see limitation, a piece of the fabric of the story itself, becoming less of a handicap and moreso a rare bloom of life to behold.

A strong downside to reading Never Let Me Go is the necessary but unwanted homecoming on the facts of life related to juvenile behavior. Once in a while, a small refresher can add a mischievous spark to any literature, although it may come at the cost of target audiences not taking it seriously. On a rough estimate, 20-25% of this novel is blathering on in some form or another about sex. 'Sex sells' so the saying goes? Dubious. It is unfortunate that A: the author is clearly not a woman, and B: he wasted 1/5th of a novel on refuse I could care less about. It could be said that I'm no better for having written so much in opposition against it, but I can live with that.

Aside from all the hype and fuss, the straightforward bead on this paperback is that it is very realistic and very perfect in being delicate. The characters are sheltered, treasured and educated clones that must in the end be harvested for their organs to donate to people with identities in transplants. The world is cured of cancer, nobody has to feel the cold reaper at their back any longer. Nobody, except a caste of less-than-humans that may neither procreate nor experience true freedom. This is the indulgence of children that may never roam free.

I poked around and picked out a few books here and there in lists people declared as 'must reads'. Suffice it to say, grabbing at random from collections of people whom I've never met will land some interesting choices. I would not have picked this off the shelf spontaneously, though the actual decision-making of the past was exactly that. It might or might not have been a 'must read', I am at odds to judge it as either. It is a quick read and it leaves the reader with a ponderance of things long afterward. It does need to be mulled over on, so I guess it can't be all bad.

Website Construction

I completed my website project earlier today. You can find it at http://cheynej.awardspace.biz/. I'm posting some pics here for the purpose of archiving later on. In the future, I'd like to post an instructional on basics for using Microsoft Frontpage and Adobe Dreamweaver.































I also just fixed every hyperlink in this blog to open a new browser window upon clicking instead of using the current one. Why a blog wouldn't do that by default is a good question to ask. That's it for now!